《Decompose!》


 Day 0

    It all began with a phone call.


    I was watching the third movie adaptation of that famous post-apocalyptical teen novel hit where the heroine discovers the truth about her world when my phone rang. I paused the stream, checked the caller ID, and answered. It was my advisor from the university.


    "Professor Andrews, how are you?"


    Professor Andrews is a tenured professor at the Environmental Sciences department. He and I are members of an NGO dedicated to the maintenance of several parks and reserves nearby. We have a stipend from the government so we are usually called on when something happens. I''d seen the news and had a hunch of what was the subject of the call.


    "Miss Rinaldi, I''m fine, thank you. We have a situation at the Devil Ridge forest. A group of students invaded the reserve and hosted a party there last Friday. The warden''s office called us, the place is a mess."


    "I saw the news, professor. If the news helicopter caught that much garbage, I can only shudder at the thought of how much is hidden by the trees. I''m glad nobody got hurt, at least."


    Some ambulances had to be sent there because some students drank too much and needed IV glucose. The partygoers mistook the ambulance sirens for the police and departed in a hurry, abandoning people behind. It was a mess but everyone was accounted for.


    They left everything behind, however. And now, it seems the cleanup is up to us. The government has it cheap with our stipend. I sighed. At least we are doing our part.


    "Yes, things are bad. Worse yet, I''m afraid the local wildlife is now feasting on the food they left behind. We need to go there today. I already contacted the other professors and cleared up your schedule for the whole week."


    Now, that was bad news. One week away from civilization? I had work to do, papers to write.


    "What about my credits? I had some papers to turn in this week."


    "I can give you extra credits if you write a report on the degradation of the local environment, especially the damage to wildlife. You have a knack with the critters, Sandra. Document everything with your usual diligence. We can even try to coax a joint publication or two out of this tragedy."


    Yeah. That part really tugged at my heartstrings. The critters, not getting my name in a publication as a co-author.


    "Get me an extension on my papers'' deadline of at least ten days and I''m in."


    "Done deal," He chuckled through the line. "I already did it. Glad to have you aboard, Sandra."


    I walked into that one, didn''t I? It was a given that if he already talked with my other teachers about me missing a week of classes, he''d talk about my deadlines too. Professor Andrews carried some clout in the department. I was lucky to get him as an advisor but when I think about the classes he made me enroll in, I regret becoming his student. Material engineering, advanced chemistry, metallurgy, geodynamics, forestry, political sciences, oceanography. I had my optional classes all lined up until graduation and then some.


    "I hate you, you hear me?"


    "One day you''ll thank me. Ganbare, Hikari-chan."


    I poked the red ''end call'' button so hard the phone almost slipped out of my hand. Then it shook.


    <blockquote>


    We are picking you up in 1 hour. Get ready.


    Joshua.


    </blockquote>


    Joshua was one of my classmates and another member of our NGO. He wanted a spot with Professor Andrews and joined to earn himself some brownie points. He was tall and blonde. His pet peeve was the fact everyone thinks he got a sports scholarship when he didn''t. Although he played football in high school, he got a nasty injury during his senior year championship match and stopped playing.


    But I had very little time to get ready. Worse yet, if I was gathering data, I needed to get all my stuff. I jumped out of the couch and ran to my room. I went past my roommate Theresa''s open door and caught her in a rather intimate moment.


    "Dammit, Sandra!" Theresa cursed as she jumped out of bed, pulling her pants up. "What is going on, girl? Where are you going?"


    I entered my room without stopping. "Shut the damn door, Theresa. I don''t need to see how many pubes you have!"


    She snorted and giggled. "None, you mean!"


    I was busy putting clothes in my carry-on and looking at my camping checklist on my phone. Too bad Google Glass was a miss. Too bad humans are creeps. I''d love to have a HUD screen that could free up my hands.


    "Hey, don''t ignore me, girl! What is going on, where are you going?"


    I spared Theresa a glance. "Devil Ridge. Where that party happened. Joshua is coming to pick me up. I was surprised you weren''t there."


    I need my electronics. The iPod, iPad, laptop, mouse, GoPro, Bluetooth speakers, the camping power pack, solar charger. Also binoculars, climbing gear, spools of rope, hatchet, hammer, multi-tool, survival knife. I gathered all this on my bed.


    "Damn, girl. You look like Tom Cruise getting ready for another Mission: Impossible stunt."


    I turned around and faced Theresa. "You could help me, you know?"


    She smiled. "Okay." And then went for my vanity. She opened the drawer and took out my makeup kit, putting it over the iPad. "Now what else will miss Honor Student forget to take with her because she''s so single-minded?"


    With another sigh, I let her do what she wants and kept gathering my stuff. We would need to gather samples, so I''ll need my field kit. I pulled the zipper and checked inside. You never know when some glass broke until you check. Test tubes, beakers, PH strips, reagents, everything seems fine. I took the Dremel rotary tool kit too. I might need to cut some samples. And I know getting cell signal in the Devil Ridge is hard but it won''t hurt to take the portable router. It might work If I climb up and set it on high ground.


    I looked over my shoulder to see Theresa rummaging through my dresser, filling in my carry-on luggage with clothes. She noticed she had my attention and smiled.


    "Can I borrow your sailor uniform?"


    I did one year of high school in Japan. My full name is Sandra Hikari Kinoshita Rinaldi. My father is Italian and my mother is a nissei, daughter of Japanese immigrants. My grandmother divorced from my grandfather and traveled West with her daughter. We had no contact until a few years ago when my grandmother''s brother died. I went with her to Japan and reconnected with my family there.


    Long story short, I agreed to spend a year living with my grandfather. In the west I''m Sandra Rinaldi, in the east I''m ľÏ¹â. A light that lives under a tree.


    "No. You''ll tarnish the honor of my alma mater by using my uniform to make lewd things."


    To my relief, Theresa put the uniform back in the drawer. "Okay. I bet my boyfriend would just jizz in his pants if he saw me with a genuine JK uniform."


    I grunted. She doesn''t even try to deflect the accusations. But Theresa is a sweetheart despite her utter lack of morals. I kept getting my camping stuff. Water purifier, water bottle, canteen. An army dish set. Mug, plate, cutlery and a frying pan all stainless steel. First aid kit. An LED lantern. An LED flashlight with a hand crank. LED headband. A dry duffel bag for the laundry.


    "Speaking of which," She continued, "Are you taking protection with you?"


    "Jeez, Theresa. I''m going to research and cleanup a forest. I''m not going to have sex. I don''t even have a boyfriend now."


    Two weeks ago my boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to move to NY and take me with him. I couldn''t abandon my studies. He didn''t want a long-distance relationship. Case closed. It hurt a lot but ever since he started job-hunting out-of-state I knew things would go that way.


    "Are you still on birth control?" She asked me with a serious face.


    "Yes. I can''t just stop in the middle. I won''t stop taking the pill, you know the drawbacks of stopping."


    Taking the pill is bad, going back and forth is worse. Acne, wild periods, etc. No, thank you.


    "You still need protection. I have flavored condoms that come in a tin. I''ll give them to you. Let me go get''em."


    I held Theresa by the arm. "No. Theresa, I won''t need the condoms. It is too soon anyway."


    She gave me the ''yes, sure'' look. Then she smirked. "Who is coming to pick you up again?"


    I released her and sighed. I knew what she meant. "Joshua," I replied and slouched my shoulders.


    "Exactly. You tell me that you will spend a whole week with that hunk in the woods and nothing will happen? C''mon, miss Rinaldi! Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? Have you SEEN the way Joshua looks at you?" To drive her point home, Theresa pushed me before my mirror. "Look at yourself. The perfect mix of the Mediterranean charm with the Japanese cuteness. A supple body that is neither too deprived of curves but still lean. Muscles toned by decades of kung-fu practice. If only you ditched those bottle-bottom four-eyes. Girl, you''d be Campus Queen."


    She tried to take my glasses off but I held her hand. "First, it is not kung-fu. I trained Aikido with my grandfather. Second, I can''t wear contacts. My eyes are too sensitive.


    "Theresa, help me pack. Get some sturdy pants and clothes suited for hiking. Don''t fill my luggage with frilly dresses only."


    I released her and to my surprise, she took a step back and saluted. "Aye, aye, sir. Roger, wilco!"


    She made a mess of my dresser again. At least she was putting hiking clothes in the luggage. Too many clothes. She handed me a set of clean travel clothes and I changed. A blouse, cargo pants, hiking boots. I glanced at the mirror, I looked like Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone.


    I went back to my things. I needed my tent, sleeping bag, blankets, pillow, and thermal mat. I took my phone and checked the boxes. What was I missing? Of course. A way to carry all that stuff. A padded backpack for the electronics, a duffel bag for the tools, another hiking backpack for the camping and climbing gear. Handbag with my documents and other knickknacks.


    I was stuffing the last blanket on the backpack when I heard Theresa huffing.


    "C''mon, close you damn briefcase!"


    I turned around and saw the comic scene of Theresa straddled on my carry-on, putting her weight on it to close the zipper. I knelt next to her and helped to push it down. She finally managed to pull it across and the luggage was closed.


    "Thank you, Theresa."


    She pinched my cheeks. "You go and save the world, girl. I''ll take care of our love nest."


    I laughed. "Right. I never took you for the homemaker type."This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I stood up and helped pull her back on her feet.


    "Nah. It''s the XXI century! I''ll be the kept husband. You''ll be my wife."


    I heard a horn at the front door and took a step toward the corridor. Theresa slapped my butt. I yelped and ran. Outside, Joshua was in his truck with Ivan and Professor Andrews.


    "Are you ready, girl? We have a rodeo date!" Joshua shouted at me.


    "Right! Come inside and help me carry my luggage."


    I went back indoors and left the door open. Theresa was singing in the kitchen. I went upstairs into my room and slung the backpack over my shoulders and lifted the duffel. It was all I could carry in one go. I went back downstairs.


    Ivan came and picked up the duffel. "Let me help you, Sandra."


    I removed the backpack and placed it on the couch. "Come upstairs, Ivan. Help me carry everything."


    I took the carry-on, he lifted the hiking backpack. Back in the living room, Theresa was proudly holding a cooler bag.


    "I filled this with snacks and healthy food. You take it and remember to eat. You are too absent-minded."


    I took the bag and noticed the weight. "Yes, mom. I''ll eat my veggies."


    Ivan was taking my things outside. I picked up my backpack and followed him.


    Joshua was at the back of the truck, loading my things. "Goddammit, Sandra. Did you need to take this much stuff? We are just camping for a week!"


    "Yes, I need. I need my own camping gear, my portable lab, tools, clothes, my electronics. Be glad I''m taking the router, you might even have internet access on me. Piss me and no wifi for you."


    Theresa came out. She raised a finger and put it right in Joshua''s nose. "You, big doofus, stop bullying the mother of my children!"


    "Good morning for you too, Theresa," Joshua chortled.


    "No, seriously. Take care of her. One girl going to the wilderness with three guys. Very fishy." She made V with her fingers and moved them from her eyes to his.


    Professor Andrews cleared his throat and joined the conversation. "Miss Rinaldi will be perfectly safe, miss Clarke. I assure you."


    I pulled her in a hug. "Theresa, don''t cause me trouble. Be a good housewife and I''ll reward you later." I kissed her cheek and released her.


    "Fine. It''s my final warning, okay? Sandra knows capoeira. She can beat you guys up and then drink your blood!"


    Ivan laughed. "That''s Blanka."


    I frowned. "That''s not even true capoeira. They just slapped it on the character background so he had a reason to be in Brazil. Blanka could be from Africa but then he''d be Tarzan."


    "A green electric Tarzan," Joshua pointed out.


    Theresa moved her legs around, doing the capoeira Ginga. "Its a dance of death! You better not touch Sandra."


    Joshua did the Scout''s Honor sign. "I promise to not lay a finger on miss Rinaldi. Happy?"


    "Unless she wants it," Theresa added.


    I wanted to disappear from there. Give me squirrels with diarrhea, bears with upset stomachs, but spare me from this harassment.


    "Theresa!" And just because I wanted to go away from there, I remembered one last set of items I forgot. "I''ll be right back."


    "See what you did, big guy? You made Sandra cry."


    "Did not."


    Ignoring their verbal jabs, I went inside and returned with a set of folding chairs and table.


    I ignored their frowns and tossed the chair and table in the trunk. "All set to go."


    <hr>


    The trip to Devil Ridge was uneventful. I was squeezed between Ivan and professor Andrews. They didn''t let me ride in the back of the truck. At the gate, we had to show our ID''s and prove our affiliation with the NGO and the university. There was a police car parked by the gate, probably to prevent invasions. The reserve was off-limits for the general public and would probably stay like that until everyone forgot what happened.


    With that behind us, we drove until we reached the place where the party happened. It was a total disaster.


    Rolls of toilet paper hung from tree branches. Clothes, food, packaging, confetti, traces of foam spray that already melted, cardboard laid over the grass, neon graffiti on the rocks and tree trunks.


    "Dear Jesus," Joshua gasped. "I saw the TV footage but this is a war zone."


    Ivan was about to pick something up and I held him back. "Don''t touch anything yet. I want to go around and record a video. We need to show exactly how they left everything."


    He nodded. "You got a drone? It would be nice if we could get some drone footage."


    "Sorry, no budget for a drone," professor Andrews answered. "We might earn enough to buy one once we are done with this mess."


    "Or the ojou-sama could ask one for Christmas," Joshua''s verbal poke was aimed at me.


    "Sorry, I''m trying to strike out on my own," I replied. I had a nice college fund my parents made for me but I tried to curb my expenses. I had a partial scholarship so I really wasn''t starved for money but a drone was expensive. "But I might drop a hint I''d like a pony for Christmas to my parents."


    "Pony Drone!" Ivan mocked a unicorn and trotted around.


    I laughed and went around to climb on the trunk. Opening my backpack, I took the GoPro and the headband mount. I also took my iPod. It had a decent camera and If I had two sets of footage I could edit a good video later.


    Turning on the cameras, I went around the devastation. The only term I could use for what happened to the forest. They had even hacked and felled a tree. I looked at the split trunk and got a good view of the growth rings. This tree was at least eighty years old.


    I saw a pile of clothes and underwear. Some cheap blankets piled up, stained with body fluids. A pile of used condoms near the blankets. It seemed an orgy took place there. A few meters away, a pile of shoes. Once I got close enough, they all seemed to be all left shoes only. Tied up into a ball. I had no idea what kind of mindset would make them do that with the left shoes only. What happened to the right ones?


    Probably there were no right ones, to begin with. Everything here seemed wrong.


    "Sandra, over here!" Professor Andrews called me.


    I went over to where he was and kept recording everything around, taking care to avoid making sudden head movements. That''s why I had the iPod recording too. I could use one footage where the other one was bad. Having two audio tracks would also be useful for splicing later.


    The professor was around a big rock, a place that was hidden from most of the grove where the party took place. I went around and he held a hand to make me stop.


    "Don''t go in there. The police will want to have an intact crime scene."


    I froze and my blood ran away from my limbs. Crime scene? Did we find a corpse? I had no problem with seeing blood but I''ve never seen a corpse. Not counting dead people at funerals. A real corpse, not prepared by a professional mortician.


    "Wha-what''s in there, professor?" I stuttered.


    "Not a dead body, if that''s what you are afraid of finding," He told me with a soft voice. "Just some signs of drug use."


    "Should I film it?"


    "Yes. But do it from here. I think we could use some light. I''ll do it with my phone."


    I took my phone and turned on the lantern. To keep a free hand, I placed it in my shirt''s breast pocket. Then I went and recorded the spot. There were crack pipes and bottles of pills, empty. Candles and syringes along with blackened spoons. I found even some bloodstains.


    "Definitely a case for the police," Andrews concluded. "Let''s cordon out the area. We''ll report it tomorrow."


    I blinked. "Tomorrow? We don''t have cell signal here but there''s a cruiser at the gate. We should drive back and tell it to them now."


    That was the right thing to do. I had a hunch on the professor''s mixed motives and it made my stomach churn. If we reported the drugs to the police, they would put a lockdown on the whole place. And the forest would remain full of trash. If the rain washed all this trash down the river, we''d have a small disaster in our hands.


    Still, the right priority was to report.


    "Think of it, Sandra. The scene here won''t go anywhere. The blood is already two days old. They can still get viable DNA samples tomorrow. Let''s do our best to clean everything but this area here today. We might even find more evidence around. If we report and return home now, we will have nothing to show."


    I sighed. There were a lot of things at stake here. The papers we could write, the NGO funding, the new drone we joked about buying. Our week-long cleanup trip would be cut short, but this would mean we''d just failed entirely.


    But didn''t the police visit the place? Did they miss this area? It seemed too odd.


    "I don''t like it, professor. I''ll record my protest, the cameras are running. But you are the leader here. I''ll follow your instructions."


    "That''s fine, Sandra. You can have your opinion and I''ll take all responsibility when we report this. Come now, let''s start the cleanup. Our time was cut awfully short. Keep our little find between us, okay? No need to involve the other two."


    "Yes, professor," I agreed even though my heart was screaming at me to just go on foot and report it. He was my advisor and my academic future was in his hands. No way the kind professor Andrews would be wrong, would he?


    I went back to the truck, where Joshua and Ivan were unloading.


    "''Sup, Sandra. How bad are things," Ivan waved at me. "I''m guessing you want to camp somewhere far from us, ri''te? The three of us are sharing one tent."


    Before I could answer, professor Andrews spoke over me. "Yes, it is better if we give the lady some privacy. I think we could set her tent over there," He pointed at a spot between two trees. The ground seemed flat enough for a tent. "It is one of the best camping spots. It is close enough we can rush to aid her if something happens but she can have privacy and peace of mind as that tree will block our sight. Ivan, put our tent there, by that fallen log."


    I kept quiet while the professor took control of the situation. I trusted everyone here and wouldn''t mind setting my tent right next to them but I didn''t want to cause any conflict. I''d be what, fifteen meters away? That was fine, I told myself.


    "Ivan, just put my things where the professor told you. I can set my own tent."


    "You ''da boss, Sandra!" He smiled.


    We took a roll of plastic bags each and I got a trash pickup claw. Professor Andrews opened the map of the reserve in his tablet and divided the area into four sectors with a stylus.


    "Sandra, you take care of this region with the discarded female underwear," professor Andrews told me. "It is better if you do it because it''s female underwear. I hope you understand."


    By now I only wanted to get over with it. They were leaving the ''orgy sector'' to me. Worse yet, the ''kitchen'' was also in my sector. I didn''t even draw the short straw, I was forcefully handed it.


    At least I didn''t have to touch anything. I still took some gloves. I worked all day. I filled a bag with the discarded underwear, all pieces female, not a single piece of boxers. I collected all the shoes, mostly sneakers, all left-sided. The sex-stained blankets, food cartons, glass bottles, PET bottles, and aluminum beer and soda cans. A bag with sixty-six condoms, all used and smelly.


    If I believed in magic, I''d say some sort of weird ritual took place there.


    We gathered for dinner. Joshua prepared a campfire and I armed the table to download and edit the footage. I tried the router but I could get no cell signal. I''d have called the police if I did.


    Joshua handed me a pot with stew. It had some mystery meat inside.


    "What''s this?"


    "That''s my trademark boy scout stew, guaranteed to have 0% boy scout," He told me with a chortle. Sensing my dismay, he rubbed my back. "Eat! It will cheer you up, Sandra. We did a good deed today!"


    "Thanks a lot, Joshua. It was hard. I''m going to feel sore in the morning."


    "That''s what she said!" Ivan joked.


    "Ivan, imagine me flipping the bird at you. Good. Now let me eat. I want to go to sleep."


    I was really tired. Not only I gathered a ton of garbage and yucky things all day, the walking, recording, and the stress of hiding a crime scene wore down on me.


    "You got it easy, girl," Ivan retorted. "My sector had the spot they were using as a toilet. The shovel I used is so dirty I am thinking of burning it."


    I ate and after I finished writing my notes for the day, the boys decided to play poker with my folding table. I had no interest in playing games and retired earlier. For some weird reason, we were keeping the trash we collected next to our tents, orders of professor Andrews. The teacher''s orders were making less and less sense as the day went on.


    At least I wasn''t the one sleeping next to bags of human excrement. Just used condoms.


    I changed into my pajamas, slid into the sleeping bag and was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.


    <hr>


    I felt difficulty in breathing. Startled, I woke up to find a hand pressed over my mouth and pinching my nose. In the darkness, I had no idea who was straddled over my sleeping bag, pinning my arms inside. I struggled and felt sharp steel touching my neck.


    "Shhh. Be a good girl and listen," I got goosebumps over my entire body when I listened to Professor Andrews'' voice coming from my assailant. "Did you upload the footage?"


    It was a struggle to get any air in my lungs. I dared not move a single inch. After a while, the professor noticed what was happening.


    "Do not scream, do not make any noise. It is useless. I drugged the whiskey I served these two and they will sleep well into the morning. There''s nobody here to hear you scream. Just me and you. I''m releasing your mouth. Be the good girl I know you are and behave. Nod if you understand."


    I nodded. The knife left my neck, but not without nicking the skin. I could breathe again and I indulged in some fresh forest air. I could smell the professor''s cologne. I was afraid. Too afraid. The tent was pitch black. It was a moonless night.


    "Sandra, tell me. When you turned on the router, did you get a signal?" I shook my head. "Good."


    I blinked in surprise. When I nodded he was touching me, but how could he know I denied getting a signal? He answered it himself.


    "I''m wearing night-vision goggles. Don''t think the darkness can help you. Now, I''ll ask again. The footage you recorded today. Did you upload it?"


    "No. Why would I lie, professor? I trusted you, you were my advisor, my role model. You told me to hold on reporting until tomorrow, I did as you asked," I told him as tears flowed freely from my eyes.


    I knew I was going to die. He was just making sure there were no loose ends.


    "Please don''t kill me, professor. I''ll tell nobody. I''ll delete the footage."


    I''d even let him put it anywhere he wanted. I just didn''t want to die.


    "Oh, Sandra. You had such a nice future. But you had to record that footage, didn''t you? You had to be diligent and capture every single detail. I was watching you. It was only a matter of time until you found the drug grove. I am sure you would."


    I was sobbing. Trembling. PInned inside the sleeping bag under the weight of that man, I had zero chance of getting out. I couldn''t fight. Worse yet, he had a knife and could see. I was blind and unarmed.


    "Please, professor. Don''t."


    "I have to, Sandra. I got a lot of money to let this party happen. I can''t let a scandal ruin my reputation. With your footage deleted and you out of the equation, they won''t come after me. I can make everything disappear."


    Fuck, fuck, fuck. Who would come after the professor? Who stood to profit so much from this party that it was enough to corrupt the kind professor. Or was he hiding his dark side from me all these years?


    I knew I was going to die. I had to fight back in whatever way I could.


    "I''m sorry, professor but I lied to you," I lied to him. "I tried to upload part of the video to youtube with the faint connection I got. I don''t know how much went through before the connection died though."


    He slapped me. "Liar! Liar!" He shouted, psychotic. "You told me you didn''t have a connection. You told me you didn''t upload it. You are lying, bitch!"


    Enraged, Andrews stabbed me. He opened a gash in my cheek as I moved my head to the side moments before the whistling knife came down. He slapped me and broke my nose with a punch.


    "No! Please, somebody help!" I screamed.


    A lightning bolt hit the tent. I burned. My body shook and convulsed as the lightning raced through me. The professor had it worse. The sleeping bag and thermal mat were electrical insulators and I had my eyes closed. He was upright and wearing night-vision goggles.


    I moved one arm free and struggled, beating around wildly. The professor was hurt but not dead. I felt the knife sting into my arm and bashed it away.


    The tent was ruined. Some faint light from the fires the lightning strike ignited allowed me to see once my vision recovered. I yanked the night vision goggles from the professor. Some of his skin peeled off with it.


    Then a second lightning bolt struck my head and I died.

 Night 0

    I knew I was dead but I couldn''t feel sadness. I couldn''t feel anything or sense anything. Even thinking came at great effort. I wish I could describe the feeling as floating but honestly, it was nothing.


    There was only one concept to describe it. [Ÿo] (mu) - nothing.


    I could remember how I died. The struggle with my former advisor. No, even if I was still alive or somehow come back to life, I''m done with him. He failed as a person when he tried to kill me. He failed as a scientist when he tried to destroy knowledge. He failed as a professor when he assaulted his pupil.


    I was sure he''d died too. He was hurt more than me in the first lightning bolt and the second one struck between us.


    And then I sensed the presence of clouds. A soft breeze. Blue sky above me and fluffy white clouds shining under the sunlight below. Strangely, I couldn''t perceive the sun. It wasn''t sighted but the image was in my mind. I had no eyes.


    After I finished this thought, a presence grew before me and occupied all my attention. A man with heroic proportions, chiseled muscles, wearing a colorful tunic with embroidered scenes of agriculture and weather. A braided brown beard like a tapestry, broad and well-groomed, that reached his stomach. Wavy hair that floated in the wind. Bronze armlets on his wrists, drawing the attention to his strong hands. He wore leather sandals that wrapped around his thick ankles.


    My first impression was that he was a Greek god but he wasn''t greek. He looked more middle-eastern. Turkish or Iranian but he felt even older than the Greek gods.


    That god, because he could only be a god, laughed. A hearty guffaw that reverberated over the clouds.


    "Greetings, Sandra. And welcome to my domain."


    After he spoke my mind cleared up more. I could make coherent thoughts with some effort. I knew I was dead and the entity before me was a mighty god. While I couldn''t pin a name to the face, he seemed a god of thunder and agriculture like many others. Maybe thor.


    He didn''t have a Chris Hemsworth vibe and wasn''t overly handsome. He was more imposing, his face was like a clay sculpture given life. His eyes were dark and his gaze could pierce mountains. Heavy, thick eyebrows decorated a strong and solid forehead.


    "I can sense your confusion. My name is Tarhun. Like most gods, I had many names. Teshub, Tarhunz, Tarhunna, Taru. And yes, there are many deities of thunder like the one portrayed by the actor you thought of. Thunder is a mighty concept and we gods are nothing but concept incarnate."


    It meant he could read my thoughts. "Why am I here?" I asked him.


    "You were about to be murdered by a cultist of one of my many rivals. While we lost most of our influence on Earth, a god is never really gone. As long as there''s someone that remembers us, someone that whispers our name, we never lose contact with the world."


    Nice way to look cool and say a lot of things without conveying much. So the old gods were gone but not really gone. It meant there were hundreds of them around.


    "Thousands. On your Earth and other worlds."


    Okay. It still didn''t explain why we were having that conversation or how I was so calm even though I died. I mean, I died. Expired. Why?


    "Unfettered from your mortal coil, these worries are irrelevant. You no longer have flesh, hormones. Instincts. You still have emotion and reason but you are now on a higher level of existence. And your spirit already went through a century of purification. You lost all attachment to your previous existence."


    It was still creepy that I couldn''t have some privacy. But I smelled some bullshit there. If wanting to go back to Earth, to have Theresa''s babies, and to finish getting my degree wasn''t attachment, what was? And a century? Really? Did it mean everyone I knew was dead? Gone? DId human civilization even existed anymore? I had a feeling of deep sorrow for the loss of my loved ones. Ojii-chan. Mom, dad. Theresa. Even Ivan and Joshua. All gone.


    As if to mock my grief, Tarhun smiled and laughed. His boastful mirth once again stirred all clouds for as far as I could perceive.


    "You want to live. To breathe air and suffer. To toil under the sun. Because of that, you are a precious existence, Sandra Hikari Kinoshita Rinaldi."


    For some strange reason, the grief was gone. And I didn''t miss it. Still, the pieces did not fit. There was something else. If gods were real, why didn''t they interfere with the world more? What Tarhun wasn''t telling me?


    "Who said we didn''t try? But once one of us descends on the mortal realm, we are bound by its laws. Do you know what happened to the last two emissaries that went to your world?"


    I''ll go with no. I wouldn''t dare point out who were the last two divine beings that came to Earth.


    His smirk told me I did the right choice. "One died nailed to a piece of wood, his flank cut open by a soldier''s spear. The other, poisoned by his own peers for petty reasons."


    Oh. These two. It meant there were no others after them, in the last two millennia. Funny how that left the one that created the biggest religious Asian group out.


    "It is because that one wasn''t a divine emissary. He was a man that attainted divinity thorough his own enlightenment."This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    A girl needs her privacy. It was very annoying to have him in my head. Not that I had ahead, but yeah. Tarhun needed to get out of my head, fast. Or I''d lose it. What do you want from me, Tarhun? I bet you wouldn''t waste your time with a lowly human soul if you didn''t want something from me.


    "You are correct," He told me. He didn''t say what was correct though. I had a thousand thoughts. Which one was correct. He ignored me. "We cannot manifest on Earth anymore. Yet I was allowed to smite the agent of my enemy. You were in the wrong spot at the right time and died. I wronged you and we are having this conversation to make amends."


    Just beam me up, Scotty. Send me back home, to Earth. Right after I died. I don''t even mind if you send me naked, like Schwarzenegger in Terminator.


    "I know you paid attention to what I said. I cannot send you a century back in time and I cannot interfere with Earth any more than what I already did."


    I guess they didn''t make omnipotent gods in the ancient ages. Even Christopher Reeve could fix it for me. Just fly around and spin the Earth backward.


    "What I can do is to send you to live in one of the worlds I am still strong. I can grant you powers."


    This god was harder to get information from than a Zen master. Earth was out of the picture. I felt sad at the thought and then didn''t. Was my mind being manipulated? Tarhun kept strangely silent at that. I''d have sighed If I had lungs. So a mental sigh. Eye roll too to show how annoyed I was. Couldn''t he give me a form in his realm? I bet he could. But he wanted me to be dissociated from my self-image, I bet on that.


    No answer. Was he giving me room to think? To decide? To grab at his offer like a shipwrecked girl would grab at a floating door? Who was I, Kate Winslet? Paint me like one of your Babylonian girls, Tarhun.


    "Not Babylonian. I was truly worshipped by the Hittites and Akkadians."


    Oh. Sorry I wasn''t paying much attention to the history class that taught about bronze-age civilizations.


    It was useless. I was there, trapped in the fabled isekai trope. I didn''t have the honor of meeting truck-sama. But before I could decide, I needed to know how was the world he was sending me to. I didn''t want any place too violent. Also, no ''go kill the demon king'' stuff. If possible I wanted to live a peaceful life.


    "The world I have in mind has low magic. It means the monsters are only stronger and evolved animals. No fantasy races either, only humans."


    What about technology? What about societies? Was it a world with constant war?"


    "They are currently at a stage you''d call lower-middle-age. And while there are wars, they are not constant. Most of the time, peace reigns."


    Lower middle ages. That was bad. It meant no sanitation, no technology, superstition, female oppression.


    "But also no dragons rampaging the countryside, no magical monsters like vampires, undead, or evil magicians destroying cities with meteors."


    Take out the danger, take out the wonder. Can''t have on without the other. No elves, gnomes, fairies. No dragons, vampires, warlocks. Tarhun wasn''t making it easy on me. I knew he wanted something from me but the thought eluded me. As if my mind didn''t want to think about it. Or something else was making me. My chips were on the latter.


    But I had to give it to him. Tarhun had the best poker face.


    Not like I had much choice, did I?


    "I summoned you here now because the timing is right to send you there. To another world with stronger magic, we would have to wait for... a long time. Your spirit might not resist the void for too long. What did you call it? [Ÿo] (mu) - nothing."


    I wonder if he will keep listening to all my thoughts once I am out of here.


    "Only if you sincerely pray to me. I can hear your thoughts because you are in my divine domain. Once you are made flesh again, you will be on your own."


    I could feel the clarity of thought vanishing from me. Slowly. I needed to decide. Did I? Why did I want to go back to life? I...


    "Focus. Your weak human spirit cannot stand in my Holy presence for too long. You must decide. Go to this world or fade."


    I didn''t want to fade. I wanted to live.


    "Good. I shall send you to that world then."


    No. Wait. There was something about power. And why was I feeling this pressure? It was unnatural. Was Tarhun messing with me? He was. Not. Yes. Living in another world. Would I keep my knowledge?


    "Yes. You will return to life with all the memories of your previous life. I will also send you all the items you had with you in your previous life."


    That was a big problem. I had no way to carry that much stuff. It was five bags of things. And worse yet, what would I do when one of these items break?


    "Then it is decided. Your first powers. The ability to store in an extradimensional space the items from Earth, and a power to repair them if they are in storage or on your person."


    I felt sleepy. Was I running out of time? What about diseases? Parasites? Poison? Injury? The lack of medical facilities? It was a given I would be hurt, just a matter of when.


    "Immunity to all and any diseases and parasites. Against poison, I can''t grant you immunity but you will suffer half of the effect for only half the time. Regarding injury, I can make it so you will only take half damage from any wound. And I''ll enchant your body so it will restore itself to its pristine state given enough time."


    That''s plenty of minor powers. What was going on, was it Tarhun''s discount bin of reincarnation powers?


    "I''ll also repair your eyes."


    There''s nothing wrong with my eyes. My glasses protected them from damage and radiation and my nearsightedness allowed me to see minute details way better than a normal human.


    "I''ll make your eyes invulnerable and grant you the power to see minute details on objects."


    I sighed. Mentally. Tarhun the God of Telemarketing. If you decide to reincarnate now, I''ll also throw in this awesome power! I imagined him as Jim Carey in The Mask doing that telemarketing stunt.


    "Those are minor gifts I grant you. Reincarnating through divine power will unlock the true power of your soul."


    And that was what, exactly?


    "That is for you to discover. As I said, You are special, Sandra."


    Me and God, we were on a first-name basis. I wonder what was the catch.


    "I need you to declare that you and I have no outstanding debt once you reincarnate."


    And there it was. Why he was being ''so kind'' - spiritual air quotes version - to me. He owed me because he killed me, an innocent bystander, on his act of vengeance against the agent of his enemy. My advisor. The agent, not the enemy.


    This meant that once I discharged his debt, he could just smite me away and forget it ever happened.


    "If you want, we can seal a covenant of non-aggression. I vow to never harm you either directly or through my agents, and you vow to do the same."


    The negotiations were inexistent. This covenant was also very convenient for him. It meant I could not seek revenge for killing me. He didn''t answer but I could see the corners of his mouth rise slightly.


    If not for the debt he owed me, a debt I couldn''t discharge while in spirit form for some reason, he wouldn''t even waste his divine sight on my soul. I was rather powerless in this negotiation. Regardless, my drive to live was stronger.


    Agreed. Send me to that world with the powers we negotiated and with your non-aggression covenant. Once I certify that you did your side of the bargain, I''ll release you from the debt.


    His voice boomed so loudly I was blown away from his realm.


    "SO SHALL IT BE."


    Ominous.


    And there was I, tumbling through the dimensions toward my new life. As I went away from his influence and suppression, I knew I did a bad deal. I could ask for much more but it was too late. I wasn''t Penn or Teller but Tarhun had fooled me.

 Day 1

    As if waking up from a bad dream, I opened my eyes and screamed.


    My whole body was shivering, trembling in fear and rage. I struggled and thrashed, punching and kicking an invisible enemy, an enemy that was no longer there.


    As my mind''s turmoil settled, I felt the cold and damp morning breeze, heard the rustling of leaves and birds feeling the ferocious creature screaming naked on the grass. Me. I could feel the blades of grass scratching my back and wherever else they touched.


    A lifetime of civilized conditioning kicked in and I covered myself with my hands, doing my best to curl into a ball. I was still angry, I was still shaking. But at least I was aware of my surroundings.


    The grass was long and hairy. I felt a mild irritation where it scratched me. The ground underneath was fine gravel and the grass sprouted between the small rocks. The trees seemed like a kind of dwarf cedar and other varieties of smaller and gnarled trees. Spiky shrubs dotted the spaces between the trees. It was a forest but not a temperate forest. The vegetation told a story of seasonal drought and missing nutrients.


    I heard a growl and froze. My heart raced and threatened to escape through my mouth. I was naked and had no friendly bath loofah. After some long moments with no other sound or movement that could indicate the presence of predators, I sat up and looked around.


    The vegetation and environment were as I thought. The dwarf cedar was the tallest kind of tree and the others spread around. Large rocks sporadically decorated the landscape.


    I wasn''t in Devil Ridge. What happened? I cleaned up my sector, gathered and separated the trash, ate the boy scout stew and went to sleep.


    I could remember that as if it happened yesterday. After trying to remember how I ended up in a completely different biome and weather naked, the traumatic memory of what happened later that night came back to me.


    I was assaulted by my advisor. Lightning struck. Then... Did I die? I looked at my chest, shoulders, arms. No Lichenstein patterns. My skin was soft, pliable, unblemished like a baby''s. My dark brown hair wasn''t burned. Did I dream about being struck by lightning? I doubted. It felt so real.


    I took another good look at my surroundings. I could see sparse wisps of cotton-white clouds in the otherwise too-blue sky, the leaves in the trees. I touched my face and found no glasses. I was seeing perfectly without glasses. Or maybe too perfectly because I could see each individual hair in the blades of grass.


    What happened? I tried to remember and then it came to me. A weird dream. Of being nothing and talking to a God. The imposing figure of the bearded, tunic-clad, muscular God.


    Tarhun, the Hittite deity of thunder and agriculture, chief of his pantheon.


    That encounter was real. I really died and met a God. And true to his word, he gave me a new life. And there was something about special powers. Like my vision. I touched my eyeball, afraid of what would happen. Nothing happened. I could feel the tactile sensation, but it didn''t bother me like before. Everything seemed normal with my eyes. I could even see the fine wrinkles in my fingerprint. Small squares, the ridges, and valleys of the tip of my finger. I bit the pinky finger of my left hand. It hurt but not as bad as it should. I watched as the bite mark slowly vanished. Slowly but still too fast. Over the span of a minute or two, the finger was as good as new. The pain receded even faster.


    I replayed the surreal encounter in my mind several times. Every iteration revealed more details. I spent one or two hours there, oblivious of my surroundings and my exposed modesty. Recalling that conversation, that landmark event was more important. After I was done, I had a crystal-clear memory. He told me he''d send my items with me. Where were they? In the extradimensional storage? How could I access my extradimensional storage?


    By thinking of it. Once I got the gist of it, my awareness of the extradimensional storage became easy to reach. If I had to explain it was like you have a jewelry box and you carefully set all the pieces over a felt pad in a way you could pick anything without looking. You memorize and burn the location of everything. Then you''ll have a mental picture of the jewelry. It would feel like you know they are there just outside your view with total certainty. All you have to do is reach out and pick it up.


    In my case, it is not pick it up but shift the object from the extradimensional space to the real tridimensional space around me.


    It took me some time to get used to being aware of my objects. There were too many. I could also feel the bags of trash I collected. They came along for the ride. The folding table and chairs were also there. The first order of business, locating my clothes. My pajamas and the underwear I was wearing were on their own. The clothes I used yesterday were in the dry duffel. I summoned the duffel and inspected the clothes.


    They were not new clothes. It was my go-to outfit for fieldwork. The cargo pants, especially, had marks where stiff vegetation scratched it. The boots'' soles had clear signs of wear. Not anymore. They looked like brand new. Even those tiny spokes new rubber use to have were there in the boot soles. It wasn''t as stiff as a new set of boots. I checked the shirt and other pieces. Even though they looked like new, they were still dirty. I could smell the faint scent of my deodorant. Giving up on wearing dirty laundry, I summoned the pajama and put it in the duffel before sending the bag back to storage.


    I took a fresh set of clothes from the carry-on. The suitcase exploded in a spray of clothes and other objects when I opened it. Without any way to put the pieces back, I resigned myself to sending them to storage without being inside a container. Doing that allowed me to find the souvenirs Theresa sent me.


    Two packs of condoms, a vibrator, and a tube of lube in a Ziplock bag.


    I never thought I''d miss Theresa''s playful sexual harassment. But that bag screamed her name. All those memories flooded back to me. Memories of a whole world I''d lost. If Tarhun didn''t lie and a century really passed, everyone I knew was dead. Earth might''ve been destroyed. Maybe we attained trans-humanism and now the species lives on as cyborgs in space.


    Who knows? 2010 came and went without us making contact. Klaatu didn''t barada niktu on us. Maybe humanity, Earth-bound humanity, was just fine.


    After my brief bout of grief ended in a weird tone, I put on some fresh hiking clothes, socks and my trusted and magically-refurbished boots. Then I sent everything back to storage. Just will the object to return to the metaphysical, imaginary, and non-dimensional felt mat.


    I was now clothed in the middle of nowhere. My choices were to try and find civilization, to wander the wilderness in search of shelter, or to stop and catalog my things. They were not exclusive and I didn''t feel any immediate danger, so I went with three. Empty out the storage and see what I got. I moved around until I found a good and relatively clean rock slab. I had too many things for the folding table and some would have to go on the ground. I summoned the table in front of me and assembled it. This one was made for camping use so its feet could be twisted to set the proper height. It even had a built-in bubble level so you could see what you were doing.


    The first thing was checking my data. He brought the devices, but what about the content? My laptop had several offline databases from websites. When out on a field trip, you can''t rely on internet access. I had digital versions of all my college textbooks along with a library of a couple thousand other books in Calibre. Mostly public-domain literature. Some technical manuals related to my field, reference guides, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica. Five Stack Exchange sites too. Outdoors, GIS, Physics, Chemistry, and, of course, Earth Sciences. Everything seemed to be fine. I also checked on the footage of the day I died. The file played without a hitch. The personal files, pictures, and other stuff too. I went through the other devices and they also were exactly as it was when I died.


    I went through everything else, including the trash bags. I left my carry-on briefcase for last. It was the only item I hadn''t packed myself.


    Next to the carry-on briefcase. I had Theresa''s care package'', a lot of clothes and some personal hygiene products mixed in with the clothes. Soap, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, talc, sunscreen, bug repellent, and moisturizing cream. Also my prescription sunglasses, a hairbrush, a pair of scrunchies, a box of panty liners, a toothbrush, and a nail care kit. No bath loofah but I was already dressed. As for clothes, I had four dresses that shouldn''t have come, and enough clothes and underwear for nine days. At the bottom of the luggage, I found a plastic bag with my sailor uniform. With a piece of paper saying "wear this and turn Joshua into a weeaboo!" in Theresa''s handwriting. And another pack of condoms in the bag. It seemed she wanted to cover all bases.


    I could even hear her telling me to make a reverse harem in that forest. No, thank you. The professor was the culprit. Why did he do that? We weren''t lacking in funding. I wanted to know why but I had no leads. And no Great Dane to help me.


    I also had three pajamas, including the one I died in, one satin baby-doll, one transparent black nightgown, three bathing suits, and one raincoat. No wonder that luggage wouldn''t close.


    Theresa''s overzealousness was a godsend. I''d even have her babies if I could.


    Another surprise were two items that weren''t mine. The first one was professor Andrews'' night vision goggles. While not mine, it was in my hand when I died. His burnt skin was still stuck to the rubber. The second one was a sandstone tablet with engraved words. It was a message from Tarhun.


    <blockquote>


    This is the list of boons I granted you, as it was our agreement. The last three were those awakened of your own soul. Once you checked them, please say "I agree our bargain has been fulfilled".


    - Tarhun.


    Disease and parasite Immunity: You are immune to diseases and parasites.


    Toxin Resistance: You have great resistance to toxins and corrosive agents. They react half as much and you metabolize them twice as fast. Contaminants impossible to metabolize vanish from your body in 24 hours.


    Damage Resistance: You take half damage from any source.


    Fast Healing: Your surplus magic power is constantly used to restore your body to a pristine condition. The speed of recovery is proportional to the severity of the wound.


    Minute Sight: You can see small details in objects. Increase your visual accuracy tenfold.


    Invulnerable Eyes: Your eyeballs are invulnerable. You are immune to blindness and glare.


    Limited Dimensional Storage: All items brought with you from planet Earth are stored in an extradimensional space. They can be retrieved and stowed away by thought alone if they are touching you or very close to you.


    Limited Item Repair: All items brought with you from planet Earth repair themselves while they are in your possession or in their storage. Pieces removed or broken from these objects decay into nothing after a few moments.


    Scholar: Your capacity for remembering and learning is increased fivefold.


    Animal Friendship: Animals do not consider you a threat or food. You can form a special bond with sympathetic animals you care for.


    Decompose: You have the power to dismantle nonliving matter into their component parts. The degree of decomposition depends on the time you spent focusing and your familiarity with the target.


    </blockquote>


    There it was. The list of my powers. The first eight were the ones we negotiated but the last three had me delighted. The descriptions were vague but I could get the gist of it. I was not better at studying, the wild critters would not bother or be bothered by my presence, I could tame them?


    But what was this Decompose power? Dismantle non-living matter? I grabbed a rock. I looked at a rock as if I was going to bore a hole through it. Like William Katt, I had no instruction manual. So I wished the rock to crumble, melt, flake, scale, bend. Nothing happened.


    After some time just staring at a rock, I was feeling stupid. I threw the rock away and watched as it vanished between the tall blades of grass. I went off my slab of rock and plucked a blade of grass. Then I wished to decay it. I imagined the process of decay. The water evaporating and drying the blade. To my surprise, it did exactly that. It dried and crumbled. I had a fine dried grass powder in my hand now. I dumped it and cheered.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    It could be not much but it was a neat power. What else could I do with it? I touched a still connected blade of grass and tried the same. It didn''t happen. Then I tried with some other pieces of vegetation. The bark of a tree. A nut. I took a branch from a bush and this time, I tried to decompose it but keeping the vegetable matter wet. Just break the fibers. I could feel a tingling and the branch was softening slowly. It warped and I checked it. The branch was soft. I crumpled it between my cupped hands and kept the process going. The branch turned into mushy peat after several minutes. Just to make it sure I could do both, I dried it.


    That was fun. As a third experiment, I picked up a stick and focused on it. I wanted methane. I turned on the lighter and kept it near the branch. Then I imagined methane from the wood. One carbon, four hydrogens. The flame flickered and flared, setting the branch on fire. I tried to keep my focus on the power but the fear of burning myself made me release the stick. The flames died down as the stick hit the grass. Fortunately, I didn''t start a fire. As dry as the vegetation was, it would be a disaster.


    I could trigger a number of decay processes on plant matter. That was fun. I also had a sense of what I was trying would work or not. If I focused on the matter, I could feel it. It was not a tactile sensation, it was more of a mental tingle. Did it work only on plant matter? I tried it again on a rock. Silicon dioxide. The tablet did say something about familiarity. I tried to recall what I knew about the rock. It seemed like a sedimentary rock. What I knew better was the oxygen gas and that was my target. Extract the oxygen from the rock. I imagined the oxygen, felt it in my breath. The tingling sensation was all over me. Wherever air touched me which was pretty much everywhere. But I focused on the rock. I could feel the tingle from it. I pushed my will and felt the rock shift.


    The rock was wilting, slowly losing volume and becoming darker. I kept my focus razor-sharp and focused on the fading tingle coming from the rock. It took a bluish metallic shade and soon it was half its size. I had a blue-black metallic nugget in my hand. Some faint spots of a dull gray metal too. I tried to sense the nugget in my hand. Squeeze it. Coax from it what it was made of. Silicon, I knew that. The tetravalent atom. Once I locked on my mental image of silicon, I could feel a different tingle from the nugget.


    Could I move the silicon away? I tried. Push the silicon away from the nugget. To my surprise, the nugget seemed to flow like molasses, losing its sharp features and becoming rounder. I tilted my hand and true enough, the silicon flowed away through the crease in my hand. Ever so slowly. It dripped and formed a rod as it regained its solidity away from my hand. Once the silicon ended, the rod fell to the side. The tiny flecks of metal remained on my palm. I focused on them, trying to feel a tingle from them too. What metal was this? It was dull grey, it was probably iron.


    The moment I thought of iron, I could feel the tingle, tiny pricks of awareness coming from the pellets. I willed them to flow but to gather together. I got a slightly bigger pellet of iron. Other smaller dots of shiny white metal were stuck to my hand. I picked the pellet of iron and then cycled through the metals to see what were these glittery particles. I got a faint reaction from aluminum. I turned my palm down and struggled to catch the tingle from the aluminum. Once I did, the glittery flakes fell away from my hand.


    This power had wonderful potential. If I could separate elements and compounds like that, there was no limit to what I could do. I just extracted metals from a rock!


    My mirth was tarnished by a loud grunt. I looked around and found the source of the sound. A pair of silverback gorillas that seemed more humanoid than they should be running through the forest, going eastward and closing fast. They were walking upright and seemed like some kind of bigfoot. I could see the claws in their hands. Long, curved and sharp. Talons made to rend on the most muscular limbs I''d ever seen on a primate.


    They would come to my location soon. I had to go back to the folding table to store it and everything I left on it. My tools. Irreplaceable tools. I ran in the direction of the table despite my instincts telling me to hide. The two monsters stopped and watched me run. They beat on their chests and one of them grunted and pointed east. The other shoved the first and both went on their way.


    I reached the table and just willed everything into the storage. Only then my fear of the creatures became greater than my fear of losing my stuff. I should be sturdy, shouldn''t I? I had no idea what half damage looked like but when I bit myself, it seemed my teeth couldn''t sink as much as they should. It was a stupid move but they had seen me before I ran. Not too hard to miss a person standing on a grass field even though the grass reached my knees.


    But one thing bugged me. Where were those two critters going with so much haste? Were they going to war? They seemed pretty angry. What should I do? Should I follow them? I was curious. They ignored me but unless I had more data, I couldn''t know how they''d react and not knowing could be more dangerous than trying to learn. I would proceed with caution.


    Feeling adventurous, I ran after the two upright gorillas. Terrible name. Silver Kongs? Clawrillas? Whatever. I just ran. I wasn''t as fast as them, a good reminder that I could not run away from them. But following them meant going after the trail of trampled grass. Easy peasy, even more, because they were running side-by-side.


    I paused to summon the GoPro, set it on the headband mount and start recording. Reviewing the footage later could help me pick up a detail I missed. As I went after them for a quarter of an hour, the effort of moving through the grass exhausted me. I slowed to a walk.


    And then I heard it. Sounds of battle. Human shouts, metal clashing. Growls and roars from the monkeys. The two silver Kongs were assaulting a group of people. I moved carefully. I had no idea how these humans would react to my presence and I already knew the Kongs ignored me even though I was running. It made a big difference. Most predators have an instinct to go after running creatures. I was smaller than the Kongs and alone. If they wanted to hurt me, I''d be dead already.


    I ducked into a crouch and moved behind a bush. The combat was fierce and I could hear people moaning and crying. People were wounded. Dying maybe. Trembling, I reached out and pushed the branches of the bush aside. I got a glimpse of the terror.


    The two silver Kongs were hurt but still going. A group of eight men, wearing metal armor and wielding spears clustered around each other to present the pointy ends of their weapons as a deterrence to the advance of the more powerful monsters. Now that I could see them near each other, the Kongs were almost three meters tall. Their arms must be more than a meter and a half long then. The two Kongs split and circled the warriors.


    The men were fighting on a road, a wagon trail made of packed earth.


    Their armor was a mix of scale, chain and lamellar armor. Their armors looked much like the Lorica Squamata or the Lorica Hamata from the roman empire. The lamellar one had straps of leather holding the credit-card-sized plates together. They were wielding the long spears with two hands.


    Several bodies laid on the ground. Mangled. Broken. I could see three of them still moving. Crying for help. I felt my stomach churn. I hadn''t eaten anything yet.


    The grey-furred Kongs circled around and the one with fewer spearmen pointing weapons at them lunged, screaming like it was possessed by a demon. Maybe it was. He moved forward but withdrew immediately after. The spearmen watching the other Kong do nothing did the mistake of turning around, afraid the ones defending their back would fail. It was their doom.


    The second Kong took advantage of the distraction its partner caused and went in a low run like they say ninjas run. He ducked under the spears and pounced upward, raking the claws underneath the flaps of armor, catching two men in their thighs or crotches. I couldn''t be sure from where I stood.


    Without losing forward momentum, the second Kong crashed into the circle of men. One warrior dropped his spear and drew a pair of daggers. He was screaming and frothing, his eyes bloodshot and he too seemed possessed. I couldn''t understand what they were saying. He went for the kidneys of the second Kong and started to stab with a ferocity that would make Sharon Stone look like a nun.


    The Kong backhanded the soldier and I heard his neck vertebra splinter. The humans were doomed. Without reach, the soldiers dropped the spears to draw scimitars and maces to combat the monster in their midst. The first Kong waited for this. He returned to the fray and swung his arms ferociously. Four more men were down, with only three standing up. They were going to be massacred.


    The Kong pincer was brutal. The cunning monsters would feint and strike at the backs of the soldiers. The second Kong was bleeding profusely from his stab wounds and was slowing down. The last soldier standing buried his sword in the chest of the first Kong and was killed by the second one.


    I heard a shout coming from a bend of the road. A faint sound of a string snapping taut and an arrow buried itself on the first Kong''s eye socket. There were more people. Maybe there was hope. Second Kong didn''t like a bit that its companion was dead. He roared and ran out of my sight. I heard shouts and the sound of wood breaking. Horses whining and the Kong roaring.


    I wanted to get up from where I was crouching and check on the wounded men but my legs were putty. I couldn''t move and I knew I''d leaked a bit. The sight of all the carnage was making me dizzy. My knees gave in and I fell, sitting in the w position. I retched and nothing came. I had nothing in my stomach. I felt some acid climbing up my throat but that was all.


    I fainted.


    When I came to my senses, It was already late afternoon. In the west behind me, pastels of orange threatened to tarnish the wisps of clouds. I was still behind the bush and it seemed I was not hurt. My stomach, however, desperately needed sustenance. I took the cooler bag and my canteen. My first meal in another world was a bag of chips, foil-wrapped burritos, a can of soda, and water.


    Awkwardly climbing back on my feet, I moved past the bushes and into the carnage. I counted fifteen soldiers and one dead Kong. None of them moving. I had failed my fellow humans. Steeling myself, I moved forward to where Kong two went. After getting past a thick copse of trees, I could see three wagons broken, and the corpses of three people. These were wearing colorful clothes, stained by their own blood. A broken bow and some discarded weapons told the story of how these civilians did their last stand when their company of guards failed.


    Moving past the wagons, I found two dead horses and Kong two next to them, also expired. Probably from exsanguination. The stabs on its kidneys must''ve ruptured an artery. Just guessing. I could hear a horse nearby. Maybe hiding. It sounded distressed.


    "Hey, are you there? Horsey?" I called out.


    The horse whined, probably hurt. I broke into a trot and went after the animal. I found a horse dragging the broken traces. Its bridle snagged on some plants and it was unable to break free. The horse was panicking.


    "Hey, girl! I''m not going to hurt you. Let me break you free! Come on, who''s a nice girl?"


    I could see it was a mare now that I was close. A caramel mare with midnight black hair and tail. I reached from the side, afraid of getting kicked. Slowly, I laid a hand on her. I brushed her aside, singing a nursery rhyme. I could sing very well. I was part of a choir for four years, three of junior high and my freshman high school year. I quit when I moved to Japan to spend my sophomore year of high school in Japan.


    Instead of learning the piano as my mom wanted, I chose my own voice as my musical instrument.


    The mare calmed down. I could feel her heartbeat slow down back to a normal level. I worked the straps of her harness, untying them. The taste of freedom made her buckle and try to break free on her own when I was halfway down.


    "Calm down. I''ll set you free. Then you can go where you want. Stay quiet, please. Don''t hurt yourself, girl!"


    All that was left was the breeching around her hindquarters. The most dangerous part as she could easily take a step sideways and kick me. But I knew she wouldn''t. "We are friends, aren''t we?" I told the mare.


    She broke free and trotted away. After looking behind her back and checking she was really free, the mare turned around and returned to me. She bashed me with her head. I hugged her. Her ears were turned forward, toward me. I could feel her gratitude.


    And something snapped. I could feel her mood. Her dislike of pulling carriages. Her wish to run free across the plains.


    "Are you going to stay with me? I could use a companion."


    I tried to send her a feeling of staying together. I could tell she liked it. I let go of the mare and checked her body for any wounds. I found none.


    We went past the dead Kong and back to the ruined wagons. I inspected the bodies, they were already cold. Would I''ve saved at least one if I did not faint? I''ll never know and the guilt was oppressing. There was only one thing I could do. Bury them.


    I needed a shovel. The spade I had was a portable one with less than a meter in length. While it was sharp, I''d break my back if I tried to bury eighteen bodies with it. I might break it even with the perfect tool. I rummaged around and found no shovels. I was sure the crates of cargo had none inside. They had silk and spices, why would they trade shovels? Even if they did, at most it would be shovelheads. There was no profit ferrying wood around.


    The ground was rocky. I couldn''t make a pyre because it would spark a wildfire even though I could cannibalize the wood from the wagons. I checked on the cultural rites of Mesopotamia. Burial it was. They believed that the deceased should be placed where they would be closer to the underworld. Leaving the bodies would attract scavengers. I had the wagons and the cargo to check. I might find the rightful heirs of the cargo. Finally the matter of dealing with their personal belongings. They did not believe in the afterlife so the bodies were buried mostly for the first reason.


    I took a pair of gloves from storage and went on with my work. I cut off the armor of the ones wearing Lorica Hamata and lamellar armor. The chainmail was riveted and I had to undress them. I took their bloody belt pouches too, leaving them only with the linen padding they wore underneath their armor. The weapons, armor and personal items went into separate piles.


    Night came and I set the lantern on a low branch and the LED headband on my forehead. The mare I bonded with stayed with me although she kept her distance from the dead.


    Smart girl.


    I dragged the bodies to a depression I found next to where the mare was stuck. I had no idea how long I''d been working as I wasn''t following the movement of the sky. The stars were all wrong. I couldn''t see any constellation I recognized. After I was done with the guards, it was time to check the merchants.


    The three bodies were of an old man, with gray hair, a younger lad in his twenties and a rugged man maybe in his thirties. I''d say in the forties but this was a harsh world. I was sure people aged fast. I removed their pouches and dragged them to the depression with the guards. I hadn''t searched inside their clothes. If they had any hidden compartments, it was going with them.


    My idea was to bury them inside the depression. Dig up gravel, dirt, and rocks around it and cover the hole. Felt a lot easier when I had the idea but after a while, my arms were burning. But I owed these people that much. I was looting the bodies so the least I could do was give them a burial. Notice I didn''t say proper. When I felt I was hating the spade, I made it vanish into storage and checked. The bodies had a thin layer of gravel and dirt over them. I could still see the ones at the bottom.


    But there was no way I could keep working. I sent the bloody and tattered gloves to storage as well and felt dried blood on my hands. I was covered in dust too. My eyes were heavy. I had to sleep. I used a trash bag and put the pile of pouches inside. I retrieved the lantern and without thinking sent the plastic bag with the pouches to storage too. To my surprise, the pouches went with it.


    I was sure the tablet said only items I brought from Earth could be put in storage. I summoned the bag and yes, the pouches were inside. Back and forth, no change whatsoever. I could store items in storage if they were inside a container from the earth.


    Using the last of my strength, I did exactly that. I took the sets of lorica Hamata and piled them inside a bag. Storage. At the wagons, the crates of merchandise that could fit inside the hundred-liter bags were stored too. I saw bolts of silk wrapped in vellum. I took the canvas of my tent and placed the silk and some boxes of spices inside. Off to the storage. That was my limit. The larger crates and barrels would have to wait.


    Now that I had no pressing matters keeping me alert, my overworked body shut down.

 Day 2

    I woke up sore and cold. Taking in my surroundings, I found myself on the tilted floor of a broken wagon. I could sense the mare I bonded with nearby, grazing.


    I could also hear the buzzing of a thousand flies greedily devouring the spilled blood and the carcasses I didn''t deal with yesterday. I put all the humans in the hole I''d found but the Kongs and horses were left behind.


    I was not hurt and there were no insects on me. I climbed out of the wagon bed and stretched out. The soreness faded in record time. Was it my recovery boon? Most probably. I looked around. The stench coming from the dead animals was bad. The broken wagons where exactly where I left them. The weapons and pieces of armor too. Apart from insects, everything was the same. No predators or large scavengers came at night and I had no idea if I should be relieved or worried. I could see that some small carnivores came and took their share of the flesh. The pelt of the Kongs was ruined by small holes. Interesting enough, the cloud of flies was avoiding me.


    I went away from the road and sat on a rock. I used precious drinking water to wash my hands and face and also to brush my teeth. I rationed the toothpaste and used almost none. In the cooler bag, I got another burrito and some cereal bars. It felt brand new and not a hundred years old. Silly girl. I took my smartphone and gasped as I checked the time. The device''s clock was set to the same time as when I last used it. Time did not pass at all in storage. That was a game-changer. If the food and things I stored wouldn''t spoil, I could keep supplies fresh for a very long time. It also meant I could save the food from Earth instead of eating it before spoiling.


    I thought of clearing the carcasses of the monsters and horses but they were so big and yucky. I''d steeled myself and half-buried the people because they were people and deserved a proper repose. But I didn''t want to mess with that. The carcasses would eventually be cleared out by scavengers. Instead of messing with that, I went back to shoveling dirt and gravel over the place where I dumped the bodies. I got to understand Joe Pesci''s gripes on dealing with dead bodies. And I didn''t even have to dig the hole. But I had to do it. After I couldn''t see any more bodies, I rolled some large rocks on top. Time went by and it was late morning when I finished.


    I felt awfully dirty. I was clad in dust and caked blood. As an experiment, I tuned in the tingle for the silicon and willed the element away from me. Violently. In my whole body. To my surprise, a cloud of dust puffed into existence around me and the dust was gone. I felt no exhaustion from using Decompose like that. Could I do it with the caked blood and grime too? Turned out that I could. I focused on the dried blood, sweat and other contaminants on my skin. Then I pushed carbon dioxide out of them. Decompose the organic compounds into carbon dioxide and whatever is left should be gaseous or a salt.


    The sensation was if I had just dried myself after bathing in the ocean. Salt stuck to my skin. I still needed a shower. I had to settle for just washing my hands and face. I ate more snacks at breakfast. I had no idea when the food I had was going bad so I had to finish it sooner. I was sure they had food in the wagons.


    I had to get out of this place before someone else came around. I checked the crates that were too big or too heavy for storing in plastic bags. Weapons, mostly swords, without scabbards. Arrowheads. Bow staves. Ornate leather belts. Salted jerky. Deer pelts. Barrels of ale and cheap wine. More Lorica Hamata. I took the armors and filled two bags with them. Rummaging through the crate of weapons, I picked a superb longsword. All the weapons were well-crafted but this sword was the best. After searching through the pile of discarded weapons, I found a suitable scabbard. I washed the blood and hung the sword across my back with two of those leather belts.


    I also found a saddle and saddlebags in the last wagon, under the driver''s seat. Along with a feed bag and a sack of oats. With a thought, I called the mare and she let me put the blankets and saddle on her back. There were a bit and bridle for riding but I felt I didn''t need it and she didn''t want to wear them. My bond with the mare would be enough. She didn''t complain when I slung the feed bag over her head and filled it with oats though.


    Maybe it was time for me to eat too. It was past noon already. I got some slices of the meat jerky in the merchant''s cargo for lunch. They had small barrels with what passed as drinking water in this place, I guess. I dripped some bleach from my survival kit into the water and stored the barrels. The jerky was gamey and stringy. I didn''t know what meat it was but certainly did not match the deer pelts.


    After lunch, I tried and stored two of the smaller wine barrels, the ones with the best wine. Feeling I was ready to go, one thought crossed my mind. I couldn''t leave the weapons behind like that. What if some bandit group comes across them and suddenly a wave of crime starts? There was absolutely no reason to leave the weapons behind if I could do something to prevent it. And I could.


    I went back to the crates and concentrated on the metal. It felt like steel. I tried to find the ''tingle'' of iron with Decompose. I held an arrowhead in my hand and focused. A few minutes later and I could feel the iron. I canceled it and took out my frying pan. I hoped it worked otherwise I''d lose a perfectly good Teflon-covered frying pan. I took a bunch of arrowheads and Decomposed the iron out of them and into the frying pan. The metal flowed between my fingers and down into the pan. It was weird feeling the metal flow without heating. I was left with graphite dust and traces of other metals in my hand. I shook the dust off my hand and immediately regretted it.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The metals alloyed with steel are usually very valuable. Chromium, Vanadium... If we were back on Earth. In Here? I had no idea. The stuff I dumped might''ve been... not valuable? Well, it''s done now. Better luck next time. I think I saw a box under one of the benches. Let me check.


    With the box to store the unknown materials left after Decompose removed the iron, I kept removing iron from the arrowheads into the frying pan. Once it was full, I stored the pan, leaving behind a disk of pure iron. The metal flowed but didn''t melt or heat up. My items wouldn''t carry large amounts of material into the storage unless it is a closed container. Interesting. Because the gloves I wore yesterday are probably still caked with blood.


    As an experiment, I summoned the gloves on the ground. They repaired themselves but were still caked with blood. I then cut the rubber ring at the wrists, one of the few parts that were not dirty. I stored the rings only. The pieces left behind from the gloves crumbled into a fine dust that vanished in the wind. Interesting. Since the holes caused by yesterday''s work were repaired, maybe the glove would regrow from the ring. A clean and perfect glove, please.


    Back to the weapons. I kept Decomposing and making the iron disks. Each disk weighed about three to four kilograms. I would only leave after I destroyed all the weapons. It was the sensible thing to do. The morning went away and I had four bags with iron. I broke the bow staves and decided to leave all the rest behind. The next merchant that comes around will have the trouble of removing the carriages out of the way, he should have some reward.


    I called the mare and climbed on the saddle. I should give her a name but I couldn''t think of any good names. Should I go north or south along this road? I had no idea and both directions seemed nice. South we would return to where these merchants came from. My horse decided on her own when I thought about returning to where she came from. South it was. I glanced back at the broken wagons and the trade goods I was leaving behind. The barrels of ale were too big and the pelts didn''t seem that valuable. Should I take the pelts too? I really don''t know. But the merchants were carrying luxury goods. The same way they wouldn''t be carrying shovelheads, I could assume all packages were valuable.


    I''ll take the pelts. And I''ll also use Decompose on the wagons'' frame. If I can break them down enough, it will be easier for whoever comes along to clear the road or at least go around. I got down from my horse as she didn''t want to go into the sea of flies. Horses have a natural dislike of flies after all. But the flies part as I go. I can hear the buzzing but no insect comes near me. It''s a neat perk if you ask me.


    After I made my plan, I followed up. I folded the pelts and bagged them. The barrels, I rolled them to the side of the road. And then I broke down the vehicles. I separated the wheels by Decomposing the axles and set them aside next to the barrels. Spare wheels are useful, I guess. Then I broke the supports and the wagons came apart. I left the planks mostly untouched. Finally, I took some pieces of dried meat with me. I had no certainty I could find food on the road.


    I got up on my horse and rode into the sunset. About time too. I grew used to the stench of roadkill but after a breeze brought in a waft of fresh air, oh dear. It was like my nostrils woke up after being a century dead. Terrible pun, I reckon. As I left the scene of carnage behind and the thrill of horseback riding took over me, my mind cleared of all the grim thoughts I was having without even noticing. yes, I looted the dead but I made a vow to give the valuables back to their families if I found them. If I was accused of stealing, I''d show them the footage of the fight. The Kongs did that, not me.


    Not exactly into the sunset as the road went north-south but the day would soon be over. I''d spent too much time burying the people and the sun was getting cozy with the horizon. I looked around for a good place to make camp and after some time searching along the road, settled for clearing about a hundred meters from the road.


    I didn''t feel a single bug bite. The weather was clear and warm so I decided to keep using my tent as a huge bag and just crash in my sleeping bag. I also wanted a bath. I didn''t find any water body large enough for bathing and now it was too late. So I laid down the thermal mat and the sleeping bag over it. I changed into the pajamas I died in. They were cleaner than the clothes I was wearing and I didn''t want to dirty even more clothes.


    I removed the saddles and bagged them. No need to leave them around to be stolen. The horse went on her own but I knew she wouldn''t go away from me. I sat and started to write the journal of my otherworld adventures as I remembered the last day of my life on Earth and my first two days in this new world.


    Remembering rekindled my feelings. I missed my family, my friends. I hated my former advisor. I realized I was manipulated by Tarhun. He did kill me even though it was because I was in the wrong place at the right time. I didn''t even know if the professor also died. For some reason, I ''forgot'' to ask. I felt trapped. I shouldn''t but I suspected that God did not get me by mistake. He did let slip that I was important.


    I took the sandstone tablet with his message. The list of boons I was bestowed. Decompose stood out from the bunch by a large amount. I had power over matter. To decay, separate, purify, and extract compounds. Even metals that were hard to obtain like those flakes of aluminum or other rarer ones. Even the name, Decompose wasn''t what I felt from it. It was an adequate name, truly. I didn''t feel like I could force a reaction or increase the complexity of the compounds and ores. Only decrease it and purify. If I was allowed to brag a bit on my own journal, a power that matched me. I thought of calling it Chemokinesis but it wasn''t what I envisioned for true Chemokinesis. I couldn''t synthesize things. So Decompose it is. Maybe I should title my journal as well.


    Shaking my silly nerdy thoughts, I stored the laptop, chair, and table. The light was attracting bugs. I dove into my sleeping bag and pulled the zipper up. I was hidden from the road and I sent the mare an order to stay hidden from the road. Nobody would travel at night but we didn''t need to expose us.


    I shut my eyes and ended my second day. Alone. Vulnerable. But stronger than yesterday.

 Day 3

    After sleeping the night before on a hard, tilted wood platform, the sleeping bag felt like heaven. Some guys I camped with complained about two things, regarding sleeping bags, that they were too heavy for the padding and the bags are not very practical for a couple. I can attest to the latter but never had problems with the former. The amount of padding on my sleeping bag coupled with the thermal mat is just fine for me.


    I got out and did my stretches. The mare I bonded with came to ask for some oats, I could sense her wishes, and I still couldn''t figure out a good name for her. Some people can name things and pets on a whim but not me. I need to think of the best name. Nothing had come to mind yet. I gave her some oats in the feed bag and brushed her fur.


    Better look after myself too. I ate some dried meat with water.


    I studied my surroundings. The trees around me seemed oddly familiar. Elongated leaves and a tiny round and elongated fruit smaller than my thumb. Looked like olives. They were unripe though. I''ve never been to Greece but I''ve been in an olive orchard in Tuscany. This gave me a good grasp of the month. I took my laptop and confirmed my hunch. It was late August or early September, assuming I was in the northern hemisphere.


    Assuming the year here had the same length and these olive trees were similar to the ones on Earth.


    I checked the gloves I used to drag the bodies. They were completely repaired. That meant that as long as I kept a piece of an object, that object would be entirely restored over time. The only way to lose an object was to lose it entirely. Consumables don''t seem to follow this rule, however. The burrito I ate yesterday is still M.I.A. I kept the foil packaging and no burrito reappeared. Add utterly destroyed to the list to fit consumables then. The next test is the timelessness of the extradimensional storage. I took my phone and iPod. They had different times now since I used the phone yesterday.


    That was enough time wasted. My plans for today were to travel south, reach some settlement I was sure that road connected to and find a place to stay. If I found a good body of water, take a bath. I was sure I was stinking but I wasn''t going to check. Some things are best left unknown. And it was better to be on the road. I got on my mare and imagined her riding south. She went out of the grove back on the road.


    She wanted to run. I was afraid I''d fall from the saddle as I had nowhere to hold on because my horse had no reins. After emotionally arguing back and forth, we settled on a canter. It was my third time riding a horse and I had no confidence I''d be able to hold in even gripping hard on the saddle''s horn.


    After a couple hours, we left the sparse forest and entered the grasslands. On the distance, I could see some hills to the west but the area was mostly plain, covered by a carpet of green undergrowth dotted by some brave trees here and there. I looked around, searching for places where the vegetation was greener. It would indicate a body of water. The road there was straight as an arrow and I could see it would climb a hill a couple kilometers ahead. It would be a good place to scout.


    Reaching the top of the hill I take my binoculars and look around. I can see smoke rising far to the south. Probably a town as it is too organized to be a fire. The weather is so dry a fire would burn through this undergrowth like it was paper soaked in gasoline. I find what I wanted though. Two of the things I wanted. I see a figure clothed in colorful clothes moving through the grassy plains, probably crouched and a river coming down from the western hills. It seems this is a plateau. We should be far from the sea, I guess. I can see some places where trees line up but they are not bright lively green like the ones near the river bank. Probably rivers that dry in this season. The terrain gets rougher to the south, with some tall stone spikes, hills, and rises. It is actually lower than where I am now.


    I''m definitely on a plateau. The river I saw is going straight to that town. The open terrain is good for agriculture but bad for settlement defense. With monsters on the prowl like the Kongs, it is the safe choice. The fact I don''t see a single village in this plateau speaks on how dangerous this region is.


    To the north I can see the forest I ''spawned'' in and where the merchant caravan met its demise. It is a thicker forest and it seems it goes down and off the plateau. It is odd that a single road, well-traveled by how packed the dirt is and how free of grass the road is. I can see some birds flying to the west and south. Maybe they are huge birds and the apex predators of the region. A human city in the middle of these plains would be fair game for them.


    That is all theory though. I had no idea how this world works and what is considered a big bird around these parts. I know that I''ve seen a human and I''m going to meet them.


    We leave the road and ride through the grass. I''m less than a kilometer away from the person moving slowly through the grass as if they''re searching for something. In this idyllic morning, there''s almost no sound. The grass rustling, blown by the weak breeze that runs over the plateau is the background noise. This grass should have deep roots. The upper layer is still fine gravel and the blades of grass grow through this layer. I think it actually protects the moisture in the softer lower layer from the sun. The grass is not entirely dry or dead. The hairy blades actually help them save water.


    Two hundred meters away, I halt my mare and shout.


    "Hello there! Hey, you! I''m friendly and mean no harm!"


    The person stands up and looks my way. I can see it is an old woman. The clothes she is wearing resemble the ones the dead merchants had. She has a shawl thrown over her head, probably to protect her from the scorching sun.


    "Sinnistu rada atti ba annanu minu!" She shouts back at me.


    Aww, frag. I didn''t see that coming. I did hear the solders speaking and I didn''t understand them but during the tension of the fight, I didn''t connect the dots. I don''t know the language of this place. I can''t talk to people. I''m pretty sure I don''t even recognize the language. The way she speaks sounds like Arabic or even Aramaic but it is weird-sounding. Like listening to the speech of ancient English and not understanding a thing.


    The only Asiatic language I speak is Japanese. All the others are European in origin. I''m upriver without a paddle with this one.


    I wave my hands, showing my open and unarmed palms. I have the longsword at my back though. I hope she gets my message.


    "I come in peace!"


    She scratched her head.


    "Ekame enen lipissati?"


    I nodded.


    The woman got angry, waved her arm at me and then pointed at her crotch. "Lipissati!" She shouted. And then broke into a cackle. At least her body language I could understand. Did I offend her? She pointed again at her crotch and shouted "Lipissati!"


    Then she pointed at me, still laughing. "Lipissati ekame enem?"


    I pointed at my own crotch. "Lipissati?"


    Her mirth doubled. "Lipissati!"


    The first word I learned in Akkadian was the word for female genitalia. I wish I was making that up. I really wish.


    She waved her arm, signaling that I should approach her. I got down from the mare and walked. I felt it wasn''t good to approach on horseback.


    She smiled. Then she asked, "Sinnistu halaqu?" pointing a finger at me.


    I sighed. Language barriers suck. I remembered she used the word ''sinnistu'' earlier when asking something of me. Given that ''lipissati'' was at the start of the sentence when she asked me back the question she misheard from my English sentence and that ''lipissati'' was a substantive, I guess that Akkadian puts the subject first just like Japanese. So ''sinnistu'' is a subject and she used it to refer to me. It might mean ''woman'' or ''girl''. Time to test it.


    I pointed at her since pointing didn''t seem like a rude gesture in their culture. "Sinnistu?" I asked. I pointed at me. "Sinnistu?" I repeated the question.


    She clapped her hands and chortled. "Sinnistu!" She repeated the same word for both me and her. It meant ''woman'' then.


    Now that I had a good look at her, I noticed what she was doing. Picking herbs. She had a sickle and several bunches of herbs hanging from her belt. This old lady was out here in the morning picking herbs in her colorful clothes. I didn''t have trouble spotting her and neither would any predators. This meant the grasslands were safe during the day or at least the morning. I also didn''t see any kind of residence and it meant she came here from wherever she lives, probably not too far away.


    The old lady had a spring to her feet and felt full of energy. When I say ''not too far away'', I meant a few kilometers. I checked the sun''s position, it was one or two hours before noon. She didn''t speak neither did I. We stood there in the field of grass, stealing glances at each other. My mare was happy grazing. I noticed she avoided the grass and looked for the herbs growing between the blades. Sometimes a large rock broke the uniform grass and it gave other plants a chance to get some sunlight.


    She reached for my hand, I let her. She took it and handled with care, taking a good look at my fingers, the back of my hand and my palm. I had no idea why. Then she let go of my hand and stared at my eyes.


    "Tarhun?" She asked, saying the name of the God that put me in this mess.


    "Yeah, it was Tarhun that brought me here," I told her with a sigh and a shrug.


    To my surprise, she shook her head as if to agree with me. "Tarhun..." She clicked her tongue.


    I could be imagining things but I felt she didn''t have Tarhun in high esteem.


    The old lady checked the bundles of herbs hanging from her waist, looked around and pointed south. At the plume of smoke rising almost straight up. Definitely a town. A fire would''ve spread out by now even without wind. Distracted I didn''t notice what she was doing until she clapped my shoulder. She pointed in the direction of the smoke.


    "Alu," She said.


    Probably meant home or town. I nodded.


    We walked through the grass. I thought she would take the road but she didn''t. The old lady glanced behind her at the horse and noticed it was following us. Two hours of trekking through grassy fields I understood why. A group of men was posted on the road, watching it. They were talking but too far away to make any sense. The old lady pointed at a copse of trees and we went there. She pointed at the mare and a tree and made a motion like tying up some rope.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I nodded and took the feed bag. It was the only thing I had that fit over the horse''s head. I gave her some oats and left her there with the straps of the feed bag. I sent her the mental image of staying safe in the trees. I didn''t get a reply. She moved and waved her hand for me to follow. We crossed the grass crouched, very slowly. We moved until we were about fifty meters from the men. I could hear what they were saying but it was all Akkadian to me.


    The old lady took a pouch from her tunic and took a pinch of something from it. She then spoke a few words and sprinkled the dust. It swirled and reflected the sunlight, carried by a breeze in the direction of the men. I was sure there was no wind blowing that way. The dust reached them and soon they started to yawn. A few minutes later they were all sleeping. My jaw dropped. Did she just use magic? Like, real magic? My mind didn''t want to admit but even I had supernatural powers. Why wouldn''t an old witch use magic? Yeah. She was a witch, wasn''t she? There''s nothing that can spread through the air and knock out those men without affecting us. The dust...


    Yeah. Totally witch. I won''t even need to check as Terry Jones did. And I didn''t have a duck.


    She pointed back at the trees. "Sissu bussuru."


    "Sissu?" I neighed. She nodded. "Bussuru?" I waved my hand in a calling or come here motion. She nodded again. Call your horse, she said. I did and the mare came, angry at being left with the feed bag slung over her head. While I was stowing the feed bag, I missed the old lady. Looking back at the road, she was picking the sleeping men''s pockets and giggling. I approached to take a good look at them. The men were rugged, poorly dressed and well-armed. Their weapons screamed ''I need maintenance''. If this were one of those point and click games, I bet the tooltip would say "thugs" if I hovered over them. But with the cackling granny robbing them, I had my doubts on who were the bad guys.


    At least she wasn''t murdering them.


    I decided that was a good time to take care of one thing I was delaying for too long. I looked around and found a pretty nice patch of tall grass to crouch in.


    After both of us were done with our tasks, we went on our way. And no, she didn''t scribble on their faces. That would be silly. Were these guys on the lookout for her? It seemed so. But why send a half-dozen thugs after an old lady? I don''t know and I couldn''t ask, language barrier and stuff. We kept going on the road and one hour after midday we reached the gates of a town. Or a city-state. Hard to tell. The town had stone walls rising seven or eight meters up. There was sparse pedestrian traffic going in through the gate, people with farming implements, people with pack beasts pulling a small cart, and people just going on with their days.


    The old lady turned around and covered her mouth with her hand then pointed at me. Keep my mouth shut, okay. The three of us then moved toward the gate, the old lady taking point and the equine lady taking care of the rearguard. At the gate, she exchanged a few words with the guards, pointed north in the direction of the road and put a large reddish metal coin on his hand. The guard snickered and we entered the town.


    My first impression was that the town smelled. Bad. A mix of urine and sweat, of moldy feet and greasy kitchens. Those with really old grease that never saw soap. The buildings in the north sector were wattle and daub, with the wooden frame clearly visible. Some of the houses looked like they''d crumble and fall at any moment. The street was wide enough to move two wagons side-by-side and still let pedestrian traffic flow on the sides. The ground was packed earth with a lot of straw embedded in the soil. Trampled by hundreds of people every day. The street wasn''t straight. Instead, it snaked back and forth as the buildings weren''t even erected straight. Some of them had clearly newer logs placed to support them.


    The houses that had doors were all well-maintained and seemed posh compared to the drab habitations around them. They concentrated mostly around the central marketplace. The other houses had heavy linen curtains blocking the entrance. If I had to guess, this is not a place that sees much cold in winter. The position of the sun in the sky puts this place in the subtropics or inside the tropics themselves. Another hint was the lack of large chimneys. They have chimneys but mostly in the back of the buildings, where one would expect the kitchen.


    I was getting a huge amount of stares. My explorer''s outfit was not that fashionable but I endured the mental pressure and just moved on. We walked for twenty minutes and reached what looked like a huge market. We went around some stalls and she bought a bundle of candles, grilled meat for us, and a leash. She pointed at the horse and I begrudgingly tied the mare so I could give the impression that I was pulling her.


    We moved south past the market and it seemed we were crossing the town all the way to the southern sector. There we reached a walled building inside the town and I could hear the sounds of pack animals, donkeys, mules, horses. Maybe camels too. Chickens clucking, and an ox moaning. Manure joined the bouquet of odors and we came before a gate. Inside, a wide patio and several wagons parked, most of them with some kind of booth at the back. Merchants peddled their wares, while people moved from booth to booth checking what was available.


    This was a caravanserai. Some tents were leaning against the inner walls. The inside had an elevated walkway supported by arches. I could see some wealthy men talking under the shade of the roof while guards patrolled everywhere in search of pickpockets, I guess.


    I kept one pace behind the old lady. She took me to a corner where a pen made of logs kept some horses from wandering everywhere. She called a man that was at the fence gate and started a conversation.


    She pointed at me and at the horse.


    The man scratched his chin. He tilted his head and widened his eyes as he recognized the horse. "Penny-gu?" He moved his head sideways, leaning his torso to get a better look at my horse. I took a step aside and he repeated. "Penny-gu!"


    The witch patted my back. "Penny-gu sarussu!" She said.


    My horse already had a name. Penny. Quite nice. Penny it was. I patted her neck and scrubbed her fur. I should buy some horse care implements. I only noticed they wanted to talk to me when the old lady pulled my arm. She tried to talk to me and the man was now frowning. If Penny came from here, it meant the caravan that was destroyed departed from this caravanserai. There was no other destination on the road anyway. They at least passed through here.


    What I could piece together was that they were asking me about the caravan Penny was part of. I sighed and shook my head. The man became agitated and Penny was annoyed at him. I held her back out of fear she''d bite him. They insisted and I picked up the words for caravan and merchant. I had to learn their language, fast. Without much choice, I summoned my GoPro and replayed the footage of the combat.


    The old lady and the horse merchant watched the video. I paused after the last guard died and went fast-forward to when I found the merchant''s bodies.


    The horse merchant lowered his head and whispered, "Balthazar..." He earned a pat on the back from the old lady.


    I stored the GoPro before people had ideas. Since there was always someone staring at me, I saw some people poking other people and pointing at me after I started to show the video.


    Balthazar should be the name of the late caravan master. Either he was a native or he needed a fresh horse and took Penny with him. I still had their personal belongings and now I had someone I could ask about giving the things back to their family.


    If I could learn their language, that is. There was also the problem of too much blood.


    The old lady gave the man another huge copper coin and pointed at Penny. The man nodded and went to take the leather strap from my hand. I didn''t let him. I had no idea what he would do with her in there. After the witch spoke to me with a soothing voice and I could understand Penny would be safe in there, I gave up. Penny returned to her horse pen and I had to carry the saddle and saddlebags. We went to one of the tents leaning against the pillars of the caravanserai. A kid of about eight to ten years old was sitting in front and he seemed eager and happy at the arrival or return of the old lady.


    I''ve seen a few doors on the way here but not too few. None of them had a lock. It meant security around these parts is made by either barring doors from the inside or keeping eyeballs watching the valuables. The tent the kid was watching probably belonged to the witch I was tagging after. My suspicion was confirmed when he took a bunch of tiny bronze chips and handed them to the kid, that happily ran on his way.


    I knew I had some coins on me from the personal belongings of the merchants and guards. But before I found the rightful owners of the items, I needed to learn the language of this place. That should be my number two priority. Number one was finding a safe place to stay. The witch''s tent did not feel safe. Unless people are so scared of magic their socks would pop just from hearing a spell''s chant. I doubted that because everything in the old lady''s tent screamed ''witch'' and people dealt with her normally.


    We entered the tent past some charms hung on the frame and she pointed an empty space on a corner. When she did a motion as if lifting a weight from her shoulder I understood and dumped the saddle there. I took a good look at the witch''s tent. There were racks of drying and dried herbs everywhere. Glass jars with animal parts floating in a murky liquid. Clay bottles with cork stopper on a crate on another corner. A blanket rolled on another corner over some furs. Probably her bed.


    After she dumped the bundles of herbs she had on her on a table, she pointed to some cushions laid on a carpet and we sat on them. The old lady started to talk. A lot. With my improved memory, I could remember the words'' phonetics but I didn''t have to rely on my own mind. I took my phone and twisted it, sending the gyroscope the signal to start recording video. I pressed the screen against the fabric of my pants to hide the light and pressed the power button. I knew the phone would keep recording even with the screen off. She stopped to see me play with the device but I just held it in my hand, camera facing her. She shrugged and resumed speaking. She pointed at several things in her tent and I gesticulated at the objects, like a child that asks what each thing was. She kept talking. One of the main reasons I was recording a video was to allow me to see what she was pointing at and the movements of her mouth.


    Akkadian sounded at times like Turkish, Arabic, or Hebrew like Latin sounded like Italian, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. But the language evolved in all these centuries. I''ve seen some written signs and it looked like the Cuneiform version of Kanji. The ideograms were made of straight strokes. I kept her talking as much as I could. After a while, she paused, went for a jug and drank some. She offered it to me and I thought it might be rude to refuse. I took a swig of the liquid and it felt like earth-tasting water.


    She didn''t go back to talking and instead started to go through the herbs. She took some pieces of cured hide and spread the herbs on it, arranging the leaves and preparing them for drying. I felt I should pay back her hospitality. I pointed at a single leaf and made a plucking motion. She nodded and I took the leaf. Drying meant removing the water. While I could force all the water in the leaf to go away, I knew Decompose acted on an atomic level. I had the strong feeling that my power would yank all atoms of oxygen and hydrogen from other compounds into water molecules to remove.


    It was an intuitive feeling. I closed my eyes and tried to remove only the water already present. Fortunately, my familiarity with the liquid couldn''t be better. I was over fifty percent water anyway. I went slowly as to not damage the rest of the leaf. The mental image was like a timelapse video of a leaf drying. Softly. Push the water away carefully. I could feel the mental tingle of water, its special resonance.


    I opened my eyes and I had a dry leaf in my hand. The witch stopped working to look at me. She clapped her hands and took the leaf from my hand. She smelled it, nibbled the tip. She opened a broad smile and pointed at the herbs spread on her table.


    I pointed at the herbs and at me. She nodded. I just got a job. And forgot to discuss wages. Silly me.


    I spent the afternoon drying the herbs. The witch went away several times, returning with some odd item or taking something away from her tent. Maybe doing her business as everyone here in the caravanserai was a merchant in one way or another. I felt the call of the wild and stopped the witch in one of her frequent errands. After an awkward mimicry session, she pointed me to a spot on the far corner where some wooden outhouses were waiting for someone to use them. I steeled myself and went on my way. The merchants were still looking at me and one of them even stood up from his booth to approach. His coworker pulled the sleeve of his tunic and pointed at the witch''s tent. I watched carefully their exchange, committing the words to memory.


    The outhouse was... I don''t want to write about them but for the sake of being thorough, I will. It was made of wood and was used by people I was sure hadn''t even a word for hygiene in their language. I went around and behind the outhouses. Once I noticed no eyes on me, I summoned the trash bag with the looted pelts from the merchant wagon and took one out. With my knife, I carved a hole of adequate size and used that to cover the thing. I left the pelt there.


    On my way back, I focused and sensed Penny''s state. She was well fed and groomed, although annoyed for being penned with the other horses. She wanted to run wild in the grass. My mare was a speed junkie. Back at the tent, the witch had a new linen blanket and a bundle of furs. I was almost done with her herbs when she called me. Another sleeping spot was made next to hers and she was beaming at me.


    I nodded and bowed, clapping my hands. I learned that clapping hands was a sign that you were satisfied with something or in agreement at what was happening. She moved outside with a cast iron pot and I joined her after I finished drying the herbs. She was cooking a stew.


    Yum, witch stew. What could go wrong? Not like she is putting people in it, right?


    No. Shut up, paranoid Sandra.


    The stew was not human but bird meat. Chicken or duck, I didn''t know. We ate the stew and returned to the tent. She put the herbs away and we laid on our fur beds to sleep.

 Day 4

    I barely slept. The caravanserai wasn''t silent even during the night and to push away the fright I felt every time someone came near the witch''s tent, I sent the footage of her language lesson to the iPod and plugged in my earbuds. I used the phone to type the words I was able to understand. The learning boon was showing its worth. I had about fifty to seventy words already learned.


    The day starts with the sun, or even before it. The noise from outside increased until it was impossible to stay in bed. I woke up and felt the call of the wild again. I didn''t want to go to the outhouses. No way. I was sure these pelts were valuable. Compared to the ones I slept on, they were an order of magnitude better. I needed some privacy and a chamber pot. I''d settle for a proper porcelain flushing toilet but I knew it wasn''t going to happen.


    My mission then was to find a room. Maybe there''s an inn for travelers. I didn''t know. I couldn''t even ask. I turned on the sound recording on both my phone and the iPod and placed one device on each side of my pants, on the side pockets that had buttons. I needed to learn their language and I needed samples to study. Before I got outside, I heard the witch singing and the sound of something rolling. I also smelled a strong herbal scent. I went outside and she was crushing the herbs I dried yesterday with a grinding wheel. I waved at her and she waved back, saying something. Maybe it was their version of ''good morning''. I kept the words in mind to see if I heard them again. I repeated the words to her and she nodded and kept grinding herbs. She had several wheels, one for each kind of herb.


    I caught her attention again and pointed around and wiggled my fingers like a person walking. She nodded and went back to her herbs. I wondered if she even cared if I stayed or went away. So I went for a walk around the caravanserai. Like I was shopping for groceries or accessories. Find something I knew what was, let the merchant speak. Catch those patterns.


    My intentions were demolished at the first fruit stand. The fruits were all alien but the alien was me. I went around the booths, silently pointing at stuff and trusting my devices to record their mouths. Some of the merchants tried to get too friendly and I walked away. Not only I didn''t have Martin Lawrence''s charm I also couldn''t understand what the natives were talking. I noticed that all merchants in the caravanserai were men. Some women here and there shopping, but all of them avoided eye contact with men and gave them the right-of-way.


    Soon the fact that I was window shopping and breaking a few privacy laws that weren''t invented yet became obvious and the merchants stopped giving me attention as a customer. It didn''t mean they stopped giving me attention altogether though. They just started to evaluate my worth as merchandise. I reached a section of the caravanserai where a lot of scantily clothed girls aged from young to pedobear-flagged too young were on display, with chains bound to their ankles. A thick piece of metal was twisted between the rings, preventing them from breaking free. Behind the girls, cages with men and other women, the slave merchant probably didn''t feel like marketing as sexual toys.


    That''s right, a slave merchant. He talked to me, pointing at some strong men that had oiled bodies and a too-tight and thin loincloth designed to show they had nothing going on underneath. Eunuchs. I was about to get the heck away from there when I was approached by a man dressed in a colorful toga, embroidered with designs and a well-groomed beard. His outfit screamed nobility, and I knew he was bad news. He spoke something and I just shook my head. He moved closer and I saw some guards behind him. These were wearing chain hauberks and ornate scimitars.


    He had a creepy way of looking at me, like some sort of sexual offender ready to pounce. As he approached, I felt heat leave me as my whole body prepared for the incoming fight of flight of response. Another step from him and fearing he''d just box me in or grab me or something else, I turned around bolted away.


    Halfway through the caravanserai and dodging passersby and animals. Some chickens started to run away from me, turning into a forward escort to make people part. I glanced behind me and they weren''t following. I stopped to catch my breath. Heart pounding, I cursed my lack of a spine. He was just talking, dammit. But I felt creeped out. Badly. I didn''t even have my sword with me. Stupid. Not stupid for not having a sword, for thinking of starting a fight here. The place was packed full of money and valuables and guards were everywhere.


    I could see I gathered the wrong kind of attention for my daring dashing antics. Some merchants were pointing at me, shouting something. Guards wearing scale mail were coming, armed with scimitars. They hadn''t their weapons in hand yet. Yet.


    Mr. Fancytoga was coming, taking his damn time. I looked around and I was surrounded. The whole caravanserai stopped to watch. Fancytoga said something, probably a joke. Some men laughed. The guards stopped about two meters from me, some of them with their hands on the hilt of their scimitars. I should be looking guilty as hell. Shaking, panting, trembling. My flight instinct running at a thousand volts, pumping adrenalin in my bloodstream.


    My gaze was on Fancytoga. Some other merchants came and asked something of him. I could grasp his name. Hama-Tula. He dismissed and denied whatever the other guy said without taking his gaze away from me. He stopped five meters from me and his two guards moved forward, flanking him, probably to defend him if I tried to strike him. Not happening.


    He spoke to me. I had no idea what he was saying but I was recording. He ended with a question. I decided to not answer. Not to give any yes or no response with my body language.


    I heard the witch''s voice and I almost cried in relief. I looked and she was pushing the guards away. Soon she was by my side, taking to Hama-Tula. She pointed at me and then her. Then she grasped my wrist and slapped my face. She had a tender gaze and the slap hurt. But this disparity between her action and the way she looked at me made me pause. She then started to pat my body, searching for something. I put my hands in my pockets and sent my devices to storage. Now the only items form Earth out in the open were the clothes I was wearing. For two days straight. I wanted a bath. Badly.


    She pulled my hands and showed they were empty. She kept searching and pulled my pockets inside out to show they were empty. Then she asked something to Hama-Tula and he denied. She slapped my face again and grabbed my wrist, pulling me back toward her tent. I couldn''t even think straight. All that went through my mind was what would happen if she hadn''t intervened. Dazed, I followed her inside her tent. She closed the curtain and tied two ribbons to keep it shut. Then she started to scold me, speaking a ton of things. I brought my devices back and checked the screens. Still recording. I sat on the furs I slept on and the tension left my body.


    I cried.


    My whole body felt as if I took a beating from all those guards. What wonderful idea to go out and just take a walk as if I was a tourist in an exotic place. I was in a dangerous place where human life was worth almost nothing and women were merchandise. I filtered out what the witch was telling me. I could berate myself just fine. Stupid, stupid, stupid.


    Eventually, she tired of speaking and I tired of crying. The witch went back to crafting her magic potions or whatever else that was and I just hugged my knees. What a great reincarnated heroine I was. But we were not scheduled for calm and quiet. The forecast had a drizzle of interlopers. I saw a group of shadows crawl up on the outside of the tent and a man shouted. The witch groaned, put her herbal concoctions aside and went to the opening to see who was it. I had a hunch she knew.


    She untied the ribbons and poked her head outside. She started to argue with the men and I recognized the word for women. They were talking about me. I could understand the words "girl/woman", "offered price" and Hama-Tula''s name being dropped in an intimidating tone. The witch was being pushed into selling me? What the heck. The woman was the only decent person I''ve met this far. Out of two.


    I felt something burning from my very core. My head spun. If I weren''t already sitting down, I''d fall. I just dropped a hand to the ground to support myself. I saw their faces flash before me. Andrews, Tarhun, Hama-Tula. To them, I was never a person. Just a tool. Something that could be manipulated and used. Probably disposed of when no longer needed. I saw the girls being sold at the slave market. I was afraid.


    I felt the terror of being assaulted by my advisor of all people, professor Andrews. I felt the indignation at the absolute intimidation from the deific presence of Tarhun. It was a feat of strength in itself that my disembodied soul was able to even negotiate with him in that state. Although he did offer me some perks, the fact stands that he killed me. I felt the humiliating outrage at being reduced to mere merchandise just because of my gender.


    I had a second life. What kind of person would I become? Who was this girl? Sandra Hikari died. She was doomed that night. Was I her? The people that cared about her mourned and also died. A century went by if I were to believe what Tarhun told me. Would he lie?


    While I was absorbed in self-reflection, the discussion outside was going in a downward spiral. Whatever Hama-Tula offered for these guys, they were not coming back empty-handed. I wondered what kind of influence that man had. Was he a wealthy merchant, or some local noble? Was this a barony? What was the political structure of this land?


    "Why should I care?" A voice from a dark place of my mind told me. "Just crush anyone in your path."


    I felt the same suppression I did in Tarhun''s domain. But this time, having flesh and a thinking brain, I could both recognize it and feel the sheer terror as my survival instincts kicked in tenfold as hard as when I fled from Hama-Tula.


    Some deity was talking to me. Some deity I wished to have no contact with. A dark, slimy power.


    "I''m offended you think like that of me. I could give you the truth. Power."


    I felt as if time had stopped. I couldn''t move, or better yet, Time halted to a standstill. But I had no reason to trust this voice. Why was that dark and possibly evil deity contacting me?


    "Tarhun offended you. He broke the rules and is now trying to cover up his blunder. If you help me make him pay for it, I''ll give you all you want."


    I fought back at the mental suppression. It was like knowing you were drunk, trying to sober up but then breaking into a stupid grin. I doubted this god could give me what I wanted. What I really wanted.


    "You think you want to go back to your home, but what you really want is vengeance. Strength. The power to never be afraid again. I can give it to you. Power to crush that bug Hama-Tula, to put Tarhun where he belongs, even to bring justice to your beloved professor Andrews."


    Yeah, lovely mind-reading. Didn''t Tarhun said that he couldn''t read my mind if I were not in his domain? And who was this that spoke to me without identifying themselves? And how did...


    "Enough!" Tarhun''s voice rang and I felt my eardrums almost break. "She is not yours, Dark One. You still owe me, Sandra Hikari Kinoshita Rinaldi. You still hadn''t declared our bargain fulfilled."


    "Foolish Tarhun. He can''t touch you, girl. Say the word and Tarhun will suffer the penalty for killing you. Justice will be done."


    Oh. The tablet. I still didn''t acknowledge Tarhun''s bargain. If he left it for after I reincarnated instead of doing it in his domain, it was because he couldn''t. They were bound by laws, by rules. And I could understand why the Dark One was talking to me. Because of my emotions, he was able to reach me. But besides talking to me, these two were as good as phantoms in the back of my mind.


    They couldn''t hurt me. Not without paying a high price. I couldn''t feel any respect from either of them. I was merely a tool, a pawn on their game. As long as I didn''t discharge Tarhun''s debt, that was something the Dark One could use against him.


    But the fact I was still angry at him meant the bargain with Tarhun was not fair. He suppressed me while we negotiated.


    "That''s right. You can''t trust him. Just say the word and Tarhun will get what he deserves!" The Dark One laughed.


    He fed on my humiliation. He relished at my indignation. He grew on my terror. He offered me a chance to get back to Andrews. How could it be possible?


    Silence. Neither deity deigned to answer. It was an answer in itself. Something none of them wanted to disclose or deny.


    I could renegotiate my deal with Tarhun. I knew that doing what the Dark One wanted meant forsaking any protection I had.


    "Tha--"


    Tarhun was about to speak but was interrupted. Muted. If by the Dark One or because of some authority he had to comply with, I never knew. But the Dark One interference helped me figure out one thing. Tarhun wasn''t evil. Not that the Dark One was. Who was I to call a God evil just because he fed on dark emotions?


    Neither one spoke. Both were being muted. I knew what I wanted from Tarhun. Just three little things.


    First, I wanted our non-aggression to be upgraded. He should protect me from the other deities of this world''s influence and from the ones that worshipped him. Let them not bring physical harm to me or mine if I didn''t harm them first. And as ''mine'' I meant my pets, family, and friends. No stealing either.


    Second, I wanted the gift of tongues. Not Glossolalia, but the gift of the four proficiencies in all languages. Hear, speak, read and write.


    Third, I wanted a set of pictures of this world. I imagined my GoPro soaring over the entire world taking pictures of its surface from above, going around the planet and taking the pictures at noon, without cloud coverage. That sucks in satellite photos. Enough pictures to form a Google-Earth-like rendering of the world. Skip oceans if the depth is greater than a hundred meters. And geotag them. In whatever resolution could fit into a 256GB memory card. And don''t use one of mine. Create a new one, you''re a God.


    I felt something shatter far away. It was the barrier that blocked those two gods from talking to me. Tarhun spoke first.


    "I accept your terms. It will take one full day to get the images you want."


    There was a story about two orphan brothers that had a godfather. One year the godfather promised that on their birthday, he''d take them to a toy shop and they had one hour to chose a gift and then would spend the rest of the hour playing in an amusement park. The first brother went away on his birthday and returned happy as a lark, playing the harmonica. He showed his brother the musical instrument. He''d picked it really fast so he spent most of the hour playing at the park. The second brother thought the first one stupid for choosing a cheap harmonica when he could''ve picked anything.


    So the second brother, on his birthday, decided to scour the toy shop for the perfect toy. He saw robots, brick building sets with thousands of pieces. Toy foam-dart guns that looked like the real deal. Electronic games. A bicycle. A world of wonder and so many things to chose from. He had to get the perfect one. Show his older brother how he was best at picking a toy. The hour passed and he hadn''t chosen. The godfather gave him an ultimatum. Pick one thing right then and return to the orphanage or return empty-handed. Overwhelmed by infinite choices and on a time crunch, he took the first thing he saw.


    A harmonica.


    I could ask for the power to shoot laser beams from my eyes. I could ask to be the very best like no one ever was. Would it be granted? I don''t know. I didn''t need the world. I didn''t want the perfect toy. I wanted to go to the amusement park. I wanted to live my life. Returning to Earth was impossible or the Dark One would''ve offered that. Out of his reach if not outright impossible. I could feel he wanted to bring Tarhun down that badly. So I asked for what I really needed and everything else I''d carve with my own two hands.


    My perception of time returned to normal. Their deific presence was gone. I felt a sharp pain in my mind and everything around me made sense.


    I heard the thug that was arguing with the witch.


    "I told you, old witch. Either you sell the girl or we are taking her by force. I don''t want to hurt some old lady. Take the coin."


    The dark, paralyzing emotions were gone. I knew Tarhun had fulfilled my wishes. I looked in my hand and that sandstone tablet he gave me was there. The list of boons was updated and I could feel something engraved on the previously smooth back.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    <blockquote>


    If you concentrate on a person while this tablet is on your person, you can know if that person worships me or not.


    - Tarhun.


    The following boons are added:


    Gift of Tongues: You can listen, speak, read and write any language you had contact with.


    Tarhun''s Divine Protection: The divine protection brings you good fortune. You are less likely to suffer bad events and more likely to encounter good events. You also are greatly resistant to curses. As long as you do not harm followers of Tarhun, they cannot harm you without facing divine punishment. Tarhun watches over and protects you.


    Please acknowledge our bargain as complete before the next sunset.


    </blockquote>


    It was written in English. I immediately tested it on the witch. The tablet gave a soft vibration. The owner of the voice, the thug outside the tent. It also vibrated. Tarhun wasn''t the leader of this world''s pantheon for nothing. I put the tablet in my pocket, took the longsword in its sheath, and stood up.


    "The girl is not for sale. Tell Hama-Tula that! And begone before I curse the bunch of you," The witch replied.


    I walked next to her making sure my footsteps could be heard. She glanced at me and I smiled. I pointed at the outside with the pommel of my sword.


    "Hey, senile hag, I''m speaking to you!"


    She poked her head back outside. She was about to speak when I gripped her shoulder. I brushed the curtain aside and stepped out. I gave the thugs a cursory glance, six men that looked much like the ones camping in the road. I felt fear but I was brimming with confidence. I stopped at each one of them so the tablet could react. I felt the vibrations from all but two of them.


    I sucked in a large breath. It was go time.


    "Mind your words, please. This lady is my benefactor and I won''t stand any insult against her."


    I was expecting his fist to fly and hit my face. My fear wasn''t gone. I was just overtaken by a bout of confidence from the transcendental experience I just had. I moved away from the witch whose name I recalled as one of our previous conversations replayed in my almost perfect memory and I finally could understand her.


    "Nanna, stay in your tent. I''ll deal with them," I told her with a wink without stopping.


    "You will come with us. The boss will treat you right. Now come, girl."


    I was a good ten meters away from her when the thug came to grab me. I felt every hair on my body rise and jumped back in a hurry.


    *KRAKOW*


    Thunder descended from the sky. I could see the white bolt of lightning strike the thug, burn his skin and boil his organs. Been there, buddy. Hurts like heck. My eyes weren''t hurt or blinded by the flash of the lightning. I wish I had the same for my eardrums though.


    holding the sheath in my left hand, I drew the longsword. It was really a masterwork piece. It was heavy and unwieldy in one hand though. I didn''t expect to fight with it, just intimidate.


    "I''ll defend myself if needed. Come if you want to end like your friend there."


    They looked up. The sky was as blue as yesterday. No clouds that could''ve discharged lightning.


    "Shit. No amount of money is worth dying for," One of the two that didn''t worship Tarhun turned around and ran for the exit.


    The others were divided between going, fighting, or just pretending it was a joke. They shifted with unease in their spots, afraid. I sheathed the blade and channeled my inner Ian McKellen.


    "Fly, you fools."


    They didn''t. Fly, I mean. The word I used in Akkadian didn''t mean exactly ''fly'' but the language was too context-based. They understood it as ''run''. And run they did. Nanna threw her head back as she cackled maniacally at the sight. I met her eyes and smiled.


    The stench of ozone and burnt skin reached me as the wind shifted. The body of the thug was on the ground, feet over a patch of vitrified dirt. I moved away and scanned my surroundings. I wanted to find Hama-Tula. I wished to get back at him for sending these thugs and for scaring me out of my wits. I locked my eyes on him and sheathed the sword. I walked like Rachel McAdams did as she strutted in those high school corridors. Firm. Determined. Powerful. Hama-Tula met my challenge with a smirk. He was in for a world of hurt.


    On my final approach, I review some of the conversations I heard while window-shopping. Booth-shopping. I could decipher them now and while I didn''t need to learn their vocabulary and grammar anymore, I could grasp details of their customs and culture. One thing I heard mentioned several times was "as the code says" or "the law has it that...", followed by mentions of some law. The birthplace of the legal code, Mesopotamia held their dear Hammurabi''s code to the heart. Or so I heard. But seeing how orderly they are and the reverence which they speak of their laws, I think that''s the case here. But enough musing. It is time to face the dragon.


    "Hama-Tula. I''d like to say well met but that would be a lie," I told him without breaking eye contact. "Give up and just go away. Bother me and suffer the consequences. You already gave me enough bother for a lifetime."


    He didn''t yield or even flinch. Instead, it seemed like he''d grown and his demeanor became menacing as he just straightened his back and frowned. I could tell he was angry at being talked back.


    "Girl. I could have you whipped for talking me like that. I want to take you into my service. Come work for me and you won''t regret."


    The guards'' faces behind him were inscrutable. They could be tin soldiers animated by Keira Knightley for all I knew. Unfortunately, I didn''t get to see that one on the big screen. I checked the two guards and Hama-Tula, all of them tested positive for Tarhun worship.


    "No. I think I''ll pass. I am fine with my current occupation."


    Hama-Tula''s neck became stiff, betraying his otherwise impeccable poker face. Anger flowed into his eyebrows and he lowered his head as he pointed at me and shouted. "Guards, seize this woman. She is a thief and stole from me."


    The scale-mail clad enforcers of the caravanserai took a step toward me and halted when I pointed at the sky and shouted. "Halt where you are! Thunder shall strike all who seek to harm me. Hama-Tula is a liar. tell me, what did I steal from you?"


    "Coins. Shekels of gold and silver," I smile but he waves a hand, dismissing my yet-unspoken retort. "It is inconsequential now, you had plenty of time to hide your ill-gained valuables while you were in that tent."


    A shekel is a measure of weight, around six to nine grams. The standard coin used in trades.


    I straighten my spine and try to look down on him, "Are you accusing me without proof? I haven''t touched you or even approached more than three arms from you. How would I steal anything from you from afar?"


    "Sorcery. You can use magic, that is obvious enough. And you just killed a man. As I told, it is inconsequential now if you stole from me or not," He glared at the guards. "Seize her for murder!"


    The guards hesitate. If I were them, I''d hesitate too as trying to get someone that apparently can shoot lightning from the sky might be hazardous. But I tried to use that moment to my advantage.


    "I can''t shoot lightning or move objects from afar, weaver of falsehoods!" I point a finger at the sky. "I am protected by Tarhun. He shall smite all who desires my harm."


    I left behind the part that it only works on his worshippers. I felt no reluctance in his agreement to uphold our alliance. If I had to guess, the net benefit of touching the hearts of everyone watching compensate for the loss of a single worshipper. I did a full spin, concentrating on each enforcer surrounding me. They were three meters away and I didn''t find a single non-believer. I was safe from them. I felt a fuzzy warmth in my choice of harmonica. Getting a major deity as a backer surely felt nice.


    "Hama-Tula, we all saw the lightning, we all felt the holy power in it," one of the merchants in the crowd shouted. "Even if she did that, a sorceress that can call lightning out of the blue sky is not one to be trifled with."


    I saw a flash of desperation wash over Hama-Tula for a moment. His inner merchant mind surely was calculating the odds, potential losses, and gains from getting me. To my dismay, he decided to take the risk. That moment, he looked like someone pressed into a corner. There was something looming over him that compelled him to go forward with his plan of getting me.


    "One gold shekel to the man that hands that woman to me!" Hama-Tula plays his card after his internal struggle settled.


    You better do your part, Tarhun. I grid my teeth and look around, to see where they will come from. The guards are divided between their fear and greed. Greed wins for one of them and he broke the circle to get me.


    *KRAKOW*


    Stronger and with a metal armor to direct the current away from his vital organs, the guard falls to the ground, twitching. I didn''t want to proselytize but I shouted anyway.


    "Thunder from heavens will smite all who dares challenge mighty Tarhun''s mandate!"


    That was enough to make most of the guards take a step back, increasing the clear radius around me by a half-meter. Some were slower or more reluctant in giving up the money than the others but the safety in numbers made even those back away. From what I knew of lightning victims, the struck guard would probably survive. Then I lowered and shook my head, forgetting completely that I was trying to be boastful. The guard needed modern medical treatment. I felt bad for him.


    I knelt next to him. Not that his seizures stopped, I checked his vitals. He was not breathing and had no pulse. I Decomposed the metal of his scale mail and pulled my survival knife to cut the leather underneath, removing patches of skin that stuck to the leather and exposing his burnt chest. I started CPR immediately.


    "He''s dead!" Some bystander gasped.


    Nobody approached.


    "Get me a small pillow and some beeswax. Honey and olive oil too. Fast!"


    I kept doing as I was instructed in the four-hour first aid orientation course I did a couple years ago. Ignore the century-long gap I had or not. I had to put my weight into the compressions but I feared to break his ribs. A broken rib is still better than death, I told myself. About two minutes passed and kept doing hands-only CPR. I wasn''t certified to do mouth-to-mouth. The pillow arrived and I placed it under his neck and shoulders to tilt the head back. I was playing by ear as I had never really treated a person and Hollywood does a crappy job of depicting proper techniques most of the time.


    I looked around and saw Nanna. "Get beeswax, honey and olive oil. Warm it so the wax melts and mix. Not hot enough to burn skin."


    The old witch nodded. "Yes, child. Do as she says! Hurry!"


    The mix could work as a balm to cover his burns. I later learned that beeswax was a luxury material for candles.


    Five minutes in and the guard coughed. I kept the compressions but he started breathing on his own. I pressed his neck and felt a pulse. He opened his eyes, confused.


    "Stay at ease. You''ll live. Do not move and focus on breathing. Ignore the pain." I told him.


    Nanna came with a clay pot with the greasy mix. I took it with two fingers and plastered it over his burn wounds after I confirmed it wasn''t hot enough to burn him further. I knew it wasn''t the best solution but it was what I think of in the short time and limited resources I had.


    "Bandages. Get some linen cloth and cut long straps." They had bandages at least.


    Two other guards helped me put the other sitting up. I Decomposed the armor and the silicon of the dirt stuck to his back and passed more ointment on his burns there. After he was properly cleaned and covered in the honey-based mixture, I wrapped his torso, arms, and head with the bandages.


    The same two guards took their friend away. I stood up and cleaned my hands with the rest of the bandages. I made eye contact with Nanna and the witch smiled and nodded. Glancing around at the crowd, the hostility and fear were replaced by awe. I stood up and Decomposed the bundle of bandage and wax I cleaned my hand with. Along with the wax still stuck to my skin. I felt I needed to train more with Decompose.


    Then my eyes fell on Hama-Tula. "Leave me alone or I swear you''ll regret. I did nothing to you and all you did was incite the crowd with false accusations and get a guard hurt. I expect you to pay for his wounds."


    I felt the mood swing against Hama-Tula. Some merchants mumbled that he was indeed responsible for paying.


    "We shall see, girl. If threats are the commodity of the day, then I''ll tell you this. You will also regret not coming with me. What I had in mind for you would be glorious."


    He turned around and left, flanked by his two bodyguards. The crowd started to go back to their business. I looked around and found Nanna.


    "Nanna, come. We need to talk," I told her.


    "That we do, child. That we do."


    We went back to her tent. She pointed at the cushions. "Sit, child. I''m glad you can speak now."


    I shook my head. "I could speak before, just not your language. I can now. My name is Sandra, Nanna. I''m very thankful for your help. How can I repay you?"


    She laughed. "You already did by drying my herbs. Saved me a week of work and the quality was almost as good as fresh herbs. I made more money out of them than what I spend on you. But tell me, Sandra, what are you?"


    What, not who. I sighed and puckered my lips. Then I shrugged and told the truth. "I am a person from another world. Tarhun brought me here as part of a bargain."


    "Yes, yes. I thought as much. I''ve never seen anyone with as much magic as you do, girl. Your magic glows so brightly it is hard to look at anything else. And those glowing boxes you have, they really interesting. I assume that now that you can speak our language, you don''t need old Nanna''s help anymore."


    I grabbed her hand. "I still need your help, Nanna. I need to learn about this land, this town, these people and their laws and customs."


    She made herself comfortable in her cushion and then spoke. I was in the En-Shunnu empire, the town of Es-Kina, which was the family name of the current Lords. They had several ethnical groups, predominantly Akkadians and Hittites but there were always groups of refugees migrating away from danger zones. She didn''t explain what they were.


    Their legal system was heavily based on Hammurabi''s code, without much drift for centuries. New laws were hard to enact and everyone knew these laws by heart. I asked about the caravan where I found Penny and she told me they were traveling merchants from a nearby city-state. They had no relatives here and she didn''t recommend traveling there.


    "Then what should I do with the things I took from the bodies?"


    She laughed. "Sell them, give them away, bury them deep under the earth. It is your choice as they now belong to you. As much as that lazy horse!"


    I had to defend my mare. "Penny is not lazy. She just doesn''t want to pull wagons. We get along just fine."


    "Fair enough. But you really kicked the hornet''s nest. Hama-Tula is a wicked and greedy merchant."


    I tilted my head. "Aren''t they all wicked and greedy?"


    My quip elicited a bout of cackles from the old witch. "Maybe. But that one is dark. Rumor has it that despite all his apparent wealth, his house hangs by a thread. He owes a lot of money to a lot of people you don''t want to owe money to. He is desperate, that much I could see in the way he dealt with it. My intuition is that he expected to settle some debts by selling you," She poked me on the chest and smiled, "But you are not some defenseless maiden waiting to be bought, are you?"


    That brought back the indignation and rage. I kept them in check. "No way. Back in my world, maidens aren''t usually sold and when they do, it is a crime."


    She raised an eyebrow. "Then how do women marry in your world? What reason makes them marry?"


    "Love. In my world women marry for love," I told her matter of factly.


    Nanna burst into laughter. She laughed so hard she wheezed, out of breath. "Oh, that''s hilarious. Marrying for love? Some world you have."


    "Had," I sighed. "I can''t go back."


    "What are you doing here then? Some kind of divine mission? A champion sent to cleanse the world?"


    I was quick to crease my eyebrows and shake my head to dismiss that notion. "No. I just want to live my life. I have no divine mission."


    She smiled sagely. "That you know of. Tarhun is a tricky one. But he is not an evil god, far from that. So, Sandra from another world, what will be your next step in this one?"


    I pondered for a while but the answer was obvious. "Take a warm bath."


    "Yes, yes. My friend has an inn. We can go there after I buy you some things. I bet you looted the money in the caravan, right?"


    She brought me to an inn on the other side of town. The eastern side. Her friend, the innkeeper''s wife agreed to rent me the biggest room. She bought me soap, a plant that looked like a dry kernel of corn but was a sponge inside, and some peasant clothes. I put a wooden bar behind the door along with hooks that would hold it in place and took a warm bath. I had four tubs of water, one with warm water and the other three with cold water to wash my clothes and other items. I never had a bath that felt so good. I couldn''t believe how dirty I was. I tried putting on one of the linen dresses Nanna bought me but it was too itchy. I solved it by wearing a shirt and skirt underneath.


    I took the trash bag with the personal belongings from the caravan, the belt pouches, and coin bags. I dumped everything in the water tub and scraped away the blood. After thoroughly cleaning the coins, I piled them up. I had twelve gold shekels, three larger gold coins that by weight should be worth five to seven times as much as the normal ones, and a lot of silver and copper coins. Adding everything up, I had thirty-two gold, two hundred and sixty-two silver, three hundred and twelve copper, and two hundred and ninety-three bronze chips I knew were money but I had no idea how much they were worth.


    I also had a few gemstones from the fancy pouches worn by the dead merchants too but I had no idea how much they were worth. But even if they were just sparkly pieces of worthless glass, I was quite rich. All the stuff Nanna bought me, the clothes, soap, candles, the sponge-plant, and the inn rent added up less than two silver. There were some bronze trinkets and amulets from the guards. A few had effigies of naked women. I guess they were this world''s version of pin-ups.


    I took the most grotesque amulet, a boar-woman with saggy tits and tested Decompose on it. It took me a few minutes of concentration before I could feel the resonance. I focused on it and I got a small lump of copper and a nugget of tin.


    Time to make some experiments. I took the plastic bag that had the pouches and cut a piece of clean plastic. I now had the piece in one hand and the bag in the other. I released the bag. After a few moments, the bag disintegrated into a fine dust that disappeared. The piece in my hand remained unchanged. No, I could see up close that the plastic was growing slowly. I put it in storage to check later. Another bag, another piece. I stored the piece and held onto the bag. I could summon the piece and store it again, no change. I then released the bag with the piece in storage. It vanished like the other. The piece I kept in storage had already started to grow when I checked. It meant I could ''save'' my clothes and other items by keeping a piece of them in storage. If I lost possession of the item, it would disappear and regrow later. I did it with my clothes, socks, and boots.


    I washed my laundry and hung it to dry. Considering how hot and dry the weather was, I didn''t even need to try to do the same I did to the herbs with my clothes. While I waited, I sat on the desk and took my laptop. I had to check what I could about their progenitor societies, the ancient Mesopotamian empires and write my journal.


    I decided it was time to clear Tarhun of his debt. The boons he gave me were all okay. "Tarhun, I declare our bargain fulfilled." Nothing happened after I said that. Not even a breeze. I went back to writing my notes on this new world.


    The night was claiming the blue of the sky when someone knocked at the door.


    "Miss, dinner will be served soon. I thought you would like to eat before the inn gets too crowded."


    Yes, I''d like that. I opened the door and found a small, shapely but unkempt, demure maid. "Hello. Nice to meet you, I''m Sandra. And you?"


    The key to getting good service is to be nice to the wait staff. The girl fidgetted with her dress and answered without meeting my eyes, "I''m Arwia, madam."


    "Well, Arwia. I have some items here I can''t take with me and there''s no lock on the door. What should I do?"


    I pointed at the clothes drying. She scratched her head. "Patrons don''t hang clothes to dry here. We usually wash the clothes and hang them outside in the sun. I''m sorry to ask, but what is a ''lo-ki''?"


    Oh. I didn''t notice. They don''t even have a word for locks. I mentally checked. Padlock, key, nothing. locks simply weren''t a thing. I went downstairs and bought a dinner set. It had a mug of ale, a loaf of bread and some stew. Three copper coins. I used the opportunity to check how much the bronze chip was worth. I took a pouch of them from my belt.


    "Arwia, how many bronze chips would I need to pay for dinner?"


    She froze. Then she started to count on her fingers. She stopped, counted again. "Eighteen, miss," She answered with a big grin, probably proud she could multiply three by six. Maybe she should be.


    "How old are you, Arwia?" I would give her fifteen, minus or plus one year. I counted the coins and handed her twenty. "There''s two extra for you."


    She blinked. "I''m seventeen, miss. But why are you giving me two chips?"


    "It is a tip. Because I''m very pleased with your service." I noticed the word tip also didn''t exist in the sense I used so it came out in English.


    "To buy a fig (ti''u)? Thank you, miss."


    So you could buy a fig for two chips. And figs were a delicacy that would make an inn maid happy. To each their own.


    I ate my dinner and returned to my room. Nobody stole anything, thankfully. I conducted a few more experiments and read more on my history books until I fell asleep. And begone before I curse the bunch of you.

 Day 5

    I woke up with Arwia knocking on the door. I changed out of my nightgown and stored my things, leaving just one silver coin and a few coppers in a money pouch on my belt. I also kept another pouch with two gold tied to my bra, underneath the shirt I was wearing underneath the linen dress. I placed the longsword on my waist and opened the door.


    "Good morning, Arwia. What is it?"


    "Good morning, miss," She replied without energy. She seemed concerned about something. "There''s a man downstairs demanding to talk to you."


    "Well, let''s go and see what he wants."


    I wasn''t afraid of whoever that was. I knew they wouldn''t try anything too aggressive after what happened at the caravanserai. Downstairs I found one of Hama-Tula''s bodyguards. He was tall and wiry, muscular but without the bulk.


    "Aren''t you one of Hama-Tula''s guards? What does your master want from me?" I asked him.


    He scratched his head. "I know you are angry, miss. My master wanted you to come to the caravanserai to talk. Just that."


    "Your breakfast is ready, miss. Please eat before you leave."


    I saw bread, cheese and grilled sausage with a cup of fresh milk. But my attention was with the guard. It smelled like a trap. But why the caravanserai? He thoroughly lost yesterday. The only things there were Penny and Nanna. I knew Penny was fine through our bond. Maybe it was time to get her out. But I needed to go. They could be threatening Nanna.


    "Arwia, could you please get me some salt? A big rock, if possible."


    "Right away, miss Sandra." The maid ran to the kitchen.


    I sat and ate my breakfast. Arwia returned and I took a chunk of rock salt from her. I checked the resonance and it was sodium chloride with a lot of impurities like iodine, magnesium, and calcium salts.


    "Lead the way. I bet he told you to make sure I showed up, right?"


    He sighed. It was obvious he was loathing each part of this job. "Indeed, milady. Please, this way."


    I had nothing in the inn room. I also didn''t pay for another day. I thought of renewing my stay but the inn was pretty much empty. They made ends meet by functioning as a tavern at night. I didn''t know what the day had in store for me so I went along with the guard. I was so worried I forgot to say goodbye to Arwia.


    On my way, I focused on the piece of salt. I started to extract chlorine gas from it, slowly. I also expelled magnesium chloride and chunks of solid iodine that fell on the street behind me.


    We reached the caravanserai and the place was grim. Quiet. I kept working on the ever-smaller chunk of salt in my hand. The usual blurb and hollering from the merchants drowned to whispers. They saw me and quieted down even more. I looked in the direction of Nanna''s tent and my heart froze.


    It was broken.


    I ran there, leaving the guard to catch up behind me. I reached the place and saw a band of twenty-something thugs, the same group from the road and yesterday, gathered around. Two of them were holding Nanna.


    "Look who came! The prize girl herself. Welcome miss. Are you here to see this witch?"


    Nanna had a black eye. My blood was boiling with rage. I doubted I could win against one of these thugs, much less a score of them.


    "What do you want?" I asked them.


    "You. Come with us peacefully and we will let the witch go. Cause any trouble and she is dead. That old hag caused us enough grief already."


    Nanna was my friend. How could they hurt her? I put my hand in my pocket and used the tablet. Only half of the thugs worshipped Tarhun. Nanna was silent and I could see a trickle of blood on the corner of her mouth. The bastards beat her.


    "Who hired you and how much did he pay?"


    Maybe. If a fight was impossible, maybe I could buy them.


    "Hama-Tula wants you, girl. You should rejoice, you are going to be a real princess. And don''t worry about money. We are doing this for free."


    He licked his lips. I was creeped out but I needed to get Nanna out of that mess. I owed her that much.


    "Do you promise on Tarhun''s name you''ll let Nanna go? Let her go and don''t stop her?"


    He opened his arms. "Of course. None of us want to end like Gram-Tossu you fried yesterday. Come with us and the old lady is free to go."


    I pointed at Nanna. "Let me talk to her."


    They released Nanna and the old lady crumpled on the dirt. I went and knelt next to her. Only then she whispered. "Foolish girl. This old lady has just a few years left on her. You are throwing your entire life away. Run before it is too late."


    I looked around me. It was too late. They closed the circle around me. If one of the non-believers attacked me, they would learn the extent of my protection. And then I''d have to fight half of them.


    "Your tent, Nanna. They destroyed everything. Did they steal your valuables?"


    "No. I knew they would come and gave everything to a friend for safekeeping. I doubt I can get it back though."


    I put a hand in my dress'' collar and fished the pouch with the two gold. "Take this and leave town. Go away for a while and we''ll surely meet again in the future. Can you move?"


    "You are a fool, Sandra. A sweet, kind fool. I''ll take what I''m given. And yes, once I''m out of their sight, they''ll never catch me," She whispered in my ear.


    Nanna stood up and walked. The thugs opened up their encirclement and let her go unchallenged. I watched Nanna go until she left the caravanserai. The leader of the thugs spoke.


    "That sword. Hand it over. You won''t need it where you are going."


    I didn''t surrender my mostly decorative weapon. "No. I''m keeping it. Come on, take me to Hama-Tula."


    We left the caravanserai, me surrounded by so many thugs I couldn''t see around me. I wasn''t too short but compared to the average physical build of a successful thug, I might as well be a child.


    While I finished purifying my chunk of pure sodium, we went through the streets and reached a section of the northwestern town where fenced estates were the norm. The housing of the elite. Rich merchants, nobles. Hama-Tula.


    The crowd of thugs parted once we entered a very posh estate surrounded by a two-meter tall bramble fence and stopped in front of a large house. It resembled a mix between the caravanserai and roman architecture. And I saw him. Hama-Tula. I slid the sodium into my dress pocket.


    "How sweet of you to come to visit me, miss. I didn''t catch your name. How are you called."


    I never felt like killing someone. But this Hama-Tula guy, he kinda deserved it. All I could ask was to hear him monologue and then escape like Sir Sean Connery when he portrayed the best spy ever. I hadn''t a hundredth of his confidence though.


    "My name is Sandra. The same name of your ruin. It is not too late, Hama-Tula. Let me go and forget about me."


    Talking back to him was the wrong choice, apparently. The man burst out in anger and shouted. "Shut up, woman. I''m going to make you a princess! You will be the perfect gift for Prince Marduk-Sapik-Ziarat. It is up to you to be selected as the first concubine of his harem. And I intend to drive some manners into that thick skull of yours. Now, take her to the slave pens. Put her in a separate cell."


    Slave pens. Since he broke protocol by not monologuing, I was going to make my stand right there. I started to draw my sword. All the thugs did the same. Soon I was surrounded by a swarm of swords, scimitars, daggers, maces, and axes. I swallowed my saliva and steeled myself. It was going to hurt. The silver lining was that the thugs were all armed with metal weapons. I could do something about them.


    "I dare you to come and touch me. C''mon. I''m not going down without a fight."


    The longsword was somewhat heavy for me to hold in one hand even though it was well-balanced.


    "Stop it, woman. If I let them cut your skin, you will be worthless to the prince! I cannot let you get hurt!" Hama-Tula seemed desperate. "Drop your weapons, morons. That woman must not have a single scar on her body."


    He was really out of his mind. I heard weapons being stowed around me. The fact he needed to catch me without open wounds was a big plus in this upcoming fight. I could hurt them as much as I wanted while they had to take it easy to avoid damaging the merchandise.


    I held the longsword in two hands and swung it around. A full spin. The thugs backed off. I could go for Hama-Tula I was sure if he went down I''d be free, but I needed them to start it.


    "What are you waiting for? Come and get me." The thugs were obviously hesitating. Their task was to bring me here and they were done with it. I turned around to face the leader. "Why do you guys owe Hama-Tula so much? Don''t you know he''s dead broke? You already did your task, you brought me here. There''s no need to get yourselves fried because you incurred divine wrath. Especially those that are heathens that don''t believe in Tarhun, your punishment will be twice as hard."


    I moved forward and lunged at one of the heathens. He drew a dagger in a hurry and parried my stab easily. I put my hand on his chest over his heart and Decomposed the heck out of his armor. The metal flowed down and became solid again after it went out of my influence. It locked the scales around his belly, becoming a lump of useless metal.


    "Bitch! This armor was expensive!" He came to stab me. I opened up my guard and watched where his dagger was coming to.


    "No! Stop him!" Hama-Tula shouted.


    I focused Decompose on where the dagger would hit. Over my heart. The iron in the dagger flowed away from me and down, creating spokes of metal in a splash-like pattern I felt the hilt of the weapon hit my breast. My right hand wasn''t idle though. I hit his temple with the cross-guard of the sword. He went back and fell down.


    "He wasn''t struck by lightning!" Some of them noticed. A braver one came with his ax sideways. I checked and he was a believer.


    *KRAKOW*


    I wasn''t blinded by the lightning. It just registered in my sight as a white column. The thug and four others around him fell to the ground, electrocuted. Even I felt the tingle of electricity.


    "Lightning will strike those that attack me first. Not those I attack," I half-lied. With a cursory glance, I checked my odds. Six out of twenty-something were out. Four of them were non-believers.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    I told the leader. "Leave. Your job is done. Hama-Tula''s greed will be the doom of your gang. Take your men and go."


    "Fools! The Prince will shower us with riches if we deliver this woman to him!" Hama-Tula countered my proposal. "She has the strongest magic ever, you heard the sorcerer."


    "Yeah. And I can melt metal. Do you want to find out what I can do with blood? You better not try me."


    I reached in my pocket and pulled a small pellet of the pliable metal. Once I was done with the non-believers, this fight was as good as won.


    "Bo-boss, it is better if we leave. We can''t spend the Prince''s bounty if we are dead." One of the thug lieutenants said.


    I smelled urine and noticed some of the thugs struck by lightning soiled themselves.


    "I warned you, I shouted."


    I tossed the sodium on the urine pool. It skidded and hit the wet dirt, sending sparks everywhere and raising some smoke. Then as the sodium melted flames erupted and it exploded. It was a firecracker''s worth but it was enough to surprise them. The rest of the sodium pellet shot up and away, landing somewhere on the lawn.


    "Run away if you value your lives!" I pulled another piece of sodium.


    "Grab her arm! She can''t use magic if her hands are bound, morons!" Hama-Tula shouted.


    I still had sharp metal in my hand. Armed with might, magic, and divine wrath as a looming threat, the thugs'' morale broke and they ran for it. They left their comrades behind and just ran out of Hama-Tula''s estate.


    I turned to face my opponent. "I''m here, Hama-Tula. And you can''t touch me. What are you going to do? I have no interest in that prince of yours. You can tell him to go fetch his wives on the other side of the continent for all I care."


    He turned to one of his bodyguards. "Aristunn, seize her! It is an order!"


    "I can''t, sir. I''ll be struck down by Tarhun. And my job is to protect you and your family. If she attacks or uses her magic against us, I''ll act. Otherwise, find another way."


    Hama-Tula punched the man. "You useless slave! If I tell you to die for me, you die! Go and get the woman!"


    Hama-Tula was the problem. I had to knock him out but the bodyguards would fight back if I did. Or I could just walk away.


    "Then I''m going too. Have a nice day, Hama-Tula. Here''s hoping we don''t see each other again. Bye-bye!"


    I turned around and walked away. I wish I did it in slow motion but neither I didn''t run even though my heart implored me to get away from there fast.


    "Close the gates!" He shouted behind me.


    The gate guards would close the gate before I reached the place at my current speed so I didn''t bother to run. I always could make a hole in the gate. And as expected, the wooden doors were closed when I reached them.


    I pointed at the gate and talked to the guards, "Open the gate!"


    They didn''t. I started to channel Di Caprio. I wasn''t escorting Kate Winslett out of a sinking ship but the rage was the same.


    "Open the gate right now!" I shouted.


    "Seize that girl!" Hama-Tula shouted from where he was. I glanced behind me. He didn''t move, the lazy bastard.


    "Miss, could you not cause us trouble?" One of the gate guards asked.


    I placed my fists on my hips and stared at him, "Why don''t you volunteer to become the first concubine of price whats-his-pants? Then I won''t cause trouble."


    He chuckled. "I just don''t want to get either whipped or zapped."


    "I get you, bro. Now, it is in your master''s best interest if you open this gate. Otherwise, I''ll have to destroy it. I''ll go crazy here, I am warning you!"


    Then a man''s voice boomed from outside, "Open the gate! That''s an order!"


    Oh, nice. I added my own voice to the chorus. "Open the gate! That''s a nice request before I start throwing fireballs around."


    "Hey, Sandra, you in there? I brought help!" Nanna''s hoarse voice sounded like a choir of angels.


    "I''m fine Nanna! How are you? You brought help, how wonderful! Did you see the band of thugs I sent running?"


    "The guards arrested them!" She cackled. "Everything is fine, now you Hama-Tula men, I know you can hear me. Open this gate before I curse you!"


    I felt pity for the guard. He looked at me with the worst ''I hate my job, I''m gonna burn this mother down!'' face I''ve ever seen. Worse than Jack Black.


    "You heard the witch guys. Open up," I told them. Then I raised my voice. "I bet there''s some town official or the guard captain on the other side. As I told you, it is Hama-Tula''s best interest to not keep them out!"


    The same male voice from before shouted from outside, "It''s the magistrate! Open up or I''ll tell the guard to break down the gate!"


    I turned and gesticulated to Hama-Tula. "The magistrate!" The greasy merchant was still on the same spot, a bit paler.


    "Open the gate!" He shouted.


    I chuckled. "See? It wasn''t that hard."


    The guard groaned and hit his coworker on the shoulder. They both removed the hardwood bar keeping the gate shut and opened it. There was a crowd outside. I could see Nanna along with a strong guy that should be close to two meters, covered in soot from head to toe and wearing a thick leather apron. He had a cross pein hammer on his shoulder. Couldn''t be more stereotypical. Next to him a greek god. No seriously, the guy had flowing golden hair, a chin I''d love to measure, pecs I could play taiko drums on and I was sure behind his chain maille there were six-pack abs. I forced myself to not drool because the guy in front was not looking very friendly to me.


    He was short, had a triangular face and a long, braided beard. With a waxed mustache and a toga that although was fancy could still be drab, this one should be the magister. He glanced at me from head to toe and I knew I was found wanting.


    He entered and strode straight to Hama-Tula.


    "Hama-Tula. What are you up to this time? I have accusations of wanton destruction of private property, kidnapping, and the organization of a private army. I''ll have to report this to the Ensi, I''m afraid."


    We went behind him. "Yeah, he kidnapped me. And he wanted to hand me over to some prince. He has no right over me."


    Hama-Tula wasn''t going to take it silently. "This woman entered my house, burned my lawn, beat up my guests. Arrest her!" He haughtily said, pointing at the dead and unconscious thugs on the ground.


    The magistrate glanced at me and scoffed. "Captain Brandon Al-Amir, arrest this woman on charges of trespassing and murder. Farewell, Hama-Tula!"


    The hunky blonde came to grab me but the smith and Nanna held him back. "Brandon, wait," The smith said with a voice that felt like it came from the depths of Khazad-Dum.


    "Yeah. Why arrest me when Hama-Tula was the one that did all that! I demand Justice!" I told the magistrate. "I demand a fair trial!"


    That last part was spoken before my wits reminded me that, like Judy Garland, I wasn''t in Kansas anymore.


    "A fair trial?" The magistrate asked. "And does the young foreigner lady knows what is a fair trial in these parts?"


    I glanced over my shoulder at Nanna. She just shook her head. Now that I started it, I had to go on with the farce.


    "Yes! I want a fair trial to prove that Hama-Tula is in the wrong and I am innocent. All I did was in self-defense."


    Nanna did the universal sign of ''you screwed up''. She put her hand covering her face. The blacksmith grimaced and my Norse god clapped my shoulder. I almost made a weird sound.


    "Then a trial it will be. Captain Brandon, let''s take her to the river."


    I froze. The... river? What about a jury of my peers, witnesses, or even a gavel? No? I felt Brandon''s hand grasp me tighter, like totally no escape.


    Hama-Tula was frowning but there was a sinister light in his eyes. Like, you ruined my plans but I am going to have the last laugh. At least he wasn''t nibbling on his pinkie.


    Without much of a choice, The group went on their way with Brandon escorting me. We went out of town through the western gate, gathering a big crowd. From the jeering of the peanut gallery, it sounded like an execution. Given that the guard captain was holding me like I was a convict, I added two and two and felt like running away.


    We walked for an hour and reached a river. It was large, about six to eight meters from shore to shore. The current was strong upstream but the place we were at had a bend. A wooden pier went about three meters into the river.


    The magistrate spoke. "We are here to adjudicate a dispute between miss Sandra and the honorable merchant Hama-Tula," He said in the most biased speech I''ve heard since the last presidential election. "The woman demanded a trial and we are here to put her bare before the gods for that reason. Strip her of her clothes!"


    The crowd cheered and hooted. Brandon reached for my dress and while I wouldn''t mind him undressing me, I''d love to have a more private place. I found Nanna and she just shook her head, mouthing "silly girl," and shaking her head. I stored all my clothes and shoes underneath the dress. No need to let them take that from me. The silent and stoic guard captain removed my belt, scabbard and pulled my dress. I had to let him take it out or he''d rip it from me.


    It was not the time to be squeamish or prude. I just imagined it was some out-of-body experience. And there I was, naked. They took some hemp rope and Brendan started to bind me. But not the turtle shell knot. More like the heroine-on-railroad kind of wrap with several loops of rope around me from my knees to my shoulders. At least it covered my lady bits. Then, to add insult to injury, they tied a rock to the stone.


    "Toss her in! Toss her in! Toss her in!" The crowd started to shout.


    "Wait! Wait! Magistrate!" I called him. "Make Hama-Tula check the rope and knots! He must attest that the rope is well bound. I don''t want any doubt falling on our noble and stoic guard captain that he made it easy for me!"


    Of course, I had a plan. It was rather obvious given my set of talents. The magistrate pondered for a moment and called Hama-Tula.


    "Honorable merchant Hama-Tula, please check the rope bindings and knots."


    The merchant came and tugged some loops of rope. It was really tight, I knew it better than anyone. But he wasn''t satisfied as he took more rope and wrapped another set of ropes around me, tying another rock.


    "Everything is fine. Let the river decide the fate of this woman!" Hama-Tula raised his hands like a politician in a rally. The crowd was delirious and bloodthirsty.


    I remembered one important thing. "Brandon, there''s a chunk of metal in my dress'' pocket. Whatever happens, DON''T LET IT GET WET!" I told him and shouted at the end."


    He finally spoke. "I''ll keep that in mind. Don''t worry and I hope you have your fair trial." He clutched the folded dress under his arm. Even his voice was sexy. I was in love.


    "Oh, thank you. So, how does this work? How long do I have to stay in there?"


    He raised an eyebrow. "Crazy woman, don''t you know? You have to get out. If you stay in the river, you were found guilty and all you own will become the property of Hama-Tula. I''ll repeat. You have to get out."


    That made a lot of sense, given that Hama-Tula even tied more rocks to my rope. "What if I get out?"


    "Then you are innocent of any crimes. And we throw Hama-Tula in the river next to see if he was guilty," He said. I moved my head as if to ask ''what else'' and he continued, "If he is guilty, everything he owns becomes your property."


    "And what if both of us get out of the river?"


    He gave me a ''seriously?'' glare. He was the kind of stuck up guy Theresa would love to tease until he broke. And I totally understand her. I also wanted to tease him.


    "Then both are innocent and this was a huge waste of time. I don''t like to waste time," He replied and ended with a period mark that showed he''d spent his whole allotment of words for a day.


    "Okay. I''m ready. I''ll be back soon, Captain!" I told Brandon. Then I turned to the magistrate, "Honored Magistrate, I''m ready for my trial."


    The magistrate waved his hand and pointed at me. "Good. Throw her in!"


    Three guys from the crowd picked me up with two others holding the rocks. They walked over the pier and then started to swing me and the rocks. On a count of two, they tossed me. I missed my window to breathe because I thought they would go on three. Dammit.


    I plunged into the cold water and the rope tightened even more. I wasted no time. Decompose on max, move all carbon away from me. The place I was thrown in was deep. the water was murky and full of aquatic plants. The ropes weakened and snapped. I wriggled free and Decomposed the rest of them.


    I was about to swim back to the surface when I felt a tentacle wrap around my ankle. My lungs were burning. I summoned the survival knife and slashed at the tentacle, cutting my own skin in the clumsy struggle. The tentacle released me and I felt something stir in the water. I stored the knife and released a bubble. It was important to make sure which way was up. I swam after the bubble and finally saw sunlight filtering in the water. I kept kicking water and soon broke the surface a bit downriver from the pier.


    I gasped for air and fought to avoid getting caught in the current that ran out of the bend. Once my mind cleared from the oxygen deprivation, I swam back to the shore. Someone from the crowd threw a cloak at me as I was about to reach the gravelly shore. I tested the depth and managed to get a foothold. I wrapped myself with the cloak and walked out of the water. I found the person that threw me the cloak and bowed my head.


    "I made it!" I shouted.


    The crowd brought the house down. They cheered and shouted. I stared in Hama-Tula''s direction. He was looking for a way to escape but I trusted Brandon to get him. And get him he did. The magistrate clapped his hand over his head until the crowd died down.


    "Silence! This is a sacred trial before the gods! Miss Sandra was deemed innocent by the gods! Not it is Hama-Tula''s turn! Undress him!"


    Hama-Tula wasn''t a decent man. He tried to evade Brandon''s grasp and fought to keep his clothes. The smith whose name I didn''t know yet helped the guard captain and soon two other men came and removed all of his clothes and jewels. They started to wrap the merchant as he shouted and squirmed. I kept there, silently watching. I felt no satisfaction, no joy in knowing what fate awaited the merchant. I felt a weight, a burden.


    He brought this on himself. If only he kept his greedy mitts out of my oven. If only he could see me as a person and not some sex merchandise. But he was beyond hope in that regard. Given a whole lifetime, I doubted Hama-Tula would remove the scales from his eyes. I moved around until I found Nana. The old witch hugged me and I felt like crying.


    They finished wrapping Ham-a-Tula and tied the rock to the tip of the rope. The man was screaming so much they bound a loop of rope around his neck and in his mouth. The magistrate looked at me.


    "Do you want to check the ropes?"


    I shook my head. "Do we need to--" Nanna''s hand over my mouth interrupted me.


    "Let it go. He dug his own fate," The witch whispered to me. "You did what you had to. You gave him plenty of chances to back off. Now it is between him and the gods."


    I nodded. I had to trust someone in this world, and Nanna never led me astray. I reached a hand out of the cloak and grabbed her hand. I kept my eyes peeled as the men carried a screaming Hama-Tula into the pier and tossed him down. The water bubbled, stirred. Whatever lived down there would have the feast I denied it. Truly enough, soon the water of the river ran red. A large bubble of air denounced watery lungs. I forced the water away from me with Decompose, drying myself.


    Only then I closed my eyes and let the tears I was holding back run freely. Everything I told him, every warning came back and felt like a prophecy. Even Shylock got away without losing everything. But the cruelty of the punishment reminded me that this was the land of Lex Talionis.


    An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. They came to this world from the land Hammurabi once ruled and brought his code of laws with them. Unchanged for centuries. Stagnated.

 Evening 5

    We waited. Some spectators grew bored and left. I waited. Hama-Tula would never leave his watery grave, but we had to wait. Soon there was only me, Nanna, Brendan, the magistrate, and the smith. After a pregnant pause, the official of justice spoke.


    "The gods have delivered their judgment. Hama-Tula was found guilty. I now declare miss Sandra as the rightful owner of all of his possessions. Come, girl. Get yourself dressed and let''s go to the courthouse for the paperwork."


    I nodded. The men gave me some privacy by turning their backs to me. Nanna helped me put on my clothes and sword back. I checked the lump of sodium. Brandon and the smith turned to face me.


    "That is one of my swords," the smith pointed at the blade hung on my side. "I heard from Nanna. You took it from Balthazar the caravan master. Nasty and gruesome way to die. Rage-Apes," He clicked his tongue. So that''s what they call the Kongs. "Name''s Albert Samus. My parents are not from this nation. We came from far away, as refugees."


    It was the second time they mentioned great refugee migrations. But his name sounded European enough. What other civilizations were around?


    "Let me ask you one thing, Sandra," Brandon spoke. Maybe he didn''t meet his quota or it had a cooldown of less than a day. "Why is it bad to let that white thing get wet?"


    "This is sodium, a metal," I showed him the white, oxidized dough-like metal. "And he likes water so much it makes the water burn."


    I didn''t tell a lie. I just tried to portray it in a way he could understand.


    "Here, cut off a small piece and toss it in the river. Make sure your hand is dry."


    "Let me," Samus took a knife from his pocket and cut a piece of the sodium chunk. We could see the metallic silver of the unoxidized metal on the cut. "Can I toss this pellet in the river?"


    "Yes. Far from us, please."


    He did. The sodium touched the water and boiled it immediately. Then a plume of vapor rose, followed by a tongue of fire where the hydrogen released burned. And as expected, it exploded. The pellet flew and landed on another section of the river, where it did the same thing again at a lesser scale. After the second explosion, it landed in the vegetation.


    "That''s...." Samus gasped, "I felt no magic. What is that?"


    "This, master Samus, is no magic. Just chemistry. If you''d believe me, this lump of metal was salt when I left the inn."


    He smiled. "Maybe it was worth postponing my trip to the mines. Miss Sandra, would you be willing to share me more of this chemistry-not-magic of yours?"


    I laughed. "It would be my pleasure, master Samus. If you would share your smithing expertise to craft some metal articles for me as well."


    He extended his hand and I took it without blinking my eyes. It was rugged and full of calluses. That hand told a story of hard work and passion for the forge.


    "Nanna, when you told me of the girl you found, I didn''t believe you. I was wrong," Samus bowed to the witch.


    "Bah!" She scoffed. "Have you seen the girl''s aura? Tarhun really played a joke on us this time. I had no idea where he found her. But let''s get out of here. This water is making me all wrinkled," the witch cackled.


    "You ARE wrinkled, old hag," The blacksmith chortled. "But let''s go. The magistrate and the guard captain are not patient men."


    I didn''t pay attention to the town as I walked to the courtyard on the other side, in the northeastern ward. There the magistrate wrote some papers. I paid taxes with the coin purse Hama-Tula had on him. I got a bundle of scrolls detailing what I now owned and even a complimentary messenger bag to carry them. I got all of Hama-Tula possessions and none of his debts. His family would have to shoulder them.


    Outside the courthouse, Samus, Nanna, and Brendan were waiting. The master smith clapped the guard''s back.


    "Sandra, I convinced my friend Brendan here to train you. Nanna told me you came from a peaceful land and our place here is anything but peaceful. Brendan will train you to wield a sword and fight. You must learn. You are a very special person and soon there will be people after you. People more capable and more powerful than Hama-Tula."


    I bowed. "I''ll trust master Samus'' wisdom. If Brandon would have me as a pupil, I''ll eagerly train under him."


    I''d be willing to do other things under him as well. I kept my mouth shut though. My stomach, on the other hand, protested. Between going to the river, dealing with the judicial ordeal, returning and drafting the paperwork, we were between one and two in the afternoon.


    "A request from master Aran," Brandon spoke, "Is an order to me. I don''t hope to repay the debts I owe him in a lifetime. I''ll warn you, girl. My training is harsh. I won''t blame you if you give up."


    I nodded. "I''ll be in your care. What should I call you? Master? Teacher? Instructor?"


    "Just call me by my name."


    Samus stretched. "Since I missed the convoy to the mines, I''ll go to Abil-Kisu''s celebration. Why don''t you invite the lady to go with you, Brendan?"


    My ears perked up. I could feel them twitching. A party? A party date with Brendan? I held my breath for his answer. Nanna chuckled.


    Brendan nodded, "Miss Sandra, would you--"


    "Yes!" I didn''t even let him finish. The answer came as easily as L¨²cia Moniz to Colin Firth. "Easy question."


    "Then I pick you up... where are you staying?"


    I don''t know. "Nanna, what''s the name of the inn again?"


    The old witch snorted. "You own Hama-Tula''s former estate girl. You have a home. The captain knows where it is."


    "Yes, that," I tapped the bundle of scrolls in a messenger bag slung over my shoulder. "So, can I buy you guys food? I''m paying."


    We ate and parted ways. Brendan had his guard duties, Samus had a smithy full of apprentices to look after. Nanna and I went to Hama-Tula''s former estate.


    "I have a date, Nanna!" I twirled around, causing my skirt to balloon a for a while. "Tehe!"


    The witch cackled. "Oh, to be young and foolish. How stupid a maiden in love can be."


    Her comment threw a bucket of cold water in the furnace of my burning passion. "What? Is the captain married?"


    "No. The captain has yet to buy his first wife. From what I know, he seldom visits the brothels. But I don''t understand you, girl. You could have a prince and now wants to get hooked with the guard captain? That''s how it goes in your land? The slave chooses the master?"


    That gave me pause. Either there was something I didn''t understand or the witch was pulling my leg. "Not a master. A partner. Partners in crime and equals for life."


    She just shook her head. "Delusional woman, that''s not how it works here. A wife is her husband''s property. And in this whole land, you won''t find the biggest bastion of the old ways than the guard captain."


    That was the problem with reality checks. They melt your waxwings, they cut your string, sever your ankle. I''d been denied even that sweet deliver of dreamy and unrealistic infatuation because of the no-nonsense witch. I knew that tonight I''d need the solace that only Theresa''s gift could bring me.


    The bag of junk food, were you thinking of something else?


    And then, ironically enough, I was on the other side of a gate, shouting the same thing. "Open the gate!"


    A woman on the other side shouted, "Don''t open that cursed gate! Don''t let that murderer in!"


    That hurt. I wasn''t the one that provoked the whole situation and I did not know that the judicial trial would be to the death although I should''ve known better.


    "That''s the master of this estate," I heard Aristunn the bodyguard saying. "Open the gate!"


    The wood creaked and the doors opened. I saw two dozen slaves groveling across the path before me. Twenty-one males and three females. On either side of the slaves, two guards, armed and armored with maille hauberks. While I was fighting to accept the reality that I had slaves, two women in their thirties and some children also came out from the main house. I could see they took their time to dress up but it was a rush job. Behind them came two other guards, each one keeping a wary eye on one of the women.


    You see, that is a problem when you get someone killed without researching their whole life before doing the deed. You never know how many orphans you''ll make. I could rationalize it as ''he did it to himself'', ''i only defended myself'', and a ton of other excuses that boiled down to ''not my fault''.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Nanna pushed me forward and I crossed the gate threshold into what now was my own property. The thugs that fell unconscious or dead were no longer there and the place had been cleaned. I remembered there''s a pellet of sodium hidden somewhere in the lawn. Damn. That''s the problem with tossing dangerous chemicals in someone else''s lawn. You never know when the soiled lawn will be yours.


    This was a nation where fathers could whore their daughters to pay off gambling debts. Worse yet, they''d come back after three years, if childless, to be whored again.


    I pointed at the women, "Are you the widows of Hama-Tula?" They nodded. I could feel they wanted to speak but were very afraid.


    "Cast them away," Nanna counseled me. "They will be only trouble. The wives have their dowries, that should be enough. You owe them nothing."


    Some get a talking cricket. Others a tingling fairy. I got a grumpy no-nonsense witch. But it was impossible to just throw these women and children out to fend for themselves. I couldn''t. I met Nanna''s eyes and frowned.


    "Let''s sit and talk, okay? Then I will decide. Maybe let them spend the night here and leave in the morrow?"


    She snorted. "Suit yourself. They''ll try to murder you."


    Murder me, not murder us. That was Nanna''s tough love for you. Trust Nanna because Nanna''s knows best. I still couldn''t kick them out. The day was about to end.


    "I''m not kicking anyone out until dawn. It''s late. I''ll enact changes but a weary mind is bound to commit mistakes," I told them and some of the guards nodded. "Guards, lead the slaves to their resting places. Do not hurt them. I abhor violence. Any punishment underway is canceled. Tomorrow morning gather all of them at sunrise so I can talk to them. Fear not, everyone. I promise you to be a kind and generous mistress."


    And Tarhun knew I couldn''t afford to commit more mistakes. The family stayed while the slaves moved to the back of the estate led by two of the four guards. Aristunn and the other bodyguard stood by me and Nanna.


    "Let us move inside and talk more comfortably."


    We went into the house and one wife led us to a sitting area after we removed our shoes to step on the expensive Persian-styled rugs. The wives made my seat on the center where the master should be and each sat on my side with the children at each one''s side in order of seniority for the boys and the girls at the end. Nanna took a cushion on a separate circle and stood there, watchful and silent.


    Brooding maybe. I guess she knew what was coming.


    "Bring wine!" The first wife clapped her hands. A girl came from, I suppose, the kitchen. She was young and freckled. Younger than Arwia at the inn. "Bring the wine with the green band around the cork for the lady of the house!"


    The servant went and they introduced themselves. I noticed the two bodyguards were standing at attention on either side of the carpet but without stepping on it. The servant came with a small ceramic jug of wine and after opening it, poured on a pewter goblet.


    "Give it to the lady." The first wife ordered.


    I accepted the wine and sipped it. Sweet with a tongue-numbing feeling that made me salivate like there was no tomorrow. I reached out and placed the goblet on the table moments before my arm went limp. It was hard to breathe. I choked and focused my mind on the wine I swallowed. I felt something not-wine on it and put my mind on Decomposing it. Feeling I was running short of time, I just stripped the carbon out of it. I couldn''t get all of it, the trace amounts that weren''t together too faint to be individually targetted. My vision went black.


    There was no better surefire way to destroy most poisons than removing the carbon from them. I couldn''t get all the poison before it mixed with my body fluids and wasn''t considered non-living for Decomposition though.


    Only the inorganic ones like cyanide would remain. Fortunately, it wasn''t the case. My body was paralyzed and I couldn''t pull in air. I Decomposed the water in my saliva to flood my throat with oxygen. The gas would spread into my lungs and promote the exchange even if I was not pulling in the fresh air. After training at the river ordeal, it was easier.


    My senses returned after a while. I could see but it was blurred, I could hear as if I was underwater. Minutes later my sight focused and I could taste blood on my mouth. I blinked and my arm jerked. One more minute and I was moving again.


    "Good try," With a groan, I told the first wife as I met her horrified gaze. "Guards!"


    She tried to run but Aristunn held her. I still couldn''t hear well yet but I glanced around. The children and the second wife was frozen with fear and awe. Nanna had a raised eyebrow. The scene froze as I gasped for air. My body burned as it fought the strong poison, my cells dying and my regeneration boon restoring themselves.


    "Please, no! She is a witch, a demon! Nobody should survive that poison!" The first wife struggled.


    Nanna broke her silence. "Take her to the magistrate. Let her suffer the consequences of her actions together with that girl that obviously doesn''t know better," She pointed at the girl from the kitchen.


    I just couldn''t condemn the girl. The wife I was halfway there, but not that girl. She was barely old enough to have boobs. Thar freckled and innocent face didn''t deserve death. I bet she didn''t even know it had poison. The wife probably kept that one for when Hama-Tula went out of control.


    I took the goblet and poked my finger inside. I could feel the poison, that was vicious enough to act on contact attack my skin and I immediately started to Decompose it by viciously pushing the carbon away from me. I swirled my finger inside to mix it and make sure no poison was left in the wine. I stood up, picked up the bottle, and moved to where the wife was being held by Aristunn.


    "Drink. If you die, you die. If you survive, you and the other wife will take your dowries, personal items, and your children and go. Live on your dowries, return to your fathers, I don''t care. But if you do die from the poison, I''ll raise your children as my own. That I vow under Tarhun''s watchful eyes."


    Then I took my finger out of the wine and sucked it. The wife gave me a venomous glare and yanked the goblet from me. She downed the wine in one go like a pro. She coughed and sputtered, probably a reflex as she really thought she was poisoned or...


    Did I make a mistake and some trace amounts of poison were left in the wine? Oh, dammit.


    Nanna cackled behind me and pulled a ceramic vial no bigger than a test tube. She pulled the stopper and forced the woman to drink it.


    "Idiots, the lot of you," She said staring between me and the wife. Then she slapped the woman''s cheek hard. She only didn''t fall to the ground because Aristunn was still holding her. Then Nanna turned to me. "She took another poison once you promised to take care of her children. I won''t have these brats around, spawn of Hama-Tula."


    It didn''t escape me the fact that Nanna already invited herself to live here. I didn''t fail to notice the fact that the children didn''t cry when her mother was about to die from poison. I went back to the table and took the bottle of poisoned wine. I put my hand over the mouth and turned it upside down, Decompose working full time to neutralize everything, wine, and poison. I could feel the pressure building up from the gases that were forming. My hand couldn''t form a watertight seal under so much pressure and some water started to seep down and over my hand. It was just water as the carbon couldn''t get anywhere near my hand without having its covalent bonds forcibly disconnected and pushed back.


    The water pooled on the ground and I kept my concentration. Soon there was no more liquid. I turned the bottle back and heard a clink as the chunk of graphite that formed hit the ceramic. I returned the now empty bottle to the table.


    "It is late. Prepare one of the guest rooms for me and another for Nanna. Keep guard over the family all night. Bring the girl from the kitchen to my room."


    The guards and bodyguards did exactly as told. Soon I was in a guest room sitting on the bed with the girl groveling on the ground, her forehead pressed to the wooden floorboards. The room was better than the one at the inn, the bedding felt softer and the windows were larger. She was strong and did her best to not cry but I knew she was afraid of me.


    "Girl, what is your name?"


    "Belle-Sunu, mistress. I didn''t... Please punish this servant any way you want."


    She had a change of heart halfway through. Maybe she considered that the best strategy to avoid my ire. I wasn''t sure.


    "Belle-Sunu, what is your age?"


    "I turned fourteen five months ago, mistress."


    Fourteen. An age she should be worried about tests and boys, not poison and death. I wanted to ask about the poison but I had to make sure she wouldn''t lie.


    "Tell me your story, Belle-Sunu. How did you come to be in Hama-Tula''s employ?"


    She broke into tears. I still couldn''t see her eyes because she didn''t stand up. "Employ? Hama-Tula bought me and used me when his wives couldn''t. I bore him no child in these three years and was discarded in the kitchen. I''m a slave, mistress. Born a slave and doomed to die a slave."


    She showed me her forearm, a tattoo I''ve seen before in some people. So that was a slave''s brand. I felt my own forearm burn. Was that what they had in store for me?


    "Do you hate me, Belle? Can I call you just Belle?"


    "The mistress can call me anything. I''m your property."


    "Then I''ll call you just ''Belle'' but your name remains what you want. Do you know what Belle means in the language of my home? Stand up, girl."


    She lifted her head and sat seiza. I finally met her eyes, bloodshot from crying. I wanted to hug her. She was lovely and those freckles just begged to be poked.


    "I dare not guess, mistress."


    "Belle in my world means beautiful. It is the name of a princess from a fairy tale. Stand up, Belle. Wear your name proudly."


    She clutched her hands over her chest and cried again. I couldn''t resist. I left the bed and dove to hug her.


    "Mistress?"


    I caressed her head and held her against my chest. I felt as if she was a sister to me.


    "Hush, my Belle. If you are mine, I can hug you if I want, can''t I?"


    She sniffled. "Mistress. If you want my night services..."


    And it took a weird turn. I wasn''t going to do anything to her though.


    "No. I promise you nobody will ever demand night services from you, my sweet Belle. Now answer me truthfully. Did you know the wine was poisoned?"


    I pushed her so I could take a good look at her face. I wiped her tears and mine.


    "I can''t lie to you, mistress. While nobody told me there was poison in that wine, I knew it. Banunu told me to hide it behind other bottles and never bring it out unless she ordered explicitly for that one."


    I assumed Banunu was the first wife. Belle trembled as she spoke the woman''s name. It was the same as a kid remembering their bullies. That pang of sheer terror as one''s brain recalls all the suffering.


    "It is over now. Promise me you''ll be loyal to me and me alone. Hey, look at me, in my eyes." She did. I smiled. She sobbed, her body still in crying mode even though the sky was clearing. I held her by the back of her neck and pulled her in to kiss her forehead. "You are forgiven, Belle. Go and rest. Tomorrow will be a busy day."


    I went to the door and opened it. Aristunn was outside.


    "Mistress. What are your orders?"


    "Belle-Sunu is not to be disturbed or harmed. Let her free to do her chores. Are you going to stay there all night?"


    He nodded. "It is this eunuch''s job to guard the mistress. I''ll stand to watch all night. Don''t worry, I''m used to it. And with Banunu still inside the house, I can''t falter."


    Eunuch? As in those guards that had their genitals forcefully removed so they could work around the household women without raising suspicion? But Aristunn had a nice baritone voice. Didn''t eunuchs have sharp voices? I froze for a moment as my brain refused to take in that reality pill. Were the other guards also eunuchs? The temporal standstill ended when Belle held my hand.


    "He''s right, mistress. I''ll be forever grateful for your kindness. Let Aristunn guard you. I trust him with my life. Sleep now. You must be tired after surviving Hama-Tula, the river, and now the poison."


    She was right. I had escaped death twice thanks to my divine boons. She let go of me and walked back to the kitchen.


    "Goodnight, Aristunn."


    He nodded. "Have a good night, mistress."


    I shut the door and went to the vanity. It had a polished iron mirror, not a glass and silver one. I summoned my laptop and a memory card fell down on top of it. It had a human head logo that resembled some big memory manufacturer from Earth but it had a braided beard and curly hair. Tarhun.


    I turned on the laptop and booted Ubuntu. Then I plugged the card in the slot. It had tens of thousands of pictures of the land. The computer struggled to generate the thumbnails. I checked the metadata and truly enough it had coordinated. I really hoped they were accurate. It would take ages to process everything. I didn''t even know if my computer had enough memory and processors to do the job in a reasonable time.


    Or power.


    I looked at the battery meter and it was sitting at forty-something. I ejected the memory card and tried to store it. Away it went. I wrote my journal, changed into fresh pajamas and went to sleep.

 Morning 6

    Aristunn woke me up by knocking on the door. I was excited because I had a date tonight. But there was so much to do that I doubted I''d have time to prepare myself. I''d at least do my makeup, that was a given. Some top merchant was celebrating the birth of his firstborn son. But before I start weeping at my total lack of accessories, I need to tackle two spiny subjects. That I am now a slave owner and the fate of Hama-Tula''s family.


    In an ideal world they would just move out, live on their own with their dowries and everything would be fine. But from what I grasped these last two days, Hama-Tula had a lot of outstanding debt and now that he died all this debt belongs to his family. His assets became mine but not the debt. And the debt collectors are also slave merchants just like Hama-Tula was. It is not hard to see how it will end. Hama-Tula''s children will become debt slaves.


    Debt slaves are enslaved for a period of three years. The owner of the slave can work him any way he wants and slaves have few rights. Once these three years are over, the value paid for the slave is abated from the outstanding debt. If the debt is big enough to warrant another three years enslavement, the cycle repeats. The slave has the right to shelter, basically whatever tarp is thrown over their heads to keep the rain off, the right to clothing, whatever rags the owner gives them to cover their modesty, the right to food, that excludes some things like potatoes but boils down to whatever leftovers from the owner''s kitchen he gives them.


    That part is weird. They eat almost no tubers or roots. Potatoes, beets, carrots are not considered food for people. Not even slaves.


    If the debt slave is female, the owner can rape her as much as he wants. If she bears children, she becomes a concubine. Much like Hama-Tula''s second wife or what would happen to Belle-Sunu if she conceived. Becoming a concubine ends the debt slavery, clears any outstanding debt owed by the female but she becomes a concubine, that is only one step above slaves. The husband can even cast her off if he grows bored of her. If she has any adult sons, the sons have to support the mother, otherwise, it is either the brothel or the streets if she has no skill to earn a living.


    Children can also be enslaved but their worth is so low they usually aren''t. When they are, it is because the master wants something else from the child other than the raw labor. Enough said. I''m too disgusted to keep writing.


    So there I was at the house courtyard after spending most of the morning learning about how was life in the household. I sent two of the eunuchs with some money to buy a few items but now I had to act. The lady of the former Hama-Tula estate, flanked by my trusted advisor on all things mundane and mystical, the witch Nanna. Behind me Aristunn and the other eunuchs I''d learn about soon, and in front of me two groups, kneeling. The twenty-three slaves that worked in the place, and Hama-Tula two wives and eight children. The only person that wasn''t there was Belle-Sunu. She was cooking lunch.


    It seems that I''d have another moral headache ahead. To choose the lesser of two evils on either situation.


    I decided to deal with the slaves first. My first impulse was to release them, but how would they earn a living? These people only knew how to do slave work. Even if they were to sell their labor elsewhere, they wouldn''t be able to compete in the labor market with the other slaves that basically do it for cheap. They would have to pay for shelter, food, and other necessities out of their own pockets. Their only choice would be to sell themselves into slavery again.


    Keeping them left a sour taste in my mouth. Hama-Tula had no debt slaves in his household. They were all permanent slaves, captured from wars or raids into other countries or city-states, or born from permanent slave parents like Belle-Sunu. They were one step below the debt slaves in the social ladder. I would have no problem keeping them and granting them a decent life but the fact stood that in my mind, I''d be a criminal. To keep slaves was anathema to one born and raised in a free world like Earth. From the Americas to Europe to Japan, all the places I lived in would be considered paradise by these people.


    I remembered the conversation I had with Nanna behind closed doors before assembling them here.


    "I want to release them, Nanna. In my world, to own another human was one of the most heinous crimes one could commit. I don''t want to own slaves."


    The witch nodded. She sighed and spoke, "In these few days we''ve been together, I learned a lot about you, girl. But you are no longer in your world. What you call release, here is called ''casting away''. Slaves that are no longer useful to their owners and that would be too expensive to maintain are thrown away by their owners, ''released''. I''ve seen my fair share of them. Starving. Diseased. Begging. Robbing and eventually either dying or getting killed either by criminals or the law enforcers."


    I slumped my shoulders. "Don''t slaves run away all the time?"


    "Yes, some do. But the law says that when a runaway slave is captured, the owner has to pay half the slaves'' worth as a bounty to whoever brings the slave back. Several groups hunt runaway slaves as they are easy money. Including those thugs that worked for Hama-Tula. Just give up on those silly ideals and live in reality, Sandra."


    I didn''t answer. I just looked away through the window and bit my thumb. I vowed to deal with this slave situation. If I had no short-term, easy solution, my only choice was to go for the hard, long-term solution. I''d teach these slaves how to earn a living, grant them the conditions to live on their own and only them release them. But that would be a project for months, years even. I would have to keep being a slaver for the time being.


    Turning away from the window, I faced the witch. "What do slaves do when they have no chores?"


    My brief reminiscence ended and I looked at the slaves.


    The dilemma was tearing my heart apart. Fifteen men and eight women. As far as I know, the women were never touched by Hama-Tula and the men were not eunuchs. Hama-Tula allowed them to have sex in the pens in hopes of getting some child slaves. That created a tragic internal mechanic in the slave pens. The slaves didn''t want to have children. Nobody would want to bring children into the world if they would be slaves for life, I guess. But the men occasionally sought the women when they wanted. They had non-conceiving sex most of the time and when the day of the month wasn''t favorable they had to go for side B.


    That was the first thing I''d change. Separate accommodations for men and women. I had no problem with consensual sex between them, but that was not the case. I might have a gender bias at work here but I didn''t care.


    I started my prepared speech.


    "I will give you a choice. Those among you that don''t want to stay here will be released from slavery. I''ll take you to the courthouse and get the release papers drafted. I''ll be honest with you, I wanted to release all of you, but Nanna brought to my attention that some of you might not want to take on the challenge of living on your own. Who wants to get released from slavery and rise to the rank of the freed people?"


    The social structure of this place had several strata. From the bottom up, permanent slaves, debt slaves, and runaway slaves. Then the ranks of the ''free to die on their own'', beggars, freed slaves, and freeborn people. These people needed only one bad week to fall into slavery. Above the ones living in misery, the craftsmen, merchants, and those that had some way to earn a living that didn''t depend on breaking their backs every day, like minor landlords or business owners. A step up there was the town''s elite. Master craftsmen, merchant lords, wealthy inheritors. Then the nobles, and finally the town ruler, Lord Es-Kinna.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Since I now owned Hama-Tula''s assets, I was in the ''merchant lord'' category.


    Among the slaves, thirteen stood up. All male, the youngest and strongest ones. They gave me the same ''stupid girl throwing money away'' look. These thirteen were absolute scum in my book. I bet they were the ones that sodomized the women the most.


    "Round these thirteen and put them in irons. From this moment on you are no longer part of this household. I''ll give you one last meal before we go to the courthouse to get you released." I could see a brief panic in their eyes. "I won''t go back on my word or give you any kind of corporal punishment." After they relaxed, I pointed at the guards. "Take them to the pens. Let them gather whatever personal items they have."


    I had to keep them chained for one little reason. They had to be present so the judicial chirurgeon could remove their tattoos and the courthouse drafted the release papers. But until the papers are notarized, there''s no way they can be sure I''m not selling them. These were the ones with the lowest loyalty and for them to run away and give me the headache of having to pay bounties on them not much was required.


    The lesser evil I came up with was to take them in chains to the courthouse. I''d have to live with the image in my mind.


    Two men in their forties or fifties, the gardeners and the eight women remained. I waited for the thirteen to be out of hearing range before I continued. "You do not wish to be released? To become free?" I asked them.


    One of the gardeners answered for the group, "These old bones are of no use elsewhere, mistress. I''ve worked the gardens of this house for twenty years. I talked to my friend, and he agrees with me. As for the women, now that there''s only us here, they would not wish to be anywhere else."


    "Fair enough if that is your wish. I have a task for you. Draw water from the well and fill the barrels the guards purchased. All of you can go to."


    The ten slaves left for the well. With one problem solved, it was time to address the second one. Banunu, the second wife and the nine kids of ages ranging from thirteen to six were also kneeling. My plan for them was a cruel one but Banunu was willing to poison herself yesterday. I doubt they would disagree.


    "I''ll send you away with your dowries. Your luck is your own. Go and live on your own. There is one small house in the southwestern ward of the town, I''ll gift it to you and that''s all. Does any of you have anything to say?"


    Rubati, the second wife, one that rose from slavery by giving Hama-Tula three male children, was the one that spoke first. "Milady, I know you are generous and merciful. You spared Banunu''s life yesterday. I beg you not for us but for our children. Hama-Tula had a lot of debt. If we are cast out of this house, the debt collectors will enslave us and our children. Banunu''s dowry will be taken to pay the debts. Please, mistress. Don''t cast us out!"


    "I deci--" I opened my mouth to speak but Nanna poked my ribs and cut me off.


    The witch was furious. Her wrinkled face curled into a terrifying snarl, one that would give the seven dwarves pause to rethink their chase. She really looked the part right now. My heart froze and all anyone there could do was to listen.


    "Wretched leeches! You are well aware that if you are kept here the debt collectors will come after Sandra for payment! If she does not sever the tail of the snake, the head will bite her! I asked around yesterday. If all of Hama-Tula''s debt were to be paid, all of his business and this house would have to go. What you ask the stupid girl is that she gives up all she owns to save your sorry arses!"


    "Nan--" I tried but once again she cut me off.


    "You as wives are responsible for this house''s ruin. You didn''t curb your husband''s impulses, you let him run wild and shower you with fancy silks and intricate embroidering. Jewels and gold. Now reap ruin! Sell your jewels, sell your silks, sell your bodies. You pushed Hama-Tula into living beyond his earnings and now the gods demand balance."


    I wondered how much would the prince pay for me. It was a silly and stupid thought but I wanted to know my net worth. I pushed that down and locked it down. I decided right then I was worth ten million gold shekels. At six to eight grams a coin, that''s all the gold bullion owned by the governments of the USA and France together.


    Just for the record, the coins were all of uniform weight. I just didn''t know the exact measurement.


    Banunu and Rubati broke into tears. Some of the children also started to cry. Nanna hadn''t stopped talking and now I was her target.


    "You hurry up and expel them. Break all ties with the house of Hama-Tula before ruin finds us."


    The witch''s choice of pronouns wasn''t lost on me. "Us," I quipped when I met her eyes.


    "My tent, my tools, my merchandise is ruined because of you, girl! I have nowhere else to go and you are clueless about the ways of this world. Consider this a favor from me to you, to stay by your side and give you good advice, yes?"


    I knew very well what this witch wanted. This estate was way cozier than the caravanserai tent. But she had a good point. Even though I compensated her with the two gold shekels, I still owed her for the trouble. And after you got to know her, the witch was even lovable.


    "You are hired. For your counsel, you get a guest room in the main house, three meals a day and in the future, I''ll build you a shed for your witchcraft. Is that acceptable?"


    She cackled until she ran out of air. And that was how I got a witch in my house working as my advisor. But she was right. If I kept the family here everything would be repossessed. I spent the whole morning racking my brain on what to do. It was too callous to just toss them out. But I did want to have a place to live. Heck, I had to fight off a tentacle monster naked in the river for this. Maybe some of their customs were rubbing on me, but the least terrible choice was still terrible.


    To save the body, I''d have to sever the arms. That was a solution I already passed through Nanna earlier and she begrudgingly approved.


    "Banunu and Rubati, you are hereby banished from this house. You will take your children and the dowries you brought in with you when you married and leave."


    I felt like I was condemning the family to death. Given the kind of associates Hama-Tula had around him, that might even be truer than I expected. The eunuchs grabbed the two women and were about to drag them out when I raised a hand. It was real but also staged.


    "I offer you three silver minas for each of your children. Sell them to me and I will keep them as my slaves in this house." A mina was worth six shekels. A large coin. I was mistaken earlier to think it was decimal. That was more than what a child was worth. Eighteen silver shekels. Thirty is reserved for adults.


    I kept repeating to me it was all a ploy to legally separate the children from the debt. That I was not trafficking in human lives. The children were confused. They looked back and forth between me and their mothers. I felt Nanna''s leathery hand grasp mine. Was the witch the angel or the demon on my shoulder?


    ''And by my side, I see a monster on my wing. She drags me on, she keeps me safe, she makes me see.'' The song lyrics by a punk rock band from Seattle rang in my mind. ''... Instead, I suffer here for this''.


    Neither widow was expecting this. They exchanged glances, looked at their children. It was a downsized version of the offer from yesterday. After exchanging a few whispers I couldn''t hear, they nodded.


    "We accept your offer. But Rimush is thirteen and will come of age next year. Would you pay one gold shekel for him?"


    Nanna squeezed my hand and I glared at Banunu through narrow eye slits. "Children are children. And I can never be sure he''d take after his mother''s venomous habits. Take my offer and leave, or just leave."


    Once these two were out of the gates, their best bet would be to run away from town. I couldn''t help them though. If they were caught by the debtors, they''d be stripped of all possessions they carried and then sent to slavery. Since they were widows and already old for a sex slave, their market price suffered a big drop.


    I felt dizzy. That was about my limit. The two women stood up, hugged their children and then went inside. A choir of weeping voices ensued. One of the kids, the youngest tried to run after his mother and was held back by his sister. My knees were about to give. I heard the bag of coins I''d prepared changing hands behind me. The two women would walk out until the gate and then theatrically tossed out for any passerby to witness that they were cast out.


    Before they left though, the contracts for the children were signed by the mothers. Nanna served as a witness and my signature was already in the parchment.


    I bit my lip so hard blood came out. My fingernails dug into my palms. I was a monster. I bought a lot of people. I tore children from their mothers, I got their father killed. I just tossed two women out to be eaten by man-wolves.


    I wish I was one of those Marys Sues that whipped everything wrong away with a smile and song. While I was confident in my singing voice, I wasn''t. Once I got Hama-Tula''s possessions yesterday, the debt collectors would consider me part of the Hama-Tula estate as well if I did nothing.


    Casting the widows out was the only way. At least the children were safe. Maybe if I kept repeating that to myself, I''d believe.


    It was too much for me. Not only I was just a college undergraduate student a week ago, but I also lived in a completely different society. My mind was going around in loops.


    "Aristunn, take the mistress to her room. She spent too much time under the sun. I''ll make sure her wishes are followed," Nanna said.


    I felt Aristunn holding my shoulder and my feet just followed him. Soon I was lying on my bed, my face buried in my pillow.


    I cried myself to sleep.

 Afternoon 6

    I couldn''t even take a nap. Aristunn knocked on the door half an hour later. I stood up and looked at myself with my makeup mirror. I should have bloodshot eyes and bags under my eyes but my body was always consuming magic to restore itself to ''a pristine state'' as Tarhun put it. I only had the dampness of the pillow to show for all my weeping. I fixed my clothes, brushed my hair. My happiness at having a date tonight was tarnished by the cruel actions I lied to myself about being necessary. I renewed my vows to keep the children safe.


    "What is going on, Aristunn?"


    Once I got out of the room, I discovered that the heavy door was muffling the sound of an argument downstairs.


    "Some former partners of Hama-Tula barged in when we tossed the widows outside and are not arguing with Nanna. Your presence is required, I''m afraid. Take your sword."


    I took some time to read his eyes. Aristunn was both troubled and tired.


    "Once I''m done with that, you are to retire to your quarters and stay in bed until tomorrow morning. You can leave bed only to eat or take care of your body but otherwise, you are to rest. That''s an order."


    He''d spent the night awake watching my door. The eunuch chuckled and bowed.


    "I overstepped my bounds, mistress. I accept my punishment."


    We went downstairs. A trio of merchants with their colorful long togas and well-groomed beards were spit-shouting at Nanna. I rested my hand on the sword hilt and shouted from the last couple of steps of the stairs.


    "Who dares barge into my house uninvited and harass my people? Who are these that don''t show the least amount of proper decorum?"


    I cringed at my choice of words but I wanted to sound imposing. They stopped and all eyes fell on me. I saw about seven or eight guards behind them and all my eunuchs glaring at each other. Behind me, Aristunn stomped the step behind me as if to drive my point harder.


    "There she is! The little wench that things she can usurp our money! This all belongs to us! We are collecting the debt Hama-Tula owes us now!"


    I recognize the slave merchant that was hawking the scantily-clad girls in the caravanserai. I could only assume the other two were in the same kind of business as Hama-Tula. Probably the only reason they didn''t assault Nanna was the fear of witchcraft. And now that my GoPro was back in my storage, I decided to make use of it. I summoned the camera and immediately turned it on to record video.


    "Aristunn. I will entrust this to you. Look at this square here, it will show you a painting of what is going on. Keep this pointed at whoever is taking and try to get the whole scene. Don''t let your hands tremble and don''t let this object out of your hands. Stay behind whatever happens and don''t utter a single word all the time. I''m going downstairs to settle this."


    Greed.


    Greed was Hama-Tula''s ruin. And greed would be the ruin of this trio of slave merchants. I slowly descended the last few steps, turned around and faced the camera. A smile for the crowd.


    "If you have debts owed by the house of Hama-Tula, then, by all means, go after them to collect. I have no relation whatsoever with them, as I know Nanna here explained to you in excruciating details. You are trespassing in my house and raising false accusations. I could have you flogged for this transgression. Begone or I''ll have to bother the magistrate again."


    They frowned and the tension started to rise. I knew a fight was about to break when the guards on both sides moved their hands closer to their weapons. My threats fell on deaf ears as they looked at me as if they were preparing to shoot an arrow at a deer.


    "Silly girl. This is Hama-Tula''s place. I know his sons and daughters are still here. Your little ploy of throwing the mothers out won''t work if you can''t get the contracts to the courthouse to get them notarized. All we have to do is to take you and these guards out."


    I sighed. "Did you come here to kill me then? Kill me and obtain all I have?"


    My goal was to avoid a bloodbath. Desperate, my mind was running through several scenarios. Use sodium? I''d have to get water and it could burn the whole house down. They didn''t respect me enough to allow a negotiation as they had the upper hand. So I gritted my teeth and was about to go with a stupid plan when I remembered to use the tablet. To my dismay, the most vocal and aggressive of the merchants was not a believer. The other two and the guards were, so once I dealt with that one I could solve the problem.


    Because I had friends on the other side.


    Stupid plan it was then.


    "In my land, there''s a legend. It is called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It is said that at the court of the noblest King the land has ever seen only fair and just knights sat. One day the Green Knight came and challenged them. If one of them exchanged blows with him, he''d bestow the brave knight that took the challenge a mighty gift. He would even let the other party deliver the first blow without defending himself. Eager to prove himself, the youngest knight took the challenge and beheaded the Green Knight.


    "I offer you the same challenge. We shall exchange blows. You can strike me once. I won''t dodge, parry, block, or otherwise defend myself. After you deal your blow, if I can, I will deliver mine. The same rules apply. Everyone here will be witnesses under Tarhun. I also do not wish any divine punishment against you. If you win, everything I own will belong to you three. If I win, then the inverse happens."


    He chortled holding his belly. I could see the contempt, greed, and disdain in his eyes. On the corner of my sight, Nanna was with both eyebrows raised and eyes wide open. She had a corner of her mouth raised and soon opened a wide grin. He looked at the other two and they nodded.


    "Your funeral, girl," She sneered at me. I knew Nanna was just going along. I winked at her and she cackled.


    "Ha. You are a fool to trust this witch. She only looks after herself. If you are so eager to die, girl, I''ll give you a clean death. You could be a queen if you married the prince. Hama-Tula had your interest in heart, you both would profit from it but you had to get him killed. Come, your wager is fair. I''ll deal you a blow right now and here."


    I raised a hand. "Wait. We should not soil the carpet with bloodstains. Let''s go to the lawn."


    He looked around like a realtor on open house day. "You are right. I don''t want to tarnish my new property. Outside!"


    I removed my linen dress and stood with only my shirt-and-skirt outfit I wore underneath to avoid the itchy fabric. I waved for Aristunn to follow but I got cold feet once we went outside. I had no doubt that guy would go for a deathblow. And what was I doing? Trusting Tarhun that I would only get half-dead? That his boons would work as advertised? I poked my eyeball with my fingernail. I felt the poke but it didn''t hurt. Not even bothered me. It felt as if I was gently pressing on my palm to test if a steak was medium-rare.


    But it was a golden opportunity to test them. If I could just manipulate the outcome a bit, it would be perfect. I had no doubt there would come a moment when I would have to fight. I needed to know if I could take a deathblow. Maybe part of me wanted to die. Maybe another part thought this was just a dream and dying would make me wake up.


    I looked around. Aristunn was holding the GoPro and the merchants were already on the lawn. The slaver had a shortsword.


    "May I ask you to be so kind as to not disfigure my corpse? Could you be merciful and deliver just a stab to the heart?" I asked him.


    "Bah. It is a waste to kill such a beauty, but I shall do as you ask."


    I moved to a spot on the grass and spoke what could very well be my last words. "All of you are witnesses of what is going to happen under Tarhun''s name. His divine wrath will fall on any that disrespects our duel."


    "Enough talking." He had a long and thin dagger now.


    He ran forward and I closed my eyes as he stabbed me in the chest. I felt the dagger stab and for a brief moment, there was no pain. Then my world burned. I pushed him away and fell on my back. One of the guards shouted something but I didn''t understand. My vision was blacking out, my body hit the grass, but it felt as if I was still falling. Forever. I could feel a damp warmth spread over my chest. I tried to breathe but only wheezing happened. It came from my chest. The bastard had pierced a lung.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    A thousand ants crawled over the wound. I shook and my limbs moved on their own. I felt cold spread from the tip of my fingers and toes and climb up my limbs and into my core. The crawling became a faint sensation and I was about to faint.


    Then I felt as if hot iron ran through my veins, spreading warmth back. The ants crawled all over me once more as blood returned to my limbs. I opened my mouth and dragged as much air as I could as fast as possible. I felt a lump climb and turned on my side and then on all fours, hacking and coughing until a big blood clot came out like a cat spits a furball.


    I moved one knee under me and propped myself standing up. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my blouse and the white fabric became pink-red. I stood up and looked down. A huge pool of blood gathered underneath where I lied. I had no idea how long it took but I could see Aristunn still holding the GoPro. With uneasy hands, I unsheathed my sword. Holding it in both hands, I looked at the terrified merchant.


    If I had to kill, this scum that dealt in human lives wasn''t a bad start. Fortunately, I hadn''t.


    "Now, I didn''t tell you how the story ended, did I? What happened between the Green Knight and Sir Gawain, the youngest Knight of the greatest King. You see, the Green Knight had a powerful backer and couldn''t really die. He picked up his head and his weapon after the beheading. Then, what did he do?"


    The merchant tried to back off but he was blocked by his own guards. "No! Nothing living should survive that. I stabbed your heart! We all saw the blood flowing freely from the wound. Your clothes are ruined! You are not human! Get away from me! Keep her away from me! Guards! Wretched slaves, protect your master!"


    His guards were divided. On one side they had to obey him or face punishment. On the other side, they knew what happened to those that attacked me. But I had just the incentive to tip them over one side or the other.


    "According to our wager, everything you own belongs to me. Your slaves and guards also. They are all mine and these guards now should protect me and my interests for their new mistress. Now be a brave man and let me finish. I have to win our wager after all."


    The guards exchanged glances and all of them nodded at each other. They pushed the slave merchant forward.


    He fell on his knees. "Please! Spare me! I don''t want to die! I don''t want to die!"


    I didn''t approach. I was too disgusted to even kill him. And there was the off-chance he had some sort of surprise for me. Like a hidden knife. The pain from the stab was gone but I still remembered it. Fivefold better memory, that''s what I call a double-edged boon.


    "Do you surrender then? Do you agree that you lost our wager? Say it clearly!"


    "I surrender! I yield! You win! You win!"


    So it was time to go. I pointed at the merchants, "Guards! Seize these invaders and put them in irons. I already had an appointment at the courthouse, I can surely deal with two business in one visit."


    To my surprise, the six guards they brought captured their former masters. Now that I took a good look at them under sunlight, I could see they had the same crest in their armor. So they all belonged to Hama-Tula''s partner.


    I ignored them for the moment and approached Aristunn. I was uneasy by leaving the GoPro for so long in his hands.


    "GoPro, stop recording!" I gave the command in English. "GoPro shut down."


    I gently took the camera from his hands and stored it. After retrieving my camera, I entered an empty room in the house and Decomposed the heck out of everything on my body. Blood, sweat, dirt, grass, clothes. Even my sneakers. I just ran through the entire periodic table and forced the atoms away. In the end, I was naked, dry, but clean. There was a scar where the dagger stabbed me. I put on another set of clothes and hiking boots. It was time to go to the courthouse.


    I still wasn''t used to the attention. I took five eunuchs from my own group and five from the slaver. Nanna didn''t want to come. We were dragging the thirteen slaves and the three merchants chained on their feet along to the courthouse. We spent thrice as much to reach the building and had to check our weapons at the entrance.


    I brought the set of slaves in and paid for the court chirurgeon to remove their tattoos and draft the documents. One silver shekel for each slave in taxes and fees. But once the money left my hands they were no longer my problem. I also notarized the contracts of the kids. They were no longer heirs to Hama-Tula''s debt.


    All I had to do now was to wait for my turn to present my case against the three merchants. While I waited, I moved the video from the camera to my iPad via Bluetooth. Our turn came and I entered the office. It wasn''t the same place where I got the documents for Hama-Tula''s estate. This place seemed like a tribune or amphitheater, with an open floor and a ring of large steps where an audience could sit.


    After I explained the situation, the magistrate asked the merchants for their version. The slave guards didn''t have a voice. The magistrate''s room had five guards with tabards, two at the door, one behind the magistrate and one on either side. My guess is that he requested guards because he sensed trouble.


    And maybe he was right because all hell broke loose. The three started to invent tall tales, call me names, and how I paid off their own guards to betray them. They called a ton of laws and I decided to see if I could buy a copy of their legal code. I just waited for my turn to reply.


    "Those are heavy accusations, miss Rinaldi," The magistrate told me with a neutral tone. He was very professional, I had to admit. That was why I was putting all my chips on his table. "And without proof or witnesses, I''ll have to agree with them. There''s no way you would be stabbed and just stand up before me without a blemish in you. I will not defend anyone who is a good escape artist and swimmer to destroy the merchant community."


    "I have proof," I replied to him. "I can show you their shame."


    He looked surprised. The three merchants, sure of their win but wary of my tricks scoffed and talked at the same time, trying to convince the magistrate to deliver his ruling without seeing my ''fake proof''. And the magistrate shifted from surprise to irritation. They managed to get under his skin.


    "Silence!" He shouted. "Or I''ll have your tongues cut off for contempt!"


    Hooray for Lex Talionis! Hear! Hear! ... Not.


    They shut up. The magistrate glared at me. I summoned the iPad and after setting the volume to max, I played the video, holding the device to face him. Once it reached the wager one of the merchants jumped to grab the iPad and I immediately stored it. He crashed over me, sending both of us to the ground. I yelped from the pain. He punched me in the face and I kicked his balls. He flinched and I crawled out from under him.


    Then one of the courthouse guards stabbed the merchant in the shoulder with a thin shortsword. I lifted my hands. "I''m good! I''m good!"


    "Stand, miss. No harm will come if you don''t break our rules," The magistrate had a hand raised to stop the guards from attacking me. "Show me the rest of your evidence again."


    So I did. I summoned the iPad and the video resumed on its own right where it stopped. I got to see how long I stayed on the ground. Three minutes. I instinctively put my hand in the dress and ran a finger over where I was stabbed. The scar was gone. I stopped the video when I saw myself moving toward the camera. No need to show that.


    "There you go, Magistrate," I told him. "I await your ruling."


    Time seemed to stop as he pondered. The three merchants, one of them with a limp arm wrapped in bandages, were warily eyeing the courthouse guards.


    "You died," The magistrate pondered. It wasn''t a question.


    I shook my head. "Not today," I gave him a mischievous grin.


    He raised an eyebrow, "At the river?"


    Another head shake. "Speaking of the river, did you know there''s a tentacle monster that lives under the pier and attacks those that are thrown inside? Can I kill it?"


    He didn''t take my laid back stance very well. "If there is a monster, then yes. I expect you to bring proof of this monster''s existence though. Is there anything relevant you wish to add?" He asked, clearly irritated.


    "Yes. I have these contracts showing that Banunu and Rubati sold me their children this morning. They are already notarized. The two women and their dowries are the only things that are left of Hama-Tula''s estate. These merchants claim that I owe something Hama-Tula owed them is void. I''d like an official ruling on it. The two cases are related."


    The magistrate slammed the desk. "Then it is settled. All properties and assets owned by these three are now missing Rinaldi''s property. And you three are guilty of perjury..."


    The merchants didn''t take their sentence quiet. The three kicked up a fuss but the guards were already ready when the magistrate spoke ''perjury''. One of them drew a dagger that looked like a letter opener and jumped for my eye. It was too fast to Decompose the weapon. I saw the tip of the weapon come straight and dodged. It opened a gash on my temple that scraped my skull and sent me on my side.


    There wasn''t a chance for a second blow. All three merchants were stabbed to death by the guards. I was in pain. My head was ringing. I was bleeding almost as much as when my heart was stabbed. Getting hurt sucked. I heard the merchant''s bodies being dragged and one of the guards gently pressed a rag to my wound and helped me back on my feet. I doubted that rag was clean but my skin was already closing.


    "You are quite the troublemaker, miss Rinaldi," The magistrate told me. I could almost swear he had a sense of humor.


    "More like trouble magnet." I was surprised they had a word for a magnet. Then I remembered some ores are naturally magnetic. "I swear I they come for me and not the other way around."


    "Do you have any idea what you did wrong regarding this dispute with these men?"


    "That I didn''t kill them when they invaded my house? I''d lose too many guards," I answered pressing the rag against my temple. It helped with the migraine.


    "No. You didn''t get the terms of the wager in writing. That way they thought they could run their mouths and tell any kind of lie. I got this close to condemning you for perjury. If you didn''t have the god''s mirror to show the truth, you''d be dead now."


    God''s Mirror? That''s what we''ll call the iPad now? I don''t think so. "That''s a tool from my land, not god''s mirror. It has an eye that can show what it sees among other things."


    "Well, this case is settled. Come, I''ll have to draft the papers for your new possessions."


    I jumped over a pool of blood I had no idea whose blood was. Maybe mine. I don''t know. All I knew was that my wonderful date day was this close to being ruined.


    After pulling a ton of records and writing a lot of documents, I left with my dry duffel filled with scrolls. Ironically, I owned almost all the slave trade in town. Before parting with the magistrate, I had to ask.


    "See you at the party tonight?"


    He looked surprise, "Abil-Kisu invited you? I thought he disliked slave merchants."


    "I have a date with captain Brandon." They didn''t have a word for date. What I really said was ''I''ll be escorting captain Brandon'' but it was a date and escort regarding a female with a male meant another thing in English.


    Outside the courtyard, I ordered my retinue of guards to form a box around me and we hurried back. I had to get ready for the party.


    Woe to whatever else dared to disturb my date night.

 Night 6

    I didn''t know if it was because of all my close encounters with sharp objects all day or something else but my head was about to burst. I was back home (I''m not calling it Hama-Tula estate anymore) and trying to get ready for the party. I had precious hours of sunlight left but there were so many things to do!


    After returning, I sent Nanna with a detachment of four guards, two from home and two from the merchants to the caravanserai to secure my assets there. I knew word of the merchants'' demise would spread like wildfire and I feared for the safety of the slaves. My agenda tomorrow would make John Amos proud. It involved another visit to the courthouse and a lot of money down the drain.


    I called Hama-Tula''s children to the living room.


    "Rimush, can you read already?" I asked the eldest one. I didn''t brand them with the slave tattoo.


    "All of us know most of the characters, mistress. I also know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. What would you have me do?"


    "I want you to check these documents. Tell me what they mean." I handed him a bundle of scrolls.


    He opened them and started to read. Despite their father being absolute trash and their mothers some pair of ostentatious wastrels, the kids seemed alright. Nanna told me Rimush spent most of the time I was away explaining things to their siblings. How I was merciful for making sure they all stood together even though they fell into slavery. His eyes widened more and more.


    "So? What are these?"


    "They are the writs of debt my father signed. Worth at least two hundred gold Shekels. And they are now owned by... you?"


    He looked wary. "Rimush. This is less than half what your father''s debt. These three merchants that invaded my house earlier owned these. And you are correct, these writs are now mine. Your mothers'' debt is now mine. Now, what would happen if you ripped these writs to pieces then burned them?"


    He placed them on the table and took a step back, terrified. "You''d murder me and my siblings!" He knelt and his brothers and sisters followed.


    "No! Stand up! I won''t punish you!" I hurried to fix my blunder. "No! Please don''t cry. Listen to me."


    "What do you want, mistress?" Rimush asked.


    "I''m pardoning that debt. Rimush, take your siblings, go to the fire pit at the outside kitchen and burn the writs. Remember to always live within your means. Take at least that amount of burden off your mother''s back."


    "Mistress?" He asked in disbelief.


    "Go and do as I told you. Didn''t you listen to my order? I''ll punish you if you disobey."


    "As you say, mistress." Rimush took the scrolls and pulled his siblings, "Let''s go! Let''s go! The mistress pardoned part of the debt!"


    "Will mommy come back?" Anaya, the eight-year-old daughter of Rubati asked.


    "Mom will come back when she finishes paying the outstanding debt, Anaya. Come. This will help them."


    I pointed at one of the eunuchs. "Follow them, make sure no child gets burned."


    He bowed and ran after them. "As you command, mistress."


    I spun on my heels to go to my room and start doing my makeup and found Belle staring at me.


    "I can''t believe you''ll pardon those two. Two hundred gold shekels? I can''t even calculate how much money that means!"


    I summoned my phone. "Seven thousand and two hundred silver shekels. or two hundred and fifty-nine thousand and two hundred copper shekels."


    Belle blinked. "A laborer earns six copper shekels per day. How long does he have to work to earn that much money?"


    I did more calculations. Then I looked at the battery and clicked my tongue. "One hundred and twenty years. Belle, one smile from Anaya is worth that much money. People are worth more than money. Always."


    She sighed. "Aren''t you the biggest slave merchant in town now?"


    I sighed. "I think I''m about to go bankrupt tomorrow. But today, I have a date. I''m going to my room to get ready. You clean up and come help me. Get someone else to cook dinner tonight."


    I went upstairs feeling I''d forgotten something important. I couldn''t pin it so I pushed the feeling aside.


    I entered the guest room. I still hadn''t been in the master bedroom. I''d probably burn the place down because however it is decorated, it would remind me of Hama-Tula, Banunu, and Rubati. Of them having a threesome there. Eww.


    I summoned my carry-on on the bed and started to go through the clothes I had. Who could know that packing dresses for a forest cleanup mission would be useful in another world? Not Theresa, I think. I''d be mighty pissed at her if she knew what was coming my way. Anyway, I had a light blue spaghetti dress with small white flowers, a Chinese red cheongsam and a long ruffled cream dress with ribbons.


    The spaghetti was cute but too modern. It showed a lot of skin. The cheongsam was elegant, magnificent, sexy. I''d love to let Brendan see me wearing it. But it had a slit for the cleavage and a long opening to show the thigh when I walked in it. I also didn''t have high heels and they were a must with the cheongsam. The ruffled cream then.


    The steel mirror had too many distortions. I put my own mirror next to it but it was too small. I cupped my hair and bound it in a bun with a scrunchie. I pulled some strands loose in the front, the sides and one on the back, leaving my neck exposed. I didn''t have any accessory for the hair, neither earrings or a necklace.


    That was unacceptable.


    I took the coin pouch and some gold coins. I held one coin between three pinched fingers held upside down and focused. It took me some time because it was the first time I was doing it but I got the resonance for gold. I went slowly, making a thin wire seep through the thin gap between my fingers. After it got out of Decompose range, the wire solidified but it was too thin. I went through the whole coin, discarding a small lump of copper and other impurities the coin had, creating several meters of sparkly yellow gold wire. I took the wire, twisted and folded it several times, separating it in three bundles of strands. I braided the three strands and fused the tips together around my neck, making a choker.


    I checked the choker in the mirror and it looked marvelous. The wire came out as a triangle and the twisted strands caught the light in several points. I took the bag of gems the caravan had and found a pretty clear red gem cut as a teardrop. I took another gold coin and slowly kneaded the metal around the gem to make a setting going around the teardrop. Then I fashioned a hook and attached the pendant to the choker, fusing the back of the hook back on itself. The gem rested between my collarbones, drawing attention like a beacon.


    I repeated the twisted braid but with fewer strands, using half of a coin. I had to cannibalize my keychain ring to make the hooks but soon I had two earrings that had the same braided pattern of the choker. The keychain ring would restore itself once I discarded the cutoff pieces and I stored everything back.


    I summoned the makeup kit and applied foundation, mascara, blush, lipstick, and the whole nine yards. I pulled the corners of my eyes with eyeliner to reinforce my Asiatic traces. I wanted to look my best, to blow Brendan''s sabatons off. I wanted to leave crimson lipstick marks on his sword''s hilt. On the gorget too.


    I sighed when I noticed I wouldn''t have time to do my fingernails. It wouldn''t dry. Or would it? I checked what I had. Pink, red, earth brown, moss green, navy blue. Red it was. I dabbed a small bead of polish on the back of my hand and focused on it. It was complex. Very complex. I blew on it and smelled it, trying to find resonance patterns. What was fading and what was happening. I got something. Another bead then. I focused on something that vanished as it dried and forced it out. The polish dried faster on the seventh try.


    I Decomposed the polish on the back of my hand and wiped the water with graphite dust that was left behind. Then I applied polish to my fingernails and carefully dried it by Decomposing only the solvent. Acetates, I learned after I checked on my chemistry books a few days later.


    I checked myself. It wasn''t stunning by Earth standards but I felt pretty. A rare feeling. I missed my glasses. Makeup and thick glasses didn''t mix so I had to leave them home and ''navigate by instruments'' whenever I had to wear makeup. Go to parties practically blind. I never could wear contacts. Now I had invulnerable eyes that could see the grains of mascara on the brush.


    No time to sulk. I put a pushup bra, another stowaway Theresa slipped in my luggage, and ''pulled the breast meat from the sides to the front'' as she liked to say. I didn''t have matching panties though. Will it get to that? Would Brandon care if my underwear matched? I searched through my underwear for something that matched and found a garter belt.


    Dammit, Theresa.


    I put on the garter belt and socks. Slid inside the dress and closed the zipper. And then in the best 1990''s fashion, put on hiking boots. In my defense, I only had two sets of outdoor shoes with me and the sneakers were still self-repairing. Getting stabbed in the chest burned a lot of magic power and there were less left for reconstruction.


    Belle only showed up after I finished tying up my boots. I stood up.


    "How do I look?"


    Belle covered her mouth. "Mistress." She seemed like some fangirl seeing her favorite celebrity. "It is true! You are a princess!"


    I opened my mouth, left it hanging a while, sighed then closed it shut. "I''m not a princess. But how do I look? Do I look good?"


    I did a spin to show her. The skirt fluttered.


    "You look wonderful. I''ve never seen anyone that beautiful, mistress!"


    The look of pure awe in Belle''s face made me look up and split the oxygen from the hydrogen in the tears that threatened to ruin my makeup. Dammit, girl.


    "Do you think the guard captain will like it?"


    She giggled. Belle seemed drunk. "He''ll love it. He''ll offer the world to buy you."


    And just like that, she delivers a complete turnoff compliment. Women were merchandise. At least I looked like expensive, luxury merchandise. Like those fancy stores where you are even afraid to touch because you''d fall into slav...


    I better shut up.


    I waved a hand over my things and stored everything. We went downstairs. At least the boots were easy to walk in. I couldn''t sit down. I was nervous like it was prom night. Brendan told me he''d pick me up before sunset. When I heard shouting at the gate, I was running there before I could think it wasn''t him.


    It was.


    "Mistress," The eunuch guarding the gate blinked twice when he saw me. "The guard captain is here."


    "Well, we don''t want to leave him waiting. Open up!"


    The gates opened. I was brimming with expectation. They opened too slowly. My heart pounded as if it would burst out of my chest. For the second time today. Then I saw a flash of blonde hair. It could use some moisturizer. The face with deep angles and the rest of the muscular body. He was wearing a brown tunic with golden flax embroidering, trousers, a deep blue tabard with the town''s heraldry. His sword hanging from his belt and leather bracers with geometric patterns engraved on them. I could have a good look at those biceps that were as thick as my thighs.


    I didn''t care about the party if I could take him upstairs. Right then.


    "Miss Rinaldi, you..." I missed what he was going to say. Maybe he was stunned by my killer looks.


    "How do I look, Brandon. And call me Sandra, please."


    "We are a bit late, I''m sorry something held me back. Three major merchants at the caravanserai died today." He glared at me.


    I scoffed and huffed. How dare those dead merchants show up and ruin my date? "Oh, is that so? I heard they committed perjury."


    "You are well-informed, miss... Sandra. Come, let''s go."


    I moved to his right side and took his arm. A mischievous side of me wanted to hang on that arm and never let go. I knew he was wearing chainmail underneath the tunic by the clinking. I wanted to count each link.


    "Can we start training tomorrow?" He asked.


    I shook my head. "You know about the merchants that I took to the courthouse, don''t you?"


    "The ones that went in and never got out alive? You and dead merchants have a thing. I fear for my friend Abil-Kisu."


    "Meanie!" I punched his arm. I hurt my hand. "Yeah, those. I got their business from the magistrate and now I have to sort through a ton of possessions."


    "The woes of the wealthy. I understand. The day after tomorrow then. But why do you think you need to train to use a weapon. You have guards now."


    "They wanted me. For some foreign prince. I don''t want to be used as a political tool, Brandon. And guards can only protect you so far."


    "Fair enough. We are here."


    We reached the venue. It was not far from my new place.


    You know those teen movies where everyone is distracted doing their things but when the female lead enters the place all heads crane to look at her? Well, that was what happened as I entered the party venue, and I felt like digging a hole to hide inside. I knew there was a reputation building around me during the last few days as I did my antics through town but that was too much. Some men were gawking at me, some women were pinching and shoving their still-gawking husbands.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    To the shy and demure Sandra Rinaldi that never gathered such attention on Earth, it was a brand new experience. In hindsight, I blame Lush, Sephora, MAC, and Co. The other world is nothing compared to the power of XXI century cosmetics. I tried my best to stand side-by-side with him.


    We were in a grassy field with a colorful and huge tent illuminated by torchlight. Servers were coming and going with these massive jugs of wine, mead and ale and plates with fruits. Fresh figs, apricots, grapes, apples. Or at least something that resembled them. You know how they say, if it walks like a duck... I was starving because I skipped lunch during all that thing with the merchants. I dug in the fruit and the wine, wary of not mixing distilled with fermented drinks. I think they were all fermented but when in doubt, stick to the safe. I didn''t bring a gift, couldn''t even think of getting one done because of the rush. But I didn''t see anyone else bringing in gifts and I did keep an eye on those that arrived after me. We weren''t as late as Brandon made me think.


    A blur of women came to talk to me, and I did my best to talk to them and disrespect nobody. Brendan had left me and was talking to the men here and there. The two sides didn''t mix too much. The women asked about my jewelry, my makeup, my nails, my dress. Then the inevitable question came. One of those social butterflies that want to dip its proboscis on everyone''s flowers accosted me.


    "Why don''t you have a husband? Where are your parents? What''s your price?"


    I looked around for my date. It isn''t dating if all we do is sit girls on one side and boys on the other like some awkward junior high dance. I couldn''t find him but I found a merchant that locked gaze with me. The social butterfly withdrew so this guy must be a big shot.


    "Ah, so there is where she was hiding! The person that is shaking the town''s very foundations! Welcome, welcome to my party, miss Rinaldi."


    That guy was the host. I knew I heard his name somewhere. The magistrate said it. I quickly replayed our last conversation and remembered.


    "Abil-Kisu! I am honored to be a guest at your party, and I wish all the blessings and fortune to you, your family, your business, and most importantly, your son." I told him with a saikeirei bow. This guy was the big boss of the town''s merchants.


    "Stand, stand, my dear. Let me delight my eyes with your beauty. I''ve never seen any of your people, I wonder where you are from. A kind of peerless exotic beauty. Yes! Marvelous. Please, come with me, miss Rinaldi. Would you grant this old man the pleasure of your company for a while more? Yes?"


    Abil-Kisu was a bit overweight, had a short beard but his hair reached his shoulders. He had a lot of earrings and necklaces and I wondered if his beard was short exactly to show her necklaces.


    "I see you have a good eye for necklaces. Yours is quite exquisite! I wonder what goldsmith could forge such a masterpiece. To pull the gold in a triangular wire like that, it is almost impossible to figure out how it was done." I was about to answer when we stopped next to a group of craftsmen. Abil-Kisu spoke. "Master Lu-Ninurta, what do you think of this lovely lady''s jewelry?"


    I froze. An old man, old enough to pair up with Nanna looked at my necklace and earrings. His eyes went wide. "That... That gold thread! It is splendid!" He took a monocle and examined my jewelry. "Triangular. And there don''t seem to be any seams! And that teardrop ruby, it is like it was born in the gold. I can''t see the clasps. Tell me, miss. Is it made by a goldsmith in your home country?"


    I bowed to him. I made sure I stopped at keirei. "Master, the production methods of this necklace are not standard. I made this thread with sorcery."


    Abil-Kisu broke the awkward silence, "A girl of many talents. Tell me, is there any way we can see it?"


    I nodded. "Yes, let me get some gold." I summoned my purse where I keep the large gold mina coins. I opened the clasp and took one of the big ones, closing and storing the purse.


    "That''s... convenient," Abil-Kisu commented. I noticed he had a coin in his hand.


    I plucked a small piece of the coin and then smeared the gold in my hand, molding it like play-dough. I looked around and one of the craftsmen had an ornate dagger.


    "Could I hold your dagger for a moment, master?"


    He didn''t blink twice before taking out the dagger and handing it over hilt-first. The dagger had a vine pattern etched on the blade. I waved my palm with the gold leaf and filled the etchings with a thin layer of gold. The second pass of my finger removed the excess. Decompose forced the oxygen out from the oxidation layer and without anything else between the gold and the iron of the dagger, the two metals joined. The etchings were now golden. I also coated the pommel with a very thin layer of gold. I still had a sizeable nugget in my hand. Turning the dagger around, I presented it to the owner.


    He smiled. "I''ll treasure this gift." And sheathed the dagger.


    I also did the triangular gold thread, trying to make it even thinner than before by pressing my fingers tighter. The more I worked the gold, the easier it became to lock in the particular resonance. I turned the nugget into several meters of fine gold thread. Then I coiled and bundled the thread in three parts, braiding them together and fusing the ends. It was the adequate length for a man''s wristband. I finally sighed.


    "Master Lu-Ninurta, I can''t do the clasp. Could you please help me?"


    He smiled. Yes, I was giving him some face. But I couldn''t make a decent clasp anyway. I gave him the piece and he examined it. Then he fished in his pocket for two metal loops and a set of jeweler''s pliers. He twisted the loops so they would only to through one another in a certain position that was impossible to happen while they rested one against the other. He handed them to me and I welded it to the iron. I presented the piece to Abil-Kisu.


    "Honorable Abil-Kisu. In my land, it is custom to bring a gift to the host. I hope you accept this with my wishes of wellbeing for your son."


    He took the delicate gold chain in his hands. it was pure gold and the strands were very thin. "I''ll treasure it, miss Rinaldi. But I took too much of your time. See, the women want to talk to you."


    He led me back to the female camp and left me there. I joined some conversations here and there trying to see what kind of subjects the women talked about. Dresses. Children. Jewelry. Children. Children. Who was marrying who? How much the bride sold for. When the subject inevitably reached yours truly, I''d slip and join another group.


    "I haven''t seen the baby yet," I told to the young woman with a protruding belly I was currently talking about.


    "Oh, you won''t. The baby won''t be seen by anyone but family for the first season of its life," She told me.


    From a place where almost any baby has already registered in half a dozen facial recognition systems for life before they even left the hospital to one where it is locked away for three months. If I had to guess, it was to avoid contamination and let the mother nurse the baby and give her milk time to imprint her immune system on him. No vaccines, poor hygiene, abysmal sanitation. I think I got used to the smell of human refuse by now. I only notice it when I think of it.


    To endure this constant bombardment of female conversation, I was indulging quite a bit on the wine that was flowing like it would be endless. Another woman comes in the circle and shoots her question out of the blue.


    "If you allow me a slight indiscretion, I heard several people saying you are a runaway princess. Is that true?"


    I could see the other''s ears doubling in size. I signal to another server and get a refill of wine to get some time to think about an answer. Liquid courage.


    "I''m not running away. I was invited to live here. Sorry I can''t say more."


    "Some say you run away from an engagement with an ugly man."


    "Who wouldn''t?" I quipped. "No, seriously, I wasn''t engaged to anyone."


    A girl that was also flying from group to group and getting very close to the men sometimes approached. She should be fifteen or sixteen. "I''m not engaged to anyone too. Tell me, big sister, Sandra, are you marrying captain Brandon?"


    My heart fluttered then sank in the same heartbeat. No, I wasn''t. I looked around and Brandon was talking to some scarred men whose demeanor screamed ''I''m a soldier!'' I was completely left behind. I needed more booze.


    Nanna''s warning returned. Brandon was a traditionalist. "No. Not yet, at least," my tongue slipped my true feelings. Would it come to choosing whom I''d be enslaved to? I didn''t think I was ready for fifty shades of Brandon.


    "But you are rather old already, big sister," The homewrecker continued. "Wouldn''t you worry if you could birth children or not if you wait for too long?"


    "Yes, I was wondering exactly that," a pregnant lady picked up the pace. "How old are you, Sandra?"


    I was saved from the crowd of repopulation-centric women by the timely arrival of the third old male I''ve seen so far. This one was wearing robes and had a politician vibe. The crowd of women showed him great deference. His gaze was set on me as he approached.


    "Miss Rinaldi. What a fortuitous meeting. Greetings. I am Bero-Mabii, priest of Tarhun. I was looking forward to meeting you, yes." He spoke in his paused way as if he had to think about the next sentence after he spoke the last one. His pauses were just a bit shorter than the required for the other speaker to turn in, however. It was kind of irritating.


    The server came with the jug of wine but I pulled my mug away. It would not bode well to make the priest wait while I further suppress my superego with poison. Too bad my blessing makes it go away too fast.


    "A pleasure to meet you, priest Bero-Mabii," Out of options on how to address him, I curtsied. At least in my mind, it was better than offering him a handshake.


    "Yes, yes. See, I was wondering where were you from. I traveled a lot in the years of my youth and I''ve never seen people like yours."


    Yes, I doubt you''d find someone with the perfect mix of Mediterranean and Nipponic features like me, thank you very much.


    "I''m from a place very far away. It took me an unreasonable amount of years to get here. I doubt you''ve heard of my people."


    "And how are your people called, miss?"


    I was almost blurting out ''millennials'' as a joke. But why keep the charade? I''ve shown the iPad to the magistrate, that I could shape gold to the craftsmen, I thought ''what the heck, let''s go with the truth or I''ll be in deep trouble later on.'' and spoke the truth.


    "Earthlings, priest. I''m from another world, brought here by Tarhun''s will. You could say I am only alive because Tarhun wished so."


    He smiled with his eyes and clapped his hands. He seemed genuinely pleased with my answer.


    "Yes, Tarhun is mighty. We are only alive because he allows us to. You are very wise, miss Rinaldi," He exulted. I guess there was an implied ''for a foreigner'' hidden after ''wise'' but who was I to point that out.


    And then the realization hit me.


    The frigging god WAS A REALLY GOOD SHOT WITH HIS LIGHTNING, WASN''T HIM? I''m sorry for the caps but even now as I write this I feel the indignation rise up my throat in a wave of bile.


    The hypothesis that he killed me "accidentally" became awfully remote to me. That coupled with the mental suppression to make me accept the deal meant God Tarhun had a purpose for me. Not in the omnipotent Abrahamic deity back on earth sense when the priest would say every Sunday "God has a plan for you" but in a way more fungible way. Yes, fungible. Tarhun expected profit from my presence. He already was, by instilling the rightful deific fear in the hearts of men as he smote left and right around me.


    I needed a drink. Something stronger than the lady wine. I sighed and clapped the priest''s shoulder. "Father Bero-Mabii, I was stabbed in the heart today. Tarhun''s blessing saved me. I was thrown in the river by the magistrate, Tarhun''s blessing saved me. But getting stabbed in the heart hurts too much. I want some of the strong liquor the men are drinking but I am scared of going there. Would you please go with me, father?"


    That awkward moment you realize you were drunk and embarrassed but then you need to get even drunker because your date dumped you to talk to some military folk and the women are harassing you because you are not churning babies in your tumbling baby-maker.


    I went with the priest and he brought me to the place where master Samus and the magistrate were. A server came and I got a refill from their drink. A dark ale. Down it goes.


    "Oh. Miss Rinaldi. You are almost as beautiful as Ishtar. How pleasant to have you join us," Master blacksmith Samus greeted me. "I heard of your gold-shaping stunt. Can you do that with other metals as well?"


    I smiled and stared at him for a few moments. "Thank you. It is good that someone noticed!" I slurred. "And for your information, master blacksmith Samus, I can do it with any metal, even some you never heard of. I bet it would take millennia before your people even know the presence of these metals."


    "I''d like to see it. I wonder why we didn''t find them."


    I was on the second mug of the dark, strong ale. "They are everywhere. Even in the gravel of this yard, I bet. The problem is that getting them to separate from the ore is very difficult and you don''t know how." I told him with my nose pointing up. I was being very smug.


    "And you know how to obtain them?"


    "Yes. I can use my power. There are other ways too but we need tools that just don''t exist. Can I have a pebble?"


    Some lower-ranked participant of the conversation gave me a pebble. I removed the silicon, making it flow into a lump on my other hand. I was left with a powdery mix of oxides. I focused for a while and removed a metallic pellet.


    "I believe this is tin. There''s more here," I touched the dust with my finger and pulled a yellow flake. "Here, a flake of gold that was in the pebble. The rest is probably aluminum."


    Truly enough I removed a pellet of aluminum a bit larger than the tin. The rest of the dust, I discarded.


    "Your sorcery is very versatile. Mine is only good to control the heat of the forge, I''m afraid."


    I gave him a thumbs up.


    "That''s awesome! If you can control the temperature, you can get all kinds of hardening and tempering going on! I bet that''s why your alloys are so well-made! I was amazed when I had to Decompose them!"


    "You know a lot about metals for a lady," Another man nearby quipped.


    I glared at him and glanced around. The priest escaped. I glared back at the man.


    "For a lady," I snorted. "You better beware of offending this lady here, the magistrate doesn''t want more trouble from me," The magistrate cleared his throat. "And your contempt is insulting if I must say. I have thousands of talents even before I was brought here. Against my will. Oops. Forget that last part, please."


    They laughed. I went for another mug of ale but someone held my wrist. Brandon.


    "Oh, hello there, handsome! Glad you joined us."


    "You''ve drunk enough," He told me.


    I saluted. "Yessir. Roger Wilco." He made a puzzled face because I said it in English. I reverted to Akkadian. "Where have you been? I missed you, you know?"


    "Talking. Why aren''t you with the women?"


    I narrowed my eyes and stared at him. I was about to get in a lot of trouble by saying something rode about the female mentality of their civilization and other things too liberal for their stage of development when the host came to defuse the situation.


    "Hello again, miss Rinaldi. We need some entertainment now, would you like to join?" I misheard him. He actually said ''we will have some entertainment...''


    "Okay, I can sing a song from my world if you want." I was lucky they had a context-based language. The word for ''world'' was the same for ''people''.


    "Oh, wonderful! Wonderful," Abil-Kisu clapped his hands loudly, gathering the attention of everyone. "Attention, please! Lady Rinaldi is going to sing for us. Please, this way."


    I went to the center of the area prepared for the entertainment. I saw some jugglers and acrobats waiting in a side tent away from the spectators. I gave them thumbs up and they replied most probably because they were just mimicking me.


    I summoned my Bluetooth speakers on the ground behind me and synched them with the iPod. I selected the song in the Karaoke app and pressed play, holding the mic near my mouth. The piano riff of the intro played out of the speakers and the song created by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris made its debut in another world.


    "First I was afraid, I was petrified..."


    I sang without taking my eyes off of Brandon. A song of independence and self-reliance illustrated exactly my state-of-mind at that moment. Left to fend for myself against a pride of baby-making lionesses and underestimated by the men. I didn''t have Gloria Gaynor''s velvety depth but I didn''t crumble. I didn''t lay down and die. The song ended and the app played the clapping track because I scored ninety-six. The crowd recognized the sound and I got a standing ovation. Just because they were already standing.


    For someone piss-drunk, ninety-six was great.


    I curtsied and stored my devices. I''d just started another trend because I remember seeing some of the ladies trying to imitate me. I later learned they thought it was a love song. They weren''t wrong but it was a song of self-love, not love for Brandon.


    The big blonde captain was blushing. I swear he was. At least I didn''t go for ''It''s raining men''. Or Thriller. I''d totally do the zombie dance and die of embarrassment later. No, really. I can''t dance.


    I withdrew to a vacant spot next to Brandon and saw the spunky recently-molted teen girl biting her thumb. I grabbed his arm. Mine! Gollum.


    The jugglers and acrobats entered and did their number. I clapped like a child in the circus for the first time. The entertainment ended and we entered the main tent, removing our shoes before stepping on the Persian rugs. I stored my boots instead. If only I could summon them already in place...


    There were several circles of pillows around low tables on the rugs. The central and biggest circle was for Abil-Kisu and his wife, and the guests were finding their circles based on levels of influence. Brendan and I were going for the second row when the host called us out.


    "Captain, lady Rinaldi. Please sit here with us."


    Fortunately, we didn''t have to displace anyone. Once all the guests were seated, he clapped his hands three times and the slaves entered carrying trays of food. I was ravenous and assaulted the food like someone that almost died. That reminded me that I needed a fence. And who better than the biggest and kindest merchant baron in the land?


    "Brandon," I whispered to my date. "Is it rude to talk about business in the middle of the feast?"


    "What kind of business?" He asked, wary.


    Wary of what, I didn''t know. Everything was so perfectly smooth so far!


    "I have some items to sell, I was wondering if Abil-Kisu would buy them."


    "You should wait until tomorrow. You are in no condition to negotiate."


    He had a point.


    "And whose fault is that?" I asked just to give him a chance to come clean and repent.


    Brandon stopped eating and looked at me. "Woman, I know your game. And the only winning move is to not play."


    Spoilsport.


    I got a refill of dark ale and downed it in one go. If Brandon wasn''t going to play my game, I''d play the ''drink when he''s stupid'' game. And I was a hundred rounds behind.


    After saying my goodbyes to the hosts, I left the party with Brendan.


    "Now I understand what you said about wanting to avoid being used as a political tool," He told me after walking a couple blocks in silence.


    I didn''t remember putting on my boots. Everything after that was a kind of a blur. I felt tired.


    "Why do I feel there''s a but in there?"


    "But," he continued, "I think it is impossible. People will try to garner your support for their political cause. A neighbor kingdom might attack to secure you and your blessings for them."


    "It seems no matter which world we are at, humanity is petty."


    "Also," He stopped.


    "Just say it. It can''t get worse."


    "Okay. The paint on your face is running."


    Maybe it could.

 Morning 7

    The best part of regenerating is that you probably won''t die from a pierced heart. The second best part is that you have no hangovers. The worst of having a memory perk is that you do remember what happened last night. I woke up with Belle knocking on the door.


    "Sandra, wake up. You have a visitor!" She called.


    "If there''s anyone out there wishing to be taken to the magistrate to die, send them away, Belle!"


    "It is master Samus!"


    Oh. I doubt Samus wants to be taken to the magistrate. I also noticed I was getting numb to the sight of blood. Or corpses. That was bad. I jumped out of bed and noticed I was naked. The dress I wore yesterday was on the chair and my boots were neatly arranged next to them. I still had the necklace and the earrings were on the vanity.


    Maybe I didn''t remember all that happened last night.


    "Belle, come in here."


    The eunuch guarding the door let the cook in and I pointed at my dress.


    "How did I get in here yesterday?"


    She gave a wry smile. "The guard captain brought you asleep. I took you to bed and undressed you. I washed your underwear, it is downstairs, drying. I''ve never seen fabric like that. What is it made of?"


    Damn. The only garter belt in the whole world. I was quite possessive of my stuff. "Get everything and bring it to me. Now. I don''t care if it is damp or dripping. Where is master Samus?"


    "In the sitting room. I''ll get your things, mistress."


    "Call me San..." I never got to finish it because she was already running out.


    I put on a fresh set of clothes, the same I wore when the merchants stabbed me as they had finished regenerating. I also cut a small piece of all my articles of clothing to keep in storage so I didn''t need to worry about losing them. I stored the dress, the boots and brushed my teeth with the water basin on the dresser.


    I wanted running water but it would be a pain to run plumbing on this sandstone house. Finally ready, I went to meet the master blacksmith.


    "Master Samus, what brings you here this early?"


    He nodded at me. "Miss Rinaldi, greetings. I need your help. I should''ve traveled to the mines to oversee the purchase of ore for the smithy but due to the problem involving you, Nanna and Hama-Tula, I decided to not go. But our smithy is running out of iron. You said you could get metals, I was wondering if you could help us."


    "I can''t get metal out of nowhere but I can extract metal from rocks if the metal is present. Like that pebble yesterday, it had that flake of gold inside. I just extracted it. If you have some ore, I can extract the metal without the need to smelt the ore."


    "We don''t have any ore left. The smithy is running on molten metal scraps but the quality of the final product is too low."


    I tried to remember what I could about metallurgy. "What about the slag?"


    "We have lots of slag. There are at least two pits full of slag buried in the smithy courtyard."


    "Then I might be able to help you. Let me think... I can try to get the iron left in the slag for you if you let me keep the rest, whatever that is."


    "Slag is worthless to us. If I have lots of magic to spare, I might be able to reuse it but I have to make the forge too hot. If you can get iron from slag, you can have everything as far as I care."


    "Then we have a deal. Let''s see... Could you bring the slag here? I really don''t want to expose myself more than I already did."


    "Yes, we have carts to carry heavy things around. I''ll have the apprentices dig up the slag and bring it here. Then they bring the iron back."


    I remembered the iron I looted from the caravan. "I have some iron with me. I took all the iron from the caravan the rage-apes destroyed."


    "That''s good. I can send the cart to pick up the iron. Is it here?"


    "Yes, it is here with me. Why don''t we go to the smithy and I give you the iron there? I have to go to the caravanserai and it would be nice to know where the smithy is."


    "That would be great."


    I got my underwear from Arwia and left with Samus to the smithy. The place was huge. A complex walled by the composed back walls of the houses around it, it should have more than ten thousand square meters. It had stables for their beasts of burden, a dormitory for the apprentices, a fancy tent to entertain guests, and the smithy was a collection of forges for several purposes fed by central bellows and fuel storage. The sound of hammers hitting the anvils rang everywhere. I wonder how the people that live near the smithy could live.


    "Welcome to my domain," Samus opened his arms wide. "Come, you must meet my partner, Aran."


    Aran was a blacksmith a hand shorter than Samus but stocky and with a long beard. How did he keep that beard from burning was a mystery. Samus introduced us and wasted no time in opening negotiations.


    "Well met, miss Rinaldi. Lovely necklace, by the way. Superb workmanship," Aran shook my hand.


    "Well met, master Aran. The necklace is my own design. Made with sorcery."


    He nodded. Samus slapped Aran''s back. "Well, miss Rinaldi, let''s see the metal you have."


    I walked to a cart that was idle near the wall and summoned the trash bags with the disks of iron. Instead of unwrapping them, I just plucked a piece of each bag and stored them.


    Samus weighed the disks, pressed on the pliable metal. He put his strength to bear and slightly bent the edge of the disk. He pointed to Aran.


    "No veins. I can''t believe it but this is pure iron. I''ve never seen iron so soft."


    I pinched one of the disks. It didn''t seem soft to me.


    Samus called an apprentice and had the iron weighed. Then he did some math and paid me a handful of gold coins. I didn''t haggle. After selling the iron, we went to check the slag. They had two pits that were full and buried and a third that was almost full. He picked up a slag rock and gave it to me. I focused on Decompose and felt the resonance. It had a lot of different materials. I could feel the iron.


    Since I only had to extract the iron to own the slag, I did just that. The piece in my hand should be two or two and a half kilograms. My first commission would be a scale I could trust. I extracted the iron. Holes broke in the slag and the iron poured out. From the two and a half kilograms of slag, I obtained three hundred grams of iron. I handed the lump to Samus. He bent the iron and even bit on it.


    "That''s real?" Aran asked, skeptical.


    "Yes. Gather the apprentices and tell them to get shovels. We are carting all the slag to miss Rinaldi''s property. She will get the iron and give it back to us in exchange for the rest of the slag."


    Aran went away to call the apprentices, obviously excited.


    "Miss Rinaldi, do you think you will get the same amount of iron as this sample or was this a lucky one?"


    "I don''t know, master Samus. But I believe it will be close to this. I don''t see a reason why this particular rock would have more iron than the others. We will have to test."


    "There are gurs of slag buried here. If all of it has this much iron, I am afraid I have to compensate you somehow. You are getting us a fortune in iron."


    "Then agree to craft me the items I need. I bet you''ll learn one new trick or two."


    "That''s a deal! Unfortunately, I have a ton of things to do, master."


    We shook hands and drank a cup of tea to celebrate. Samus was ecstatic. With the iron I brought back, they can keep on working for another week. The ore only arrives in two weeks, however. But I am pretty confident I can get at least a hundred kilograms of iron from the slag. And a ton of other things. I couldn''t hit the books but from what I remember the slag is spent flux with all the impurities from the ore and metal. That means a lot of lime, sand, and metallic oxides they can''t process, like aluminum. And traces of almost everything else. But traces from a dozen tons become ingots.


    I''d need to wait and see. Nothing is set on stone.


    From the smithy, I went to the caravanserai. Nanna and the guards spent the night there protecting my assets. Assets I am about to release. I cross the city streets fast and reach the caravanserai. I could sense the mood was odd. Eerie. As if there was static in the air waiting for just one spark to trigger a thunderstorm. I cross the main gates and enter the inner courtyard drawing attention from all the merchants. They are looking at... my neck?


    Oh, yes. I still had the necklace with me. Not that there is a way to take it off without ruining it as it is welded around me. I should''ve asked Samus if he had a goldsmith. Oh, they are selling bamboo.


    It didn''t take too long to find the place where Nanna and the guards were. I just needed to find the biggest source of trouble. Next to where the merchant slave had his pen, a mass of angry people is complaining while the guards try to keep them at bay. I approach and hear the commotion.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    They are complaining about the freeze on slave trading. Some of them need slaves for their caravan, some of them want to sell the slaves they brought up through the last leg and trade in for fresh slaves. Since I gave them orders to not sell anyone, the caravans northbound are stuck. Even more so now that confirmation of the caravan''s demise by the rage-ape-kongs reached the town.


    I slip between the crowd and the wall and after being pressed by the angry merchants, reach the line of guards that recognize me and let me past them. Nanna comes to meet me.


    "Sandra, this is a mess. If we keep the ban on selling slaves, we are going to have a mutiny in our hands," She tells me. "They might get the magistrate or worse, the Ensi."


    Damn. The show must go on? Is that it? I still won''t trade slaves. I should just spark a revolution if it comes to that. Damn. If I don''t trade slaves then someone else will. Heck, no. Worse yet, how can I change the mentality of the slaves? I know they have the spark of rebellion and the yearning for freedom in them. Every human has, it is inherent to our nature.


    But I need to make a decision, and once again it''s crunch time. Going from crisis to crisis is tiresome, even more, when I didn''t get the release I wanted yesterday. Nanna opens the iron gate and I enter the slave pens.


    "Close the door behind me. I''ll be safe."


    I didn''t bring my sword with me but I am not defenseless. I have my survival knife and a hatchet ready to be summoned into my hand. I also know aikido and capoeira, having two and four years of training in each. I''m somewhat rusty because my last three years of college were completely focused on the academic side of college life but I might be able to pull off an attack by malnourished slaves.


    A group of five, probably the top dogs in the place, approach. Other slaves are wary. I put my hand inside my pocket and summon the tablet. All five are worshippers. I can be at ease.


    "What do we have here? A young lady who got in the wrong spot? Nice necklace. I wonder how many shekels that is worth."


    Okay, change of plans. The thugs and douchebags can wait for the next kid that washes down the river in a basket. But given the setting, it might be Sargon the conqueror than Moses.


    "Tired of staying penned up? I need a group of volunteers to go with the caravans northbound. I''ll pay half the profits of the deal to the person."


    My offer sent ripples through the slaves. The side conversations died and only the clamor from outside can be heard. The group of bully slaves didn''t flinch though.


    "Why would you do that? Why would we go? I know who you are. The girl Hama-Tula wanted. If we catch you, we can force the new slave trader to let us go."


    "You want to go? Then go. I''ll brand you with a release seal."


    One of the big advantages of being the main slave trader at the caravanserai is the writ to carve seals on the slaves without having to go to the courthouse. And right then that person was me. I earned the writ.


    "Why would you release us?" He asked, wary.


    "I''ll offer you four options to choose from," I shouted at the whole slave pens. I don''t know if people behind me listened but they probably did. Not my problem.


    "First, you go with one of the caravan merchants north as a porter or a soldier. I''ll give you half of the price the caravan merchant pays. That money will be yours.


    "Second, you come to me and get a release seal branded. You are free to go and live your life however you want.


    "Third, you can come work for me. I''ll offer you a copper mina per day as wages. Three decent meals a day, no whippings or harsh punishment. You will still be expected to work. No sexual abuse either."


    I pause. Then I wait for the lead bully to pick up the cue.


    "What is the fourth?"


    "You try to do something stupid, like attacking me. Then you suffer divine punishment." I took a step forward. "If you know I am the girl Hama-Tula wanted, then you know what fate awaited both him and the other three merchants that were your masters. Come. You five, make your choice first."


    He pushed forward the quiet one of the group. "Here. Gusu, you want a release seal, don''t you?"


    "Ye-yes," he stuttered. "Give me a release seal, please."


    I reached out a hand. "Gusu, is that your name? I shall honor my word. Come, let me get you past the gate and ask one of my guards to give you a release seal."


    He didn''t take my hand but came next to me. I turned around to ask a guard to open the gate and surprisingly, none of them stabbed me in the back. The guard was listening so he just opened a gap for Gusu to slip past and took him to the brazier where the branding irons are kept warm.


    Some slave seals are not tattoos. Some are brands made with a hot iron. One more nail in my coffin. Silence falls on the slave pen and some of the people in the throng of merchants stop to watch as Gusu gets a brand. The hissing of burning flesh and the scream of pain Gusu makes drive that nail to the head into my heart. At least now he''s free.


    Gusu shouts with joy and the commotion resumes with double the strength. The merchants ask if I am crazy. Maybe I am.


    "And to the four of you, option three is not available to you. One or two, pick."


    The leader scoffs. "Gusu is an idiot. Freedom without money is just another way to fall into debt slavery. I''ll travel north. Let''s go, guys."


    I reach the gate. "Tell the merchants I have four able and willing men that want to go north with a caravan. Get Nanna to find the highest bidder."


    Soon the four bullies are getting a new brand on their forearms for the caravan they are going away with. Each man went with two silver shekels in their pockets and I got six exhausted and near-death slaves as a rebate. I also earned eight silver shekels but that is just a drop in the bucket.


    My goal was to get rid of the slaves, not obtain more. I can''t even release them because they will just die in a gutter somewhere.


    I gather the remaining slaves. "The offer stands. I promise in Tarhun name to treat well the ones that come work for me."


    One of the pleasure slave girls I saw on display a few days ago come to the front from her holding cell.


    "Will we be forced to provide night services for anyone?"


    I shake my head. "Not on my property. I won''t stop you if you want to lay down with a willing man, but your body is your own. I don''t think any woman likes to be forced. And I kinda know what I am talking about."


    She playfully shoves another of the pleasure girls that came next to her. "See? I told you she was looking at us without disgust. I''m Shiva-Fluk. I''ll work for you, mistress."


    She imitated my gesture and reached out a hand. I took it and gave her a warm shake.


    "Welcome aboard, Shiva-Fluk. What about you, girls. Come with me and you won''t regret."


    All the females leave their cells and file behind Shiva-Fluk. There are the pleasure girls, obviously better treated than the rest, middle-aged and elderly women and even some girls that didn''t even start to grow their tits. All of them have only rags for clothing, some of them even forsaking to cover their breasts. I count the women. Twenty-seven. That''s plenty for my projects. I want to craft a lot of things. I need to make money or my cash reserves will just plummet.


    I turn to the male side now. "I still need able men to go with the caravans."


    "Raise our share to three-quarters and we''ll go!" Another group of twenty men offered themselves. I sent them off and the pressure from the caravaneers diminished to the point the commotion died since there was no more safety in numbers and they could see the flow of slaves coming out of the pens. I got eight more discarded slaves and twenty silver shekels for my troubles.


    I now had eighteen able men and twelve almost-dead newcomers. Like the horse merchant, the slave trader earns his profit from nursing slaves back to health. After some back and forth, I get nine of the twelve to go free after bribing them with a silver shekel each. Gusu got the short end of the bargain, it seems.


    "Good. Now, let''s go outside, okay. And please, do not run away. I know it hurts but does get a release seal if you want to go away. It will be a bother if you are recaptured and I have to ransom you. I might give you to whoever catches you as a reward instead."


    My joke was well-received. One of them joked that I might be able to get milk from rocks if I can give away slaves like that. I lead the group forty-two people to the branding area and make them wait there while I send some guards to buy pelts, twine, and bamboo.


    We need stretchers to carry the newcomers. They are in no condition to walk.


    I also emptied the coffers of the slave trader. One of the guards knew where it was hidden inside what passes for office on the second floor of the caravanserai. Tomorrow I''ll invent a pin and tumbler lock, I promised myself. With the money from the coffers, I order all sorts of things bought. While I went on my shopping spree, a group of merchants approached.


    "Milady Rinaldi," They called my name. It seems word-of-mouth spread my infamy around. "You sat at Abil-Kisu''s main table yesterday, didn''t you?"


    I nod. "I was with captain Brandon and we were about to sit at the second table when the host graciously invited us to the main table, yes. What about it?"


    They get even more polite. "Milady, I''ve talked to your guards and the witch. I''ve watched the way you are dealing with the slaves. Are you perchance going to close the slave market?"


    I suck in a deep breath before continuing. "I wish I could, honorable..."


    "Bertramus, milady."


    "Honorable Bertramus. I wish I could end the slave trade. I believe you should not do unto others what you don''t want to be done to you, and let''s be honest, nobody wants to be a slave. But is that possible? I closed the market for one morning and look at what happened. No. The slave market won''t close."


    "If you don''t want to trade slaves, then why don''t you sell the market to me? I''m sure we can negotiate a good price..."


    "Sure."


    A battle of wits ensued. Since I was the one willing to sell, the price started low. Too low for my tastes. I countered with a price a score-fold higher.


    "That''s absurd," He gasped.


    "I know that," I replied. "I''d rather close the market altogether and dig a hole a hundred meters deep in its place than sell it cheap to someone that would relish in torture."


    "Good. I triple my opening offer and promise under Tarhun''s ever-watchful eyes to be merciful to my slaves."


    I had no idea if the promise was any good or if the beardy up there would act if he tortured someone. But I pressed on and got a price six times bigger than his opening bid. I also dumped the twelve worn slaves on him with a promise that he''d offer them release when they returned to full health. I''d come back to check in the future.


    I didn''t sell the writ though. I still needed it to release my own slaves at home. I took the release seal home with me. Everything else in the caravanserai I owned was sold even Nanna''s old spot.


    Then I resumed my shopping spree, buying things in bulk. Barrels of live oil, fifty-kilogram bags of rock salt, salted meat, spools of burlap canvas, all the bamboo available and some shoots to start my own grove, big ceramic jars with honey, blocks of beeswax, essential oils to make perfume, a crate of clove, and clothes. Lots of clothes.


    My shopping spree was met by a sudden inflation spike as the supply dwindled. One of the caravans even decided to switch directions, sell the remainder of their wares after I bought half of their cargo. They will restock and return south and east. The trip north won''t be profitable anymore. After my shopping spree, Several wagons departed to take the goods I bought home and I counted what I had from the slavers'' assets. Twenty-three gold shekels. I spent about one hundred and forty-something around the market.


    I was spending coin and clad in gold, not to mention the rumors I had Abil-Kisu''s favor, I could get a lot of quotes for the goods I had. I could appraise the cargo I looted from the destroyed caravan. The kegs of wine were very expensive. The premium beverage is from a vineyard that only sells to nobility. Each keg was worth twenty to thirty gold shekels. I had six. The deer pelts were also a luxury good. Each pelt was worth four silver mina, or two-thirds of a gold shekel.


    Back at the spot claimed by my group, I gave each girl a rough linen dress and each man a tunic. I also had kebabs bought for them. The mix of sliced roasted meat, vegetables in a specially baked bread crust made some of the former slaves cry.


    Former slaves. I''m getting everyone released this afternoon when we return home.


    I take the branding iron with the release seal. "Are all of you sure you don''t want to go free? All you have to do is ask. I''ll give you one silver shekel if you go. But if you want to stay, then you make sure you''ll not betray me later. Come on your own two legs."


    Twelve adult women decide to take the offer. They offer me their forearms and I brand them. I have to do it myself. I also won''t let the young girls go. I asked and none of them had family that would take them back. One of them even hid from me because she would just be sold again if she was returned. From the forty-two that got out of the pens, I was taking eighteen home. Five children, three men, and ten women, three of them looked almost as old as Nanna.


    And they were forty years old.


    I gathered my group to go away. Eighteen guards, five of them from home, the others from the traders, the eighteen slaves, and I. I searched for Nanna and she was coming with Penny.


    Oh, my. Penny! I''d forgotten Penny! I ran to meet the mare but she backed off. Only after a lot of goading did she let me touch her again. I felt she demanding to stay with me the whole day and go out for a run. I promised her a trip outside town tomorrow.


    I was way too busy today.


    I took Nanna, Penny and two eunuchs with me and dispatched the rest in a convoy back home. They would help escort the high-profile good. The honey and olive oil were very valuable. My destination wasn''t home. I wanted to recruit someone. The inn maid, Arwia.

 Afternoon 7

    I needed people I could trust with the middle management or I''d go crazy. Especially I needed someone smart enough to run my projects and trustworthy enough to not sell my secrets to the highest bidder. After talking to Nanna, she asked me what I thought about the inn maid I''ve met.


    Arwia was a seventeen-year-old girl, sold as a debt slave by her father two years ago to the innkeeper. As any men do with the female slaves that strike their fancy, he took Arwia''s chastity and attempted regularly to impregnate her. Yes, let''s write it like this so I don''t have to commit too many expletives to the digital paper.


    The older sister of six, her mother died in childbirth seven years ago. Up until then, she was the lynchpin of the family, keeping her husband''s gambling habits in check and managing the family''s meager finances and the children''s education exemplary. After she was gone, the husband went into an ever-descending spiral, spending more than he could earn, selling their possessions, and getting deeper and deeper into debt. The loan sharks stopped giving him any more money and they started to attempt to collect their due. What did he do? He sold his eldest daughter to a certain innkeeper.


    Nanna was friends with the innkeeper''s wife and she told me that the woman disliked the girl. The truth was that she feared being replaced. Arwia suffered under the wife during the day and suffered under the husband during the night.


    She learned how to read, write, and do the math from her mother, a jewel hidden in the night-soil-swamp that were the slums. And now I was going to make her mine. Not really mine but I''d offer the innkeeper something he couldn''t refuse.


    Maybe I''d even play the role of a mafia boss. And if the innkeeper doesn''t like it, he can go... attempt to impregnate himself.


    We reached the inn and entered, leaving Penny outside. The place doesn''t even have a door. That might be the reason they cut off thieves'' hands. The punishment must be harsh or everyone would be one. Anyway, I remembered locks and postponed that project. I promised I''d do it today but I''m too damn busy. The inn was almost deserted. There are not too many patrons. I honestly think the location is bad. To get travelers, the inn should be in the north-south axis of the town, where the merchant wagons go through. It didn''t take long for Arwia to find us.


    "Miss, welcome. Madam Nanna, too. What can I get you?"


    I was divided between asking for some dark ale or joking that I wanted her but Nanna went before I could make my mind.


    "Call the mistress. I want to talk to her."


    The girl went pale and dashed into the kitchen. I think I did right in associating myself with the witch. She could even stay as a freeloader, I wouldn''t mind. Nanna is invaluable as my guide in this weird world. If I only could convice her to wear a tuxedo and a top hat... While I digressed, the maid returned with the innkeeper''s wife.


    "Nanna! What a pleasure to have you in my inn. And who is the lady by your side! Welcome, welcome. Please have a seat. Girl, bring us some drinks."


    We took a table in the otherwise empty taproom.


    "Nice to meat you. I''m Sandra Rinaldi," I introduced myself and extended a hand to her.


    "Oh, miss Rinaldi! I heard about you, you are the talk of the town! What an honor to have the miss in my humble inn. You even rested for a night here, didn''t you? Oh, where are my manners? I''m Tiazi."


    "Well met, Tiazi," I answered.


    I was the talk of the town? Oh, well. I did cause a few ripples here and there. I could even imagine Brandon raising his blonde eyebrow and staring at me, asking back ''a few?''. And I''d blush. Then we would find a grassy field, and...


    I stopped my wet delusions to see that Nanna was staring at me and so was the innkeeper''s wife.


    "So, as I was saying, what brings such an esteemed lady to my inn?" Tiazi asked.


    I calmed myself and went straight to the point. "If you allow me to be blunt, I am here to buy Arwia. I need her to help me."


    The silence that followed my declaration was broken by pewter mugs dropping on the floorboards and spilling ale all over Nanna and the innkeeper''s wife''s skirts.


    Tiazi looked at me, "Three silver mina and she''s yours."


    I showed her one finger, "She only has one year left in her. One."


    "Two. The lady is very rich. Please."


    "Deal!" I tossed her the two huge silver coins. "Nanna is our witness."


    We looked at her. Arwia was frozen. "Me? Lady Rinaldi wants me?"


    "Cleanup this mess, girl," Tiazi shouted.


    She stood up and raised a hand to hit her. I held her wrist. "You better not hit my people," I warned her.


    I moved past Tiazi and held the stunned Arwia by the shoulders.


    Nanna was cackling. "Let them go, Tiazi. You got three times the girl''s worth."


    Who knows how the witch''s sense of humor works. I was pushing Arwia in the direction of the front door, Tiazi was regretting selling Arwia before she could clean her parting gift, Nanna was catching her breath when the door was blocked by the innkeeper.


    "Oh, great. We have guests. Welcome," He said and glanced over us at his wife picking up the tray and the mugs from the floor. He saw Arwia in front of me and anger took over his face. "Why aren''t you cleaning the floor, you bar wench? Do I have to hit..."


    He raised his hand and I swapped places with Arwia, expecting to be hit. Nanna said two short words that resounded in the whole inn. Something invisible slammed the innkeeper and he flew two meters back and out of the inn, falling on the street cobblestones.


    "You stupid moron," The witch cursed. "Stop right now or the horse will kick you!"


    I focused on our bond to stop Penny from making innkeeeper pure¨¦. I glanced over my shoulder, Nanna was standing up and moving toward us. I regarded her as a force of nature. I just waited for something to happen while restraining my newest hire from escaping. Not for a lack of trying.


    "It is fine, Arwia. I''ll protect you," I told her. "Just stay near me."


    The innkeeper recovered his wits and was standing up, "What in the abyss happened here? Was it you, woman? Why are you holding my maid?"


    He glowered at me. I''d learned my lesson at the caravanserai. People pay much more attention to you when you flaunt wealth. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad. Seldom very good but often very bad. So I fiddled with my ruby and gold necklace.


    "Your wife sold me Arwia. Now if you step aside, we can go on our way. Please?"


    "Tia, did you sell Arwia? On whose authority, woman? Undo this business right now."


    Nanna reached us. She raised her eyes until she could look at the innkeeper''s face. "Step aside or I''ll give you another concussive blast. And I won''t hold back this time, scum."


    A man this szie flew back two meters and she was holding back? Is that what the gods consider lesser magic? More importantly, could I use it too? Would Nanna teach me? I could wear a pointy hat, no problem. It''d be halloween every day. Instead of a piss-poor living health-code-violation renaissance fair I was stuck in. Dream on, Sandra.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    But the witch was far from done. "But now that you are here, hurry up and go fetch the girl''s contract. It now belongs to lady Rinaldi. And I bet you know what happened to the last four merchants that dared to cross her."


    He looked around and found his wife. The woman was glaring daggers at him. I didn''t like the last line she said but whatever allowed me to get away from here with my employee without bloodshed would be fine.


    Yeah, look at me. A week in another world and I was already considering bloodshed as a viable outcome. I was afraid of what a month would do.


    "Mister, your wife has the money I paid for her," I added. "Get the contract and we will be on our way." And nobody gets hurt. Not.


    "Just go, you big oaf!" The wife had a pewter mug in her hand. If the lead poisoning doesn''t kill you...


    Arwia was shaking like a bamboo shoot in a storm. I didn''t resist and hugged her. The innkeeper walked in and we sidestepped to avoid bumping into him. He returned with a small scroll. Nanna took it, looked at the contents, and finally pushed us past the threshold.


    Outside, the girl finally spoke, "Why me?" She was on the verge of tears.


    "I need you to organize my employees," I answered. "Pay wages, listen do complaints, settle disputes. I also have nine children in need of tutoring. Nanna told me you are good with children."


    She basically raised her siblings.


    "Nanna," I continued. "Stay here with Arwia and Penny. I''m going to give the innkeeper some saving grace."


    I go inside. The innkeeeper and the wife are having an argument in the kitchen. I barge in and they both stop to loook at me.


    "Would you take on a commission for me? I need you to prepare me for dinner for fifty people today. I''ll pay two gold shekels, ingredients included if you do."


    A pint of their ale sells for two bronze chips. A bowl of stew with bread sells for one copper shekel. If a patron eats and drinks six pints, they''d need to serve over four hundred patrons to make a single gold shekel.


    I can feel the gears in the Tiazi''s head cranking. She opens up a wide smile. "For that price, we''ll serve the ale too. I know where you are living, leave it to us. We''ll load the tankards of our best ale on a cart and meet you there once we buy everything in the market."


    I give her a gold shekel. She hides it in her cleavage. "I see you there then."


    Before I returned home, I had two stops. The first one was the central marketplace, to buy as much tallow and lard I could. The second was the glassblower. There I ordered a big convex lens. I''d have to return later for glassware, but the lens would be a good icebreaker. In the road home, I noticed the increaed wagon traffic. One of the wagons coming back empty was from the smithy. I recognized one of the apprentices.


    I entered through the gates. The feeling that everything was a dream increased. The guards bowing as I walked past them. A real witch on my side. A scared girl trying to find out her place on the other side. Everything happened so fast I couldn''t believe. We went around the two-story sandstone building and into the back. One of the guards ran ahead to give the warning.


    After a few minutes, I assembled everyone in the backyard. Except the guards manning the gate, eveyrone was gathered. A barrel and some crates served as a dais for my speech. I looked around. Belle-Sunu, Arwia, Nanna, Aristunn, the other eunuchs, the guards from the three merchants. Hama-Tula''s children, the other slaves that came with the house. The others that came from the caravanserai. All of them waitng for me to say something.


    I thought about the week I''ve spent here. I changed. A lot. I woke up in that forest, watched powerless the caravan''s demise. Got penny, met Nanna. Got tangled up in Hama-Tula''s web. Back on Earth, I was a follower. Now I am a leader. I have around fifty people here, eagerly waiting to hear what I have to say. What changed? What motivated this change? Was this what Lord Acton was warning against? Was I becoming some corrupt entity because I had power?


    I touched the necklace, played with the gold strands. Decompose would allow me to make things against which this necklace would be a mere trinket. I was stabbed in the heart and survived. Who wouldn''t change given superpowers? I was afraid. Except for Nanna, every person there was my slave. I was a certified slave merchant. I bought and sold people. Worse, in the environment I was, it was considered normal. The usual backlash society would deliver upon me did not happen.


    Why do we refrain from committing crimes? Isn''t it because of the law? Because we fear punishment? Would a common person have the moral fiber to act righteously and remain true to her principles if nobody was watching? In zombie movies, people turn to looting. Some of them even leave money behind on a counter that will never be manned again. Who am I? What kind of monster is wearing Sandra''s skin right now?


    I don''t know. I was just a dedicated student back on Earth. Here, I became someone else. Roleplaying. I''ll erode and vanish, getting reborn differently. But I made everyone wait for too long. I turned to GoPro on and told Aristunn to go around pointing it at the slaves and at me. We still had sunlight but in an hour and a half or so, it would be gone. I had a hunch the days had a different length here.


    As my trusted bodyguard went around recording the scene, with uneasy steps, I climbed the crates and stood up on the barrel. It didn''t wobble because it was filled with water.


    "Attention, please," I start my speech. "I know you have lots of questions and I don''t even know your names yet, but we''ll fix it with time. First, thank all of you for being here. You had the choice of going away on a caravan, of being set free but you chose to be here. I''m thankful. I''m going to say a lot of strange things and I guess I''ll need to repeat some of them later but I want you to repeat one thing with me. Each one of you here is important to me. Please, let''s do this team-building exercise. Repeat, ''I am important''. Because it is not a lie."


    Nanna cackles. The laughter of the witch makes everyone uneasy and silent. Then she catches her breath and says. "I am important, there you go." And resumes her laughter. "Good grief!" She mumbles.


    I am beet red. I thought and thought of what to say and the first thing I do is met with laughter. Maybe it is better than flying vegetables.


    Some of the slaves mumble. One of the women from the caravanserai claps her hand. "The first day with a new master and you are already disobeying her orders? I''ll say it. I am important."


    Her words triggered the kind of reaction I deserved, but not the one I needed. They mumbled and repeated, and I could see the cognitive dissonance stamped in their faces. It was a start.


    "Now, let me tell you something about me. I am not from this world," I continued. But the word for ''world'' and ''people'' were the same. So I had to embellish and explain a little more. "I am not from this world, this land here. I am from a place far away up there, among the stars. Another land like this, floating around another sun. I come from beyond the sky. I lived in my world until I almost died. Tarhun brought me here to live in this land."


    Disbelief, awe, religious fervor. I didn''t use the tablet on them but I was sure it would buzz stronger. Some of them started to talk among themselves again.


    "And in the world I lived, things were very different. The laws were different. We didn''t have slaves. Not for a long time. We had but we found out that slavery was bad. There were other differences too but I''ll talk about them later. Now, I am going to tell you something..."


    One of the guards came and I had to stop my speech to hear.


    "There is a couple at the gates saying they came to cook dinner."


    The innkeeper. I pointed to Belle-Sunu. "Belle, go there and show them the way to the kitchen. Stay there to oversee them. You are in charge."


    The young freckled girl ran back to the gate with the guard. I continued my speech. I explained how I found the caravan, met Nanna, got tangled with Hama-Tula, the judicial trial by water, the three merchants and then reaching today. A busy week.


    "As long as you are willing to stay here and work here, there will be no punishments. If you give your best, I''ll pay you a wage. We will have several tasks to do. And if any of you want to leave, I still have the writ of release and the branding iron. I want you to stay here because you want to, not because you are slaves. If you decide to stay, maybe, maybe, we can build a better life for ourselves.


    "I brought Arwia here so she can teach the children the letters and numbers. If you want to learn, we can arrange a time for that too. Today, we will feast. I brought an innkeeper to cook for us. And there will be some rules."


    I explained to them they were forbidden from eating with dirty hands. I bought some ash soap in the market, it was terrible. Greasy, ashen. Guaranteed to put stains in all the wrong places and destroy any white. But that was what we had for now. I had some guards put a set of trays on a table and showed them how to lather and rinse the hands. The last tray would have to be replaced with every washing. Then I made everyone line up and clean their hands. I gasped at how dirty the water came out. Some of them had terrible fingernails. I clipped their fingernails. Most slaves refused to let me because it was beneath a slave master.


    I was not a slave master. I bought and sold people, that was true. But I gave them a choice. I told to myself that trimming their fingernails was part of my atonement. I didn''t dislike doing that. So maybe just a bit. Maybe.


    I miss home, where my biggest moral dilemma was why my advisor was secretly a mad cultist-murderer.


    I asked for some names. I hope my memory perk works. Some asked about the GoPro. Some asked about life among the stars. A few that heard the story, asked about if I was really stabbed in the heart. I promised to show them proof. I wanted that convex lens so bad. With it, I could project an image from my computer on a big screen. Here''s wishing a good job for the glassblower. We changed the water of the trays. They found washing hands a new experience. Most of the slaves were from a raid in another city-state.


    The young girls from the slave market tried to play with Hama-Tula''s children but they didn''t want to mingle. I''d let them on their own unless some kind of bullying happened.


    The night was falling and it was finally time to eat. The innkeeper never did the stew on the same day as it was served. The meat was softened through one day or two of simmering. They sold me the stew for today and tomorrow. They returned to the inn and would be back for their kegs, tankards, and tableware later.


    I separated a keg of ale for the guards that would be on night duty. Everyone else ate and drank to their hearts'' content.


    Night fell and they lit some torches. The party went on until they finished all the food and drink the innkeeper brought.


    I retrieved the GoPro and went to my room to sleep. One week. So many changes.

 Week 1 - Cast

    Sandra Hikari Kinoshita Rinaldi -


    Born on Earth from an Italo-American father and a daughter of Japanese immigrants, she lived in Italy, Japan, Brazil, and the United States as she followed her parents during their work assignments. She was 160cm tall and had an average-to-thin body build. She had to wear glasses for her nearsightedness. She likes motion pictures too much. Before she died on Earth, she was a 3rd-year undergraduate student of Environmental Sciences with a partial scholarship. Speaks five idioms, English, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and French. Her extracurricular activities included four years of singing, four years of Capoeira and two years of Aikido. Died at the age of 21 from divine intervention gone slightly wrong and was transported into another world by Tarhun. She brought with her all the gear she took to the camp, plus the trash she collected and her murderous advisor''s night vision goggles.


    Tenured Professor Andrews -


    Teacher at the Earth Sciences Institute and advisor to Sandra, he also leads an NGO focused on environmental cleanup operations. Secretly a worshipper of a deity called "The Dark One", he used his influence to allow a group of students to do a sex-and-drugs fueled rave in a forestal reserve. The rave was actually a ritual for the Dark One. Once Sandra found evidence of the ritual, he decided to kill her after she erased the evidence but couldn''t complete the deed because Tarhun killed Sandra first. His fate after the girl''s death is unknown.


    Theresa -


    Sandra''s Roommate is an easygoing, laidback, and thrill-seeking girl. She likes to indulge in her own body a little too much and wants to break Sandra out of her shell. She is not a Dark One worshipper and did not attend the rave even though she was invited because she''s not into drugs. Winners don''t do drugs, and Theresa is a winner even though might not be a keeper. The Keeper, Professor Andrews, did drugs. And not only the recreative type.


    Joshua -


    One of the 10 most coveted male human steaks in the whole student body, according to Theresa. Served raw, preferentially. She''d totally write a paper or five on that student''s body. Sandra''s classmate and a member of the NGO led by Professor Andrews, he went to the reserve to help with the cleanup. He was drugged by the Professor so he couldn''t help Sandra. He totally would.


    Ivan -


    The fourth wheel. Has an exquisite sense of humor.


    Tarhun -


    AKA Tarhuna, Teshub, Teshup, Enli, Tesub, Taru, and several other names as any self-respecting god should have. We are going with Tarhun only. The chief of the Hattian-Akkadian-Hittite pantheon. Yes, we are committing a historical inaccuracy for the sake of literary entertainment. Bear with it.


    Worshipped on Earth between 2,300 BC to 1,100 BC, He lost favor and eventually faded from the Earth''s divine sphere. Claims that all thunder gods that came after him were copycats. He moved some of his believers to other worlds and nurtured them there. He dislikes the presence of other pantheons in his world. Has an enemy he calls only "The Dark One" that still influences Earth because kids are into sex-and-drugs fueled raves even to this day.


    Balthazar -


    Caravan master and luxury goods trader, he and his whole caravan were wiped out from an attack by two rage-apes (local designation) or "Silverback Kongs" (as Sandra named them).


    Penny-Gu "Penny" (in English) "Honey Cake" (in Akkadian)


    One of the draft horses pulling Balthazar''s wagons. This caramel mare dislikes pulling loads very much, likes running free very much. She bonded with Sandra once the human rescued her from a bramble thicket the mare ran into and snagged the harnesses attached to her.


    Nanna the Caravanserai Witch (It means "moon" in modern Akkadian) -


    An elderly witch that still has too much spring on her legs. Age unknown. Had an ongoing feud with some thug gang but since she could cast spells and make potions and they couldn''t, she had the upper hand. People are afraid of curses so she was treated with the utmost respect. Met Sandra while gathering herbs outside town and after sensing the girl''s absurd levels of magical power, decided to take Sandra under her wing. After her tent was destroyed, she decided to move in with Sandra and liked the change very much. She never said she was a good person.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Fancytoga" Hama-Tula (the nickname given by Sandra) -


    One of the merchant lords of the town. Had fingers in too many pies and several of them spoiled. Owes debts that are almost as much as his net worth. Had minor magical powers and could sense the magic talent of people, which gave him an edge in slave trading. Met Sandra at the caravanserai and decided that the girl would be his golden ticket out of debt once he sold her to Prince Marduk-Sapik-Ziarat of a neighbor kingdom. Focused and relentless once set on a path, he spared no expenses to try and get the girl. Eventually cornered and taken to a judicial trial by water, he was tossed into the river and eaten by some tentacle monster that found a spot where tasty people suddenly appeared sometimes. The tentacle monster is definitely not an evolved mimic.


    Arwia the (former) barmaid -


    Seventeen-years old and Eldest daughter of six. She lost her mother ten years ago and helped her father raise her siblings on her own. Homeschooled by her mother, yearned for a better life but her father accrued too much debt from his gambling addiction and had to sell her into slavery. She was bought by an innkeeper two years ago and worked at the inn. She dislikes and resents her master, father, and workplace very much. Met Sandra when she slept one night there and was subsequently bought by Sandra to help raise some kids.


    Prince Marduk-Sapik-Ziarat -


    The crown prince of a neighboring kingdom. Is building a harem of exotic beauties and is paying the woman''s weight in gold to whoever brings him an adequate one.


    Aristunn -


    Hama-Tula''s eunuch bodyguard. After all of his master''s possessions including himself went to Sandra and witnessing the divine talents and kindness of the girl, he decided to devote his life to protect her. Sometimes used as a cameraman for Sandra''s videoblogs. He feels honored to be allowed to handle the divine artifact called "GoPro".


    Captain Brandon Al-Amir (Sometimes typo''ed by the Author as Brendan) - That''s amateur writing for you. No reviewers or editors cause this kind of inaccuracy.


    Guard captain of the town. Son of refugees and not form the Hittite-Akkadian ethnical group. Blonde, well-built, handsome, totally hot 10/10 would date him, according to Sandra. Has a soft spot for her but suspects that she''d be too high-maintenance. Is a traditionalist and because of that keeps his distance from that weird girl that is turning the town''s order upside down. Owes some sort of life debt to Samus the blacksmith and agreed to start training Sandra in combat techniques.


    Master blacksmith Albert Samus -


    A sorcerer by birth and blacksmith by trade. He came to town in one of the several refugee waves. One of the two owners of the town''s largest smithy workshop and a close friend of Nanna the Witch. Met Sandra for the first time when Nanna came to him to ask for help rescuing some girl from the evil clutches of Hama-Tula. After seeing the girl''s power over metal, he invited her to discuss a trade partnership to exploit her power as a cheaper source of metal. He entered a trade agreement with her when she showed him she could extract iron from slag.


    The Magistrate -


    Official judge and ruler of the courthouse, he forsook his name upon taking the position. He has a dislike for people that come back alive from his trials because it means he has little power over them. When informed that a monster took residence in his favorite trial spot and was interfering with the fairness of the trial by throwing people bound to rocks into a river, he gave Sandra permission to kill the monster if she brings back proof. Regretted immediately when he learned she can record videos.


    Banunu -


    The first wife of Hama-Tula. A bitter and vengeful woman and mother of five, she didn''t like it when Hama-Tula took a slave as his second wife and was currently trying to turn the cook girl of all people into the third wife. She kept a bottle of poisoned wine hidden in the cellar for when she was done with her husband - when he cleared his debts, that is - but after her husband died she decided to use it to kill Sandra instead. It didn''t work because of her divine boons. She sold her children to Sandra to remove them from the succession line and therefore shield them from debt collectors. She fled town with the second wife to avoid losing her dowry and getting enslaved because of the debt.


    Rubati -


    Second wife of Hama-Tula. She was a slave that got impregnated by her master and was raised to the position of wife. Had no dowry and was forced to take the same deal as Banunu. She sold her children and fled. It is unknown if the two are still together or if Banunu wouldn''t just settle old grudges.


    Belle-Sunu (or "just Belle because it means beautiful") -


    Fourteen years old. Slaveborn (daughter of slaves) working in the house of Hama-Tula, this freckled and lovely girl (as perceived by Sandra) worked as a cook during the day and prospective third wife in the night. Shy and reserved, she is still coming to terms at receiving true affection from her mistress without any strings attached. Like having to provide night services at such a tender age.


    Rimush-


    Thirteen years old. The firstborn son of Hama-Tula with Banunu. Knows how to read, write and do basic math operations. Sold to Sandra to cut himself off from Hama-Tula''s succession line and shield him from the debt.


    Anaya -


    Eight years old. Daughter of Hama-Tula and Rubati. Like any child her age should, she misses her parents very much. She barely understands what happened but is determined to follow her older brother''s lead.


    Merchant lord Abil-Kisu -


    The most powerful merchant in town. He has fingers in several pies but tries to leave room for the others. Respected by fairness in his deals. Met Sandra in a party thrown to celebrate the birth of his firstborn son. He disliked Hama-Tula underhanded methods and the other merchants'' dishonorable practices. He decided to keep a closer eye on Sandra to see if she didn''t take over the other merchants by force.


    Priest Bero-Mabii -


    High priest of Tarhun. Noticed the abnormal amount of lightning bolts falling on otherwise clear, dry, and warm weather the last few days and after investigating it, connected them to the presence of the foreigner girl, Sandra. After evaluating Sandra at the party, he decided that she is really sent by Tarhun and didn''t push the issue further. He also wants to keep a closer eye on her to see if she really is a divine envoy or a ploy.


    Master goldsmith Lu-Ninurta -


    This old goldsmith should be retired if retirement was already invented. He was impressed by Sandra''s gold-and-ruby choker and that encounter rekindled his passion for crafting jewelry.


    Master blacksmith Aran -


    Ten years younger and partner to Samus. He likes to try new things and thinks the art of blacksmithing is stagnated. He is right.


    Tiazi -


    Wife of the innkeeper and friends with Nanna. She dislikes Arwia because no woman likes to share their husbands. Tries to keep her husband in a tight leash but that''s hard to do in that society. Didn''t bat an eyelid to agree into selling Arwia to Sandra, she just wanted to squeeze money from the rich girl. After all, that gold-and-emerald choker should be worth at least a few gold minas.

 Morning 8

    The day had a slow start. Everyone was slow from the feast yesterday, and it was perfectly fine. I did my morning routine and once again decided to leave the choker on. I even put on the matching earrings and tied my hair in a ponytail. I made sure to keep one small piece or shard of every item from Earth I was wearing inside storage. Today I had training in the morning and work at home in the afternoon.


    I opened the door to find Aristunn guarding it. I slimed at the devoted Eunuch. "Aristunn, you are promoted to senior guard. All guards and soldiers are now under your command. You are to set the schedule in order to make sure every guard that works during the day has eight hours of rest and every guard that works during the night has ten. Understood?"


    He nodded but then paused. "We don''t have clocks."


    So clocks are a thing. "Are clocks expensive?"


    He nodded. "Only the richest people in town have clocks. Hama-Tula didn''t."


    I was suspicious this world didn''t have a twenty-four-hour rotation like Earth. It felt faster, about twenty-one hours if I had to guess. Measuring it properly would take a year at least though. I''d have to leave one of my devices outside to avoid the time freezing of the storage. One more thing in the list of stuff to do. A minor one actually. I glanced back at the room I slept in. It wasn''t the master bedroom. I still didn''t go there. I knew I''d have the whole place redecorated and furnished with new things. I didn''t want to sleep in the same bed Hama-Tula did. Eww.


    But that was also something that would have to wait. I had several things of higher importance than claiming the place. I went downstairs and found the children eating breakfast. Both groups, the girls from the caravanserai and Hama-Tula''s children. Arwia and Belle were leaning against the wall separating the dining room from the kitchen and once they saw me, they stopped talking and seemed wary.


    "Good morning girls. Good thinking with the children''s breakfast. They have to eat a lot to grow strong. Keep up the good work."


    Both girls stopped holding their breaths. "I told you, Arwia!" Belle playfully pushed the older girl away. "Sandra wouldn''t mind if the children ate before her."


    "She''s right. Arwia, take your time. Get to know everyone. Don''t mess with Nanna. And please, if you have any doubts, talk to me."


    "Yes, mistress," The former barmaid bowed.


    "And cut this mistress crap," they didn''t understand my slang translated into Akkadian so I rephrased. "Stop that kind of treatment. I''m not a mistress. You are to call me by my given name. Sandra."


    "That''s improper!" Arwia protested.


    "If you still think like a slave, girl," I approached her trying to sound menacing. "Then you will heed this! You will call me Sandra, that''s an order!" I hugged her. For some reason, I was really needy of some human contact. "Arwia, arwia. In my world there''s a fairy tale princess called Arwen, did you know?"


    Belle snorted, "Your world has a lot of stories about princesses!" She commented.


    "Oh, that they have. They have stories of princesses fair and wicked. Stories about kidnapped princesses. even stories of boys becoming princesses." Too bad I won''t get to read how that one will end because I died before the author resumed writing it. "And I know the stories. I might tell them to you if you call me Sandra, you know?"


    "If that''s an order..." Arwia answered, clearly embarrassed.


    "No! It is not an order, I was joking. It is a request. In this household, my word is not absolute, Arwia. Please. I''m just asking. Don''t call me mistress, call me Sandra."


    "Just do it," Belle pulled Arwia by the arm. "You''ll get used to it. Give her a few days, Sandra."


    "No problem. Belle, I''m hungry."


    The cook giggled. "Right away, miss... Sandra!" She teased then dashed into the kitchen.


    I took a seat between the children. Elbows rested on the table, I crossed my fingers and hid my mouth like some famous abusive father and secret mecha organization boss.


    "Okay, kids. Now it is between you and me. If any of you brats call me mistress, I''ll have to tickle you until you yield." I raised my arms and wiggled my fingers. The children laughed and squealed as children should. It was refreshing. "Good. Today I want you to play around and get to know each other. I don''t care about your upbringing, in this house you are all equal. Tomorrow you''ll begin taking lessons from Arwia with Rimush''s help. You cool with that, ''champ?"


    The boy stared confused. But he nodded. "I''ll help! I can do it."


    "Good. Look, my food arrived."


    I ate breakfast and left for the training grounds with two guards as escorts. I was riding Penny and they were on horses that came with the estate. It was good that they came with me because I had no idea where the guard training grounds were. And by ''guard'', they meant army. The town was a city-state, vassal to a bigger one but in most aspects an independent political entity. It meant that it had to have its own army. In times of peace, the army was responsible for enforcing the laws and patrolling the streets.


    The training grounds were in the backyard of the big military complex. The building was made of sandstone bricks like the courthouse and my house. If I had to guess it could host a thousand soldiers. Plus or minus nine hundred. We asked for directions and a soldier stationed at the main gates directed us to a side street where we found a back gate. The sounds of metal clashing and hitting wood rang as we crossed the gate and took in the sight of the backyard.


    There were hundreds of soldiers practicing. Some of them were running along a track that went around the complex behind the walls. Training dummies, archery range, muscular men with shirtless torsos glistening with sweat. This training grounds would give me diabetes from all the eye candy. But I was here not for mere sugary candy, I was here for the gold-topped seven-tiered velvety designer cake called Brandon.


    I stood up on my stirrups and looked around. And there I found him, the golden top of his head glowing like a second sun. I sighed. If only he wasn''t so stiff in the wrong places. Penny understood my wishes and clopped toward the open ground he was standing in. I got down in a practiced motion and patted the mare''s neck. Penny seemed very happy and I remembered I had promised her to go on a ride.


    "We''ll go after I finish training, okay?" I told her. "Now be a good girl and keep watch over the other two horses."


    She snorted and pressed her forehead against mine. I hugged her snout and let Penny go.


    "Miss Rinaldi. You are late," Brandon spoke.


    I took a good look at him. He was wearing a set of linen shirts and trousers with leather sandals. I was in my explorer outfit made of a cotton white shirt, brown cargo pants, and hiking boots.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "I''m sorry, instructor Brandon. I had to find my way here but we''ll come on schedule tomorrow." I bowed respectfully.


    "That''s fine. You are not that late. Today I want you to show me what you can do. We will talk about what weapons best suit your fighting style tomorrow. You might want to take off your jewelry."


    I smiled and removed my earrings. He pointed at his own neck and I touched the choker. "It is welded shut. I''d have to cut it. Don''t worry, it won''t be a hindrance. I have to visit the goldsmith to get a proper clasp installed."


    "Okay. We don''t want to ruin the delicate piece though. Let''s start." He took an unarmed fighting stance. "I want you to attack me. Don''t worry, I won''t fight back. Try to avoid dirty blows but don''t pull back your punches. You may start."


    I needed to get myself in a good fighting mood. I closed my eyes and remembered the voice of that recently-molted homewrecker social butterfly. How interested she was in Brandon. Yeah, that hit the spot. I did a series of warm-ups, noticing how flexible my body was. It felt like I was back in my rubbery fourteen-year-old body.


    Once my muscles were properly stretched and warmed up, I dragged my legs into sweeping moves and got into a good Ginga. I could hear the berimbau and atabaques playing in my mind and I moved forward to attack. I fainted the start of a straight kick, ben??o, but retreated my support leg to the ground and spun the other leg around, delivering a roundhouse martelo kick. Brandon blocked with his forearm.


    "Good speed and strength. Keep it up," He said and kept his guard up.


    I kept moving around and my next blow was a pis?o aimed at his shin. Well-delivered, it would put him off-balance. On the iron wall that was his body, it felt more like I was climbing him. His leg didn''t budge. I threw a straight punch and he snapped with his right to grab my wrist. Oh, boy.


    I stepped outside his immediate front as I twisted my hand to grab his wrist and clapped my other hand on the back of his. I put a twist on his wrist and pressed hard on his articulation, putting pressure on the ulnar nerve. Nikkyo, the second aikido technique. Wrist control. With his arm twisting as a natural reflex to avoid the wrist pain, I brought Brandon on his knees. I slowly returned his wrist to a comfortable position and released it. Taking a step back, I bowed.


    He didn''t leave his kneeling position, taking his time to rub his wrist. He divested his eyes from the wrist and met mine. I was worried. It''s been some time I''d trained aikido and these techniques could cause serious injury if done wrong in a training situation. My worries melted as he opened a wide smile. putting pressure on his knee, he lifted his inverted pyramid of deltoids, pecs, and abs.


    "Very good. Very good indeed." He clapped his hands. "I''ve never seen anything like that."


    Brandon''s gaze went sideways and I followed. Some soldiers came to see the captain training with a girl.


    "Seems we have a crowd to please now," I joked.


    "Indeed. I bet some of them would love to see me have my ass kicked by a ''lovely lady such as yourself''," He said. I must admit my memory blessing wasn''t working very well. I might''ve embellished some facts.


    I giggled. I felt electricity run through my arms. Maybe I was turning into Blanka. "Well, now I have to do my best to make it real. Come, big one. Prepare to the beating of your life."


    He didn''t raise his guard so I waited. "I heard you got your heart pierced. Was that true?"


    "Who told you that?" I tilted my head, mildly annoyed my name was on the grapevine.


    "The magistrate," He smiled.


    "Well, do you think such an esteemed paragon of our society would lie? He didn''t, by the way."


    "Then you can take some punishment," He grinned.


    ''Yes, I''ve been a bad girl'', I thought. "You can attack. Just don''t break me."


    "Here I go!"


    The guy was fast for someone his size. That mass of lean human 3% max fat content meat came and I barely had time to deflect the first punches. The thing was, he was experienced, I didn''t doubt he was in more than one bar fight, but he didn''t have technique. I dodged, ducked, deflected, and took his blows, giving ground and circling around. I was flexible, agile, and both martial arts I trained focused on keeping oneself whole. Defending. I got some bruises from the raw potency of his punches and as the exchange moved on he stopped pulling his strength. The blows were coming at full power as if he was trying to hurt me for real.


    Then he connected a perfect haymaker. I felt my jaw crunch and I spun first on the air then on the ground. I tasted blood.


    "Sandra!" Brandon rushed to pick me up and hold me. "Medic!" He shouted.


    I kept my lips shut and felt the teeth he dislodged shifting back in position. I was Dafne Keen. I swallowed the blood that pooled in my mouth and as my vision focused, I met his eyes and smiled.


    "Sandra are you okay?" He asked.


    My ears stopped ringing and I felt no more blood pooling in my mouth. I Decomposed the carbon out of everything in my mouth and swallowed the water and graphite. Sure I wouldn''t show a bloody grin, I spoke.


    "I''m okay. Don''t worry."


    He wiped the corner of my mouth. Oops, forgot the outside too. But it was risky. I could destroy my clothes. Then he showed me the bloody finger.


    "I''m sorry. I overdid it," He shook his head.


    I had to hold myself back. I wanted to take those lips, caress that golden scalp. I settled for a hug. I threw my arms around his neck and ignored some soldiers whistling.


    "I''m fine. I told you. Don''t worry. Don''t blame yourself."


    He let go and I slid out of his lap, hanging on his neck before I released and slid down to reach the ground. I slacked my jaw, held it and wiggled the bone sideways and back-and-forth. Then I grinned.


    "See? Perfectly fine." He didn''t answer. Brendan had a wry smile. "At least now you can believe that I was stabbed in the heart and survived. You wouldn''t believe how much I bled. I''m tough and heal fast."


    He chuckled. And he had dimples on his cheeks when he laughed. I was grinding my teeth to keep the squeal that threatened to come out. I had all the butterflies fluttering too.


    "Good. Now I have a good grasp of what you can and can not do. Let''s try a shortsword, okay? I''ve seen you with a longsword but I don''t know if it is a good match. You are fast and the longsword will get in your way. Did you train with any weapons before?"


    I trained the bo and katana with my grandfather and the fac?o in Brazil. Instead of trying to awkwardly explain it to him, I pulled my iPad and showed him pictures of me, training.


    "This is me on my grandfather''s training grounds. I trained with this sword, the katana. And also with this staff, the bo. And this... Is me training with the fac?o, a really long knife."


    Brandon touched the device, turned it around to see the back and then gave up trying to understand it. He quickly learned to use the touchscreen and I let him browse the photos. My martial arts album had nothing that would hurt decorum.


    "Very good form. I haven''t seen this kind of sword but you have a good stance. It is a slashing weapon, and this armor... what is it made of?"


    He gave me the iPad and I made it vanish in storage. "That is just some training protection. It won''t hold in a real fight. So, what do you think?"


    "The longsword is more for stabbing than slashing. I don''t think you''ll fight in large battles, so we can train you for duels only. If you show this to master Aran at the smithy, he might forge you one of these... katanas. You can definitely get a wooden one made and we can see how it fares. I''m very interested in seeing it in action."


    I nodded. I also wanted to see it in action. But today was not the day.


    He gave me a training sword and we did some basic sword drills. My grandfather was a traditionalist too and actually harsher than Brandon. I did the series he wanted, and It was a good workout. The only reason I wasn''t a puddle of putty and sweat, in the end, was because of my self-healing power. But there was another problem. Brandon handed me a linen sleeveless tunic.


    "Put this on. Your clothes are becoming transparent."


    He was avoiding to look at me and instead was glaring left and right at the soldiers that were watching me train. My sports bra was showing through the shirt. I put on the tunic to avoid troubling him.


    With my modesty protected, I did more exercises and two laps running around the compound. I used the pedometer in my iPod and each lap was about three and a half kilometers. And with that, morning practice was over.


    I returned to where Brandon was and waited for him to finish giving some rookies soldiers some instructions. I was stealing precious time from the captain but once he saw me he basically kicked the recruits away and jogged to where I was.


    "Are you done? Good. You need to stay under the sun more to get a good tan. So, visit the carpenters, get some wooden weapons made like the ones you showed me. I''ll see you tomorrow, one hand after sunset. Don''t be late."


    My complexion does not tan. I just get red until the skin flakes off. But I kept nodding like an idiot as I took in his delightful voice and watched his Adam''s apple bob.


    "Okay. I''ll be here. Thank you very much for the training, Brandon."


    "Okay. Take care."


    I summoned Penny and she ran to me. I didn''t whistle though. I got up on my horse, smiled and waved goodbye to my fighting instructor and rode out with my bodyguards. I really wanted to go home and take care of some itch I was having but that would have to wait until tonight. Maybe not, that bedroom is not soundproof. Anyway...


    We left the training grounds and went to the woodworking shop. It was near the smithy, less than a couple hundred meters away. There I showed the pictures and the measurements of the pieces I wanted. I paid in advance and they told me it would be done in three days.


    With that our morning was done. My escort and I ate at some roadside food stall before we left west. It was time to get to know the countryside.

 Afternooon 8

    We rode out of town. Penny whined and I could sense she was taunting the other horses to keep up with herself. I thought about what people said about her and nothing matched. This was not a lazy mare, this was a sprinter through and through. I was getting used to riding without a bridle, just sending her my will through our link. Penny was extremely smart also. So, why was she regarded as lazy?


    "Is it because you are a prima donna, Penny?" I ask the horse out loud.


    She relishes, shakes her head and buckles up to make me bump my butt in the saddle. I guess that she didn''t like the mental image of a prima donna.


    Oh, well. The roads around here are terrible. It seems the properties are claimed haphazardly and the road has to go around them. Because the properties are small, less than an acre in size, most of them, the road goes back and forth and sometimes you move two kilometers only to find yourself on the other side of the road. At least I got to see a lot of farms. Most of them are focused on subsistence, with a diverse amount of vegetables and orchards. It is very colorful, at least. Farmers wave at us, some of them shout threats.


    After a while, I removed the tunic Brendan gave me. My shirt was dry again. My goal is also in sight. There is a large rock just protruding from the ground and up. It looks like a miniature Devil''s Tower, like the one in Wyoming but shorter. The geometric columns are just like that. The geologist in me is salivating. I never got to visit Wyoming but the place is a rich source of ores and minerals. I expected to find veins exposed in the open. The only thing that told me it wouldn''t be so easy was the fact that the road leading there didn''t have any large wagons moving through it. Therefore, no mines.


    Samus also told that a trip to the mines took weeks, not a couple of hours. Maybe I could find some untapped resources. Yes, I had to go there and check. Penny caught in my excitement and broke into a gallop, almost knocking me out of the saddle. The other two horses and their eunuch riders were caught in the dust cloud she kicked up.


    I laughed. The feeling of the wind blowing past me was refreshing. I did Kevin Costner and opened my arms.


    We reached the boulders underneath the stone formation. Penny didn''t want to walk over them, as it would only take a loose rock to break her delicate horse legs. I dismounted and played with her neck and head. Penny headbutted me as the adrenalin was still running in her, compelling her to sprint and run wild. I looked back and saw the two riders coming behind. They apparently let me go ahead to follow outside the dust cloud.


    "I''m going to climb that rock now and collect some samples, you hear me? Please be a good girl and go graze in that clearing by that tree."


    I slapped her flank and Penny obeyed. I stretched my arms and shouted. I was feeling awesome. Brimming with power. Energy, posssibilities. This morning surely lifted my spirits. Even the pain from the haymaker was mellowed by the cuddling I got in exchange. Aww, I wanted to devour Brandon. I picked a random rock and checked. I could see it had some calcite crystals and feldspar, confirming the volcanic origins of this rock formation.


    I prepared several ziplock bags for the samples. With Decompose, I didn''t need to keep the rocks as I could refine them in the field and only bring back the finished material but I didn''t want to destroy this beauttiful landmark. I was in awe of its magnificence. I should really have visited Wyoming. The one there is at least four times larger than this one.


    I wiped a tear as the nostalgia of a lost world washed over me. So many places to visit. All lost because of two asshole gods and their stupid worshippers.


    But this was my reality now. I dumped the calcite out of the rock into a bag. The transparent-white cristals just crumbled from the rock, leaving it looking like pumice. I closed my eyes and channeled Decompose into the rock, trying to find the resonances. I could sense iron. Probably magnetite. I removed the iron from the rock into another bag. Then I removed the silicon, leaving a mix of brown dust in my hand and a nugget of silicon on the other. I poured the dust into a third bag. I labeled them. Calcite, magnetite, trace elements.


    The catch-all term for ''stuff I don''t want to properly identify''.


    I also stored the silicon in a trash bag. Not that the silicon was trash but I didn''t want to leave it behind.


    The eunuchs approached. "Mistress, what should we do?"


    "Get some shade under that tree. Watch the horses. I am going to survey the area a bit. Maybe climb the rock. Do you have a name for this place?"


    He nodded, "God''s finger, mistress."


    Well, between God''s Finger and the Devil Tower... nah. Who''s comparing? It was time for exploratiion. I changed the SD card in the GoPro and checked the battery. The camera still had a couple of hours in it but I should start charging my devices or I''d be without them. I took the headband and strapped it in, affixing the camera and started the recording.


    I walked around, climbed boulders, collected samples. I found pyroxene crystals embedded in the rocks, then tiny pieces of apatite. It is awesome when you can strip the silica and see what is inside a rock. Kaolinite meant aluminum. None of the materials existed in quantities that justified a mining operation and unless I found a fault or some upturned terrain feature, it was not economically viable.


    Well, that only when you can put a price tag on your own labor. I had no idea how much my power would be worth but to me, I paid only in time to use it. I hadn''t tried mass-scale Decompose, but this small crush-rocks-get-mineral-nuggets play didn''t tire me at all. It came as easy as breathing. And the more I did it, the easier it got.


    And so I went on. I got some gypsum, quartz, granites, and andesite. I had samples containing magnesium, potassium, chlorine, and fluorine salts. These minerals for me were like flowers for other girls. Even more, now that I could get them easily.


    I found a family of rabbits living in the gap between some boulders. They came to me and I could pet them. No fear of them whatsoever.


    My sample bags were full. Long ago they were sent to storage and I only summoned them when it was time to add more minerals. I was at the base of the rock now and eager to climb. I went around, collecting whatever rock looked different or those I knew had some rare mineral. In tiny quantities though but it could add up. I probably had around four kilograms of magnetite, for example. That was enough iron to make two swords.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    After a few minutes of walking around the boulders, I found a good spot to start my climb. I wasn''t too worried because I could easily create handholds with Decompose. I could probably bore a tunnel through the rock and make a staircase going up. I steeled myself and started to climb. I made the handholds large enough for my boot too. So I crawled up the rock, making good time. I glanced sideways sometimes and was presented a gorgeous landscape. I knew the true prize would be up there so I resisted the urge to take in my surroundings now and kept climbing.


    The breeze was hot and dry but helped banish the sweat. When I reached a ledge that could support me, I turned and sat on it, legs dangling. I should be about thirty meters up and halfway through. I looked and saw farms, forests, some small ponds, grasslands, open plains, and signs of smaller settlements in the distance. I was with my back to the grasslands plateau so I couldn''t see it but the view of the valley was teeming with life. I could see flocks of birds flying kilometers away, dark clouds moving over the treetops.


    I took my canteen and drank half of it while I gave my body time to rest. I poured some of the cool, refreshing liquid on my face. My heart was pounding strong, my body ached for the challenge of finishing the climb. And so I did. The geometric rock pillars narrowed as some of them ended. I kept going up slowly, making sure to create handholds that would last.


    I was a seventh of the climb from the summit when I heard a raptor bird cry. I looked around, scared, and finally saw them.


    Two majestic eagles, with brown and white feathers and a green neck like a mallard flying around. They were measuring me up. I''d probably intruded in their territory. They were large. Larger than a bald eagle, their wingspan reaching almost three meters. They seemed to be as big as the brazilian harpy. They swooped and dove, flying close to me. I dug into the rock with Decompose, making holes I could hold onto even if they tried to yank me from the rock.


    They did a second pass and one of them even brushed the tip of its wing on my back.


    I''d fall fifty-something meters if I lost my footing. They shrieked and made their passes but I noticed they weren''t attacking. They just flew close and then retreated. After a while, I decided that staying there and losing stamina was worse than whatever scratch these overgrown birds could cause and I kept on climbing. Several minutes later, I was granted accesss to the summit. It wasn''t a smooth top as I thought. It had tons of small bumps and loose rocks and pools. Some holes seemed narrow but deep. It was as if the top of this rock was on the wrong side of a bombardment.


    I walked carefully. Then one of the eagles soared up past the summit. I looked at it and the eagle dove straight at me. Before I could throw up my arms to protect my face it pecked my eye, tearing my eyelid. I crouched and covered my head with my arms. My eye was fine, being indestructible, but the eyelid burned like hell. All I could see with that eye was the red of the blood. It took a few minutes for the regeneration perk to start mending the torn flesh. The bleeding stopped in half the amount of time it should take.


    Shouldn''t I be safe from attack from animals?


    It healed. I had some blood stains in my shirt but I''d solve this by cutting off the offending part and then waiting out for the reconstruction to happen off-camera in storage, later. I cleaned my face and hands with Decompose, with the unexpected side-effect of destroying my nail polish.


    Oh, well. Lesson learned.


    But my irritation at the bird or the loss of the nail polish was quenched by the sight. I could see the entire town, the grasslands plateau, the main river, the farms, the villages in the distance. The summit was large enough to build a few houses on. I knew I should''ve bought the binoculars with a rangefinder feature. But at the time it was a thousand Euros investment. Oh, well. I can''t have everything.


    I took the GoPro and did a slow panoramic 360 with myself in the frame. I wish I could show it to Theresa. Was she really dead? It was so unfair!


    "GoPro stop recording!"


    I shouted at the camera and stored it. I took the bag of silicon and fashioned a seat for me. Then I sat on it and cried.


    There was stilll some blood hidden under my eyelids and my tears were pink.


    I felt the darkness creep up my soul and fought it back. What good grieving would do? I was wealthy, powerful, almost immortal. But I couldn''t just forget and leave the world I was born in behind. So I took my phone and recorded a video message for Theresa.


    I sent it to her number. No signal.


    The phone still marked the day I died. It said erroneously it was 8:37 in the morning. I looked at the date and I really wished this was some kind of ''trapped in a VR world'' and some emo dude with a fidget spinner armor would come to rescue me. But no.


    I tasted my tears, they were salty and bloody. The pain was real. Everything was real.


    "Fuck you, professor Andrews," I cursed out loud. I allowed myself one F-word.


    I had half the mind of just running and jumping off the edge. Would I die? Would I break every bone in my body and suffer for hours as my body re-knitted itself. But I wasn''t crazy enough to go through it.


    I don''t know how long I stayed there, sitting on that silicon chair. When I calmed down, I took the selfie stick and the camera. I did another panoramic shot with me in the frame then a third, slow one focusing on the landmarks. Obedient, the GoPro took in snapshots when I ordered.


    The battery level dropped below ten percent though. I stored it and took out the binoculars. I checked around, trying to get a grasp of the distances. I could try and triangulate it but it felt like too much work. Besides, I could get a good measurement by studying video shots. My goal was to identify large landmarks so I could find this place in the god-satellite images Tarhun gave me.


    Then I saw a mess of feathers and angry diving at me through the binoculars. I couldn''t see the slingshot though. I ducked and stored the binoculars. The eagle''s talons flew centimeters away from my face. I''d been hurt more than enough times today, given that the optimal amount was zero.


    The eagle landed on my silicon chair and pecked the material. Then I saw the other one flying around. A mated pair? Was I intruding on their love nest? The other eagle landed next to the chair. There wasn''t enough room for both in the backrest. I carefully approached. They kept turning their heads to stare at me. But they weren''t making those warning sounds. When I was three meters away, they flew off and down past the edge. I waited for a while but they didn''t return.


    The sun was about two hands from sinking behind the horizon, from where I was. I had even less time to the sunset from the surface. So I started to climb down. It would be even harder than going up. I should''ve used my climbing gear to get down safely but I was too angry for that. My frustration mounted up. Brandon didn''t respond to my advances. I was practically throwing myself at him. Tarhun, Dark One and Andrews. The eye-pecking eagles. Being basically alone in another world.


    I just recklessly climbed down.


    Fortunately, I didn''t fall down dozens of meters and broke every bone. I reached down with little time before the sunset. The eunuchs were already worried.


    "Mistress, we must return to town. The sky-lords are angry and the time for them to hunt is nigh."


    I pointed up. "Do you mean birds with sharp talons, crooked beaks, green necks, and nasty temperament? I''ve met them."


    Surprise and awe washed over them. "You did? And you are alive? They are vicious monsters!"


    I nodded. "Yeah. They tried to poke my eye out. If I weren''t me, I''d be with an eyepatch now. Or dead. But let''s go. These nasty birds of legend sometimes like horse meat."


    Penny wasn''t amused at my joke.


    We rode back. Night caught us halfway through the sinuous road. I can swear we''d have half the travel time and double the farmland if the roads were straight. I summoned my selfie stick and attached the LED lantern on top of it. Then I turned it on and held it above Penny''s head.


    "Let''s go. At least now we can see."


    We met some scared farmers on the way. They kept moving only because the town gates would close soon. One good thing was that they gave us right-of-way.


    We went home. Penny was quite satisfied with the ride. I left her with the guards and went home. Everything was fine. There was no crisis to solve, nobody trying to kidnap me.


    That might be considered a win. I took a hot bath, wrote my journal, cataloged my minerals. Then I went to sleep.

 Day 9

    After climbing a spire or rock seventy meters tall, training martial arts the whole morning, and getting beaten up by brawny hunks and mighty eagles, I should''ve awakened as sore as one of those rave kids from the reserve. But no. I woke up completely refreshed. I even felt stronger than yesterday. It might be my imagination. Belle was knocking on the door.


    "Sandra, I have your breakfast. You have to get ready to go soon or you''ll be late for your training."


    Can''t have that. I can''t be late for my morning dose of blonde goodness. I washed my face and ate my breakfast. On the way out, I gave my instructions to the staff.


    "Arwia, start teaching the children. We will talk about making some teaching aids in the afternoon. Belle, make sure everyone is washing their damn hands. Before eating, after relieving themselves or after messing with earth or other things. They can wash just because the sky is blue for all I care, so long they wash. Aristunn, make sure the guards are rested. Do you train?"


    The eunuch was taken by the question. "Sometimes."


    "Then divide the guards into three squads. One squad is guarding, one squad is resting, the third is training. Do we even have training weapons? Training dummies?"


    Arwia took the lead, "We can commission some."


    "Good. Tell the people at the sawmill that I''ll pay for it later when I go to pick up my weapons. Also, send a messenger to Abil-Kisu. I have some properties and business I want to sell him."


    With their instructions handed over, I mount on Penny and go to the training grounds with two different guards. I made sure to get there at least a quarter of an hour earlier but Brandon was already there, training his sword forms. I could watch him train all day.


    "Good. You are on time. Let''s begin."


    I dismount, put on the tunic he gave me, adjust the belt to keep it firm against my body and start my stretches. Brendan approached and watched. I was sitting on a bench stretching my lower back.


    "If you are going to stand behind me, at least put some weight pressing my back down," I told him.


    I felt a shiver as those strong, manly hands grabbed the end of my ribcage and pressed down. I was really limber than before. I felt like a gymnast. Taking advantage of his disposition, I asked him to help me with several exercises, relishing on the physical contact. I was trash for taking advantage of him like that when the objective was to improve my survivability but it was a guilty pleasure.


    Horny girl, you are turning into Theresa.


    "Why do you do these kinds of exercises?"


    "To warm-up and stretch. This way I don''t pull a muscle and get the most of my exercise. You guys should do that too."


    "Well, we run around the outer wall before our training starts. But we don''t bend, twist the way you do."


    I looked at him and saw a faint sliver of pink in the nordic hunk''s cheeks. Was he blushing? I decided to tease him.


    "Well, I can guarantee it also improves reflexes, agility and the survivability of the troops. It also helps with morale as they already have all those nice endorphins running in their blood."


    Great. Endorphins don''t have a translation. "It makes their blood pump faster and stronger," I corrected.


    "Well, you can go pump your blood with four laps around the place," He told me.


    That was fourteen... fifteen clicks. I was ready and broke into a jog and then a full sprint. I wanted to see how my stamina was affected by my healing boon. I went halfway and still felt there was gas in the tank. I kept my rhythm, my sneakers had proper shock absorption and I kept going. One lap. Two laps. I fell into a state where you are tired but know you can still go on for just a while more. Where everything is burning but you have so much adrenalin and endorphin running in your blood you can go. I felt like Tom Hanks, actually. From coast to coast. Third lap.


    Perhaps I was in a state where my exercise was starting to force my muscles into overload. Compared to voluntarily allowing that merchant to stab me in the heart, it was nothing. I kept pushing, focusing on my body. Circulate my chi, open my chakra, reach my cosmos, be mindful of my exercise, training at the thousand G pod, limit breaker, all that crap. I vowed to only stop when my body collapsed. I needed to know. So I kept running at the edge of my aerobic capacity.


    I got tunnel vision. I kept seeing the dirt path ahead of me but everything else was a blur. I could keep going. I felt salt in my mouth. Sweat. It was warm. My lungs complained. You won a scholarship exam. Thousands of candidates. One spot. Yours. Sleepless nights studying. Kept a stellar GPA for three years and even found time to date. Learned five freaking idioms at native-level fluency. You''d eat Jennifer Lawrence for breakfast in that jungle. And hooked up with Liam Hemsworth. Nothing against Josh but his character was a creep, a whiner, and a sucker. I didn''t want to enslave myself to a master but I also didn''t want to nurse some poor crybaby. I want a partner to walk beside me as equals.


    Talk about going into a tangential rant there.


    And then something picked me up. I struggled a bit but then something held the back of my head. The magic ended and I turned into a pumpkin. My body was burning.


    "Sandra! Sandra! You there! Get some water!" I heard Brandon shouting.


    All I could do was keep my breathing stable. I could feel muscles randomly firing and twitching everywhere. My cheeks were spouting flames. Not literally. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth.


    I felt cold water splashing over me. Stealing away the heat.


    "More water! She is burning."


    I heard a story once. I never fact-checked it. Do you know why camels are used in the desert? Because when they are tired, they lay down and rest to keep going. Horses are stupid and run until they die. No offense, Penny. It is probably a lie.


    Time went by and the heat stopped. I regained control of my muscles. I was tired and hungry though. I opened my eyes. I was on a bench, guarded by the two eunuchs. I stood up and checked the sun. Almost noon.


    "Hey, guys. I''m fine."


    My limbs felt like lead but I was fine. I stood up on uneasy legs. I held onto one of the bodyguards'' arms. I was drenched. My hair was clinging to my face.


    "Glad to see you awake, mistress."


    I glanced at the bench. There was a pool of mud underneath. "For how long did I sleep?"


    "Not very much. Are you really feeling well?"


    "Yeah. Just tired and hungry. Let me dry myself."


    I synched on the water''s resonance. So long the complexity was lower, Decompose could remove atoms from other compounds to synth the one I wanted if I wasn''t gentle. So I had to force the water out slowly. I felt it run out of my hair as if my whole body was hydrophobic. Most of it evaporated and my body cooled by a lot. I was shivering at the end. I moved to an empty and dry bench and summoned the cooler bag. I took a carton of orange juice and a triangular mayo chicken sandwich.


    I looked inside before dismissing the bag. I was halfway through my food. And Theresa was mighty irresponsible by packing mayo without proper cooling.


    But it tasted otherworldly. Pun intended.


    After finishing the sandwich at a speed that would put some competition eaters to shame, I topped my stomach with water from my canteen. It was only half-full because I didn''t refill it from yesterday. I basked in sunlight for a few minutes, warming myself up. I stood up and went on to find Brandon. He was instructing some soldiers.


    "Miss Rinaldi! Glad to see you standing up. Forgive me but I have to ask. Why do you push yourself so hard?"


    That was a good question. A man of few words knows how to put worth in each one, so they say. I blinked at him.


    "Because I need to know my limits. Because soon enough another idiot like Hama-Tula will look at me and see not a person, but a merchandise or a piece of meat. So I need to be stronger. I need to know how hard I can push myself. I need to know the limits of my powers. And as you can see, I am perfectly well."


    He smiled. It was warm, and I melted inside. "Those are good reasons. You almost broke our record. Do you know how many laps did you run?"


    "No idea. I stopped counting on the third lap."


    Brandon pointed at one of the soldiers. He took a step forward and knelt. "You ran eight laps, milady. I''m deeply moved by your endurance and resilience. I''m sorry I laughed at you. I''m sorry I called you ''a stupid wench''."


    I ran for almost thirty kilometers. Daaang. In what, three hours? That''s... amazing. I shoved that aside to pay attention to what was going on now.


    "Am I supposed to do anything?" I asked Brandon.


    "You can do whatever you want to this guy. He failed to show proper respect."


    I frowned and shook my head. "Stand up and strive to improve. Throw away your biased views. That''s all."


    "Thank you, milady!" He returned to the formation.


    Brandon looked at him, at the other soldiers holding back the hazing that was sure to come that man''s way. Then he faced me.


    "I think we are done for today. Go and rest. Until tomorrow."


    I bowed. "See you tomorrow, instructor. Thanks for your hard work."


    I returned home. Thirty kilometers was a lot. I didn''t break any record or anything as I spent about three hours to run that but this resilience is unexpected for good old me. I wasn''t a couch potato but far from athletic. And some weird thought came to me. What if my boons were shared through my bond with Penny? It could be the reason the mare likes to run so much now. Did she have any condition that hindered her stamina and bonding with me fixed it? I''d have to ask the horse merchant at the caravanserai. But if I had to say, Penny did look more impressive than when I found her.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    "Confident. But that''s my girl, right Penny?"


    As if she could understand me, Penny snorted. We crossed the gates, I left her to go to the stables and went indoors. I still wanted something to eat.


    Inside, I heard the children repeating something Arwia just said. They were sitting on the dining table, and Arwia was standing up, lecturing. We made eye contact and I gave her a thumbs up. She just smiled and kept on with her lesson.


    I dove into the kitchen, outside the building. If it were inside, everyone would die cooked. The chimney ran tall and had an arc connecting it to the building''s second-floor roof to give it support. A colorful awning was all that spared the food and the cook from the elements. By the oven, Belle-Sunu was spreading gravy on the kebab meat standing upright on a spit. The meat, not the girl.


    "Belle, can you get me some food fast? I''m starving."


    She glanced over her shoulder and returned to her work, "Just a minute, Sandra!"


    I went to the basin and washed my hands. A few minutes later, I was eating a succulent and delicious kebab. The food was wolfed down in a very unladylike manner and I was going for seconds before I knew it. I was turning into anime protagonist material. All I needed now was the tsundere, the aloof loli, and the childhood friend.


    I filled my belly and rested for a while. It wasn''t noon yet. My stupid starvation-induced thoughts vanished.


    "Aristunn wanted to talk to you. He''s at the slave pens."


    I nodded. "I have to remodel the place and also think of a better name. I''ll go there to take a look."


    I crossed the backyard, waved at the two gardeners and reached the slave pens. The place would be at minus four stars. It was dark, dirty and gloomy. Two guards were at the door. Some hay bales were piled up on the side of the building.


    They stood at attention. "Mistress." They didn''t shout.


    "At ease, and call me by my given name. Sandra. What is going on here?"


    "Nothing, Sa-Sandra. Aristunn is inside, checking some things."


    I walked with firm steps inside. the ground wasn''t stone, it was dirt covered with straw. The straw was moldy and I cursed myself for not checking it before. I really had to get better at grasping the whole picture. It had several cells with the doors open. I could see the people I brought resting against the walls, doing nothing. They weren''t even paying attention to the door of the cell.


    "Aristunn, are you in here?" I asked out loud.


    It was like kicking an ant nest. They jumped and for a moment, looked frightened. "Mistress!"


    "Okay, everyone. Calm down. Where is Aristunn?"


    The eunuch came, looking flustered. "Mistress Sandra. What brings you here?"


    I smelled something on him and decided to not ask what he was doing here. It was none of my business.


    "Aristunn, you wanted to tell me something?"


    "Yes, Sandra. Abil-Kisu invited you for dinner in his home. You may discuss business with him at that time."


    I nodded. "Good. Now go and get yourself cleaned."


    He blushed and ran outside. I wondered if he was really a eunuch but then again, it was none of my business. If someone was getting some, more power to them.


    Without much to do in there, I also went outside, turned around and gave the building a good look. It was made of sandstone bricks like the house but it had poor ventilation, poor illumination. It was a prison before it was a habitation. That had to change. I had to go all over the place and make it mine. Claim it. That included the guardhouse, the barracks, the stables, even Hama-Tula''s untouched bedroom. No, seriously, the last person in there was him.


    I needed materials to make my transformation real. I went back to the main building and into a pile of porous, black to light gray rocks that looked somewhat vitrified. The slag. There should be over two tons of the stuff there already and I knew for a fact that they were bringing more as I looked at the pile. Some empty crates were next to the pile of rocks, probably for me to fill with the iron and other materials. Well, time to work.


    The first order of business was to prepare some crates to hold fine-grained particles, like sand and other stuff. For that, I took a crate two plastic bags and some slag rocks. I placed the crate over an open blue plastic bag to catch whatever fell through and started to remove the silicon from the slag. Focusing on fine control, Decompose removed the silicon and I started to lather the inside of the crate with a thin layer of silicon, filling in the gaps. If it weren''t four times as light, it could be mistaken for silver. The already porous slag rock became brittle and I stowed it in the second plastic bag.


    I kept molding the silicon over the crate until it was waterproof and no wood could be seen from the inside. With time it would absorb oxygen from the atmosphere and turn back to rock but that was a slow process. The silicon would swell and break the crate. it was stuck to the wood now. Oh, well. I had to make this one crate a worthy sacrifice. So I took another rock and poured another layer of silicon, then smooth it out until there was no place for anything to snag on. Then on a corner, I made a channel and a beak. I''d pour the material I collected through there into bags or other crates.


    I tried lifting the crate. It was still okay for me, but if it were full of something heavy, like a metal oxide, it would be hard for me. I thought of several means to make it work, like a swiveling mount but I didn''t have time for that.


    It was time for some serious Decompose montage.


    I knew most of it would be calcium hydroxide or slaked lime. The most recent slag rocks would still have quicklime inside, but the ones that were left out in the open would''ve soaked water like a sponge. I didn''t want to disturb the balance of whatever chemicals were inside so I couldn''t take out just the hydrogen. Even taking the silicon would''ve damaged some other compounds that were not silica. I also decided to remove the compounds, instead of individual elements.


    In a sample this big, there''s bound to be some super reactive element or radical that is completely neutralized. Like phosphorus, fluorine, or an alkali metal. Some of them could ignite in contact with air alone.


    I started to pull out the silicon dioxide from the rocks. Chunks of quartz, sand and probably glass came out and fell on the box. Sometimes flakes of the slag rock would break because I was breaking its structure and I had to fish them out. But it was too much material and I had few places to put that white sand. I was running out of trash bags. Another thing I forgot. Cleaning up the trash I brought from Earth. I bet that stuff would sell very well.


    So I started to pour silicon on my frying pan and making disks. Cylinders. Conical frustums. Who came up with that name, anyway? It seems the cone is frustrated. Cones are happy! Party hats. Ice cream. I''ll go with disks if you can forgive my french... Akkadian.


    After the silicon was gone I removed the metals. Iron came easily. Aluminum too. The wind was blowing lime everywhere. I wasn''t too concerned as I was sure this soil was acidic. Some calcium for the grass. I extracted the lime on the box and scooped it with the portable shovel into barrels. I had some nice barrels that were empty from the party. The innkeeper''s barrels. I''ll buy them from him or buy new ones. Once the lime, silica, iron, and aluminum were removed from the slag, I was left with two-tenths of the original material. There''s where the gold was. I was hoping to find some real gold, but I meant the real juicy goods.


    I put my hands in the pile of ''trace materials'' I had and sensed for some signature I could recognize. There were sodium, chlorine, sulfur. Sodium sulfate. That was a useful chemical. Would I get it? I focused and pulled, instead of pushing away. I got a speck of white dust that tested positive with the portable lab for sodium, sulfur, and oxygen. Sounds good to me. Now that I had a sample, I started pulling the salt from the mix. I got about two kilograms. Quite a haul and it used up all the sodium. I had to extract the halogens in salt form with an alkaline metal or I''d lose them. So potassium chloride and potassium fluoride. I also got some potassium sulfate. All the potassium salts went into the same ziplock bag.


    Two carts with slag arrived while I was processing the pile. They unload the slag where the previous pile was. They stopped to watch me work and talked about the metallic disks I already had piled up. I only had iron and aluminum extracted otherwise I think they would go nuts. Since I wanted to measure productivity, I didn''t let them take the iron yet. I stopped working to process the new material and join it with what I already had.


    All that was left was a pile of brown-gray heavy dust in the crate that should be mostly metallic oxides. I extracted magnesium and manganese in metallic form after mucking for a while. They were very abundant. Then I saw a speck of yellow while sifting through the dust. There was gold. I focused on the gold and pulled it toward my hand. It had the undesirable effect of ruining my necklace. I cursed. I was getting attached to that necklace. Oh, well. I put the ruby back in the gem pouch of my handbag and used the gold in the necklace as bait for the rest of the gold. At least I won''t have to destroy more coins. The lump of gold from the necklace tripled in size.


    The only explanation for that was they had bad metal shavings management. Everything that falls on the floor from the machining, hammering and other operations was swept into the slag pit. I tried silver and got a smaller nugget. What''s left? Copper and tin, because they worked with bronze. Maybe some nickel and lead too. As I removed the metals, the pile of metallic oxides got smaller. Half the crate.


    And I felt more tired from moving the metallic disks around than from Decomposing it.


    It was hard to get anything from there now. I had no idea what kind of materials were in that pile of flakes and dust or if extracting something blindly wouldn''t cause the metals to ignite by reacting with the oxygen again. Phosphorus would do that. I got a ziplock bag with Phosphorus trioxide.


    With that out of the way, there were not many things that would spontaneously burn if I reduced the oxides back to metallic form by removing the oxygen. I did that and got a pellet of metal but I didn''t know which metal it was. The pellet was too small to decide by density and it had more than one metal. Transition metal, at least. I didn''t think there would be any other group 1 or 2 metals in any significant amount. Without another choice, I went through the periodic table. Scandium, not detectable. Titanium, yes. Most of the pellet was titanium, to the frying pan with it.


    I was left with less than half percent of what I started with. That was still ten kilograms of whatever trace elements were in the slag. It could be anything from lithium to uranium. I bagged it and tallied my metals. The frying pan had about 300ml of volume but not all disks were flush with the pan. Several of them had more or less material.


    <blockquote>


    46 disks of iron ~ 109 Kg


    880 disks of silicon ~ 307 Kg


    70 disks of aluminum ~ 57 Kg


    28 disks of copper ~ 75 Kg


    9 disks of tin ~ 20 Kg


    5 disks of nickel ~ 13 Kg


    13 disks of lead ~ 44 Kg


    15 disks of magnesium ~ 8 Kg


    3 disks of manganese ~ 7 Kg


    8 disks of titanium ~ 11 Kg


    3 barrels of calcium oxide / hydroxide ~ 900 Kg


    Sodium sulfate ~ 2 Kg


    Potassium sulfate ~ 250g


    Potassium-halogen salts ~ less than 100g


    Phosphorus trioxide ~ less than 200g


    Gold nugget ~ 2 shekels (in weight)


    Silver nugget ~ 1 shekel (in weight)


    Unknown oxides ~ 10 Kg


    </blockquote>


    Looking at the list, I could tell their manufacture processes had too many losses. Those losses were almost unavoidable. Giving them only the iron felt like I was robbing them. I piled up the metallic discs inside the trash bags and stored them. A 100-liter bag could hold easily all my metals if I don''t intend to lift it from the ground. The iron went into the crate and the silicon I was going to use it now.


    I called all the workers and had them carry the silicon disks to the about-to-be-renovated slave pens. The first order of business was to remove all the cell doors. Decompose did quick work of the floor straw and other materials. Then I took the silicon disks and used Decompose to pour them on the floor, covering the entire building with a smooth layer of silicon.


    I tried to walk on it and slipped.


    Maybe too smooth was a bad thing. I had to add texture to the silicon. Something that could give a good grip but wasn''t too rough for cleaning. My first thought was handprints. I just had to put my hand against the silicon and use my power for a fraction of a second. But it wasn''t fashionable. The material I had plenty of was straw. That would work. I gathered the women and told them to gather the straw from the hay bales outside and weave them in a loose square pattern over the floor. While they wove the fibers, I went for the windows. I removed the bars of iron from the sandstone and then started to cut through the wall. We talked about life, the future, and silicon disks. They looked nice but


    Slow-motion karate chop plus Decompose. It gave the windowsill a metallic finish though but it would gray out once the silicon oxidized. Let''s put some sunshine in these gloomy slave pens. With the extra silicon I removed from the windows, I went through the walls filling in any holes and cracks. The beige-red sandstone had some metallic spots but I wanted to paint it later. Once the women finished braiding straw, I''d press the lattice against the silicon with Decompose to imprint and then I condensed the carbon from the fibers into chunks of graphite. One of the elder women came after me with a mop, removing the graphite and saltwater that was left from the straw. I learned to regulate the pressure to let just the texture sink in and not the entire straw lattice.


    We worked on renovating the slave pens for the rest of the afternoon. It got an even floor and the work people did on it made them feel like the place was theirs. The lack of bars, doors, and narrow slits for ventilation also helped lift the mood. They took a new batch of straw from the hay bales for bedding, laid their hides on top and smiled at the new place. I needed beds.


    I glanced up at the sky and saw the deep orange of dusk in the west. Beds would have to wait until tomorrow. Right by the time my body complained about getting some R & R, I saw Arwia, coming to call us for dinner.


    Or call them for dinner. I had an appointment with Abil-Kisu.

 Night 9

    I went inside and after a quick wash-Decompose cycle, slid into a new set of clothes. I really needed to get new dresses. I didn''t want to wear the same one I did for the party, the cheongsam was too much and the spaghetti was nice but not for this age as it showed too much skin. I could compound it with a long-sleeve shirt and stockings. It would hide all skin except for the hands and neck. I put on the clothes and used the phone as a mirror. With the hiking boots, I''m ready to star ''that 90''s show''. I don''t even know if they made one.


    I went to the living room to ask one of the girls about my getup and at the top of the stairs, I heard a familiar cackling. Nanna was absent all day, where did she go? I go down the stairs and see her with her bundles of herbs and it clicks. The show must go on, I guess.


    "Good evening, Nanna. Did you get a good haul?" Nanna, Arwia, and some kids stop what they were doing and turn to look at me. I spin around to show off my outfit. "Hey, folks. How do I look?"


    "That''s... different. I like the colors," Arwia comments.


    "Yeah, I like it," Rimush said while ogling me a bit too much. I didn''t mind but Arwia pulled his ear.


    "It really accentuates your lack of hips, girl," Nanna added. "Since you don''t want to get married, I guess it is perfect for you."


    I don''t know if I should be flattered or annoyed. Or both at the same time. Nanna is hard to deal with as she pulls no punches on her verbal sparring.


    "Okay," I decided to go with ''ignore the witch''. "What I want to know, is it too indecent? Immoral?"


    "What? Do you have another of your ''dates''?" Nanna asks, using the word in English.


    "No! I am supposed to go have dinner with Abil-Kisu. I want to negotiate some of the properties and business I got from the merchants."


    "I guess it is fine then," The witch replied, "You look like a child anyway. You need to eat more and put some meat on those bones."


    I had no idea if she was being sincere or sarcastic. I guess Nanna being Nanna, she was just speaking her mind and being both at the same time.


    "Then I''m off. Arwia, what do you think?"


    The girl was caught by surprise as the kids and Nanna turned around to wait for her answer. I guess she was not used to be in the spotlight.


    "I think you can go as you are, Sandra. You are not showing too much skin and everyone knows you are a foreigner. What I am concerned about is that your dress seems very light. A strong wind can lift it up and.... you know."


    "These stockings are not transparent," I start my defense but backtrack halfway. "I can put some pieces of metal to weigh down my dress hem. This way it won''t raise."


    "Yes, that would be nice."


    Women in this world go commando. I bet most of the man too. Totally like Mel Gibson did in Scotland. Well, it won''t hurt me. I get a few copper coins and Decompose them into a wire that I pass through the hem of the dress. After it is through I pinch the dress and push the copper away to create breaks in the wire so the hem is not rigid. I twirl a bit and it seems okay.


    After getting the approval of the ladies in the living room, I went with two soldiers to have my dinner with Abil-Kisu. We live very closely together. Darkness would already set and the nights were pitch black. I took my lantern and set it on the end of the selfie stick. Then it struck me. I haven''t seen the moon yet. I was so tired at the end of my days that I didn''t really think about it.


    "Do you guys know how long a moon takes to appear?" It might be the case that the moon does not show up every day like Earth''s moon but a whole week?


    "I''m sorry, mistress, but I don''t think the witch was invited."


    I stop walking because something went wrong in the translation. I try to picture the sounds of the word moon in Akkadian, it is ''nanna''. I can recall how it is written too. Funny. Nanna''s name means ''moon''. They have a word for moonlight too, ''nannaru''.


    "I didn''t mean Nanna the witch. I meant the moon (nanna), the star that shines at night, shedding moonlight (nannaru)."


    The guards look very confused. "All stars shine tonight. Do you mean the brightest stars? I don''t really know what you mean by ''moonlight''."


    No moon. Is that even possible? I studied very little astrophysics beyond what was necessary for my geology classes but every planet has a moon. I can''t waste much time with that. I need to hit my books.


    Pushing the subject aside, I went to Abil-Kisu''s place. The guards at the gates direct me to the same tent used for the feast a few days ago. Abil-Kisu and his wife are there.


    "Honorable Abil-Kisu, I''m honored you spared some time to host me," I say with a respectful saikeirei bow. I didn''t curtsy because my hem is just knee-height.


    "Please, please. We are between friends here, yes? Miss Rinaldi is a very important person, one that is shaking the very foundations of the town. Even the magnificent Ensi Es-Kina has heard of you by now. Please come and have a seat. What would you want to drink?"


    I move and sit next to his wife so she is between us. "Wine is fine. Say, Abil-Kisu, would you be interested in sharing tales of your land?"


    He clapped his hands, excited. "Definitely. I knew the lady had the makings of a scholar. You are very observant and always ponder before you answer. You speak with certainty and wisdom as if you were repeating the words of gods."


    "Then, allow me to go first. What would you want to know about my land, Abil-Kisu?"


    He didn''t bat an eyelid. "Tell me stories of great wars."


    I can''t help but recoil. "There''s no greatness in war, but I''ll oblige. I''ll tell you of one ancient battle. It happened roughly five hundred years before I was born, in the land of my maternal grandfather. There was a lord that later unified the country, called Oda Nobunaga..."


    I proceed to tell him the story of the Siege of Inabayama Castle. How Toyotomi Hideyoshi built a castle at the riverbank practically overnight, seized the support of minor lords and snuck into the castle to destroy the granaries and weapons supplies, throwing the defenders into disarray and finally conquering the otherwise impregnable castle.


    I can see Abil-Kisu scratching his beard. "Interesting. That the battle you are most comfortable to tell is one won through cunning, craftiness, and diplomacy. It tells a lot about who you are, miss Rinaldi."


    "So it was a test. Did I pass?"


    He opens a broad smile. "There is no such thing as passing a test of character. There are no wrong persons. Only persons in the wrong place, position, or time. But I am sure there were dozens of other battles you know of that you are not so comfortable talking about."


    My mind flashes on the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of the execution chambers of the Nazi. Of terrorism. 9-11. Or when American troops bombed a hospital for two hours in Afghanistan.


    I can''t help but be overtaken by sadness and a couple tears escape my eyes. "You can say that battle was so romanticized and re-enacted by thespians that the loss of life and destruction were erased by too many repetitions. But I am not comfortable talking about any war."


    "That you are, my dear," Abil-Kisu takes my hand. "War is not a woman''s territory. Husband, I think it is time we serve the food."


    "Of course, my dear wife," Abil-Kisu nods and claps his hands three times.


    Slaves enter and serve us the food. Lamb with grilled vegetables. I see no potatoes or carrots. They don''t eat roots or tubers.


    While we eat, Abil-Kisu prompts me. "It is your turn. What story do you want to hear from me?"


    The thing that''s bugging my mind now that I noticed it and I cannot let go is the lack of a moon. I mean, that''s so strange, so odd. I have to ask it even though I might be wasting a golden opportunity to learn more about him.


    "I heard rumors that once there was an object in the sky, a sister to the sun that appeared at night," I said, skirting around the moon (nanna) because it had the same name as the witch. "It would cast light during the night, it was big and round..."


    Why not? I summon my iPad and show him a picture of the moon against the starry sky. Abil-Kisu jumps back, scared. His wife is almost fainting.


    "That... The ancient legends... I''m sorry. It is just that we don''t talk much about the legend of the Harbinger."


    Oww, frag. I just walked into this one. I bet I just triggered some weird taboo flag.


    "You don''t have to tell if you don''t want to," I tell him. In fact, I can ask Nanna or research on my own.


    "No. Let nobody ever say that Abil-Kisu backed off on a deal. I''ll tell you," He readies himself to tell the tale and I turn on the recording on the iPad.


    "Legends say of a great silver star like the one you showed me. She was the wife of the sun and forever played with him in the heavens above. But then, an age ago, the Harbinger came to this land. He brought the promise of wealth and prosperity to those that subjected themselves to him, and death and ruin to those that did not. The harbinger did well on his promise. Many Lugals (emperors, kings) marched against him. All perished.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "The weaker ones, seeing the destruction his troops could cause, submitted themselves to the Harbinger. Misery and poverty was their reward. The surviving Lugals then made great sacrifices to the gods. Tarhun, Ishtar, Enki, Marduk, and Nabu answered the people''s pleas. They walked upon the land and brought upon a great cataclysm to the Harbinger''s realm. Rain, Thunder, Earthquakes.


    "But the Harbinger would not stand idle. He struck at the heavens itself, killing the silver star and shattering the celestial abode. The gods lost their ability to walk the land, forever. But the harbinger was not done. He threw big arrows of iron into the sky and descended upon the city-states of the Lugals, making the towns vanish in plumes of fire and smoke. It is said that almost all of those that witnessed it, died. Those that didn''t die forever lost their eyes. They became blind and mad prophets of the cataclysm.


    "It is said that the Harbinger still lives. Hidden deep in his realm of death and ash, waiting for the time of his return."


    Okay. That was ominous. I''d say it is mythology if I hadn''t met the god himself. Or at least have a very clear memory of meeting him. I don''t know what can I trust, that''s why I keep this journal. I stop the recording.


    So some entity comes, tries to take over the world, almost succeeds, then the gods come, the moon is destroyed, the gods are banished and then what? The guy nukes the cities that opposed him? Not real nukes, I mean. I hope.


    Dear Sandra. please invest a hundred bucks on a Geiger counter instead of buying that yearly subscription to the MMORPG.


    "That''s terrible," It is all I can say.


    I almost searched for a picture of a nuclear blast to show them. Almost. But I didn''t. I was afraid. Very afraid that they would say it was like that. I didn''t want to talk about it.


    "Yes. Even to this day..." Abil-Kisu stops when his wife grabs his wrist.


    "That''s enough, husband. I believe miss Rinaldi wanted to discuss business. I''ll withdraw for the night, the baby needs to be breastfed. Lady Rinaldi, thank you for the story of bravery. That general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. I''ll tell his story to my son one day. So he might win his battles with cunning and diplomacy as well."


    "Thank you for hosting me."


    She departed. I didn''t ask for her name because I was pretty sure I should remember it but I was too drunk during the party to be able to even with my memory blessing. We waited until she left and Abil-Kisu opened the negotiations.


    "So, miss Rinaldi. You are causing quite the ripples in the merchant community. I must say, some of my associates are afraid of what you will do next. Four of our most prominent merchants dead, and probably five as we are not sure how Balthazar''s caravan was wiped out, exactly. Yes, I know of the rage-apes attack but some say you can control wild beasts."


    I could show the video but against an accusation such as that? It would be useless. I could be controlling them, the video wouldn''t prove otherwise.


    "That I might be able to do. But any man can wield a sword. Must all man be guilty of every murder then?"


    He clapped his hands. "That is true! Well-spoken. I am not one to believe the rumors or we wouldn''t have this conversation."


    "Surely," I nodded.


    "Samus told me about you, Sandra Rinaldi. Of your enormous magic power. Of your disposition to share your knowledge. I also heard of your actions. To offer all your slaves freedom. I''ll be honest with you. I knew those merchants that were found guilty by the magistrate. I liked none of them."


    He served me wine and I took a sip. Enjoying the silence for a moment, I broke it. "Is there any merchant you like, Abil-Kisu? Besides yourself, of course."


    He chuckled and sipped his wine slowly to gain time.


    "You are the wittiest woman I''ve ever seen. No wonder Hama-Tula lost miserably and even dragged three others to the grave with his folly. Do you know when you won my admiration, miss Rinaldi?"


    "I wouldn''t dare to guess."


    "When you took Hama-Tula''s children under your wing, to shield them from the debt. Please tell them that Banunu and Rubati are safe. I secretly spirited them away from town and sent them to the capital. With Banunu''s dowry, they can live the rest of their lives if they are wise."


    Oh. They are alright. The kids would love to know that. However, "Isn''t it better to keep it a secret? Wouldn''t those that have outstanding debts against Hama-Tula go there to try and collect from them?"


    He denied, "No. Because that debt is no longer profitable. They would have to go over and against those that are protecting those two women. You, me, and some other interested parties. They also do not wish their deaths. Why waste money with assassins? The women are only worth something alive. No, they will bite their fingernails and eat their hats in rage, but they won''t act."


    "That''s a relief. The children will be very happy. There''s a chance they get to see their mothers again, right?"


    He clapped his hands once. "Of course. In five years, the debt is canceled. Then they can be reunited."


    That was a weight I didn''t even know I had. Good to know that but something remains unexplained. "Why did you help them?"


    "A loss for my enemies is a profit for me. They have less money and I have more. Now, enough talk about the wishes of others. Let''s talk about what brought you here."


    I stow the iPad and bring the duffel bag with the scrolls and deeds. I separate the permits I want to keep as they will allow me to conduct business without going through the red tape again and get the deeds to the various properties and business I won from the merchants. I show him the properties. The businesses are run by employees or are concessions. I didn''t even get to check on them. I just want to get some funds from them and also avoid the burden of managing the real-estate. There are houses, workshops, stores, even some pack animals. I separate these as I''d like to get more horses.


    Might even get Penny a boyfriend so at least one of us sees some action.


    "I don''t know how much they are worth but I know you will be fair in your appraisal, Abil-Kisu. I don''t mind selling them at a small loss though."


    He claps his hands four times. A guard comes from a fold in the tent''s wall and I suddenly wonder how many men he has hidden away. I was stupid. Of course, a merchant lord would have some protection or guards at hand. It is that naive and trusting nature that got me killed back on Earth and might get me killed again.


    The guard returns with an inkwell, pen, and parchment. There''s also a triangular block of wood he places on the table. Abil-Kisu rests the parchment leaning on the wood, wets the pen and starts to do some calculations. He whispers something to the guard and the guard seems surprised. Annoyed, Abil-Kisu glares and the guard goes on his way. The tent keeps silent, I did not dare speak. Only the sound of ruffling paper goes on as Abil-Kisu keeps sifting through the deeds, rechecking for any missing details.


    The guard returns with two men and a beautiful leather bag. I can hear the sound of jiggling coins inside. Then Abil-Kisu speaks.


    "I don''t have much money on me, I hope you understand. I offer you as part of the payment these two highly trained eunuch soldiers. Shamash, introduce yourself."


    One of them moved forward, he was lean and seemed agile. His arms were strong and I thought he could use a bow. I knew what he was doing. Placing men loyal to him in my retinue so he could keep an eye on me. As they say, keep your friends close... I heard their presentations before taking any other conclusions. I had little choice though. From what I sensed, the coins and the guards were part of an indivisible package.


    "I am Shamash, from the forest tribe of the north. Our people lived hidden in the forest, but the Akkadian burned the woods and captured us. I am nineteen years old. Abil-Kisu bought me at a slave auction in the capital four years ago. He was a fair master and he recommended me to enter your service. I am grateful to you both, Sandra."


    "They burned the whole forest just to get your people?" I was shocked.


    "Yes. We were fighting their woodcutters to defend our territory. But the Akkadians waited for a long drought season and then burned the forest."


    "Back in my home, one of my duties was to take care of forests. I was studying to do exactly that. I feel your pain, Shamash. Tell you what. You and I, along with everyone else, we are going to make a new forest one day. Teach me the forestry skills and lore of your people, and I will teach you the mine."


    My guess at the time was that Shamash was the closest to elves I was going to get. The low magic of the world was not friendly to fantasy races. But the memory of the forest and the fact he was now working for a kindred spirit in our love for nature drove the man to tears.


    "That would be an honor, milady."


    Abil-Kisu clapped loudly. "Now, Ananu. Your turn."


    The other man had Hittite features and was of average build. He moved forward and stopped side-by-side with Shamash.


    "I am Ananu, twenty-two years old. I was sold by my father twice as a debt slave. The second time, I ended up with a rough master that beat me and whipped me in the front, wounding my manhood. The medic could not fix it and I had to choose between either giving up being a man or dying. I sold myself to Abil-Kisu to pay for my sister''s dowry and worked for him for the last three years. He recommended me to serve Sandra, and I am grateful to be here. I will also pledge my life to defend you."


    I beamed sympathetically at him. I might''ve lost my family and world but I could always build another one, couldn''t I.


    "Your sister, Ananu, how is she?"


    "My sister lives in a village to the south. Last I heard about her, she was pregnant with her third child."


    "We will make arrangements so you can visit her soon. Welcome aboard, Ananu."


    Abil-Kisu spoke, "Tell me, miss Rinaldi, are these two eunuchs to your liking?"


    I gave him my deadly ''oh, really?'' stare. Not. I''m not that good being dominating.


    "Abil-Kisu, there is a saying in my land, ''a man cannot serve two masters''. I know they owe you a great deal and they are loyal. I accept them to work for me with one condition. I still have the writ to release slaves and the branding iron. Tomorrow morning, you will send two free men of your trust to witness their release. I will hire Shamash and Ananu as guards and pay them a wage. When they feel they cannot continue in my employ, they are free to go away. Two copper mina per day, the same I''ll start paying my other soldiers. Is that a fair wage?"


    He claps his hands. "Yes. That is good. We will do as you say, miss Rinaldi. I don''t expect they will cause you any trouble and they will be more than happy to serve you. I''ll be honest with you, miss Rinaldi. I''m not sending them to spy on you. I''m sending them to protect you and keep a link between us. You turned the merchant community in this town upside down in one week since your arrival. I don''t know what you will do in the next week or the other beyond that, but I suspect some people won''t just let you be. There''s profit to be had from you. I both don''t want to be left out of it and want to deny certain elements to control you."


    A lot of nice words and I am grateful if he is being honest. But I can''t just trust a shrewd merchant like him. I doubt someone reaches his station without any skeletons in his closet. Look at me, I have four.


    "But not you. You don''t want to control me."


    "It is not a matter if I want to control you or not. I know I can''t, so why try? You are an envoy from the mighty Tarhun, miss Rinaldi. You have a purpose. The caravanserai witch took a liking to you. Master Samus has you as an important partner. You are infatuated with the guard captain. You gave my son a marvelous gift. Bero-Mabii speaks highly of you. You helped the town get rid of the canker Hama-Tula was. The magistrate testified that you were stabbed in the heart and survived. If you were me, where do you think the biggest profit lies? To be your friend or your enemy?"


    I honestly didn''t know how to answer. "I don''t know how to answer that."


    Stop the press. He said what about me and the guard captain? Infatuated? Is that so obvious?


    "Then I''ll answer for you. Your heart is huge, miss Rinaldi. You were given two eunuch slaves that would gladly die to protect you and you set them free. I believe it will only put a strain on your finances as they will still gladly die to protect you and that is not because I am putting any pressure on them, because I am not, yes? I want to be your friend, Sandra Rinaldi. You will do marvelous things and I want to witness them with my own eyes."


    I was flattered. Abil-Kisu had a way with words and his calm tone of voice and cadence left little to no opening to disagree with him. I understood how he became the most powerful merchant in town. He makes it so it is better to work with him than against him. If he always wins and never loses, it is easy to settle for a lower margin.


    I think he invented the win-win negotiation without even knowing it.


    "I will take your friendship in the spirit it is offered, Abil-Kisu. I can see in the eyes of your men that they respect you. And yes, I intend to do many things, and I hope I can use your help to make them happen. I think there will be a lot of profit on the horizon for both of us. And I don''t mind sharing."


    He chortled. His hearty, warm, charismatic bellows rang through the tent. I could see some of the guards smiling.


    "That we will do, miss Rinaldi. No. My friend, Sandra. Here. I believe this is enough compensation for the properties you sold me."


    He put the large coin bag in front of me. I opened it and saw yellow under the torchlight.


    I almost fainted.

 Morning 10

    Life is a rollercoaster. And a busy leader should learn to delegate. I promise that to myself as I lay on my bed watching the spiders crawl in the roof of the guest room that I, the master of the house, am still using. Too many things, too little time. I can''t even stop to think about what to do, because there''s someone at the door. I recognize the voice. It''s Aristunn. Without standing up, I ask.


    "What is wrong, Aristunn?"


    His reply sent a shiver through my spine. "Some of the sla... people want to leave. They asked if you''ll honor your promise of one silver shekel and the release brand."


    Yeah, I will. I took one of the linen dresses and threw it over the pajamas, tied my hair in a bun with a scrunchie, and slid into the sneakers. Then I was out of the room without doing my morning beauty routine, just a quick stop by the latrine.


    On my way out I remember I have to set the charger or my devices will die. I go to the inner courtyard and set the folding table with the solar charger and the battery pack. I think I''ll have to switch places in the afternoon but it will get sun the whole morning. When I come back from training I''ll shift it.


    "Aristunn, make sure nobody touches these objects. They are of the utmost importance. In fact, I want you to use this knife to remove a small shard of each."


    I give him the survival knife and he removes a piece each from the plastic from the table, the battery casing, the cable shielding, and the charger''s strap. If he keeps these pieces on him, even if the main object is stolen I might be able to recover them.


    "Keep these pieces with you," I tell him as I retrieved the knife. "If I ask them you give them to me. Once I return and retrieve these objects, you can discard the pieces."


    "Understood. I will protect these pieces with my life." Please don''t.


    Aristunn leads me to the front lawn. They had a brazier already lit and I see a group of twenty-nine people willing to go. Half of the current inhabitants of the estate. Let my people go, he said. I take the branding iron that was in a bag from storage and set it over the embers. While it heats up, I fish for my coin bag and take out twenty-five silver shekels. If they want to go, let them.


    "Aristunn, call everyone here. It is time to finish one of the things I was postponing."


    He signals to other guards to approach and look menacing next to me and bolts back into the house. Or a mansion. Villa. Nobody speaks and I can''t help but think it was for the best. I was irritated, they wanted to go. Let them be free and just go. I gave the group a good look and some guards were there too. With their armor and weapons. Should I let them take the equipment with them? Aren''t those things expensive? I don''t know and I''ll just let it be. Honestly, I don''t need to worry about money. I''d rather pay to skip the drama of ''whose sword is that''. A parting gift for services rendered, let''s put it that way.


    My mental state fluctuated back and forth between sadness, relief, disgust, and denial. The real truth was, I didn''t want them to go. I wanted everyone to stay, to work and build something together. Plant bamboo. Weave baskets. Make soap. Harvest bamboo. Extract the fibers. Make textiles. Make paper. Chemicals. There was so much we could have done. But now they wanted to go. It was their right. Denying them that now would mark me as a real slave master. The fact I had to brand them makes everything worse.


    I wanted to run away. The desire was so big that my bladder was feeling full even though I relieved myself minutes ago. My stomach churned.


    I summon a folding chair from my camping set and put the coins on top of it. It''s awkward to keep them in my hand as they are quite large. The branding iron is getting dark red. I think it is good enough to leave a mark. Fuck it, I am going to brand people. I should add five more coins to that pile. Then go hang myself. I might not die. Why did this day have to start on such a gloomy tone? Everything went so fine yesterday.


    Time goes on. I remove the branding iron and let it cool. No use causing more hurt than what is needed. I have no idea how hot this thing should be. But people get burnt on metal that is not red-hot and still gains scars. I see Belle and Arwia with the kids. Some guards too. No sign of Nanna. I point at the guards.


    "You two, go inside and bring a water barrel." I was going to ask for a bucket and chair but I have these. "Belle, go inside and get the jar with the burn ointment. Arwia, go get some bandages. You kids, don''t approach."


    Burn ointment is what we are calling the mixture of honey, olive oil, and beeswax. They go back to do what I asked and the wait continues. Then Aristunn comes with the rest of the guards and the household staff. I take a look and it seems to me that everyone except for Nanna is accounted for.


    "Everyone is here, Sandra," Aristunn reports.


    "Good. Any news of Nanna the witch?"


    "The gate guards reported she left a little before sunrise. Said she''ll be out the whole day."


    "Let''s start, shall we?" I have to face them. I turn toward the group of departees and speak. "I thank you for trusting me this far. I told you you could go, and you can. But once you receive this brand, there''s no going back. You are on your own out there and I won''t take you back in unless I really need more people. And I don''t. Also, as a courtesy for the ones that worked as guards, I''ll let you take your armor and weapon with you. I know you would''ve risked your lives to protect me."


    Time for your morning torture-inflicting session and it started with a white lie. Way to go, Sandra! At least I don''t need to write individual contracts. The barrel arrives, I summon another chair and the steel bucket. Fill the bucket with water. Get the bandages and the ointment.


    I call in the first one in the line. I test the branding iron with my left finger. The skin sizzles. it hurts a lot. Apparently, that''s what my brain arranged as a coping mechanism. Let''s go the self-flagellation route to alleviate the guilt. I need a therapist. Come back in a millennium.


    I go through the line of people. Get forearm, wash with water and soap, dry, brand lather with ointment, wrap with bandages. Hand over a coin, have the person escorted out. Rinse repeat. I make sure to take in the scent of burnt flesh and hear the screams of pain. My penance is just sensorial abuse. My finger is already healing. They are marked for life. I''m a fool for not fighting the system.


    The last person goes away. One of the showgirls. She crosses the gate with a silver coin to her name. Probably more money than what she had at any point in her entire life. Since last night I have a bag with enough gold to pay off Hama-Tula''s debt.


    I feel someone holding my hand. The finger is fine, by the way. I glance sideways, it''s Belle. The freckled girl, that also never had a silver coin to her name, smiles at me. Slave-born. I squeeze Belle''s hand back. On the other side, watching over the brazier as if someone is going to knock it at any time, is Shamash.


    Right then the two envoys from Abil-Kisu arrive. Now everything clicks. The brazier was set for them and the others took advantage of that as the catalyst to take a decision. I hope they don''t regret it. Too late to turn around.


    "Welcome, gentlemen. You are here on Abil-Kisu''s behalf, right?"


    The man, probably the merchant''s advisor or accountant, because of he too thin to look like a fighter, answers. "Indeed. We are here to witness the release of Shamash and Ananu."


    "Then let''s get the show started. Gentlemen, your forearms."


    Shamash and Ananu move forward and show their arms. I wash them. Brand them. Spread the ointment and tie the bandage. Not too tight.


    "You two are to take the day to rest. No training, no straining those arms. Stay in your quarters. That is your assignment for today. You are to report for duty tomorrow at dawn."


    They both nod. "Yes, mistress."


    The two guards are about to leave when I raise a hand. "And you are forbidden to call me mistress. When in private, you will call me Sandra. When in front of others, ''lady'' or ''miss Rinaldi''. Understood?"


    "Yes, miss Rinaldi," Ananu answers.


    They leave. The two envoys from Abil-Kisu also depart right after. I''m still clutching the branding iron. The desire to drive it into my thigh is almost unbearable. So I make a stand. That would be the last moment I''d wield it. Everyone else present would get the release brand now. Today would be a day off for everyone.


    "Everyone with a slave brand, line up. I don''t want to hate myself more than I already am, and I''m branding the release for everyone. Guards will now earn two copper mina as wages. The other employees above the age of fourteen will receive one copper mina. Aristunn, Arwia, and Belle-Sunu will receive one extra copper mina per day as a bonus for their responsibilities."


    Then I repeated the ritual. I washed their forearms carefully. I pressed the iron against their skin. I spread the ointment. Wrapped the bandage. No coin for them. When it was over, I quenched the iron in the bucket, well aware it would destroy the metal.


    At least the itch to inflict harm upon me turned into an itch to destroy the tool.


    "Take this brazier to the kitchen and dump the coals in the stove," I say to nobody.


    The brazier moves, someone carried it. I didn''t see whom. I tested the iron, it was still warm but wouldn''t melt plastic or hurt the skin. Some scale flaked off. I put it back in its bag and stored it. I dumped the rest of the water in the bucket on the cobblestones to wash the soap away. Stupid. Should''ve Decomposed it.


    I store all of my objects and notice the bucket is no longer there. I really don''t want to go training but Brandon is waiting. I might feel better with my morning dose of blonde hunkiness. Maybe. No. I can''t go train today. I find Rimush.


    "Rimush, can I ask you a favor?"


    "Sure, Sandra. What do you need?"


    "Run to the garrison. Tell captain Brandon I won''t train today. I''m... not feeling very well. I''ll be there tomorrow, I promise."


    "Are you sick? I can call a healer too!" The boy offered.


    Oh! The news about their mom. I need to tell them. But the sun is already up if he doesn''t run I''ll be truant.


    "No. Just go there and back safely. I have good news about your mothers. I''ll tell you when you are back."


    "Mom!" He shouts full of mirth. The other kids run to get the news. Chaos ensues. I was forced to tell the news beforehand.


    "Rubati and Banunu are somewhere safe. A friend took them where the debt cannot reach them. Once it expires, they will return to you. So you have to work hard and study so they will be super proud of how much you''ve grown."


    The nine kids cheer. Some cry. They miss their mothers. I miss mine too. Rimush goes through the gate and I lead the children back inside. The only people that hadn''t been branded were the two guards at the gate, Arwia, and the kids. I couldn''t muster the courage to brand the girls I took from the caravanserai. They are too young.


    I check who departed and who stayed. All the adult women left along with the slaves recycled from the caravans. All of the guards from the three merchants left. Some of the guards from Hama-Tula departed. I could only count with eight guards, including Aristunn, Shamash and Ananu, twelve children, Arwia and Belle. The two old gardeners and two old ladies also stayed. My total expenses with wages are twenty-one copper mina per day. Or a bit short of three silver per day.


    That''s the hand I''ve been dealt. I didn''t want them to depart but I really wanted them to make their own choice. It means the former slave pens'' renovation is no longer necessary. The guard barracks have room for twelve. I can move the elder workers to the guard barracks with better accommodations. Arwia, Belle, Nanna, and the children can live in the main building. I''ll convert the slave pens into office, laboratory, and storage.


    There''s so much to do and things are happening faster than I can process. The mental strain was tough, I feel like it was exam week every day. I was not meant to lead. I had twelve children to care for! Just the thought was insane. I had no idea how Arwia was handling it. Maybe that''s a good start. I went into the house and heard Arwia lecturing. She had a soft, motherly voice, most probably from her experience with her siblings. As I recalled what Nanna told me, her mother died ten years ago in childbirth, and she had to raise her siblings because her father was a deadbeat through and through.


    I allow myself time to lean against the wall and watch her lecture them. She is teaching them the basic glyphs of their ''cuneiform kanji'' writing. It is probably a bad way to put it because it is totally unrelated to kanji but the parallel development process was very similar. They had ideographs and they composed them. But they used only straight strokes instead of the elegant brushstrokes of the Chinese characters.


    After a few minutes, she notices me, freezes and blushes when I smile at her.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Sandra! Do you want something?"


    A lot of things actually. None that is more important than the lecture though.


    "No. Just watching. Are any of the kids causing you trouble?" I immediately regret saying that. Some of them freeze like I am going to punish them. "Hey! Guys, please. I''m just trying to help and I won''t punish any of you. I was just asking if I could help."


    Arwia shakes her head. It is hard to tell what she meant with that if I couldn''t help, if help wasn''t needed, or if the kids aren''t causing trouble."


    "No, Sandra. Everything here is fine."


    I nod. "Okay. I''ll let you keep on with the lecture. Sorry for disturbing."


    I flee to the kitchen. Belle is rubbing spices on a piece of meat. I won''t interrupt her. I notice the kebab spit and well, I guess it is a common food. The meat is smaller now. I think her workload lessened drastically now. So I put on my ''just passing by'' face and slip into the backyard. I go find the gardeners. One of the elderly men saw me and stopped working on a flower bed to talk.


    "Milady, what can I do for you?"


    "I want to start cultivating bamboo. Could you prepare a patch for the grove?" I look around, "I trust you to find a good spot. And don''t worry, We''ll use as much bamboo as it grows. I know it can become a nightmare if not maintained."


    He nods, "I''m glad the lady understands. Yes, I''ll start planting the bamboo, I think that by that corner of the wall it will be fine. Maybe leave some room between so it won''t spread to the other side."


    "That is perfect. What are these flowers?" I ask pointing at the bed he was working. I could see a pile of removed weeds where he was crouching before.


    "They are called sunspots. Tiny yellow flowers. Their nectar is very sweet, the children like to chew them. They bloom only twice a year though."


    "That''s nice. Well, I won''t keep you from your job again."


    I prepare to leave but stop when I see him fidgeting as if trying to find the words to say something. "Mistress, I... I heard the people that left today speak some baseless rumors about you these last few days, and I want to say I don''t believe any of them. You did well in releasing them. I think you will be an excellent mistress. You look at us differently."


    I hold his hand. It is dirty and callused. "In my land, we learn to respect the elders. They lived longer and accumulated much wisdom. Thank you for trusting me. I''ll try to be worthy of your trust. And if there''s anything bothering you, please speak up. I''m no mistress. At most I am your employee, your boss. And you will move into the guard barracks. Check with Aristunn for your placement. I''m dismantling the slave pens. Please let the others know."


    He nods. "I will, mi... Sandra. Thank you."


    And I notice I once again forgot to ask for his name. "Please, forgive me but I don''t remember. What is your name?"


    "I am Hesha-Doka, mistress."


    "Hesha-Doka. Please continue. And don''t push yourself too hard. There''s always tomorrow."


    He smiles. "The same to you, mistress. You seem to be as busy as a bee. Never stopping. Take a rest sometimes."


    "Good. I will, I promise. I won''t leave home today."


    I go find the other gardener. He was at the back, taking care of a fenced vegetable garden. At his side a burlap bag filled with horse manure. I could see cabbages, lettuce, and other greens like what seemed like a mix of beans and broccoli. It seemed like the pods sprouted from the broccoli flowers. I''ve seen them in the kebabs Belle served and it was good to know some of them were home-grown. I approach trying my best to act normal and draw attention at the same time.


    He turns around. His facial features are more eastern-European than middle-eastern or Turkish but he''d not be out of place in Prague or Kyiv.


    "Greetings, mistress! What is the matter?"


    "No, just checking. How are you? Is everything alright?"


    "Everything is going on as Tarhun wished. I only pray that he wishes some rain upon us. The river won''t dry anytime soon but the well level is low. If this drought keeps on for longer, we might run out of water in the well and we''ll be forced to fetch it outside."


    "Did it happen in previous years?"


    "Once, five years ago. But this drought is worse than back then."


    "I''m glad you told me that. Please watch over the water from the well. Warn me if the level drops too low. I''ll think of something. Mister, could you give me your name again? I... I''m sorry, I don''t remember."


    "I am Tullius, milady." He answered with a smile.


    "Tullius, are you a refugee?" He nods. "What is your birthplace? Why did you come here and what were you fleeing from?"


    He pauses as if recalling the memories was painful. Damn, Sandra, you did it again. Curiosity killed the cat''s social life. But after pondering for a while, he speaks.


    "Do you know the tale of the Harbinger, miss?" It seems to be a sore wound for these people. The Harbinger and what he did. I nod. "After he destroyed the armies that opposed him with the great fires, he unleashed another calamity, one that haunts us to this day. The Death Snow."


    I''m taken aback. "Death Snow? Are you talking about when it rains ice or tiny flakes of ice from the sky? In cold weather? White, wet, cold?"


    He shakes his head. "No. I''ve never heard of what you are talking about. The Death Snow is dry, hot, and gray. The few that saw the Death Snow and survived to tell the tale to speak they look like ashes. None of them survived for long. They died horrible deaths," He tells me, clearly shaken as if he was breaking a taboo.


    It isn''t as if we were talking about Ralph Fiennes'' unnameable villain. But the emotion was the same. It was as if Brad Pitt would come and punch you in the face for breaking rule one.


    "You fled that awful fate. I''m sorry for asking, it must be painful."


    "No, milady. You must know. This place is quite far from the affected regions, but what the Snow claims, it never gives back. Nobody travels to the Realms under Snow and survive. I pray it doesn''t find us here."


    It is awful. Worse yet, I have a hunch and I don''t like it a bit. It is like Jeopardy. ''What great fires cause a rain of ashes that kills everyone?'' And then I am too afraid of hitting that buzzer because I don''t want to believe that kind of thing exists in here. Or more importantly, that someone crafted it.


    "Well, I''m glad we are safe here. But please watch over the well level, Tullius. I''m going to think of a solution."


    The drought must be worse than I thought. We are lower than the plateau and while I don''t know the dynamics of the water table, we shouldn''t be with low water levels. Unless the water basins split exactly at the plateau-valley divide.


    I went to check on the two ladies that remained. They seem old but they might be less than forty years old. Time to get to know them. They were at the former slave pens. I check the silicon. The metallic sheen seems the same black metallic sheen from yesterday. They were in the back near a window that lets the most sunlight in.


    "Hello? I''m coming in!" I announce myself to avoid any surprises.


    The conversation ends and silence reigns for a moment but one of the answers. "Come in!"


    "Ladies," I entered the room. They were sitting on a pile of hides, probably gathered from the abandoned bedding from the departees. "I see you claimed the whole area. Could I talk to you for a while?"


    I move to sit at the pile of hides next to them. They don''t seem to mind and we sit shoulder-to-shoulder.


    "What brings the young mistress here? I love the new floor, by the way. It cools the environment."


    I touch the silicon and feel the heat seeping into the floor. It seems to be as conducive as iron.


    "Glad you liked. Look, I''m moving you to the guard barracks. This place... It has too many painful memories. Of the terror, the people forced to live here endured. There''s room available there. Would you mind?"


    One of them scoffed. "And lose the opportunity to sleep in a real bunk? No way."


    They were about to go. "Wait. Talk to Aristunn to see your assignments. I have a task for you. I want you to boil tallow. I have a lot of tallow I want to make soap off, but I need to purify the fat. Boil the tallow, remove the foam and the impurities. Do you know how?"


    The other one nods, "That is easy, girl. Is there anything else you need to be done?"


    "I have some bamboo. Ask the guards to split the thickest pieces in half and remove the inner nodes except the first and the last. We are setting the soap there to cool. If you have time, you can also have the guards cut and thin strips of bamboo to weave baskets."


    "That is easy. We were growing bored without tasks. Is there anything else you want to have us do?"


    I remember something. "Actually, yes. I have some delicate clothes that I need to wash. Can I leave them with you?"


    "Yes, of course. Boil tallow, weave baskets, do the laundry. That is fine. We will do these tasks from now on. Maybe help the young girls clean the house."


    Another failure. Who was doing the housekeeping? Belle and Arwia alone? Maybe I can have the kids help.


    "Okay. Then we are settled. Do you mind if I ask your names?"


    "I''m Sere-Naha and she is Kali-Maru. We know your name, Sandra Rinaldi."


    I smile at them and hold their hands. "Sere-Naha, and Kali-Maru, thank you for staying. I hope you can have happy days here. Now if you don''t mind, I have to go. Oh. Here are the clothes. And before you ask, none of them were ever worn by me. Keep the blue bags. They are important."


    Important and irreplaceable. I summon the bag of female underwear and the bag of left-foot shoes. Why the heck would they leave only the left foot.


    "Oh, so colorful. These corsets are so thin. We will wash them, no problem. Should be all dry tomorrow."


    "Thank you."


    I leave the former slave building behind and return to the main house. As I go around I see the pile of discarded iron cell doors and window bars. It would be a waste to leave it there so I dedicate half an hour to turn them into disks with my frying pan as a mold.


    After that, I went to the main house to claim it. I''d start with the bedrooms of the former masters of the place. Hama-Tula, Rubati, and Banunu. I knew I would renovate everything. Probably put up the items for sale and then either purchase or craft new ones. Yes, that would be better. I didn''t want anything to remind me of them.


    I went through the dining room and Rimush had already returned. He was helping Arwia oversee the writing training. The kids had wooden trays filled with a lump of soft clay. They had small sharpened wooden sticks they used to punch the straight cuneiform strokes on the clay. If they committed a mistake, one smudge of the finger would erase it. Quite clever as a teaching aid. The clay could even be fired in a kiln to preserve the writing but scrolls were preferred as they were easier to store and were less brittle.


    I didn''t speak or interfere with the lessons. All the kids were focused and their drive would put those hyperactive sugar-addled Earth kids to shame. At least the ones I''d contact with. I can''t vouch for an entire planet, can I?


    I heard the creaking of wheels, announcing loaded wagons arrived. More slag. A problem for later, I shouldn''t even be here.


    I went upstairs and made my way to the master bedroom. No guards up here. I was down to a third of my guards and half of them were resting to avoid aggravating the brand. I pushed the wooden door and entered Hama-Tula''s room. It was dusty from all these days without anyone entering. I went to the windows and opened them. There was a balcony that looked over the inner courtyard. It was well built into the arches of the lower walkway and was hard to see from below. I wondered if that creep used this to keep an eye on the people below. Quite his thing.


    Now properly illuminated, I could see that the room was very well-decorated. A pile of fancy cushions covered by a huge black bear pelt served as a bed. The fur was soft as... too soft. I immediately changed my mind about discarding everything. I wanted that pelt. But Hama-Tula and his wives... on top of it. There''s no problem if I give it a thorough wash. Tapestries hung over the walls, hung as if to hide the dull sandstone bricks. A desk with scrolls, chamber pot, clean, and an archway that led to a bath. Porcelain tiles made an intricate geometric mosaic and half of this room had no roof. There was some mold growing on the corners of the rectangular tub that could fit six people easily.


    I returned and started to take the tapestries off the walls. I had lime and crystal-white sand, I could make mortar and paint the walls. One of them revealed a second passage, into a closet. A bolt held the door closed. I lifted the bolt from its rest and pulled it back. Once I was about to open the door, a dart shot and pierced my hand. Three other darts also shot at different heights but only the first hit my hand. My hand burned. Poison. I focused on Decompose to remove the bone dart and neutralize as much of the poison as I could. It was a necrotic one and my hand started to lose coloration and to look really sick purple. I kicked the rest of the door open and an ax swung down, aimed square at my head. I dodged sideways. The ax went back and forth several times before it lost momentum and halted.


    I didn''t mind the ax. I kept fighting the poison. I remembered that keeping oneself agitated would increase heart rate and spread more of the poison through the blood. So I laid on the bear fur waiting for the poison to be flushed from me.


    I came close to fainting but I kept my breathing still and my heart rate low. Eventually, the poison was purged and I healed. I took my selfie stick and tapped the ground, the door, the frame. Nothing. I pulled the door, now blocked by the ax and nothing happened. So I went around the massive weapon and looked behind. A series of levers attached to the back of the door drove power to the mechanism of the traps exposed in the chamber''s wall next to the door.


    A set of pulleys and weights multiplied the pull from the weights to push the darts out, while another pulled a pin in the roof to release the ax from its grove. Clever traps.


    I spent a lot of time checking the walls and the floor for more traps but found none. I also discovered the way to bypass the traps. You''d have to insert a thin bar of metal at a certain angle underneath the door and hold a latch in place. This latch, if held down would stop the other traps from launching.


    Finding no other dangers in the room, I entered. There was no sense in keeping traps where people meant to use the room would pass through. Unless you were a paranoid deranged wicked evil merchant. Might be the case.


    The room was moist and shaped like a pantry, with shelves on both sides. I could see ornate chests, boxes, piles of scrolls and spools of silk. It seemed I hit the jackpot. I pulled the lid of one of the fanciest chests with the selfie stick. No traps came off and the lid wouldn''t hold open because it would bang against the wall. I looked inside. Gold and silver. A lot of coins, probably two and a half times as much as what I saw in Abil-Kisu''s bag. Dang dawg. Open sesame to you too!


    I sift through the coins, and they all seem to be made of the same shiny yellow metal. Why would he be in debt if he had this much treasure? Why didn''t Banunu or Rubati enter here to steal the gold? They probably didn''t know how to disable the traps. I doubt an asshole like Hama-Tula would...


    It makes sense. Banunu wanted to kill Hama-Tula but only after she learned the secret of the treasure. That''s why she kept the wine. Or why she tried to kill me. I guess she could get someone to open this and disarm the traps for her, but it would mean getting more people into the conspiracy. That''s just a theory.


    I summon my purse and put the larger mina coins inside. Then I try to store it but it won''t go.


    What?


    What is going on here? I remove the new coins and do it again. The purse stores. I try with a ziplock. Nope. Are these coins cursed or something?


    I look at the other boxes. Gemstones. Silver coins. Gold ingots. None of them store with the ziplock bag. Then I find a separate box, small. It could be a woman''s jewelry box as it is beautifully carved. I open it and see...


    Kryptonite.


    Yeah, no. I''m glad Christopher Reeve isn''t here. Best Superman ever, may he find peace. But if I showed it at any geek convention and told the geeks it was kryptonite, they''d believe. It is a mineral, still embedded in bedrock. It has a tetragonal crystalline structure and is translucid. A few portions at the edge are a dull gray but most of it has this lattice of rectangular crystals in all directions. Some sections even look like a borg cube.


    It could be emerald but the crystalline structure is odd. There''s one way to know if it is emerald. Testing its hardness. Emeralds are hard. If my stainless still knife can''t scratch it, that might be emerald. I summon the utensil and do the test. It scratches. Not emerald. It is actually very soft. I can scratch it with my fingernail. I break a small piece and hold it in my closed fist. It has a strong resonance as if it was burning. It also feels weird. I check for hydrogen, positive. Water, positive. Some hydrated mineral.


    I also test silicon, nothing. Zilch. It is a salt ore then. One very hydrophilic. What elements does it have? What mineral is this? And does why it feel odd in my hand? Let''s test the other elements. I remove all the water, making the sample crumble into a fine powder. That was expected. Now to walk the periodic table. Hydrogen, no. Neon, skip. Lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, yes. A lot. Some oxide salt. Sulfur, nitrogen, chlorine, fluorine, nope. None of these.


    Phosphorus, yes. That settles the anion of the salt. Phosphate. The cation should be metallic.


    "LiNa''s oKay withRuby''sCloseFriendship." Yeah, no. I didn''t know the resonances for Rubidium, Caesium or Francium. And the chances that it had one of these were minimal.


    "BettyMontgomeryCalledSr.BarryRadcliffe." I got something there at the end of the sentence. Strontium, Barium, no. Radium. Radium. Atomic number 88. Please no.


    Fuck.


    The sample contained radium. Too little but it was like that itch that you could ignore until you knew it was there. You bumped at something and it only started to hurt when someone told you you had a wound.


    I had a radioactive mineral. And this green now makes sense. That''s why the rod in the Simpsons was green. Because it''s uranium.


    And this might mean that this entire room was contaminated.

 Afternoon 10

    "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."


    - Sun Tzu


    <hr>


    Imaginary ominous sound effects in the background. I had a huge chunk of uranium ore.


    Well, not huge but quite large, with about forty centimeters wide by ten centimeters tall, and quite active too. But if you asked me, any amount of uranium is too much uranium. Once I knew what I was dealing with, it only took a quick search to find what that green rock was. Torbenite. It could be kryptonite, I''d prefer that. I snapped a picture before messing with it.


    I tried to think what to do with it and remembered my portable lab has a dosimeter tag, one of those cheap $15 credit-card-sized ones. I went outside the treasure room, took the lab from storage and cut an ear from the tag to store back. This way I could discard the used tag and see if it would restore itself from the removed piece. After that''s done, I remove it from its lead sheet casing and return to the room.


    I put it in my pocket and checked periodically to see if the band''s color darkened. It went from the light green of 10mSv and I let time pass as I worked, checking every now and then. The green band darkened to 500 and in the end, it was a bit past 1,000 mSv right before I locked the whole material away. That was beyond safe. I released the tag and it disintegrated. But I went ahead of myself.


    Call the EPA. This uranium sample is so pure and potent it could be considered weapons-grade material.


    The sandstone walls were very thick as it could be seen through the windows, but this door frame had double that thickness. It meant this room was built to be a safe so the radiation was mostly contained in this room. But I doubted Hama-Tula wasn''t feeling the effects of radiation poisoning already if he slept here every day. I had to clear up everything. It begged the question, could I clear the contaminated gold? Maybe separate isotopes I took a coin and tried to Decompose in reverse. I''d keep the Au 197 and push away everything else. Nothing happened and I pushed more. The copper came out. These coins were not pure gold. Maybe 22-carat gold. But the lump of gold I had left after the copper came out, it stored.


    I cleaned up all the coins, dumping the lump of copper in the lead bowl with the uranium. I didn''t even care if it was contaminated or not. It was just copper. Then the gemstones. I shook my head as I destroyed probably hundreds of gold shekels worth of gems. I tested them one by one with the ziplock bag, storage refused to accept them. The whole room should be past salvation. All I could do was Decompose everything so no valuables remained behind, then lock down the room.


    Maybe if I had more experience with the radioactive elements and isotopes, I could clean without utterly destroying the objects by removing only them. But I didn''t. I snapped a video of the scroll''s contents, most of them are letters with two royal proclamations mixed in. I didn''t read them in-depth but they also had to be destroyed.


    To solve the radiation problem I had forty-four kilograms of lead. And that was what I did. After I separated the ore from the silicon, I extracted water and copper phosphate from the torbernite, removing the salt into a cup of silicon and dumping the uranium and its decaying friends inside a bowl of lead along with water. I left the bowl half-full then shaped more lead to cover it, making a sphere that was half-air with uranium sitting on the water. Uranium can burn if exposed to air. Before I closed it I had to check for more contaminated material. So I scoured the walls and shelves, Decomposing the safe materials away from the irradiated ones.


    I only hoped my self-healing boon would keep me safe.


    The sense of wrongness was strong and easy to detect now that I got used to it. It was as if my power was meant to do exactly that. Maybe it was and given all the things I discovered recently, I didn''t doubt a bit. I scraped a centimeter out of the walls, ceiling, and floor, and also destroyed every object in there. I had a fistful of irradiated material that went in with the uranium.


    I wish I had more tags to check but I didn''t and the piece I stored would need a day to restore itself before I could check if it could be reused. My only hope was to work until Decompose wasn''t creeping me out anymore when I tried to sense around the room.


    Then I sealed the material inside a block, using all the lead, adding layers until I had a thick brick. The uranium was sealed in the lead with only ten centimeters of thickness. A third than what was really needed but enough to block or slow down most emissions. The next heaviest metal I had was copper but putting a layer of copper around the lead would be bad as copper was a precious and useful metal. I wrapped the lead in a thick layer of aluminum and then wrapped around with silicon.


    I scraped samples of the roof, floor, and walls to test if it would enter storage. It did. Satisfied with the containment, I plastered aluminum over where the door was and adjacent walls, removing some of the sandstone and layering a 2-centimeter thick sheet of aluminum over the entire opening. I used up all my aluminum and lead. knew the aluminum wouldn''t block many gamma emissions but it would slow them down better than whatever I could get to block that gap.


    To me, aluminum was cheaper than copper. Hello, it is the third most common element in the crust. At least I got the gold and saved the document''s data. I had to stop and review them later.


    Nuclear crisis averted, I and shoved everything that would be sold down the balcony. After pondering I also tossed the bear pelt because I wanted Sere-Naha and Kali-Maru to wash it.


    The room was empty. I went to the next room and found Bananu''s bedroom. She left most of her clothes behind. I remember she was carrying only a sack when she left. They seemed fancy and expensive, but not my style. The next room was a storage room. Probably Hama-Tula''s walk-in closet. I could see male clothes and shoes. Nothing worth anything to me. The fourth room was Rubati''s. Same thing. I would send the girls here to see if they wanted any of these.


    Or if the kids wanted to keep a memento of their mom.


    Done with the master section of the house, I went through the other rooms but besides basic furniture, there wasn''t anything of interest. No more deadly traps hiding radioactive crap. I was upset at my previous encounter. Before going down, I Decomposed the clothes I was wearing, including the pajamas. I had a sample of each piece in storage and I didn''t want to run any risks.


    Downstairs, I called for everyone.


    "Okay, I finished clearing the upper floor. There''s a metal wall in the master bedroom. Do not go near it. I threw some tapestries and the other items in there through the balcony. I want the bear pelt washed and cleaned. I''ll let each of you take an item, any item from the stuff up there. Starting with the children. Get something that will help you remember your mothers. A dress, a trinket. You choose. Then everyone can get one item for yourselves, so long it is worth less than a silver mina. I want everything else cleaned and packed for sale.


    "After you are done doing that, let''s eat lunch together."


    The kids went upstairs. The widows left behind their clothes and the less valuable but more often-used trinkets and jewelry. They came back with trinkets like a necklace, a hair comb made of some creature''s bone, a favorite dress, and other knickknacks. Then the others'' took their pick. The women got what goes as fancy dresses for the current fashion sense and the guards went for Hama-Tula''s fancy togas. The rest of the items would go to the market for sale.


    We ate the kebabs Belle made and everyone went on with their errands. Except for the children. They had the afternoon free to play around. After I had Aristunn and another change the table with the charger to the other side so it would get sunlight in the afternoon, I had no plans. Maybe I should go shopping.


    But I should take one of the guards as an escort. I went to the barracks after a while and got the end of the room assignment. The guard barracks were a thin and long building leaning against the wall. It had eight rooms plus one lounge with a bunk bed in each room. It was cramped but not as much as the slave pens.


    "... And with that, we will have two rooms left for new recruits. I think that with only eight guards we will have a hard time protecting the lady. I hope you understand. In fact, I''ll suggest her we hire at least two more guards today."


    They were assembled at the lounge. I leaned on the door.


    "Consider your suggestion approved," I replied to Aristunn. "I''m going to the market now, I need to buy some things. Who is feeling well enough to escort me?"


    "I can do," One of the guards raised his hand.


    "Okay. How is your arm... Look, I am sorry I didn''t ask for your names earlier," I sigh. "I should really take the time to get to know you and I''m sorry. There were so many things happening that these last few days passed like a blur. So, of the guards, I''d like the five of you to introduce yourselves. Tell me your name, how did you come into the service of the house, etc."


    The guard that volunteered starts.


    "My name is Lipit-Ea. I was captured in war from the coastal city-state of Binur to the south. They made me a eunuch and I had seven masters before Hamatula bought me. I know how to sail a boat and how to catch fish from the sea."


    "The ocean! I''d like to see the seas," In fact, I would like to travel the world one day. "Are they dangerous? Are giant monsters a thing?"


    Oww, what a stupid question. Me and my big mouth. Of course navigating is dangerous, you moron.


    "I only heard legends. But it is hard to separate fact from myth if nobody survives. And even when we find survivors, they are too crazy to give a trustworthy report."


    "How far is the sea?"


    "Two months by caravan, Sandra." That should be twenty days on horseback. Three weeks. I miss internal combustion vehicles.


    "Oh. That''s a long trip. Is the way safe... nevermind. I guess it is not. Bandits, monsters, rage-apes, roving armies... Right?" And there we go again. Jumping to conclusions.


    "Yes, pretty much that. Although rage-apes are rarely seen to the south."


    "Well, we can certainly put that on our wishlist. Who wants to go next?"


    "I''ll go," A somewhat overweight guard raises his hand. I know that he is strong as an ox because he was the one moving water barrels around. "I''m Tiwatura. I lived in a city-state to the west, down in the dragon river. We were raided, captured, and sold. I was the village chieftain."


    "Good to know. I''ll count on you to advise me on political issues then, I guess."


    "It will be my pleasure. I don''t like to brag, but my village was very prosperous. That''s why we were targeted."


    I shift my gaze to the next guard in line. He was fidgeting and nervously brings his open palm to his heart.


    "Name''s Dipa-Tsu, mistress! Sandra!" He hurriedly corrects himself. "I-I am twenty-five and served Hama-Tula ever since he married. My parents were slaves of his father. I really appreciate what you did for the children. To be honest, I would like to follow the young master when he comes of age next year."


    He seems afraid exactly because that could be considered by some employers - not masters, they are free - as a sign of treason. I wave a hand and smile at him.


    "You mean you want to work for Rimush? I see no problem with that, Dipa-Tsu. I admire your loyalty and sincerity. Just make sure he doesn''t let his greed consume him like what happened to his father."


    "I''ll try. Thank you, Sandra."


    I turned to face the next guard. He returned the eye contact fearlessly. This guard was older than the others, I''d put him in the thirties. He had lots of scars and his skin was rugged. It was like he participated in hundreds of battles. He had precise movements and the aura of a predator.


    "I am Huzzi-Ya, a former gladiator at the capital. I fought for glory for five years until I received an injury to my leg. I survived that duel but it was obvious that my next fight would be my last. My master sold me to Hama-Tula. I can still fight and defend the Lady and this household, even though my mobility is compromised."


    "I don''t doubt your prowess for even a moment, master Huzzi-Ya. There''s a saying in my land that if you know yourself and your enemy, you do not need to fear a thousand battles. If I can ask of you, oversee the training of the guards. Especially regarding working together. I promise I''ll join when I can, so we can know what to expect from each other."


    I could see the gleam in his eyes. He liked my proposal.


    "It will be my pleasure, mistress." He didn''t even blink on the ''mistress'' part, as if it was only natural to address me like this.


    Then it was time for the last guard. This guy was taller than the others and very well-built. He wore a sleeveless tunic some slaves were given even though he took clothes from the closet. He had light brown hair and dark skin, an odd combination.


    "I am Sin-Ma-Sihu. I lived in my own land, across the ocean when slave traders captured me and brought me to this land. I was bought by Banunu as a pleasure slave but I incurred Hama-Tula''s wrath. He spared my life but made me a eunuch guard. I''m a very good shot with a bow."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    "Nice. Do you wish to return to your homeland?"


    He shook his head. I could see that even thinking of his homeland was painful.


    "Everything there was destroyed. Everyone I know, dead or captured and shipped overseas. There''s nothing for me there."


    "Maybe there''s something for you here then. As long as you wish, I''ll have a spot for you."


    I extended a hand to him. To my surprise, he took the hand and kissed my fingers.


    "Thank you, mistress."


    Oookay. Introductions were done, I feel like a weight has lifted off of my shoulders. I wasn''t in a perfect state of mind during the last few days. Going with the flow, ignoring reality, cocooned within my own mind for self-preservation. Time to change things.


    "Good. Guys, I''ll take Huzzi-Ya and Lipit-Ea with me to the market. I need Huzzi to evaluate prospective guards. Tiwatura, you go with Sin-Ma-Sihu and get us a lot of sand, clay, and gravel. The others should watch over the gate and rest for the night shift."


    They shout acknowledgment. Then Aristunn raises a good point.


    "If you are going to the market, Sandra, you should put on your gold choker and earrings. Maybe even some bracelets too. It might not get you the best prices as the merchants will refuse to bargain lower but it will make them act with respect toward you. I have a hunch you''d prefer the latter."


    He has an excellent point. I spend twenty minutes making gold thread from the chunks of gold I extracted from the irradiated coins, then another ten braiding it into a new choker and a bracelet. For the clasp, I use some copper that I can sever without damaging the gold. It added length to the choker so it was now a necklace. Same for the bracelet. It slacked so I ditched the copper and welded the gold around my wrist. I''d rather remake it.


    We saddle the horses and depart for the market. On the way, Huzzi-Ya and I agreed on a sign. I had to be the one making the calls but I should observe Huzzi-Ya''s hands. If his left hand was higher than the right, the candidate should be rejected. If the left hand was at the same level, below or hide, the candidate should be approved.


    I need furniture, bedding, sheets, clothes. Sell the tapestries. I won''t buy tapestry, maybe craft them later. Purchase some barrels of salt, tallow, essential oils, some citrus fruit like lemons or others, myrrh, incense, candle wax, and some root vegetables. Yes, I will buy beets, potatoes, radishes. If someone asks I''m doing that for the animals. Maybe raise pigs.


    The trip through the market went fine in the beginning. Since we were buying things in bulk, the merchants would deliver them later via cart, some of them even splitting the costs among themselves. I only had trouble with the citrus fruit vendor. They didn''t have lemons but they had this tangerine variation that could reach incredible levels of sourness.


    "I want the sourest ones. How many do you have?" I told him.


    "No! The lady must not eat this fruit! They''re too sour, the lady deserves my best."


    And as Aristunn prophetized, the merchants marked up their stuff and I got ''only the better''. As if salt had any better variant.


    "Okay. Say, how much for a bag of fruit?"


    "For the lady, I''ll take a loss and sell the bag at one silver shekel and three copper minas."


    "Oh. But you have sour fruit. How can I possibly know if the bags are only sweet fruit on top? I''ll pay only one copper mina per bag."


    The merchant smiled with his eyes. The game was on.


    "I can assure you the fruit I''ll sell you has only the sweetest fruit. Juices that will feel like nectar from heaven. Since the lady is so knowledgeable, I''ll sell each bag for one silver shekel and one copper mina only."


    The bags had about five or eight kilograms of fruit each. But I couldn''t let him swindle me.


    "I don''t know. You see, I''m afraid these fruits might stain my hands, being so acidic. But since we came to the trouble of negotiating it, I''ll not leave empty-handed. Two copper minas."


    It went back and forth like that. Invent one silly excuse and make another bid. It went down to five copper mina a bag on his last offer when I delivered a coup de grace.


    "I''ll give you the benefit of doubt. But I''m afraid you are trying to hide the very good fruit from me. I''ll pay you three copper mina on your fruit only if you sell me all your bags. Every single one. How many do you have there?"


    "Th-thirty-seven, milady."


    "three silver and two copper mina on all bags. You can go home earlier. What do you say?"


    I could see the merchant was pissed at me. He made some calculations and made a devious face.


    "I can''t deliver you the fruit today, milady. Tomorrow morning, I''ll have the thirty-seven bags delivered to your house. I have some customers that are coming today. If you want to take a bag with you now, I can arrange that."


    I knew he was going to do the good old switcheroo. He was going to deliver me the sourest fruit he had. And it suited me just fine.


    "Yes, that is fine," I paid him and took a bag he gave me. "I hope to do business with you again."


    "Yes, but I''ll be broken now. All my fruit..." He was exaggerating.


    I left. The sour fruit would be the best for me, as I wanted the citric acid. With Decompose I could try to separate the components of the juice. It would be hard because I had no familiarity with the compounds but I had to start somewhere. The citric acid was important to make PH-neutral soap.


    The other trades weren''t as stressful as the citrus fruit. Then we went to the caravanserai. I had four horses with the animal merchant that belonged to me and we needed to hire two guards. We rode past the gate, drawing just curious glances. The merchants that settled next to the entrance gates were either those interested in either selling refreshments to weary travelers or keeping tabs on who was coming in or out. The three of us made a beeline for the tavern.


    I couldn''t hire normal, as in with the dangling bits still attached, guards because it would be a scandal for a household with a Lady to have virile guards. The only ones that employed virile guards were male merchants for their caravans. But there were free eunuchs that offered their services, usually in three-year contracts. They relied on reputation for employment and word-of-mouth would be fatal. As agreed, I''d leave Huzzi-Ya conduct negotiations while Lipit-Ea would hound around me.


    I felt as if I was being showcased. We left our horses in front of the tavern and entered it. I felt like Clint Eastwood. The music stops, every eye on me... Except it didn''t happen. The patrons glanced our way and went on to ignore us. There was a group that glanced then quickly hid. The guards for the three merchants that departed today. Considering the number of tankards on their table, the silver was well-spent.


    I went to a corner table and sat while Lipit-Ea stood with his back to me and doing his best menacing face. Not even the barmaid came to take my order. I was growing bored when Huzzi-Ya arrived with eight candidates. They started to do their introductions and I had my own selection tool ready under the table, the tablet. I knew I was being biased and probably discarding good choices but having only people that couldn''t hurt me helped my own sense of safety. The standard contract for guards was three-years-long and their pay was nine copper shekels per day. I was paying 33% more right off the bat.


    "Mistress," Huzzi-Ya started, "these eunuchs here are all available for hire and showed interest in working for you. They all have at least five years of experience as guards, both in caravans and in households. Introduce yourselves."


    I could see they had scars on their arms and, in some cases, faces. Their hands were rough, callused from wielding weapons for too long.


    "I am Muta-Nani. I am deadly with a scimitar and promise to cut down the lady''s enemies!" The first one spoke. Not what I want for a guard and I don''t want thugs. Pass.


    "Milady, I''m Usalla. It would be an honor to serve under Tarhun''s Blessed Maiden." I had mixed feelings with this one. It felt like he''d worship me a bit too much. Like attempting to punish people because they slighted me, or forcing them to show the level of respect he expects. But Huzzi-Ya had his hands behind his back so I shifted my gaze to the next one.


    "Greetings. I''m Atta-Li. I swear to protect you and your household with my life if needed." He almost knelt. He had the right attitude at least. I forgot to check Huzzi-Ya''s opinion, but I couldn''t keep glancing at him after each candidate''s turn.


    "Name''s Kanu-Kasu. I traveled for eight years with caravans to the corners of the world. Now I want some quiet. I am very good at haggling." This guy seemed a veteran, just like Huzzi-Ya. Speaking of the arena veteran, he was scratching his head with the right hand and his chest with the left so I could catch what was his opinion.


    "I''m Manni-Manna. I am a minor sorcerer and I must work for the mistress. Your inner light shines so strong it blinds me. Even without pay, I''d pledge my life to you." A sorcerer for free? I''d still pay him though.


    "Iru-Nasu. I''m good with children so I''ll watch over the lady''s offspring." No, thank you. You can help me organize my day-care though.


    "Zinwa-Seli. I have night eyes and love to do the night watch. No caravan I''ve traveled with was ever robbed at night." I wonder if this is some sort of perk or special power like mine.


    "Lah-Ueri here. I worked the mines for ten years before jealous miners assaulted me and I became a eunuch." And that was the last one. The miner part was really interesting.


    There were several interesting candidates. My dilemma was that I''d never been to a job interview, much less conducted one. Before this, I mean. I needed time to think but thanks to my memory perk I could replay their introductions in my head. Aside from storage, repair, and Decompose, I learned too little about what my perks could do. So to buy time, I decided to do a little test.


    "Gentlemen, I want the eight of you to sit at a table and order whatever you want. I''ll discuss it with my guards here and tell you my decision soon. Please, leave me for a while."


    Some of them didn''t like it. Usalla, Zinwa-Seli, and Kanu-Kasu. My guess is that they wanted me to make a quick decision or they were too prideful. My eyes wandered through the tavern and I could see that the guards that departed this morning were looking at me.


    "Huzzi-Ya, what do you think? I''m sorry but I couldn''t see all your signals. I am thinking of Kanu-Kasu, Manni-Manna, Iru-Nasu, and Lah-Ueri. Do you have anything against these men?"


    "Kanu-Kasu definitely. I know him and he is trustworthy. Iru-Nasu is no good. You need guards, not a nanny. Manni-Manna is complicated. We normal folks don''t like sorcerers and the witch might not like him because he will pester her for knowledge. The old miner, I know you''ll make a point to keep him. The men told me of your fascination for the rocks."


    Not what I wanted to hear but I really wanted to hire Kanu-Kasu and Lah-Ueri.


    "So what other two we will hire in place of the two you rejected?" I asked in a low voice. There were too many necks craning my way already.


    "Take Zinwa-Seli and Atta-Li. They seem good guards and they have a good evaluation from the caravaneers. Their claims are very accurate."


    I had to trust my advisor. I had zero experience hiring guards and the reason I brought the grizzled arena veteran was exactly that. I had nothing against the ones he indicated.


    "Then it is settled. I''ll trust your judgment. Should we go and get the horses? I still want to do some work today."


    We still had two hours of sunlight. I wanted to check if Tiwatura got the materials I needed. I told the four we recruited they were hired and went to the horse merchant. Despite my worries, once I showed proof that I owned the possessions of the merchants and paid the fees owed, he released the horses. The seven of us mounted and went back home.


    At the gates, I dismounted and had Penny follow the guards. I looked at the front of the sandstone brick villa and stood there, thinking.


    I was quite satisfied with the afternoon''s results. I bought almost everything I needed for my immediate projects, hired people without having to trample my principles, refreshed my mind, found radioactive treasure, renovated and claimed my house, got to know my staff.


    Except that...


    I don''t know all the children''s names.


    Now that''s what I call a screwup. I need therapy. No, seriously. I was a piece of flotsam at the mercy of the waves during the last few days. It was as if I was dreaming and only woke up today. Self-loathing hitting in 3, 2, 1...


    I was thrown, naked, into a river with a tentacle monster. Then because I cheated a man died. The next three merchants come and stupid me decides to let them stab me. Cut to the courthouse where I thought my video would just prove that I won and a bloodfest ensues. I become a slave merchant and... I think my mind started to shut down when I saw that caravan die.


    Part of me decided everything wasn''t real. That I would wake up back in my dorm. My mind cleared up. What changed? I''d like to say it was the uranium like I touched radioactive ore and it cleared my mind, would make a good story but I was already clearing up before finding that room.


    Maybe it was the resolve to own my decisions and their consequences. When I let my slaves walk away free. When I looked at the people I surrounded myself with and saw them as people.


    I picked up a piece of gravel from the ground. Decomposed it. Separated the silicon from the oxides. Aluminum and a bit of calcium in a hydrated complex. Maybe some iron.


    This is real.


    I had twelve children, two teenage girls, ten guardsmen, and four elders under my responsibility... And a witch guest. I didn''t know what Nanna was to me, really. And we should add seven horses to that. I had to take care of them and proper sanitation was the first step.


    I shook off my daze and glanced up at the alien sky of a moonless world. I felt the urge to start working, to make something to use that last hour of sunlight to do something. I forced myself to stop. If I was here for the long run, I should pace myself for a marathon, not a short sprint.


    I had to take it slow. Think over things instead of just doing it. I went into the house and found them.


    "Rimush, gather all the children. I want to talk to all of you."


    Then I had the children introduce themselves. In order of age.


    Rimush, the oldest son of Hama-Tula and Banunu. Thirteen years old, he was overprotective of his siblings and hopefully would become smarter than his father. In less than a year he''ll come of age and will depart with Dipa-Tsu to strike out on his own. If he proved he can sustain his siblings and wished to do so, I''d let him take them.


    Pidda, second son. Twelve years old and one year and two months younger than Rimush. He idolized his father and I suspect he still held some resentment toward me.


    Belili, first daughter. Ten years old but about to become eleven in two months. She is shy and usually looks up to her older brothers for guidance. I wish I could instill more confidence in her.


    Muranu, third son and Rubati''s firstborn. turned nine a few months ago. I think he got his father''s cunning but he is the kind that waits to strike at the right moment.


    Anaya, second daughter, and Rubati''s daughter. Eight years old. She was very attached to her mother and had bouts of sadness every now and then.


    Kiya, third daughter, also eight years old, born from Banunu. Although she is older than Anaya by five months, both sisters are very close to each other. Kiya was usually the one to soothe her sister''s crisis.


    Hapiya, fourth son from Rubati''s side, seven years old. He has difficulty with his motor skills and is lagging behind in the writing lessons.


    Gadudu, seven years old and son of Banunu, is also seven but younger than Hapiya. He is afraid of me and quick to hide behind are siblings.


    And the three copper-skinned girls I took from the slave trader. Their ages are unknown but they are all close to each other in size and body shape. Gula, Mot, and Bibi. They have a strong follower mentality born from witnessing their former slaves suffer. The three girls are stoic and quiet but they are slowly opening up. I can only pray we would be granted enough time to heal their mental scars.


    I committed their names to memory and dismissed the children after Arwia came to make them take a bath.


    I went outside and checked on the supplies that were delivered, checking everything and reminding the guards that would be on the morning shift, Ananu and Lipit-Ea that I expected thirty-seven bags of tangerines in the morning. Of the other items I bought, only the furniture wasn''t delivered yet. The guards that I sent to gather sand and gravel brought back a small cart full of each. The gravel was too big for what I wanted so I had another task tomorrow, break down these rocks into a fine particulate.


    Maybe I could get a rock crusher forged. I asked Ananu to wake me up before sunrise so I would have time to run by the smithy to commission one. On my way back, I retrieved the charger, battery, and table. I drained the battery charge a lot these past days so it didn''t reach full charge even though it spent the whole day charging.


    With everything settled, I took a bath after the children and retired to my bedroom. Belle would bring me dinner because I had a huge task ahead of me.


    I needed to classify and record all the photos Tarhun took into a database. I had no GPS and I couldn''t even find myself in these ten thousand plus pictures. I booted up the laptop and wrote a simple shell script that would read the photos EXIF data and dump it as a JSON file. 163 MB of text data after what felt like an eternity. I opened the first few lines and found the problem. I was storing the full path with the filename. Write another script to fix the output of the first one and work with the constraint that everything had to be in the same directory.


    Belle came with a bowl of soup. While the script ran, I went to bed and had my soup there to avoid spilling anything on the world''s only computer. After I returned I started to write a simple HTML document with a jQuery script to load the database, and display one photo in the center of the screen along with parts of the eight adjacent ones around under a fog-like mask over them at the edges of the screen. But I don''t know what the adjacent images are. I could calculate it on the spot but it would reduce performance as the script would need to look through the whole database. I needed to pre-process the coordinates to find the adjacent pictures, record it in the database so the script would know what files to load. It meant adding four columns to each entry.


    I bet there was a more elegant solution but that''s the limit of my ability. And the limit of my patience too. I stretched and found it was too dark outside. I stored my items and went to bed.

 Day 11

    I woke up from a dream where I was drowning in a data lake. It glowed green because... why not? Belle was knocking on the door and barged in.


    "Sandra, you asked to wake you up before dawn. Are you up? Is there a problem?"


    I sat up in my nightgown and the freckled girl covered her eyes. "No. I just had a nightmare. It is fine. Thank you, Belle. Is there any problem?"


    She peeked through her fingers, "Your clothes."


    I giggled. "Oh. These? Quite comfortable as the heat is unbearable even during the night. I''m up."


    I glance through the open shutters. Tones of orange threaten to devour the stars on the eastern side of the sky. Time to get the day started.


    My early morning ritual was blessed by slightly cool water. I put on my training clothes, a dry-fit solar-blocking pink and white shirt and a black spots bra on top, cargo pants and sneakers below. Despite the nightmare, I was feeling absolutely fine and well-rested. I used the latrine holding my breath, as usual and sighed. I learned that once a week, a wagon comes to collect the night soil. You pay them one bronze mina and they empty the septic pit. I don''t even know how I should call it. It is just a hole under the latrine filled with... whatever falls down the latrine. There is a side opening that goes through the structure, a gap they left in the building that ends in a chimney. The wind pulls most of the stench out through that pipe and not back to the latrine.


    This afternoon I am building a septic tank to dispose of that. Maybe even a flushing toilet. But for that, I need to make concrete and to make concrete I need a rock crusher. We can crush rocks with a mallet but I predict a lot of building. So it is time to hit the smithy before going to training. I nab some grilled sausages and fresh bread at the kitchen and eat my breakfast washed down by some tangerine juice Belle-Sunu squeezed.


    "Oh, Belle. These tangerines, they are not for eating. Well, at least not straight. I want you to look out for the sourest ones and keep their seeds. A fruit merchant should come to deliver thirty-seven bags. I expect him to be grumpy and to give me lots of very sour fruit. Sour, not spoiled. Check if the fruit is fresh and store the bags in my room. I don''t care about the smell, I find it quite pleasant."


    Maybe even get better at Decomposing so I can extract essential oils with my power. The freckled cook nods.


    "Penny-Gu is already being saddled. Your mare is as sweet as her name sounds, isn''t she?"


    I finish chewing, "Penny? Yes, she''s lovely. Well, gotta run. Oh, take a crate of salt and a barrel of water to my room as well. I''ll need them."


    "Will do, Sandra."


    "I''ll also leave the devices for Aristunn to set for me. Remind him to keep them always under the sun and keep a watch over them."


    She nods. I''m worried about leaving my charger and battery out and away from my hands as my devices depend on them to run but I need to charge them. So all I can do is trust the people I have. I wash down my food with the rest of the juice and go to the stables. It seems that Lah-Ueri will be my escort today.


    "Morning, old prospector," I salute him.


    There''s no word for ''prospector'' so I call him ''ore-finder'' in Akkadian. The veteran miner smiles.


    "I heard the Lady likes rocks," He smiled. "It is an honor. The other eunuchs told me stories of your deeds. You are very brave."


    "Or very stupid. I''ll let history judge me. Now, let''s go. I want to talk to the master blacksmith as the first rays of sun hit the Earth."


    We ride past the gates and back to the central zone of the town. Soon we reach the smithy and true enough, the apprentices are already working hard on the central bellows to get the forge hot. That work is usually left for the newest apprentices and while it seems like hazing, it is done so they can build the muscle to wield a hammer all day long along with the mindset to do the same tiresome activity repeatedly.


    We gain access past the gate and ride to the tent just as master Aran is coming out.


    "Milady Rinaldi! What brings you here this early in the morning?"


    I get down and pat Penny''s neck. "Master Aran. I''d like to commission a unique item. Can I show you a drawing?"


    "Yes, surely. Follow me inside, milady."


    I go inside and take a seat next to him on the cushions lining the inside. I take my iPad and show him the drawings I made while I waited for my scripts to generate all the data from the pictures. A rock grinder. One fixed straight plate with undulated teeth, and two sides making a U shape and another movable straight plate with teeth that matches the first one but is free to swivel along its base. Two grooves running along the bottom of the arms of the U allow the movable plate to be adjusted so you can select the grain of the crushed rocks. A lever attached to the top of the movable plate allows one to convert up and down motion into sideways motion with multiplied strength to chew the rocks. The joints are made with large rivets that can be smashed on both ends to affix the parts together and keep them movable. I can also later attach the lever to a wheel.


    "This is a rock crusher, master Aran. The teeth are round and the rocks put inside are chewed by them, making fine gravel. Can you make one today? The parts are not that complex and require little delicacy. I just ask that the teeth plates are made of the hardest steel you can make."


    "Hardest steel..." He ponders.


    "It will suffer a lot of stress, so it has to be well-tempered," I added. "Since it might catch a really hard rock to crush inside."


    "I can try to make it. Let me make a copy of that drawing of yours."


    He goes and copies the design in a piece of parchment. Satisfied, I left for the training grounds.


    I thought I was coming early but Brandon was already there. The guard captain was practicing a few martial forms with a spear against a training dummy when he stopped and rested the butt of the spear on the packed dirt ground as he heard the clopping of hooves. Once we went past the gates I donned the training tunic over my dry-fit long-sleeved shirt and tied the belt. It was a fashion crime but nobody in the know was looking. I hoped.


    "Captain, good morning!"


    I thought he smiled for a moment. I kept my inner fangirl quiet because I remembered what Abil-Kisu said. People could notice my totally undercover fawning over the hunky captain so I better police myself.


    "Good morning, Sandra. You are here early, good to see you are eager to train. How was your day yesterday?"


    "Fine. I shopped for groceries and hired some guards. Meet Lah-Ueri, my bodyguard for this morning."


    The former miner nods, "Captain."


    "Good. Today you are going to practice basic swings. I''ll show you five basic swings, you are going to go through several bladed weapons to find the one that suits you the most. Follow me," He said and moved to a weapon rack. "These are the scimitar, the shortsword, the sword, long sword, dagger, and finally the sickle sword."


    I''d never seen the last one. It had a large handle, and the blade was as long as a longsword. But it had a crescent shape halfway through the blade that was deadly sharp on the inside. Brandon explained.


    "This sickle sword is used from the back of a chariot. Here ner the pommel you attach a strap of leather to the chariot. Any enemy limb caught in this weapon will be severed off."


    I never heard of it but yes, the weapon could be even considered a polearm with a short haft. It was taller than me. I think it was developed here in this world. It should work well otherwise people wouldn''t bother.


    Brandon shows me the five basic swings in their training manual. Side, upper, rising, diagonal, and stab. All their weapons are made for both slashing and stabbing. The rapier does not exist. I guess it is an elegant weapon for a more civilized time. I did forty repetitions of each of the five strikes with each of the six weapons. One every twelve seconds, on average. At the end of the training session, I was trying to hide the fact that my arms became noodles.


    "All done for today. Good exercise!" I told Brendan.


    "I''m amazed you managed to do all those exercises," Brendan said. "Too bad you could do only twenty of each."


    I could even hear his tongue click. And the burning fire coursing through my arms muscles ran to my heart and rose to my brain. What the! That''s twelve hundred repetitions! I basically became a slashing machine there. I tried to protest but my arms wouldn''t respond. He kept staring at me and in the end guffawed.


    "I''m just joking. Seriously, you have the endurance of three soldiers!"


    Eh?


    The fire went to my cheeks. I tried desperately to understand what was going through his mind. One day he can sink DiCaprio and the whole ship, the next day he is... cracking jokes?


    "Are you feeling ill, captain?"


    "No. What, can''t I make a joke? I can see that you hurt your arms from overdoing it. But you''ll probably be fine once you reach your home, right?"


    Is this some sort of test? I don''t understand this guy. "Yes. Was that why you had me do all those swings? To test the limits of my recovery?"


    "Yes. And I must say, I''m liking very much, training with you."


    I froze for a moment.


    Modern Akkadian (as opposed to Earth century XXIV Akkadian) is a context-based language (although there''s evidence the latter also was context-based) and leads to these kinds of misunderstandings, especially when some parts are only spoken at the end of the phrase is jumbled up. He could''ve meant any of the following:


    "I must say I like training with you very much."


    "I must tell you that the more I train with you, the more I like you."


    "I must say I like you very much so I train you."


    "Training you this much [is my way of] saying I love you."


    "After training you I must say how much I like you."


    Now, Brendan is not a native of this region. Like Samus, he also is a refugee. His domain of Akkadian is not at a native level and I have my translation power that has no telepathic component because it translates the sound, not the meaning. In fact, the meaning is very often conveyed the way I''d interpret it first. I had my share of misunderstandings already.


    Then, what should I do? I remembered Nanna clearly warning me to keep my fluttering heart in check because the captain was a traditionalist.


    "What did you say? I''m sorry, I didn''t get it." So I asked.


    "Your progress. I like how dedicated you are and it''s been a pleasure to train you."


    Oh. Yeah, I pray to Tarhun to freaking upgrade his divine translation software. Because it kinda sucks.


    "I am also pleased with how it is coming out. Thank you for your efforts, Brandon. So, see you tomorrow?"


    "Until tomorrow, Sandra. I believe your training weapons will be ready by then. I''ll have the carpenter deliver them here."


    I didn''t even remember them.


    "Oh. That''s sweet of you."


    "I am eager to see that katana of yours in action."


    I narrow my eyelids. Is that the reason he is acting like that? Just because he''s happy he''ll get to know another kind of weapon? I can swear I don''t understand dudes.


    That''s what I get for putting my hopes up. Nanna was right, maybe I shouldn''t pursue a romance with the captain. Speaking of the witch, where in tarnation is she? I have no idea. I call Penny through our mental bond by sending the emotion of needing her and she comes. I climb on a bench and go up the saddle. No upper body strength for now. I glance back at Brandon, he is watching with unbridled mirth. I raise an arm and wave at him. Penny starts to walk away on her own. Lah-Ueri comes right behind me.


    "We are going back to the smithy. I want that rock crusher done today. Maybe I can help them."


    The former miner pairs his horse next to Penny, "You do like metal, don''t you, mistress?"


    "We can say so. The metal is cool. What would be of us without metal? Heck, our bones are made of metal." And that''s true. Take that, Hugh Jackman. You are only special because you had claws and was hot.


    Lah-Ueri opens his eyes wide. I chuckle. "Really, mistress?"


    "Yeah. It''s the calcium. Find me some non-human bones and I''ll show you. Lah-Ueri, I have one request, if you may."


    "Anything, mistress!"


    "Call me Sandra when there are no strangers. I''m no mistress."


    I don''t know if it has the same meaning here but the term ''mistress'' annoys me. A lot.


    "As you wish, Sandra. I''m looking forward to seeing metal from the bone. That tool you are crafting today, you said it is a ''rock crusher''?"


    "Yeah. It is a device made to break large rocks into fine chunks. Sometimes you have some important minerals stuck inside some hard rock. Well, the crusher makes it easier to reach those."


    He nods sagely. I know I triggered some memories because his next move is to glance away and up, absorbed in recollection."


    "I can promise you that in less than ten days you and I are going to get us some ores. I''ll show you some amazing things from my world."


    He smiles. "Looking forward to that, miss... Sandra."


    I usher Penny ahead and the mare just bolts toward the smithy. We have no trouble getting inside and sending our horses to the less noisy corner of the complex, where they keep their mules.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I went to find Aran and after a while I find him hammering at a thick sheet of metal with a cross pein hammer while two apprentices hold the thing together. I can see him forging the teeth for the crusher with his hammer. After he makes one row of grooves, he calls a third apprentice, older than the first two and carrying his own cross pein hammer. He asks something I couldn''t listen due to the overwhelming sound of hammering coming from all the other stations but the apprentice takes his place and starts hammering another grove before the metal cools too much.


    Satisfied, Aran backs away and sees me. He comes with his hammer on his shoulder. The man is covered in sweat and soot.


    "Ah, miss Rinaldi. I just sent another three wagons with slag to your home. The parts for your project are being made as we speak. I took some apprentices to work on them."


    "Excellent. Say, master Aran, am I disturbing the place too much? I can see some smiths are glancing at me too much."


    He glares around and the ones that were doing that suddenly find renewed interest in their work. "Do not mind them. If they get distracted and burn or crush a finger, it is their problem."


    I am forced to agree with him. He''s the boss.


    "Follow me, come see what we have already done."


    He goes to show me the articulated arm that is supposed to convert downward force into a push to move the grinder jaws forward. I check them, and everything seems fine. It is just a really awkward and heavy jointed metal piece now but once it gets bound to the frame, it will convey and multiply the force through basic mechanics. The rivets are well done.


    "Did you have any trouble making the joints?" I ask, running a hand through the handle.


    "No, none at all. Once you showed me the shapes, we did it easily. It helped that the holes are so big. Once we polish this, it won''t be so rough."


    "Don''t bother. These parts are for heavy-duty, not for show. As long as they don''t break or rust too much, I don''t care how they look."


    "They won''t. And aside from the rainy season, the weather around here is dry. Metal just don''t rust."


    "Okay."


    I was happy with the fact they could do the joints. If they could make gears too, I could join the articulated arm and the gears to make all sorts of contraptions, like vehicles or engines.


    "Master Aran, someone mentioned clocks, do you know where I can obtain one?"


    He shook his head. "No. There''s only one in town, in the palace of the Ensi. And it runs on water, so you can imagine how exquisite it must be. Rumor has it that the clock sings."


    It must be really impressive. A water clock contraption. Oh, well. The guys don''t have locks, much less mechanical clocks. Maybe I can find something in Wikipedia or Britannica.


    I check the articulations. I can see that the rivets were thick and sturdy. The whole mechanical arm weighed six to seven kilograms, it must''ve taken a lot of metal. You could make what, five swords out of the metal that went here.


    "I''ll pay for the metal and the work," I absentmindedly mumbled.


    "Nonsense! Lady Rinaldi, it is a pleasure--"


    I interrupt him. "Master Aran, it would be an insult to your work and your apprentices'' combined effort if I don''t pay them. I barged in front of a lot of projects you had scheduled for today and I''ll take that as your token of appreciation. This rock crusher will be important in mining and I am sure you''ll sell lots of them, at least until others learn how to make one. Despite that, I must compensate you for your time. It is only fair.


    "Besides, I have too much gold."


    He chuckled and I just smiled.


    "Well, can''t let a paying customer waiting. We''ll finish this today. I was thinking, these teeth will wear out fast if you crush hard rocks. What if I made the plates with teeth removable and affixed with bolts on the back? This way you wouldn''t have to throw away the whole machine once the teeth are bent."


    "Excellent. Is that why the teeth plate was being forged on its own?"


    He nodded. "Indeed. I''ll add pins in the back of the plate that will have holes for the rivets. It should sit tight. I''m going to start assembling everything."


    I waved and Aran went away after giving a servant orders to keep me supplied with fresh fruit and ale. Not a nice combination but I think it is what goes around here. I took the iPad and started to design the septic system. Two chambers, drainage...


    I needed pipes. I couldn''t make a septic system without pipes. The tech tree raised its ugly head. Time to go through my checklist of things to do. It is so large it is more of a wishlist than a proper to-do list. I intended to do some serious chemistry soon and I''d need proper containers. I decided to check the portable lab. The portable geology lab used to have one but it broke back on Earth if you believe me. And unless I could fix it, it would remain broken. Worse yet, I didn''t know if it wouldn''t revert to its normal "broken" state.


    Besides the broken precision scale, it had a digital thermometer, a probe to extract soil and clay samples, enough reagents for forty tests of each nitrate nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, aluminum, sulfates, ammonia nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, chlorides, ferric iron, calcium, and humus. I didn''t have it by heart, I was reading from the printed manual. It also had one hundred PH strips and a bottle of PH testing liquid that could be used for another hundred measurements.


    It also had test tubes, pipettes, measuring spoons, and snap-top bottles for samples. Four small graduated beakers, one 500 ml graduated cylinder and two watch glasses. Let''s not forget the still-regrowing radiation dosimeter tag.


    I put everything together and closed the lab case, sending it back to storage. Most of the tests I could do with Decompose but the lab glassware was precious. The reagents wouldn''t replenish if I used them but maybe the PH strips would. I could test one later when I started to split salt to get soda and hydrochloric acid.


    But while they forged my crusher, I went out of the tent and walked around. Aran and the apprentices were hammering another teeth plate. Or making a nice wavy sinusoidal surface on a thick steel plate. I wish I could make them a hydraulic hammer. It would make their work so easier. But what material would I use as seals? Rubber? Where would I get rubber? Or better, extract latex to make rubber. Rubber trees? Good luck finding a rainforest that has them.


    Another reason to work on those photos. A rainforest could be on the other side of the mountains to the west for all I knew.


    I had to stop and breathe. I couldn''t get tunnel vision from anxiety again. Maybe I should input those things into a wishlist. While I digressed and wandered through the smithy, I found master Samus.


    "Hello there, milady Rinaldi!" The bearded and grandfatherly blacksmith opened his arms wide. He was covered in soot and checking on the excavation of the slag pits.


    "Master Samus, thank you for your hospitality. How are things going here?"


    "We received your iron ingots yesterday. I was wondering, how do you get them in that shape?"


    "I use a frying pan as a mold and pour the metal on it."


    He stopped and gave me an ''are you serious?'' look. I smiled and showed him the frying pan. My mistake. The man took the pan and put himself to check the object. The handle, the rivets, the metal, the Teflon coating. He kept mumbling "this... this... this..."


    I felt bad for him. It was like I offered a trinket to a native. Some bauble that I''d trade for all his gold. I wouldn''t trade the pan though. It was really one of a kind. Samus started to bombard me with questions.


    "What is this black coating?"


    "That''s... a substance we put on the pan so the food won''t stick."


    "What metal is it made of? It seems like steel but..."


    "It is steel. In my world, we had thousands of years to develop lots of different steel alloys. It was considered the strongest kind of metal."


    "Can I heat it?"


    "Yes, but only over an open, normal flame. Otherwise, the metal will lose its tempering. You can fry an egg on it if you have one."


    He went away with the frying pan. I felt afraid of losing the item but I had to trust them. He came to rescue me from Hama-Tula. That had to be worth something. He called in a favor to make Brandon train me. The pan would find its way back to me.


    After I watched the cooking utensil that I used for several things except cooking go away, I noticed the apprentices stopped digging the slag pit to stare at me. I looked at the pile of slag awaiting a cart and I thought, ''why should I wait until it goes home to come back?''


    "Let me handle this. You can take a rest."


    They stopped, curious about what I was about to do. The only that did any sort of reaction was the one that arrived with a shipment of slag right when I was Decomposing the first batch.


    He nodded, "Hear the lady. Step aside and let her do her magic."


    The mention of magic was enough to scare the apprentices into acting. They vacated the pit and stood a few meters away, watching intently. I approached the pile of slag and crouched next to it with a blue plastic trash bag in my hand. I put a slag rock inside and extracted the iron, calcium, and silicon from it. I felt the slight high of breathing too much oxygen but it went away quickly. What was left in the bag was the powder of the oxides and salts from the slag. I kept doing it, piling the chunks of soft metallic calcium, dull gray iron and gray-black silicon separately. After an hour, I had the three bags I had full of oxide dust.


    Samus startled me as he cleared his throat after I stored the bags. I fell on my butt and craned my neck to see what he wanted.


    "Yes?"


    He handed the pan to me. "Your pan. It is really marvelous this black layer. I''m afraid I''ve melted the black material of the handle."


    I took it and checked the molten plastic near the pan. The pan would self-repair in storage so I sent it there. "Don''t worry. I can fix it with my magic later."


    "Speaking of magic," Samus spoke tactfully as if broaching a delicate subject, "I see that you removed three kinds of different metals from the slag. The iron I recognize, but what are the others?"


    I saw three apprentices with small crates for the metals and I backed away to let them gather them. "They are called calcium and silicon. Silicon is what sand is made of, and calcium is found in limestone, eggshells, and bones. Take care of the calcium. It burns if hot and boils water if wet."


    He nicked the soft metal with his fingernail, pressed it. "Can I try it?"


    "Sure. Drop a small piece on a bucket of water. It will make slaked lime and heat up the water."


    He sent an apprentice to fetch water and dropped a pellet of calcium in. it started to bubble hydrogen out as it reduced the water. Calcium was not as reactive as sodium or potassium so it didn''t burn the hydrogen. He laughed like a child.


    "Can I keep this... calcium?" I nodded. "What about the dark one?"


    "That''s silicon, you can have it too. It is part of what makes rocks and sand. It is not a metal but sometimes behaves like one. It doesn''t have much use."


    Yeah. No chance of making circuits, transistors, etc. Silicon was useful as a building material but that was it. Its greatest advantage was abundance.


    "Do you think I can smelt it?"


    "No. You''d only waste time, but it is not dangerous. I think it is too brittle to be forged."


    Samus had the apprentices collect the elements and I looked at the crates. They seemed to be better than the leaky ones I had at home.


    "Could you get me some of these crates? I''ll get you more calcium for them."


    I had no idea the worth of calcium. Being able to boil water without fire was valuable, you could warm food by using a bath and get slaked lime back but that was not the point. I thought of something. I never tried to push Decompose to its limits. How much material could I affect at once? How far? How fast? For how long? I had to know. Not knowing the limits of my power would be catastrophic if I had to rely on it and fail or if I needed something and wrongly thought it to be impossible.


    Samus barked some orders and soon I had several crates available. I descended into the slag pit next to an apprentice and focused on answering the first question. How much material at once. I repeated what I did with the material outside. Extract the iron, calcium, and silicon in massive quantities. The chunks of metal formed on my hand and I passed it to the apprentice that handed it over to the guy outside.


    Then a mini-disaster happened. I was removing silicon when the large rock I was standing on crumbled and I fell down.


    Never dig straight down.


    After reassuring everyone that I was okay and having the apprentice leave the pit, I carved a niche on the pit wall for me to sit in and resumed Decomposing. As the slag rocks crumbled, I removed material beneath me to lower my seat. Rotating between the three elements, I made short work of the slag pit. And didn''t feel any signs of exhaustion. Decomposing the slag felt as tiresome as walking.


    The bottom of the pit was full of the oxides, a gray-brown mix. The payload was in there so I decided to remove the oxygen, cycling Decompose through the most common metals so they would bind the dust among them. The metallic particles bound to one another as the pure metals formed bonds between them once the oxide layer was removed.


    I ended up with a large chunk of mixed metals that shone multicolored. From a light silver to blue to yellow. Since nothing happened, I took down the three bags of oxides I had and did the same to it, separating lumps of particular elements out of the mixed lump and putting it inside the bag. After half an hour I was done and the slag pit was empty. I stored the plastic bags.


    "Want a lift?" Samus asked me with a cheeky tone.


    "Sure, throw down a rope."


    I got my climbing kit and took a quickdraw and an ascender. I bound both carabiners of the quickdraw to the loop at the bottom of the ascender to make a stirrup. Once the rope came down, I attached the ascender and locked it. I grabbed the rope and placed my foot inside the quickdraw loop.


    "Pull me up!"


    Samus stood at the edge of the pit and lifted me up like a line fisher. I was amazed at his arm strength, it felt like I weighed very little, which I did. And still do. You''re welcome.


    Once I reached the top, I deftly jumped out of the pit and pulled the end of the rope to me, sending my items to storage.


    "That blue thing you attached to the rope..." He started to ask but halted when I shook my head.


    I felt a mischievous grin form on my face. "That is for another day. Did you get the iron and calcium?"


    "Yes."


    "The water you mix with calcium, don''t let people touch or drink," I told him. "If you let it dry, you can use the slacked lime."


    "I think I can add it as flux. I''ll try."


    "Yeah, it might work." The calcium would snatch the oxygen faster than the carbon, protecting the steel alloy."


    Samus pointed at the crates, "What should we do with these?"


    "Just send me the empty crates."


    An apprentice came and made eye contact with me. "Milady, master Aran is calling you."


    I looked around. It was late. I should''ve spent two hours cleaning the slag pit. "Okay, show the way."


    Samus went with me. On the way to Aran''s station, he commented. "You used a lot of magic on that slag. Aren''t you tired?"


    I denied with my head, "No, not at all. Should I?"


    "You used about ten times as much magic as my full potential," He commented somehow embarrassed.


    "No, I could do another three pits if I had time. Or more control. I tried to move large volumes but my control is lacking. Say, do you think I can learn magic? Sorcery? Casting spells?"


    "It is hard. You obviously have a lot of magic power so you''re covered on that side but you must have affinity and training."


    "I''m curious, how do you know I have magic power and how much?"


    He balked. "Are you serious? You have so much magic power you glow, Sandra."


    He seemed to be really surprised, as he even used my first name. "I can''t see magic."


    "That''s unheard of. Even the weakest adept can sense magic power."


    "Maybe I''m broken." I quip. Or maybe some deity broke me. I think Tarhun blocked my magic or did something because I couldn''t feel a thing.


    "I doubt. Ask Nanna when she returns. Maybe she can help you."


    I stopped. "Where is Nanna? She disappeared yesterday morning and didn''t return."


    He chuckled. "Typical. She went to the mountains, to harvest some rare ingredients for her potions. She won''t be back for several days."


    "I wish she told me," I sighed.


    We reached the workstation where Aran was assembling the rock crusher. I checked it was resting on the table, and the chute was in place underneath the teeth.


    "Ah, miss Rinaldi. The plates are hardening now but we are assembling all the other parts. You can check them."


    I did. The frame was heavy but compact with thick walls. The lever and the pieces seemed to be attached to the right places and I gave it a tug. The articulations reduced the amplitude of the movement and multiplied the power by a factor of twenty if my calculations were right. Depending on the hardness of the teeth, it would break most rocks.


    "Everything seems fine. I look forward to using it tomorrow."


    "The teeth plates will be done tomorrow morning. The whole thing will be by your gates by noon."


    I bowed to him. "Thank you, master Aran. I think I must go now. Master Samus?" He seemed to want to speak.


    "Since you emptied a whole pit today, we will need more time to excavate the third one. We won''t be able to make deliveries of slag for two days."


    That was fine, I guess. I''d need to process the materials I took, but I should have as much as what I had on the first session. I nodded at him.


    "There''s no rush. And please take care when handling the calcium. It can cause a nasty burn if wet. Use gloves to handle it."


    I said my goodbyes and rode back home.


    I wanted to do a lot of things but I knew that if I threw myself at things the fastest I could I''d get tunnel vision again. With that in mind, I pushed my sanitation concerns aside, retrieved the battery and charger and went to my room. I had to write a script to calculate the adjacent pictures so I could browse them in the HTML I wrote to view them.


    I rewrote the script to dump a CSV instead of a JSON and loaded it into a MySQL table. Then I loaded it and created indexes on the columns for the coordinates. I ordered them by latitude than longitude and checked the two pictures on top of the list. Their edges matched. If I had to guess, they had about two to three percent of overlap between them. I''d later compress the photos one under the other to make them look seamless by shifting their CSS. To my dismay, their coordinates weren''t exactly the same. It seems there was a little shift between both coordinates as each picture had a unique value.


    I''d have to select the closest picture by approximation on both values. I wrote a procedure and let it run. The processor locked and the HDD lamp started to blink like crazy. The heatsink fan turned on at the maximum speed a minute later. After my initial panic died down, I let the machine do its thing and shifted to the iPad to sketch where I was going to put all the holes for the septic tanks, water reservoir, etc.


    I needed pumps. Next request at the smithy. The septic tank would only work if water went down with the sewage. That meant flushing toilets. Did I have a good picture of the inside of a flushing toilet? Yup, there is one on Wikipedia. Even four types. Let''s go with the easiest one. But this meant I had to install a reservoir above the house. Another pump.


    Don''t forget the filters.


    And I had to make activated charcoal. I was about to finish doodling when Arwia came with my dinner.


    "Sandra! You can''t lock yourself in your room every night. The children need to spend time with you. I brought you dinner, how are you?"


    I gave her a thumbs up and she tilted her head, confused. "This means that I am alright. And hungry now that you showed me food."


    I glanced at the PC and it seems that the procedure already ended. Twenty-seven minutes. I stored my devices to eat.


    "Thanks, Arwia. Is everything fine around here? How are the new guards? Are the kids studying?"


    "Yes, they are nice, and yes. These kids are very dedicated," She cooed.


    "Good. Tomorrow, we are going to dig some holes. It will be fun."


    Arwia''s mood changed. "What part of digging is fun?"


    "Come here!"


    I show her my plans on the iPad. Of the toilet, the septic tank, the filter. And while I was at that I also added a rainwater collector. Enlarge the underground reservoir. This way the house could survive the drought season.


    I''m definitely bothering Aran for water pumps tomorrow.


    Arwia was slack-jawed. "I''ve seen your magic tablet, but to think it could do such things..."


    "It only draws, if you are having some weird idea." I knew I shouldn''t have rendered them in 3D. "We still need to actually make things."


    "And that way we''ll have all the water we want?"


    I poke her forehead. "No, dummy. We will have all the water we need. We still have to be careful about using too much water."


    She rubbed where I poked and smiled. "That would be awesome. But I think it is time for you to sleep, Sandra. You worked hard today."


    "Yeah. Goodnight, Arwia."


    She smiled from the door frame. "Sweet dreams, mistress."

 Morning 12

    I woke up early. Eerie early. For no reason whatsoever, but I felt the hairs of my neck standing up. As if I was in danger. Some danger to my home, my family. The feeling was strong. I wanted to go out and hunt the bastards that were threatening my family. I could feel that this emotion was affecting Penny as well because there was agitation coming from the stables.


    I went to the window and threw it open to let some light in. The moonless sky was dark and full of stars. Since the fire never went out, some light came from the kitchen but dawn was still a faraway dream. I saw movement and caught two guards going out of the guardhouse, carrying a torch they lit up once they were outside.


    I put the LED headband on my head and turned on the lantern I was holding in my left hand. I felt no pain as the dimly lit room flashed into existence. I went out of my room and down the stairs.


    "Arwia! Wake up! Check the children!" I shouted as I approached the girls'' room.


    I could hear movement and voices as the children woke up in their rooms.


    "Sandra! What is going on?" Arwia''s voice came from inside.


    "Get dressed, Arwia!" Belle-Sunu shouted at her roommate.


    It reminded me, I was in my pajamas. No time to worry about it.


    "I think we have intruders! Check the children!"


    Belle came out with a candle lamp. "I will go ahead."


    "I''ll call the guards," Arwia said as she went out of the room, in a dress and a cloak.


    "I''m going with you," I said and followed Arwia.


    I went out into the front lawn. Lipit-Ea and Shamash had the gate. "Mistress!" Shamash shouted.


    "Be alert, I think we have intruders," I shouted back.


    I was not holding back my voice. If the prospect of getting caught would scare invaders away, so be it. If I could avoid a fight or a kidnapping, that was good enough in my book. I turned on the headband and broke into a jog and ran along the outer wall, trying to find signs of intruders. The rest of the guards were coming out, I could see several torches roaming around as I went around the main building and reached the backyard. They were shouting, searching, and I kept going around.


    I crossed with a pair of guards, Muta-Ni and Usalla. "Did you see anything? Any signs of intruders?"


    "No," Usalla answered. "But the Lady should wait inside. It is safer."


    "Keep searching. I''m going to the stables," I answered, consciously ignoring his advice.


    I was more resilient than they were and I could heal from any would that was not instantly fatal. Or so I hoped. I dashed to the stables. Inside, Aristunn was trying to calm the horses. I found Penny and quieted her down. The feeling of intruders was gone now and both of us quickly calmed down once we confirmed that we were unhurt. With Penny calm, the other horses also quieted down.


    "Sandra, what happened?" Aristunn asked me.


    "I don''t know. I woke up with this ominous feeling, that some bad guy was coming to harm us, especially the children. Keep everyone alert, Aristunn."


    "Will do. Now, go back to the main house."


    I pondered on what they were telling me and figured out that they couldn''t help but be nervous with me exposed. I went back to the house and found the girls and the children in the living area. I did a headcount and everyone was accounted for, except for the AWOL witch.


    "Is everyone alright?" I asked.


    The small children were scared and the bright white light from my headband and lantern were not helping. I shut down the headband and dimmed the lantern, reducing the number of lit LEDs.


    "All the children are here, none of them are hurt, Sandra," Arwia answered. "How is it going outside? Did the guards find any intruders?"


    I shook my head. I felt nervous butterflies in my belly as if I did something wrong. Was it a false alarm? The feeling was so ominous. I had no idea what was going on.


    "I don''t know. At least everyone is safe. That''s what matters."


    "Okay. Since everyone is awake and it won''t be long before dawn," Belle tried to distract everyone by clapping her hands, "why don''t we start early and eat some breakfast? I''m going to make some eggs and sausage."


    I was still feeling that anger at something. As if in the corner of my sight there was an enemy poised to strike at my children. It didn''t overwhelm me but soured my mood.


    "Arwia, I''m going back to my room. I''m not feeling very well."


    The former barmaid looked at me with her big almond eyes.


    "Should I send someone to warn the guard captain you''ll miss training today?" She asked with a cheeky tone.


    Today was the day the training weapons would be ready for use. I wanted to go. "No. I''ll go train. Rimush, please calm down your siblings."


    "Will do, Sandra. I..." He seemed bashful as if he was going to confess to a girl. Oh, wait. "I''d like to thank you for taking care of us and worrying about us. I really appreciate that!"


    He pushed Pidda and Muranu forward and both of them bowed. "Yes, we are grateful, Sandra." Both said as if rehearsed. Then Muranu added, "You went so far as to make sure our mothers were safe."


    Seeing them trying to create a bond with me melted my heart. I knew Rimush and Muranu had a vested interest in getting on my good side as I could - but would never dare to - kick them out and forget they ever existed. Or sell them. Eww. But it only reinforced my instinct at protecting them. Something was threatening my children. I could feel that.


    "I''ll go to my room and work on some projects. I''ll come back at dawn."


    I went away and set the lantern on the vanity where the light would diffuse on the steel mirror and illuminate the room. Then I sat by the desk and summoned my computer, hooking its power supply to the camping battery. I also took every device I had that was not at a full charge and plugged them too. A carnival of color LED indicated they were charging.


    I wanted to check the photo database. I exported the table to a JSON file, hooked it on the HTML and loaded the page. I was staring at a random photo. The page always showed a random photo when it loaded. But the other photos next to it were all messed up. The terrain seemed the same but the edges didn''t match. I checked the ID''s of the nine photos and marked them in the directory. Then I exported them to GIMP.


    I played around with them until they matched. The script found the four adjacent photos but scrambled them. I checked their coordinates and ported them to a spreadsheet. Then I manually calculated what the script did. Then I wrote next to the results what numbers they should be. Put some weights on the coordinates and recalculate. Adjust and recalculate. Until the formula yielded the same as the result of my observations in the image editing software.


    I ran that with another five sets of images, checking if the formula would work now. It looked fine so I made the corrections on the script and told MySQL to recalculate the adjacent images. I also added a command to play a sound file when the procedure ended. I knew it would take around half an hour so I withdrew from the desk.


    My wonderful adventure in another world included getting paranoid over raising children and running SQL procedures. And digging holes.


    While the procedure ran and my devices charged, I went back to the big lumps of mixed metal I brought from the smithy yesterday. I got the frying pan, perfectly repaired and started to separate the metals with Decompose. First aluminum, lead, and copper. I made the disks and recorded the amounts. The proportions were different. I guess it was from a different ore mine. That accounted for more than half the metal. Then tin, zinc, titanium, and nickel. This sample had more titanium than before. And zinc, that the previous one had none.


    I had no sulfates, only pure sulfur because I removed oxygen with brute force. That would be troublesome if I had to manipulate fine compounds. I extracted sodium fluoride and potassium chloride. I could make toothpaste with the former and use the latter as a food supplement. Make sure these kids had the right levels of potassium in their bodies. It spent all the halogens so I next took sodium metal and potassium metal into some of the sample pop tubes from the mineral lab.


    Speaking of which, I should check the radiation tag. I summoned it from storage and it was regrown. I checked the strip and it was light green, lighter than the 5 mSv band. I put it back in its lead sleeve and stored it in the lab case. I had a hunch I''d need that tag a lot in the future.


    Why these items disintegrated and reformed while in my possession or in the storage? I had no idea. If I had to formulate a hypothesis, I''d have to admit I had no idea. It''s magic, doh.


    The music played. I transferred all the ''trace materials'' to the bag with the ones from the previous session and checked the result. The page opened on an image with a river. The black water ran through what seemed the vivid green treetops of a rainforest. I could see the river snaking from photo to photo. I opened the browser console and messed with the CSS to move the photos to overlap. When I was satisfied I reloaded the page, showing another random spot in the world. The edges didn''t match. So I removed the negative border-collapse.


    I groaned as I thought of setting individual distances for each photo. Not going to happen. I opened the script and bound the onClick event of the adjacent photos. It should set the value for the center photo as a GET parameter and load the eight adjacent ones from the database vectors.


    That was good enough. I''m no computer scientist and I was sure it was a crappy job that would get me fired from any IT internship. But I had a way to navigate the photos. And even bookmark them because each photo had its own URL.


    One day I''d find Es-Kina on the map. But today was not the day. Because I got bored after the hundredth-something click. Then I committed a crime. I scaled down the page until all nine photos could be seen and edited the HTML to add this tag to the header.


    <blockquote>


    <meta http-equiv="<wbr>refresh" content="1">


    </blockquote>


    And there it went. 540 images per minute started to burn my retinas and my mood. I found a city and the page kept going. The damn thing didn''t stop and I shut down the browser. Heck. I launched it again and checked the history. I could get back to where it was if I opened the history, right?


    Wrong.


    Not only the stupid refresh kept moving, but the URL was also the same. Stupid machines! Can''t you figure out what I want without trying to murder Linda Hamilton?


    I deleted the tag. Cliff Robertson taught his nephew well. I checked why there was no photo ID in the URL, it was because the ?ID=XXXX query string only appeared when the jQuery trigger wrote it in the URL for the reload. So I replaced the meta tag with a timer function that would choose a random number between 1 and the number of photos and navigate there. Making a trail in the damned browser history.


    Then I let it run again. It wasn''t one second exactly because the page load event only fired after everything was loaded but that was fine. The frantic succession of pictures went by without anything of interest until I saw a large city. It took most of one photo and the four adjacent ones. I tried to stop it but I noticed I hadn''t put in a stop mechanism.


    Infuriating. And all my fault.


    At least I got the photo ID. I opened it in GIMP and zoomed in. I dragged the other four and matched them, exporting into a bigger photo. It was a huge city. The architecture seemed odd. I could only see roofs but the roads looked like they were made of stone. I could see tiny people, more like blots in the largest zoom, but the streets were large.


    It felt like a modern urbanist made a town with medieval technology. The blocks had this square-ness to them. They were not square but also were not the jumbled labyrinth of roads and alleys I''ve seen here.


    I scrolled and panned over the image, trying to find something. I don''t know. A water tank, an antenna, a building too tall. I couldn''t find anything. I found a carriage with horses and measured its size. Then I used it to extrapolate the town size. Thirty-five by twenty-seven kilometers across. I also found a palace and the city walls. A very nice palace - not a castle - resembling Versailles. Large garden, slanted roof. Definitely a luxury habitation rather than a military fortress.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    I saved the composite photo and sent it to all my devices. Then I stretched and notices sunlight. Playtime was over.


    <hr>


    I took a quick bath - showers still had to be invented - and bound my hear in a ponytail. I checked my training uniform and it didn''t seem to need washing. The self-repair function or the act of stooring them removed the grime and sweat. The training tunic, however, was filthy. I took another tunic and donned it over the pink-and-white dry-fit shirt.


    After storing all my stuff back where it belonged, I went downstairs and ate breakfast. Kali-Maru was there.


    "Oh, mistress Sandra! The clothes and shoes you gave us to wash are already dry. What should we do with them?"


    Right. Left-foot shoes and female underwear.


    "Bring them to me."


    I ate my breakfast, got the bags of underwear and shoes back and sent them to storage. After giving the charger and battery to Aristunn, I mounted on Penny and went to my training session. Kanu-Kasu was my bodyguard for the day. The ride to the garrison complex was uneventful and I arrived just in time.


    My daily dose of nordic hunkiness was just about to be delivered. Guard captain Brandon was there, in all his blonde-topped muscle majesty. Smiling. I deluded myself thinking he was smiling because I came but in fact it was the wooden weapons.


    "Sandra! The carpenters delivered the wooden weapons yesterday. Please check if they are accurate."


    I let Kanu-Kasu take Penny to the stables and approached Brandon. The weapons rack next to him had a wooden fac?o and a bokken. I took them from the rack and inspected the items. They were made of hardwood and were only slightly lighter than the metal counterparts. The fac?o was thicker than a metal one and seemed to be just right. There wasn''t a precise measure of how a fac?o should be anyway. The bokken was the troublesome one. I checked the curvature, balance, it lacked the finish of a Japanese-made bokken but anyone from Earth would say it was a wooden katana. I held it and did some test swings. The sound of the wooden blade cutting through the air was refreshing. Yes, for something made just from an image and some directions, it was very good.


    "They are okay. Did you test them?"


    Brandon smiled and I handed the bokken to him. He took it and gave it some swings as if it were a scimitar.


    "Yes, I gave them a few swings while waiting for you. No, don''t worry, you are on time today."


    "Good."


    He swapped weapons and tried the fac?o. Or a big knife in Portuguese. Because it was exactly what that was.


    "This weapon is strange. It seems more like a big kitchen utensil than a proper weapon. But I believe it can deliver nasty cuts. The balance is more like an ax though."


    I chuckled. "That it is. A big knife. We call it fac?o. And it is used more as a tool to chop undergrowth and low-hanging tree limbs to open up a path through thick forests. But the people that developed the art of fighting with them, they did not have much choice regarding what weapons to use."


    Now that he had an idea of how it might be used, the veteran guard did a few chopping motions as if hacking at bushes and thin branches.


    "I can see it. But if the people that learned to fight with these had metal for such large blades, they surely could forge swords."


    I sighed. They would if they could. But they weren''t allowed anywhere near real weapons. The African slaves in Brazil had to conceal their fighting ability. That''s why they disguised their martial art, capoeira, as a dance. That''s why they fought bare-handed or with tools. The fac?o used to clear trails in the tropical Atlantic Forest - not the rainforest of Amazonia but still as thick with vegetation and biodiversity - and the navalha, a barber''s folding razor blade. They also didn''t fight fair. They were fighting against an oppressive system that would kill them and their families if they were captured. The slavers seldom kept escaped slaves alive, preferring to use them as examples to frighten the others from escaping.


    The hardy people, forcefully brought from Africa, were once proud warriors. Despite everything, they often chose death over slavery. Banzo, the sadness over the loss of their homeland often made them just die of sadness. While this might seem like a weakness, they had a will strong enough to go over their survival instincts. Out of sheer resentment. During the four years I trained capoeira, I could only deepen my respect for them.


    That was yet another reason I loathed slavery. I swore to myself I would change it around still in my lifetime. But I couldn''t wallow in remembrance. I took the fac?o from Brandon.


    "They couldn''t. The lords didn''t allow them to have weapons, so they had to use tools. I''ll tell their story later."


    Brandon was a traditionalist, Nanna''s voice rang in my head. I wouldn''t reveal to him the origins of capoeira now. I was afraid of how he''d react.


    "Okay, I''ll hold you to that and wait for the right time. Can you show me some moves?"


    I nodded and took the bokken. They did polish the wooden blade like I asked so I could draw it against my hand. I had no saya to stow the blade. I held the bokken with my left next to my hip and bowed to Brendan. Then I turned east and bowed to my grandfather. I had no idea where Earth was, but to me, my Ojichan was always to the east. I focused and calmed my heart. I drew the bokken and assumed the basic stance, chudan-no-kamae Aikido favored so much. Despite not having leverage for powerful swings, from here I could keep the opponent at bay, stab forward or quickly shift to another stance to attack. But the stance that was at the same time, relaxed and full of energy to spring into attack was the first thing I had to learn before my grandfather taught me anything else. I''d spend hours just standing there, under his watchful eyes. Sometimes he''d push me or adjust my stance. I think he was testing me to see if I''d give up.


    I didn''t.


    From chudan-no-kamae I went through the basic shikakke-waza. I could hear my grandfather''s stern but warm voice warning me of my footwork. He''d make me hold the shinai behind my back and train fumikomi until I had blisters on my feet. "I want to hear a petal falling on a lake when you walk! Be gentle with the hinoki floor your ancestors polished with love!" He would shout at me. Of course, that would change over time. But first I had to do a perfect fumikomi. Perfect to me. He could always find fault. Like when I lifted my knees or toes too much. "Glide! You are a crane over a calm lake. Make no ripples!"


    It was a hot contender for the best year of my life. Gone.


    I finished my routine and sheathed the bokken. Then I bowed east and to Brendan again. The guard captain clapped his hands. I could see several guards looking at me.


    "Sandra, that was magnificent. I can see how refined those techniques are. Little wasted motions, every blow a fatal one. Wait, were you crying?"


    I turned my face away and Decomposed my tears. "Just some dust that rose," I lied. "And yes, these techniques are hundreds of years old."


    "Marvelous. I might hire you as an instructor for my men," He chortled.


    Mesopotamian samurai. Who would''ve thunk it? As Edgar Bergen''s puppet would say.


    "Sorry, too busy. And you can''t afford my price." I joked.


    Yeah, way to go, Sandra. It felt as if cumulo-nimbus clouds darkened the sky immediately as Brendan''s mood plummeted. Then it clicked. "Afford my price" as in hourly wages wasn''t what came through. As "my price" in the context of a woman meant another thing to them. Stupid.


    "Should I train with the dummy?" I asked, failing miserably at changing the mood.


    Brendan waved a hand, "Please. Show me more moves."


    Then I did. If it were to avoid the awkward mood, I''d slaughter an army of straw men. As a personal challenge, I tried to only lightly touch the dummy as fast as possible. Control, you must learn control, as Frank Oz immortalized it.


    Then it happened.


    I was mid-swing when a sharp pain hit me in the chest. I dropped the bokken and unceremoniously crumpled on the ground. It burned, it felt like I had been shot. Brendan lifted me.


    "Sandra! Say something!"


    I felt a wave of dread anger. A wish for vengeance directed at who hurt me. Overwhelming rage. Penny was running towards me and I knew I had to be elsewhere. I had to hurry. The children were in danger.


    "I''m fine, put me on the ground, now!" I roared at him and wriggled until he released me.


    I jumped on the ground running and dashed out of the training grounds. Penny was running and soon was beside me. She didn''t slow down as I threw myself over the saddle and caught my feet in the stirrups. The mare and I were one and the same. Our minds were also of one thought. Run the faster we could to save the children. Precious children.


    "Open the gate!" I heard Brandon shouting behind me. I could almost see through Penny''s eyes but not quite. I just knew Penny could see Brandon running behind us. The gate opened slowly, I crouched and hugged Penny''s neck as she went through the gates, brushing my leg and her side against the door. She didn''t even flinch.


    And we ran west. Past the market. West. Past the gate. We were running out of time. My chest still hurt. It burned. I came to the place where the road did a two-kilometer loop to go around this stupid farm. Penny leaped over the fence and ran past the flax field, tramping the plants. She jumped again and we were on our way.


    The miniature Devil''s Throne was there. I jumped off and went for the place I''d climbed without thinking. I had to go. The children were dying!


    I climbed the rock and halfway I knew I had to go around. I used Decompose to create handholds and footholds to cross sideways through the geometric-shaped rock columns making up the hill. Not a single iota of fear passed through me. Only anger.


    I went around to the north face of the hill and saw a bird''s nest. Dozens of arrows were stuck in the straw, protruding from the inside of the nest. I kept moving. More arrows hit the stone around the nest and I quickly crossed the last few meters.


    Then I saw it.


    One of those large, green-necked eagles was in the nest, an arrow stuck to its chest. His breath was wheezing and the wound bubbled. Punctured thorax, maybe lung. Inside the nest, a lot of cracked eggs, the whites leaking and bird fetuses dead inside the shells. The children.


    I heard voices below and took a look. A handful of men were down there, with bows. And another eagle hung by the feet and slung over the shoulder of one of them.


    Enraged, I took the arrows out and tossed them downward. They picked speed from the gravity pull and rained on the men. I hit one of them before they retreated underneath some trees. With them out of my sight, I could focus enough to try and give the bird some first aid. The hunting arrows were not made to detach the head like the war ones. I held and pulled the arrow carefully but there was no way around it. the barbed head tore some flesh out. I summoned my first aid kit and took one patch made to close thoracic wounds. I plucked feathers to expose the skin and waited for the bird to exhale before I plastered the patch over the wound.


    I could tell it worked because the bird started breathing more normally and was not wheezing anymore. After a few breaths, it opened an eye and stared at me. I caressed its head. He looked down and saw the men. The rage returned.


    I almost jumped down to get them. But I was not a bird. I summoned my hiking backpack and sent everything inside to storage. Then I picked up the bird and placed him comfortably inside. I didn''t close the pack but he was entirely inside. I checked the eggs but they were all cracked.


    The men were shouting but I couldn''t make what they were saying. I had to go back to the ground so I went around the rock face, using my spots where it was practical or making new ones with Decompsoe if it was not. When I reached the southern face and the road, I made my descent.


    Just when I reached the ground, the men came out of the undergrowth, bows trained on me.


    "Give us the bird, girl. it belongs to me!" The men with the female eagle corpse barked.


    I knew it was the mate of the one struggling to live in my backpack.


    I gave him a defiant stare, "No. Both birds are mine. You killed my eagle!"


    I wasn''t afraid of arrows. Penny came around and snorted, patting the grass with her hoof. Our anger and resolve were shared.


    "These birds killed my sheep! Who is going to pay for it?"


    They probably did. But I gave zero fucks for that man''s sheep. Just by hearing the man''s voice, the eagle''s blood boiled and so did ours.


    "You murdered my tame eagle! Who is going to pay for the bird?"


    The archers behind laughed. "Tame sky-lord? That''s rare now. These critters respect no one! They can''t be tame!"


    Then it struck me. I already had a bond with that bird. All the weird feelings I had the whole day were caused by him. Sent by him.


    "If the bird is not tame, what will happen if I put my hand in the pack?" I asked him.


    "You''ll lose your hand. Now stop playing around and give me the bird. Or I''ll tell my men to shoot you and take your horse. That will be a waste."


    I could sense the bird awake. And angry. He was the premium one, he didn''t need a slingshot. I willed him to cry. He didn''t let me down. A shrill shriek came from my pack. Good to know he could speak.


    I put my hand behind my back and into the pack. "You were saying? Now, you''ll pay for my slain bird and the broken eggs, and I''ll pay for your sheep. You really got me angry, there."


    "Shoot her!" He called.


    I summoned my frying pan and the hatchet. The arrows came. I tried to block and parry with the metal tools in my hands and got... zero success.


    As if I could parry point-blank shots. At least two missed. Four hits. Penny dashed and barreled through the archers before they could reload. My adrenalin was extremely high and I barely felt the shots. I pushed the iron of the tips out of me and Decomposed the wood, making the shafts clatter down. I was bleeding but the hole was closing.


    The leader moved to the side and away from Penny as the horse tried to kick him. The others were on the ground, two of them trampled by the horse. He nocked his bow and I threw the hatchet at the bow. The blade caught the bowstring and the staff quivered violently, hitting the man''s hand.


    I charged and bashed his face with a two-handed frying pan swing.


    "Bitch!" He drew a dagger.


    I moved backward, storing the frying pan and taking my survival knife instead.


    He stood up. Penny whined. The eagle cried. I crouched, poised to strike.


    "HALT! IN THE NAME OF THE ENSI!" Brendan''s voice came from the road.


    "Milady! Are you okay?" Kanu-Kasu said behind me and drew his scimitar as he jumped off his horse. "You! Prepare to die!"


    The man dropped his dagger. I saw a sword coming from behind me, held by Brendan''s muscular arm.


    "What is going on here?" The guard captain asked, voice full of authority.


    "This man killed one of my sky-lords, broke my eggs and wounded the other bird," I told Brendan.


    It was not a lie. What I felt at night was the female dying. They were bonded to me, therefore mine. Even though I had no idea, in my heart, that was true.


    "These wild birds killed my sheep! They are wild!"


    The other archers were doing their best play-dead act. Without any immediate danger, I took off the backpack and retrieved the bird. He looked alert, his head swiveling back and forth as he assessed the surroundings. He zeroed in the hunter with the female corpse and cried bloody murder.


    I held his beak. "Would I be able to do this to a wild bird?" I challenged him, even though I knew he was mad at me. I sent him calming thoughts. ''Play out this one with me, buddy.''


    He held my finger in his beak, taking care to not break the skin. "See? He could''ve bitten off my finger, but he doesn''t. He wouldn''t even poke my eyes off." I brought him close to my face. I knew my affirmation annoyed him almost as much as losing his mate and clutch. He beat my face with the blunt upper part of his beak. "Totally tame!"


    "Sir, you have to pay for the bird. This rock is nobody''s property and the birds are really hers." Brendan said.


    "No! It is not right!" The hunter cried. He recognized Brendan and was obviously scared.


    "Okay, let''s think this one over," I said, trying to act diplomatically but without being so. I was going to corner him into an agreement and leave it there. "We are clearly in disagreement. So, let''s go to the magistrate and sort this out. Maybe you are right, but I''d take any trial the magistrate proposes to prove that I was right.


    "Or you could strike a deal with me. Give me my bird you killed, we consider ourselves even regarding damages done to one another. You take your men and go on your way, I take my birds and horse and go on my way."


    Sandra you sly bitch.


    I was not proud of what I was doing but he murdered my children. I felt weird. It was like I had laid these eggs. I felt like a mourning mother. My instincts and body were raring to go at that man''s throat.


    "The magistrate won''t be happy to see you again, lady Rinaldi," Brandon honestly remarked, displaying concern.


    Kanu-Kasu chuckled. "Again."


    "Yeah, he might get us both killed for contempt," I added.


    The hunter raised his hands. "I yield. I yield. Here, take your cursed birds."


    "And you take your wounded men," I roared at him. He looked at his knife and I kinda wanted him to pick it up. He looked at the arrow wounds and went wide-eyed. My skin was showing.


    He scuttled back. I had Penny go around and stop by my side. "I agree. I''ll go without any ill will if you do the same."


    "The captain and Kanu-Kasu are witnesses then. Let''s go home, Dime, Penny."


    Yeah. My horse was called Penny, why wouldn''t I call my eagle Dime?


    "Good name," Brandon quipped.


    I put the bird in the backpack, Kanu-Kasu took the female and placed the corpse in the saddlebag. We got on our horses and rode home. Brandon came with us.

 Afternoon 12

    As we put distance between us and the nest, my senses returned to something close to normalcy. From when I got on Penny and ran to the hill to now, everything felt hazy. One problem with these altered states of mind was that they were really difficult to recognize. It takes a whole new level of mindfulness that I just didn''t have. I was not proud of how I handled things but at least I avoided too much bloodshed. I only got shot by four arrows and penny trampled the hunters. Nobody but Dime''s mate and clutch died. Now that the wilful bird calmed down, I wasn''t overwhelmed by the torrent of emotions. I don''t think I''ll let my guard down that much again. I didn''t recognize the bond''s influence and mistook those feelings with a premonition.


    We reached the gates and I allowed myself to relax. The bird on my backpack was quiet but not asleep. He was just weak from the wound. He was out of danger and would slowly recover from his arrow wounds. Just like I did from mine.


    I can''t believe I was shot four times. One in the leg, on each shoulder and on my ribcage. I think I fractured one rib but the arrows didn''t pierce too deep. Only half of what they should. I was so high on adrenaline that I didn''t even register the pain. At least I could hold myself back. Even though people died because of me, they were given plenty of opportunities to back off and live. I was still a murder virgin. Eww. Terrible term.


    I hadn''t directly killed anyone yet. And I really hoped it would stay that way.


    Another thing I didn''t notice until my mind cleared was the fact I had big holes in my clothes. The tunic was gone because when I used Decompose to push the wood away, what I really did was to move the carbon away. Guess what was also made of carbon? My clothes. Even the synthetic ones. Maybe if I pushed only cellulose I would only damage the natural fibers but that was not the case. I couldn''t manipulate cellulose yet as I had no familiarity with the compound and I didn''t even try.


    Without saying a word, we went inside. I got off Penny, took the saddlebag with Dime''s dead mate and waited for Brandon to send off his own horse. Kanu-Kasu took its reins and rode around the house to the stables. Penny just went ahead, strutting on her own horse queen world.


    Dime made a weak chirp in the backpack. Brandon was looking at me but avoiding staring at the holes in my clothes. They were closing but it would take a few hours to fully repair.


    "You have a living sky-lord on your back. I can''t believe it," He said.


    I frowned for an instant and shrugged. "Yeah. It seems I tamed it. I have no idea how. Last time I met them, this dude tried to peck my eye off."


    I remembered Dime diving and pecking my eye. I felt no pain whatsoever, just the tactile sensation of something lightly touching my eye. The memory made the bird feel dismayed. Dime cooed in the backpack and I felt resignation from him. Was that the moment I bonded with him? If I recall, Penny bonded after I rescued her. Why would Dime bond when he failed to tear my eyes off? That was just a theory.


    "And he missed," Brendan asked more like a statement since he could see both of my eyes were perfectly healthy. "Sky-lords don''t miss. Did you dodge?"


    I shook my head and held the saddlebags against my stomach. "No. He did peck my eye. But my eyes are indestructible. Nothing can hurt them."


    "I can see that. You are really amazing, Sandra."


    I felt my legs almost give. Did I get a sincere compliment from Brandon? It seemed so.


    "Thank you," I purred. "You are also quite amazing. Anyway, do you want to come inside? I think we have some tea... or tangerine juice."


    "Yes, let''s. The sun is scorching. Lead on."


    Hey, I found him out in the wilds, can I keep him? Yes? No? Please? Oh, whom am I speaking of? Don''t be silly.


    Brandon took the saddlebags from me and we entered the house. The children rushed to meet him and started to bombard him with all kinds of questions. Rimush and his two closest brothers, Pidda and Muranu, stood back and did not join the other children, maybe because they thought it was... childish? I can see Rimush at that age where he can''t behave like a child anymore, like ''I can''t wait to be king'' and then going to the elephant graveyard. Because if there''s one thing older children hate, it is to look childish.


    Little they know they act childish by doing that.


    It is also an interesting case study. We need more data points on how Brandon acts around children, yes? In the name of science. And he''s getting full marks as he raises brave Kyia up for a spin. The girl''s squeals are contagious. I lean against a wall and watch. Then professional spoilsport Arwia comes around.


    "You are drooling, Sandra," She purrs next to me.


    "Am not," I reply and turn away just to make sure. Was not. "Just hungry. Is there something to eat?"


    "I heard guard captains are very good this time of the year," She whispers.


    Oh, wait. Who are you, exactly? Theresa, did you reincarnate in this world too? I glare at Arwia and she pretends it is none of her business before slipping outside into the kitchen. I glance around and find Brandon''s eyes on me.


    DAMN!


    I almost used Decompose to dig a hole underneath me and disappear.


    "Belle-Sunu!" I exit stage left and follow Arwia into the kitchen. "We have a guest that''s hungry, please get us something to eat!"


    And of course, the two teenage girls were gossiping in the kitchen. I stop underneath the awning and both of them are looking at me with smug smirks.


    "Good afternoon, Sandra," Belle smirks. "Where do you want lunch to be served?"


    My head is spinning. These two are out for blood but I won''t give in and play their game. At least she didn''t ask whom I want to eat.


    "Don''t we have a dining table? What''s the point here? And why are you staring at me like that? Stop it!"


    They giggle and Arwia points at me. "Isn''t she cute when she''s red like that?" She whispers to Belle.


    I turn on my heels and do a strategic retreat. Two on one is unfair. I rush past the living room where Brandon is currently telling the kids stories about his guard captain adventures, ignore the trio of sulking preteens pretending to act cool, and reach my bedroom. I toss the backpack I''m holding on the bed and summon my carry on.


    *SCREECH*


    The backpack protests. The backpack is angry at being mishandled. Inconsiderate backpack!


    A brown raptorial head pops out and Dime screeches again. Oh. Poor thing. I go take him out and he pecks me. Not strongly enough to break the skin but it hurts. I hold the big bird in my hands. Dime must weight eight or nine kilograms. That''s a big bird, almost as big as the Brazilian Harpy. The green feathers on his neck glisten under the sunlight, iridescent. It is so beautiful. That''s a majestic creature worthy of the name sky-lord.


    Dime senses my thoughts and croaks. If birds could have smug faces, I would be looking at one right there. And he seems full of life.


    "How''s your wound, big bird?"


    I put him on my lap to avoid having those talons ruining my bedsheets. I check the patch, it is firmly attached to his skin. I can see some tiny down growing around it already. Dime follows my eyes and pecks the patch in an attempt to remove it.


    "No! You let that on. You''ll reopen your wounds. Can you stay here for a while? I''m hungry and I''m going downstairs to eat something. I''ll bring you food and water later. Just behave and don''t remove the curative patch. Dime?"


    Our eyes meet and I feel the bird is in agreement. Dime opens his wings, wider than the bed and flies to perch on the dresser. He found a good purchase with his talons and settles down there. Even though his wingspan might be over two meters, he had no problem flying in the bedroom.


    I check the backpack, Decompose the bloody parts and store it for the auto-restoration. The next thing to go was my damaged clothes. I Decompose the parts that had blood on them and store. Now, what should I wear? I check my available clothes and my eyes dart to the cheongsam. I imagine myself going downstairs dressed to kill... And imaginary Brandon gives me a deadpan look, asking me why I was dressed like that. I felt stupid.


    I need more clothes. Both formal and casual.


    I settle for a rough linen dress I bought on the market on top of some casual clothes. Before I go out I check how the bird is and scratch the eagle''s crown, Dime chirps in joy and I leave him to return to the living room.


    I reached in time to see the kids asking about the saddlebag slung over Brandon''s shoulder.


    "What is in your saddlebag, captain Brandon?" Anaya asked.


    "Here? This belongs to Sandra," He heard me by the stairs and turned to face me. "And there she is. Here!"


    I took the saddlebags and twelve pairs of curious eyes followed the object.


    Belili jumps and takes a peek inside the bag. Then she screams. "A sky-lord!"


    "It''s going to eat us!" -- "Run away!"


    With pure terror stamped on their faces, the children screamed and scattered, each one trying to find a hiding place. Some go upstairs, some out through the front door, and most to the kitchen.


    "No, wait, it is not going to hurt you!" I try to calm them in vain.


    I looked at the bloody bird inside the bag. The hunters didn''t clean it. Rigor Mortis had already settled in so the bird was stiff. The shouts attracted Belle-Sunu and Arwia from the kitchen. They zeroed in the bag on my hand.


    "Sandra!" Belle called for my attention. "Did you hunt a sky-lord? Weren''t you... training?"


    "No! I mean, it wasn''t me!" I desperately tried to defend myself. "It is dead. In the bag. The bird. Won''t eat anyone."


    "Why are you scaring the children with a dead bird!" A scolding Arwia came behind Belle.


    I glanced at Brandon and he suddenly found an interesting crack in the bricks near the roof. I almost stomped his foot. I could swear he was one tickle away from bursting into laughter.


    "Say something!" I shouted at him.


    "What do you want me to say," He croaked. "that you have another, live, bird in your room?"


    *SCREECH*


    "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"


    Three children that went upstairs, two girls and one small boy rushed back, stumbling and running to hide behind Arwia and Belle. I couldn''t even see who they were, just the tiny forms rushing past. Dime screeches again and flies into the living room, showing a keen ability to fly in confined spaces. Then he banks and flies to land on my arm. That was holding the bag. The talons dug into my skin and I dropped it.


    Rimush shouted from the front door, "IT''S ALIVE!"


    Almost everyone ran outside, screaming for their dear lives. Brandon stood next to me, one hand on the hilt of his sword and another covering his brow and protecting his eyes from being pecked.


    I could feel Dime''s irritation. He wanted to peck some eyes to punish these noisy little morsels. I placed a hand on the back of his neck and stared at the big eagle.


    "You are not pecking any eyes from people, do you understand me, mister Dime?" He did. Dime turned his head sideways to stare at me with one eye and he submitted to my will. "Now you stay very quiet there and don''t move. What if you opened your wounds again? You could have internal bleeding! Why couldn''t you just stay quiet?"


    The bird sensed intruders. Noisy little intruders. At least those were the feelings I grasped through our bond.


    "Look, I''m putting a hood over your head so the children can stay at ease, at least until they get used to you, okay? These noisy little humans are now our clutch. We have to protect them, do you understand? Nod your head if you do."


    He nodded. I summoned a sock and placed it over the bird''s head. The cotton was porous and he would be able to breathe just fine. Brandon relaxed.


    "I can''t believe my eyes. I mean, you are quite someone, aren''t you, miss Rinaldi? You really tamed a sky-lord."


    I caressed the bird''s feathers. The down where I ripped the feathers was bigger. The curative patch was actually detaching from the skin, pushed by the regrowing feathers. How fast could he regenerate? I showed the small feathers to Brandon.


    "Is it normal for these birds to recover this fast?"


    Brandon shrugged. "I really don''t know. They are magical and can control winds. Maybe they heal faster, but for a bird that was almost dying a couple hours ago, that''s really fast. Sky-lords are feared and they can swoop down to capture lambs in their talons and then fly away carrying them. Some mothers use them to scare children."This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Meaning I basically brought home the avian version of the boogeyman. One dead, one alive. Would it hurt if someone told me that before I crossed the gate? Or maybe they did. I was pretty out of myself this whole morning.


    I try to sense Dime''s wellbeing through the bond. He seems okay, I can''t say if he is in pain or not but if I had to guess, I''d say not. I check the patch up close. It is barely attached to the skin in some places but the feathers would keep pushing it up. I don''t think it is even making a seal over the wound anymore. I gently feel over the curative and Dime does not complain. I press with a bit more strength and he does nothing. It didn''t hurt. I peel the curative carefully, avoiding to pluck any feathers. Some of them are almost entirely stuck and come off. I see the place where the arrow hit, it is tender and has a faint scar, but the wound is healed.


    I think the bond allows them to benefit from my boons. That was why Penny, that was considered a lazy horse is so full of energy. She might have some wound or condition that was healed by our bond. ''Returns the body to a pristine state,'' it said. Same thing with Dime. I can tell that this eagle is smarter and more wilful than Penny. His anger and hatred really rubbed on me. But now that I know what it is and witnessed the power of the bond, I can rub my own feelings on him.


    ''So no eating humans. We will protect these human children. They are our flock.'' I sent it to him through our link.


    "Chirp!" He pipes in agreement.


    "Sandra?" Brandon calls me. I turn my head to face him. "Were you talking to the bird just now? You''ve been making faces and staring at it for some time already."


    "Yes. I was telling him to protect the children," I reply. I can see in the corner of my sight that some tiny heads were spying on us. "If only there was a brave child that could come here and prove that this sky-lord is not scary..."


    I was impressed that Hapiya was the one to approach. He ignored the pleas of his siblings and came next to me.


    "Can I touch him?"


    "Yes, you can. Use a firm hand," I lowered my arm. "Put your hand over the wings and rub down. Not too strong but firm."


    He pets the eagle while I make sure Dime will remain quiet. The clumsy boy smiles and pets Dime again.


    "He''s not scary!"


    Brandon chuckles. "Sandra tamed him. She''s the only person that tamed a sky-lord that I know. You there, don''t be afraid. Come and pet the sky-lord."


    I smile and nod at my wingman. He picked up that I want the children to lose their fear.


    "You know early today when I woke up afraid something wanted to hurt the children?" I ask out loud. I see Belle coming through the door, curious. Arwia also comes, five heads partially hidden behind her skirt. "It was Dime''s feelings. A bunch of bad hunters was threatening his mate and their eggs. Unfortunately, I arrived too late for the mate and the clutch. I was barely able to save him. But now Dime has found another clutch to protect. He''ll watch over us and protect this house and the children that live here from threats coming from the sky. Isn''t it right, Dime?"


    *SCREEECH*


    Dime cries a raptorial call that made the children flinch.


    "See? He''s eager to hunt." Truthfully, he was. Once the concept of hunt flowed to him, Dime lowered his head and scratched the sock. "Outside. Let''s go."


    We go to the back courtyard through the kitchen door. Curiosity won over their fear and now the children are watching with sparkling eyes but still hidden behind the girls. I remove the sock and hold my arm up, sending Dime the image of a rat to hunt. The eagle spreads its wings and jumps off my arm. The children squeal and hide. Dime flies in a circle around the house and dives into some bushes outside the wall, causing several birds that were perching on trees around to fly the heck away from the apex predator of the skies. He rises right after with something struggling held in his talons.


    After another lap around, Dime lands on the balcony and bites the head of the rat off. Blood spurts all around.


    "I''m not cleaning that!" Belle-Sunu immediately protests.


    "Neither will I," Arwia adds.


    Maybe for a villa this big, I''m seriously understaffed.


    "Shush you two. I''ll clean up," I tell them. With Decompose, of course. Just remove the carbon from the blood. Easy peasy.


    Everyone stopped watching as Dime went for the rat''s entrails.


    "Well, I''m relieved," Brandon broke the silence. "But I am hungry. Is there anything to eat? Besides rat, I mean."


    I kick his shin. "I hate you! How can you joke like that!" He doesn''t even flinch.


    "I''m sorry, sir," Arwia goes back to her barmaid routine, "But we don''t serve rat here. We do have some grilled pork with vegetables and wine though."


    That''s new. Since when we have... "Wine?" I ask out loud.


    "You inherited Hama-Tula''s wine cellar too, silly. And there are no more poisoned bottles."


    "Poison--" The captain started to talk but I cut him off by pushing him indoors.


    "Come, esteemed guest," I tell him with a fake haughty tone like the bad actress I am. "Let''s go sit on the cushions and let the maid serve us. Arwia, Belle-Sunu, food, and wine for me and the captain."


    "Yes, mistress!" The two smirking girls reply as one, their minds obviously full of dirty thoughts betrayed by the glimmer in their eyes.


    If only. If only.


    We sit down and I have him talk to me about the town. Of fun stories of his adventures patrolling town. He told a funny one about some drunks that were fighting and breaking everything around them because they kept missing their blows and damaging things. When he entered the fray, the drunks kept dodging him until he fell on his face. We ate the pork with vegetables and tasted some of Hama-Tula''s vintage.


    I should probably stop mentioning him. May Tarhun have his soul.


    So, where was I? Yes, having a delightful lunch with the guard captain, drinking vintage wine from my wine cellar. Lovely. I giggled at every single bad joke he told me, even though I understood half of them. I just wanted to hear his voice.


    "I''m amazed you too so many children under your care. They aren''t your own," Brandon broached another subject.


    He said it as if it was an afterthought, but the last phrase, ''they aren''t your own'' came with the meaning that I should only care about the children I birthed from my own womb. As if I should leave them to their own fate. I doubt Banunu and Rubati would be able to get away with nine children trailing behind them. The three girls I took from the slave trader? I hope I can make a difference, heal their spirits. The slaves that went out en masse didn''t even think of taking the three with them. Brandon''s words were very callous and they hurt me.


    "Sorry? Why not?" I ask him, trying to keep my annoyance in the hold. Even though I now know those feelings were not mine, I spent the whole morning worried about the safety of ''children''. The feelings were real even though they were alien. "I have the means, the children needed shelter and someone to care for them. I am not swimming in gold but I have enough to last me for some time."


    "I can understand raising the girls but not the boys. And even if you have plenty of gold, each shekel you spend on them is a shekel you didn''t save for your heirs or a shekel you didn''t spend on yourself," He replied. "I mean, if you have that much gold, you could be draped in silks."


    I froze as I forced my brain do disregard whatever he meant when he said he could understand raising the girls. I seriously tried to understand his point of view and push my budding irritation back inside. It failed. Did he just tell me my clothes were... nevermind. I needed time to digest what he said.


    Remembering the bolts I looted from the caravan, I grumbled, "I have plenty of silk," I only addressed his least-important point because if I acted on the more important one''s things would sour fast. "Maybe if the captain recommends a tailor, I can go and get some fancy clothes for myself."


    His reply sounded like he couldn''t get a clue regarding how disturbed I felt by his comments. Not a clue.


    "Oh, I have a good one. Madam Cloe. She usually only takes commissions from the high society, like Abil-Kisu''s or Ensi Es-Kina''s wives. But she might accept work from you."


    I was about to burst and give him a piece of my mind when a wild Ananu appeared at the front door.


    "milady Sandra, master smith Aran is here with a special delivery for you."


    Probably the rock crusher. I stood up and invited the captain.


    "I asked master Aran to make a contraption for me. Do you want to see it?"


    He beamed. "Of course. What does it kill?"


    I seriously couldn''t tell if he was joking or being serious. "It kills rocks", I smiled and went there to greet the blacksmith.


    Even though Ananu came to warn us he was here, the wagon from the smithy was already reaching the backyard. Aran was guiding the donkey and two apprentices were taking parts of the rock crusher to assemble.


    "Ah, lady Rinaldi, captain Brandon! Your order is complete, milady. My apprentices will assemble it now. Where do you want it?"


    I point at a spot near the back wall of the villa. "There. The gravel we are going to kill is there."


    "Kill?" Aran asked.


    I point at Brandon with my thumb, "He asked what my contraption kills. I told him it kills rocks."


    The craftsman clapped his hands as he chuckled. "That it does! That it does!"


    They assembled the crusher and I placed a pail underneath the chute. "Now, if someone strong pulls this lever up and down, the crusher will murder all the big bad rocks," I said staring at Brandon''s muscular chest.


    "I guess that''s me!" The captain answered with high spirits.


    We fed the rocks and Brandon put himself to move the lever. The teeth slowly but surely crushed the rocks into fine gravel and some dust. I check the size of the particles but large rocks couldn''t fall through the gap.


    "Good. Keep up the good work, captain. We are going to need a lot of gravel."


    Since we now could work on our construction, I had LIpit-Ea and Atta-Li mix the slacked lime from the barrels with sand to make mortar and cover all the walls in the master bedroom. Before we shut the secret room forever, I opened it and dumped more lead over the radioactive material, doubling the thickness on the sides facing rooms and the bottom. Then I encased the whole thing in more aluminum. The light metal had a low Z value but it would still have an effect on slowing down the gamma radiation. After that, I moved the aluminum blocking the door in its place and carved the surface using the Dremel to make a rough texture with raised and lowered spots where the mortar could adhere to.


    Decompose makes surfaces too smooth. So smooth the metal adheres to one another.


    I told the two guards to start spreading the mortar over the walls and after cleaning up Dime''s mess with the rats on the balcony, I went check on the third project. Soap. The tallow was almost entirely clean of impurities. Several cycles of boiling and cooling already done in the past days.


    And to make soap, I needed lye. I had some metallic sodium left and that would be enough for today but I needed to prepare a way to make more soap later. Dissolving the sodium in water was troublesome as the reaction was too violent. I took a beaker from my lab and placed a small piece of sodium inside. Then, with an eyedropper, I added some drops of saltwater, one by one. This way some sodium hydroxide would already be present and facilitate the reaction. Using pure water would be dangerous. Once I had a saturated lye solution with some hydrochloric acid mixed in, I started to add a weak salt solution slowly, using a glass rod. The extremely caustic solution reached a boiling point and I stopped. I couldn''t have droplets spilling over or causing the hydrogen that was escaping burn.


    I drained the solution into a flask with pure water. It still warmed up the water but didn''t spill, explode or anything else.


    It would be easier if I could Decompose two substances at once. I could push the sodium to one side and the chlorine to another, splitting a salt solution into an acidic one and a basic one. It didn''t felt like it was impossible but not within my reach right now.


    I repeated the procedure several times, filling my steel bucket with the lye solution. We heated up the tallow to soften it and added olive oil. I stirred it vigorously. I didn''t have any measuring tool but I would sacrifice a few PH strips and check if they could be restored like the radiation tag. The first strip went to test the PH of the lye. Twelve-something. Pretty concentrated considering there''s some chorine in there. I ripped the tip and watched as the discarded piece disappeared. Would the strip regrow? I stored it alone and vowed to check tomorrow.


    The problem with the soap they make was that one, it had ashes, two, it wasn''t fully saponified, three, it had a lot of potash, four, the fat wasn''t thoroughly clean, five, they didn''t put any additives. Points one, two, three, and four would be addressed by making sure the materials used were the purest possible.


    I reached for the purified tallow and Decomposed the sugars. Not the fatty acids, just starch. It became water and carbon that I gathered into a black graphite pellet and tossed out. I tried to move the proteins away but they were too complex. Well, at least it is as clean as I can. I next set myself up to be burned. Chemically burned, if I failed my stunt. I approached the lye solution and expelled the chlorine gas. I was millimeters from the lye, pulling the chlorine away. Some of it escaped as I felt its particular resonance pattern float up in the air. I stopped and held my breath for a few more seconds. Then I tried to place my hands on the sides of the hot flask and push the chlorine up.


    My theory that Decompose was actually Chemical-kinesis with a constraint on compound complexity was probably right. I could manipulate matter on an atomic level if the complexity remained the same or lower. I could extract water from dry plant matter but not create sugar out of water and carbon dioxide. I could either move atoms or speed up natural processes. I could compost plant matter or turn wood into peat. The second part would be very important in my soap-making endeavor.


    I started to mix the lye into the mixed oils and stir. I never made soap before but I knew the process. Keep the fat at about water boiling temperature, add the lye, stir well. It should thicken as the soap and glycerin formed. From the reference book I read, the PH should be around nine to ten. more than that I should add more oil, less than that I needed more lye. That meant more measurement strips used. After I finished adding all the lye I needed - I had to go make more - I let Kali-Maru take over stirring the pot with orders to call me if it got too thick.


    I went to the lab, formerly slave pens, to check on what Sere-Naha and Tullius were doing. Several pieces of bamboo cut in half along the length were resting on trestles, bound by strips of bamboo fiber. The diaphragm separating the nodes was kept mostly intact. We would pour the soap in the bamboo halves to make half-circle soap bars.


    "Is everything alright here? The soap is almost coming," I told them.


    They nodded. We chatted for a while then I heard Kali-Maru calling me and went back. The soap was now a thick sludge. I took one of the plastic bags and sifted through the clay flasks with essential oils. I settled for none after thinking. I needed to check the raw power of the soap. Adding oils was just one more variable in the equation. So I called Shamash and Lah-Ueri to carry the cauldron to the lab. We poured the soap on the bamboo halves with a ladle and that was it. That cauldron was now the exclusive soap cauldron. Tomorrow morning before leaving for training I''d try to use Decompose to accelerate the saponification on a single stem cavity of the bamboo molds.


    I''d made soap and didn''t have to get weird kiss scars or kill Meat Loaf. That''s a win in my book.


    I congratulated them on a job well done and then rewarded them with more work. I gave Kali-Maru and Sere-Naha the bags with the food cartons, glass bottles and plastic bottles to clean. The job they did with the shoes and underwear was good. I was still ashamed of dealing with the condoms though. I had half the mind to just burn them but that was a very good source of rubber. And I had no idea how to obtain rubber. So no, the condoms would not be just destroyed and no, I wasn''t ready to address that.


    The day was almost over. Brandon gave up on breaking rocks while we were pouring soap and he was telling the kids tall tales of his exploits. The boys were listening, wondering, and dreaming about having their own manly adventures, the girls were listening and wondering about having adventures with a manly dreaming of their own. Even Arwia and Belle were eating the captain with their eyes. I felt jealous but his comment during lunch actually made me rethink some things. And there was no way one of them would make a move on him. Right? Right?


    Dime flew overhead with another large rat struggling for its life. The balcony was about to become bloody bloody again. An extra bloody for bloody emphasis. At least the rodent infestation would no longer be a problem. It wasn''t before, I hadn''t seen any rats before today but besides Dime''s morsels, I doubted I''d see any. If I were a rat I''d be packing for New York right now. To either start a new life or call in help from the Society. But please take it easy on me, I am not in the business of bullying little girls.


    I rushed indoors to avoid any blood sprays and even had time to wink at Brandon as he craned his neck to watch me prance through the inner courtyard. I was feeling really good at seeing so many things wrapping up around the house. I quickly reached the master bedroom and the smell of drying cement hit my nose.


    It felt like a new home.


    "How are things here?" I asked the two guards tasked with plastering the walls,


    "Everything seems fine. The wall feels a bit rough though," Lipit-Ea answered.


    "Well, it is not smooth, but there''s a trick to it," I replied. "Get a brush, and sprinkle some water on the plaster, then smooth it with the straight side of the trowel. It doesn''t matter if you don''t get it smoothy smooth because we are going to put spackling over the plaster later. Did it adhere to the metal?"


    "What is in there that needs a sheet of metal to hide?" Atta-Li asked.


    I sighed. As the saying went, two people can keep a secret only if one of them is dead. "Honestly? Death. There''s a rock inside that gives a death aura. It should be one of the former owner''s prized treasures because it is quite beautiful, but it would kill a person in two days if you were locked next to it. I sealed its evil for now and I hope you two don''t tell about it to anyone. I won''t punish or threaten you though."


    They stared at me with disbelief. I summoned my handbag and let they take a good look at all the molten gold I was keeping inside. "Look inside. I don''t need a secret room to hide my treasures, I can carry them with me. Besides, what is in there is more powerful than the Death Snow."


    My last point was the winner. They took a few steps away from the secret room. "It is perfectly safe the way it is now. I''ll be sleeping here after all."


    Dusk was almost upon us. I gave up on smoothing the plaster and gave the order to serve dinner. I spent part of the night working on the god-satellite photos, fixing a few discrepancies on the display and following the roads to connect towns. I hadn''t found Es-Kina yet, but it was a matter of time.

 Morning 13

    Dime woke me up a few minutes before sunrise, pecking on my window shutters. I woke up refreshed and sat up on the bed. Some straw from the mattress was poking out from the bedsheet. I really wanted a foam mattress, but I''d have to level up my chemistry quite a bit to get there. I could barely make lye out of salt. I stored the bedsheet back for repairs and went through the boring task of packing the straw back in the burlap bag and arranging the furs over the straw mattress.


    At least my animal friendship boon kept bedbugs away from me. No mosquitoes either.


    Dime was insistent on pecking at the shutters. I removed the bar and threw the window open, only to be greeted by the dim orange of the sunrise... and a dead rat on my lap.


    The damn eagle chirped a ''you''re welcome'' feeling through our bond and rebounded back to the balcony of the master bedroom.


    I had. A dead rat. On my lap.


    Bleeding.


    So I did what any sensible girl would do in my place. I tossed the rat through the window and screamed.


    After I felt my throat sore, I leaned on the windowsill and cursed. "Dime you stupid bird-brain! I do not eat rat! You come here so I can make chicken soup out of you!"


    He looked at me, looked at the rat on the inner courtyard, dove to pick it up and bring it back to the balcony with a nonchalant shrill that said ''why are you wasting perfectly good food?''


    Our morning antics had the side effect of waking up everyone else. You can''t believe how well sound carries when the noise pollution of all the engines of modern civilization, tiny and large, do not exist. Ananu came running from the barracks and immediately averted his eyes.


    "Milady! I''m sorry, your... your..." He bashfully mumbled.


    I was screaming from the window right after getting off the bed. In my lace nightgown because it was so damn hot, dangling the family jewels for all to see.


    "Ananu, there''s nothing wrong here! You are dismissed!"


    I retreated inside and made myself presentable in my training clothes before going out for breakfast. Cooked breakfast. Downstairs, the children were peeking through a gap in the door. I try to smile at them but I am not confident it set them at ease. It didn''t.


    Arwia came from her room, still disheveled and with a bad case of bed hair. "Sandra. What happened?"


    "That a..." I remembered the children were there, watching and shoved my anger down my throat. "Dime decided to share his catch of the morning with me, and I vehemently refused. Raw rat is not good for breakfast."


    She squinted. "I see. Well, it is understandable. Any girl would scream if a giant bird tossed a dead rat on her. Hey you there," She addressed the children, "Where are your manners? Say good morning to the Lady!"


    "Good morning, milady!" They say with a bit of delay between each other.


    I could see in their eyes they were afraid of me. It hurt. What Brandon asked me yesterday came back to me as if he was right next to me. Why was I going through all this trouble of raising these children, when I couldn''t even gain their trust. Something was stopping me from getting to know them, forging these bonds. I didn''t know at the time but I was afraid of having to sever these bonds. In self-defense, I was putting this distance between me and them.


    I was powerless to fix a problem I wasn''t aware of at that time. It just caused me anguish to not notice it. These children were born and raised in another culture. One where they were worth almost nothing, where their survival until the age of fourteen was not invested in heavily. At the age of fourteen or even earlier depending on how fast puberty came, the girls would be sold in marriage, and the father would use the money any way he wanted, saving some to buy wives for his sons. Men married much later, between twenty-three and twenty-seven years old.


    But there I stood, with a sharp pain in my heart as I watched the children follow Arwia to wash their faces and hands. I fled.


    At the kitchen, I saw Belle dressing what seemed like a turkey. Shoots of basil and rosemary were laid over the breast and it seemed ready to bake in the oven.


    "Oh, Sandra. I''m almost done here, I need to put this in now or it won''t be ready for lunch. This meat takes forever to cook. I''ll get your breakfast soon, can you wait?"


    I was salivating at the thought of eating what she was making. "Is that a turkey?"


    "This? No. It is one of the rarest meats ever. Sky-lord. I already cleaned and separated the feathers, beak, and talons in a bag for you, they fetch a huge price."


    Sky-lord. Dime''s mate. Belle is nonchalantly cooking Dime''s mate. Out in the open, she deplumed, dressed, and seasoned the carcass. I turn around and see Dime still engorging himself with the rats. Our eyes meet and he scoffs. At least I think he scoffed. There''s no way he didn''t notice what Belle was doing, did he even care? I don''t think so. I was split between my own absentmindedness, Dime''s lack of humanity, and some notion that I shouldn''t do anything.


    But what if sky-lord is really a delicacy? I was divided. It felt like something I shouldn''t do. People usually don''t eat their pets. Dime''s mate wasn''t exactly my pet and the eagle only seems to care right now with stuffing its belly.


    "Belle, I don''t know if we can eat Dime''s mate. It doesn''t feel right."


    She glanced back at the big eagle and shrugged, "I can''t see why. Bloodstone doesn''t care, and it is perfectly edible. I''m worried you won''t be able to resist eating the other one after you taste this."


    Yeah, me too. I really don''t need guilty pleasures to tempt me. But something she said doesn''t fit in the current conversation.


    "Excuse me? Did you say something about a gemstone? What does it have to do with the current problem?"


    Belle just seemed confused. "You mean Bloodstone? Wasn''t it the name you gave your bird? I think your accent is somewhat strange, but it had already happened from time to time. But I think it is a fitting name. After all, the sky-lord has that bright green neck and is almost always covered in bloodstains."


    It is another of those translation glitches. ''Diim-me'' is their word for the green jasper with hematite stains. The ''i'' is spoken as in ''finish'' and not ''final'', that''s why she was thinking my accent was strange.


    "I see. Well, in my world is the name of a coin, but I think ''Bloodstone'' is a fitting name for him. What do you think, Bloodstone?"


    The bird tweets, seemingly happy at the abundance of food. It couldn''t care less about how I call him.


    "And speaking of eating your friends," Belle said in jest, "I was thinking of baking Penny-gu for dessert. What do you think?"


    I froze and turned around to face her. "You are going to cook my horse too? How cruel can you be, woman?"


    "I knew it," She chuckled. "I am going to bake a cake that takes a lot of honey in the dough. ''Honey cakes''," She spoke very slowly.


    Penny-gu meant ''honey cakes'' in modern Akkadian. I mostly ignored the ''-gu'' part, hearing only what I wanted. My horse was named ''honey cake''. That was... cute.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Belle left me to my musings and went back to spread seasonings around the bird while she happily hummed some tune. She put fig and apricot halves on the tray and I was wondering if all that mix of flavors wouldn''t just become overwhelming. But I knew she was skilled after all the former owner of this place wouldn''t have hired - bought - her to cook for him.


    I gave up on the idea of refusing to eat sky-lord. I mean, I knew girls who raised piglets and ate bacon too. But if that was such a delicacy, maybe I should use it to build some social capital.


    "Belle, how many people does that bird serves?"


    She "Four or five, Sandra."


    "Can you hold it for dinner? I might want to invite some people to partake on the feast."


    She glanced at the coal stove and tapped her cheek with a finger, leaving specks of powdered nutmeg on her skin. "I think so, yes. I''ll lower down the heat and let it slow cook, it will be okay to be served for dinner."


    "Good. I''ll invite Abil-Kisu and the master smiths Samus and Aran. Maybe the captain too."


    She nodded.


    After that, I ate breakfast and rode to the garrison. It was time to train. And I really didn''t want to linger there.


    Tiwatura was my escort. I mounted Penny and we left for the training grounds. I heard a screech and Dime flew past us. I felt he wanted to follow us. I raised my arm and he landed. The incident with the children remained in my mind. I wanted to create real bonds with them. I wanted them to like me. But we were worlds apart. I didn''t know what to do. How I could befriend them. I was too afraid of the worst possible outcome that my mind insisted on presenting to me and that paralyzed me.


    I reached the training grounds. Brandon was there with some soldiers but I wasn''t late. I dismounted with Dime still clinging to my arm. There were fifteen guardsmen.


    "Tiwatura, is there any shop that sells falconry gear? I need a glove, a cowl, a perch for this guy here. I can''t have his talons digging into my skin all the time."


    "Yes, I know of a leatherworker that has such items," He answered. "I guess a nice set of falconry equipment will cost around two silver shekels."


    "Take a silver mina and get two sets."


    He left, leading Penny to the garrison stables and Dime flew away to land on an empty weapon rack.


    "It''s true!" One of the soldiers gasped.


    "Hey, captain, did she really tame a sky-lord?" Another asked Brandon.


    "Yes, she did." The captain had a smug smile like some guys when showing their new car around. I... had no idea why that analogy came up but it fits like a glove. I approached the group.


    "What are we training today?"


    Brandon finally seems to take notice that I was a person. He wiped his smug grin and pointed at the wooden weapons. Maybe I should keep away from people today. I was too salty.


    "I was thinking of doing a sparring training. Could you use that kendo of yours against these men?"


    My evaluation of him was dropping and dropping. I went to the weapons rack and took the bokken. I couldn''t claim even one year of kendo. It was considered by my grandfather to be part of the aikido training. Along with the bo staff. I really wanted to go back home. I felt like I should stay home and do something to settle this unease. But it was training time and I had to give my best.


    Always.


    Be a good girl. Study hard. Get top grades in your class. Get that scholarship. I could get an integral scholarship, but my family could pay the tuition. I only got a scholarship because it would look good on my CV. Get that accelerated program. Get professor Andrews as an advisor even as an undergrad. Get murdered because you did your job too well.


    Yeah, that sucked. Even now, what was I doing? Living my second life in autopilot? Who could I call friends in this world? Brandon? Nanna? Where the heck is the witch? I could''ve used some snarky advice. Not the guards, not the children, not even Belle and Arwia.


    I bet some of them still considered themselves my slaves.


    I was at my limit. Again. Or not. I had no idea.


    While I mused, I sparred with the guards, one on one. The sparring was to first blow and to be honest, I was taking a collective beating. My skills were not good, even though my physique had improved these last few days, these men trained to fight their whole lives. Even though I had a boon to learn five times faster, I hadn''t even one week of proper training. The silver lining was that they were taking it easy with me, focusing on speed and precision to avoid hurting me too much. That added to the fact that I only took half the damage from any attack meant I was doing perfectly fine.


    Oh, add a side of ''I heal faster so it stops hurting faster too'' to go before you close my order.


    I ended my sparring with the last guard of the group with a single win. I could tell he didn''t go easy on me because the hazing would start right after Brandon turned around. I could see the dismayed face that guard was making and the smirks of the other ones.


    "Sandra, are you okay? Did any of them hurt you?"


    I bowed toward him and toward the guards. Some of them even tried to copy me. Back to Brandon, I shrugged.


    "Not really and honestly, even if we were with live weapons it would matter little. You know I heal fast. Can we go another round?" He seemed worried. "No, I won''t go crazy like when I ran around the garrison. Come on, we are here to spar, let''s spar."


    "Okay," Brandon clapped his hands to show approval like they usually do. "Get ready guys, another sparring round."


    "And don''t get easy on me. Or I''m going to start to hurt you for real."


    It was his time to shrug as he stepped aside. "You heard the lady."


    After the first five painful defeats, I decided what I wanted to do. And it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. It was the satisfaction of figuring out a complicated demonstration and getting everything clear. It was like finally understanding that Bruce Willis was dead from the start.


    That gave me a second wind to spar. And I started to get wins. The second round ended with me winning two in each five.


    "Again!" I shouted.


    It also cleared my mind on why I needed to train. This world was one where it could be profitable to pick young girls to raise well. This world was one where I could become a gift to some asshole prince. This world was one where elderly ladies could blow an innkeeper five meters backward from afar while not using their full power.


    If I wanted to defend those that I set myself to defend, if I wanted to carve my place here, I needed to know how to defend myself. To go even further, I needed to be known to be able to defend myself. And this guard squad would be the first one to spread word of my ability.


    I hoped it would become deterrence.


    It is okay if you laugh.


    As I sparred them a third time, I could recognize patterns. They used basic strikes most of the time. I started to read them. Predict their blows. My grandfather''s lessons also came back to me. It was like a rusted engine that got some WD-40 and came back to life. Shedding the rust scales.


    The third session was close to fifty-fifty.


    "Do we have time for another round?" I asked looking at the sun. Tiwatura was already back.


    "One last round," Brandon answered. "And let''s raise the odds. Who among you didn''t lose to miss Rinaldi yet?" Five out of fifteen guards raised their hands. "Do you guys want to bet one silver shekel on whether you win the fourth round against her or not?"


    The five of them accepted. One of them was very confident, "Captain, I''ll double that bet. I''m not holding back this last round."


    I looked at him. "Neither will I. And I raise that bet to one silver mina of my own. But I have to get a sidearm, wait a moment."


    I would go all out too. And that meant using my powers. That was another thing I wanted to be able to do in a fight. Use Decompose to ruin my opponent''s weapons. It brought the problem of ruining my own weapons, armor, and clothes if they were made of the same material.


    The training swords were made of wood, cellulose. My dry-fit shirt was synthetic. I grabbed the weapons rack and felt for the cellulose''s resonance. Then I pushed it away. The wood didn''t flow as the metals did. Instead, the wood flaked and became very fine sawdust. I picked one battered training shortsword and focused Decompose out of my left hand. Then I punched the shortsword. A spray of sawdust blew away and the tip fell to the ground.


    That would do.


    I returned to the middle of the training arena and saw that only the five that took the bet we''re in the middle. The other ten took spots on benches around to watch. I wiggled my fingers on the hilt of the bokken. Using Decompose on weapons required fast reactions. It could be a trump card if I kept it a secret but I had to practice. I was able to do it before but not always. Yesterday when they shot me, I didn''t even think of doing that.


    The soldier that bet a silver mina came first. I remained on my neutral chudan-no-kamae, ready to react. He came up, aiming at my head. I kept his sword in my sight and let him come. I focused Decompose on cellulose from my forehead. A shower of sawdust turned into a cloud and then I hit him in the forehead just like he tried to do with me.


    One down.


    "Hey, that''s..." He protested.


    "That''s me going almost all out. You said it, didn''t you?"


    He looked very sour. He threw the ruined training sword down and walked away, "Cap, she cheated. I won''t pay."


    I gave Brandon an ''it''s your problem'' glance and called the second one. He took his place in front of me and came. I tried to Decompose his weapon aimed at my shoulder, frayed the tunic I wore over my dry-fit shirt and then he tapped me on the other side.


    Can''t win every one.


    In the final three matches, I won only one. To make it easy on everyone, we called off the bets. I went to check the falconry gear with Tiwatura. He had a pretty nice decorated bracer for me. The workmanship was superb and it seemed to be just my size. There was a red ribbon tied to the end, near the elbow.


    "This is wonderful, Tiwatura. These patterns, do they mean anything?"


    I got a hunch it meant something else. Because he was embarrassed to say. "These bracers are for children. Rich children. They cost a little more than what I expected."


    I slid it and turned my wrist up to let him tie the straps. "Was the money enough? I really don''t care. They are nice and fit very well. Bloodstone!"


    Dime flew and landed on my arm. I''d pay gold to have some protection against these talons. Not to mention he could now get a firm grip.


    Tiwatura showed me a red bandanna. "You should tie this around Bloodstone''s neck. It will show that he''s tame."


    "Okay. Do you like red, Bloodstone?" I tied the bandanna around the bird''s neck.


    He felt happy because I was happy. And it was time to return home. I had a shot at upgrading my status from ''household head'' to ''family member''. But it meant I had to open up.

 Afternoon 13

    I rode Penny through the town''s streets with a huge bird perched on my arm. I was very used to riding without reins, just relying on my bond with Penny to let her know where she should go. Dime twisted its head to one side or another, wary of the people. And to be honest, the people were even more watchful of the sky-lord. It seems that the rumor that nobody in known history had ever tamed one was true. Not that I doubted Brandon but to hear the truth is one thing, to know it for a fact is another. Our brains are wired to be skeptical.


    Tiwatura departed to buy some items I''d need later today. I wasn''t completely comfortable with my afternoon plans but Brandon said it was fine and he''d go with me to help and serve as a witness.


    Dime was too heavy for me to hold him on my arm for a prolonged amount of time so I told him to return home ahead of us. He took to the air and in mere moments disappeared behind the roofs. Most houses had two or three floors and relied on one another to stand. Rarely there was a side alley leading to the backyard that could be just an abandoned area, a common yard or a private, walled-off annex to one of the wealthier houses.


    ''Maybe living closer to the central zone would be easier'', I thought. I couldn''t fit all the people I had in one of the houses, not even the big ones. Thought discarded. I wouldn''t have grass for the horses to graze, plant bamboo, let Dime hunt his rats freely.


    And room for the children run and play, like children should do. Exactly my plan for the afternoon. Bond with the children, spend time with them. Get to know each of the twelve in-depth.


    It is a selfish resolution. I need to calm down this part of me that keeps telling me I am failing as a guardian. But I need to treat them as native children, not as Earth children. Even though they are human, their culture is radically different. It is a culture centered around the fragility of human existence. Where death comes from all directions unexpectedly. It was a miracle that Banunu gave birth to five kids. Women dying of childbirth is a very common situation. Men dying because of violence also. Children dying to disease or starvation. Not cold, because it doesn''t snow in winter but heat and dehydration.


    Regarding that last point, I should really work on our water reservoir and filters. The water table didn''t reach critical levels but it is almost there. But not today. Tomorrow.


    We reached home and I let Penny at the front door. Dime was flying above the property, probably looking for something to eat. Glutton bird. I went indoors and caught Arwia finishing her lesson for the day.


    "Good afternoon, everyone," I greeted them and the children started to vacate the table, "No, please. Stay there. I have something to tell you."


    They obeyed. That was not what I wanted, obedience.


    "Please tell us, miss... Sandra," Rimush replied. "We''ll obey your commands."


    The eldest was well aware of their precarious situation. In the law of this land, I could dump all of them in the streets without even clothes. I''d never do it though.


    "That''s not what I want. I''m not your boss, I''m your guardian. From where I come, Rimush, children are important. The government, the population organizes themselves to protect children. To teach them, nurture them, raise them to be good people in the future. That''s why I took steps, cruel even, to keep you safe. It turned out well because someone else helped your mothers, but that''s not the point.


    "I do not own you. I''m not helping you to feel good about myself either, or to make a profit selling you later. Next year you will come of age, and Dipa-Tsu will enter your service. Treat him well. It also means you will leave us to strike out on your own. Maybe you should start to think about it. What will you do when you are an adult. Fourteen is too earlier if you ask me, but that''s the way this world works.


    "Nevertheless, that''s not the point. We will eat lunch now, and then I have a series of activities planned for us." I had a plan. I even had accomplices working as I spoke to the children. "You go and wash your hands for lunch. I''m going to have a little chat with Belle."


    They obediently complied. I gave Arwia a guilty look and she nodded. If there was one person that could help me reach the hearts of the children, it was her. I went to the kitchen and she followed me.


    "Welcome back, Sandra," Belle greeted me as I walked under the awning covering part of the outdoor kitchen. "What''s the matter? Why the somber mood? Arwia?"


    Was it that obvious? I guess it was. I sucked at poker if that explains something. I was even bad at lying to myself.


    "Hey, Belle. How are the lunch preparations? We might need to eat earlier, it will be a crowded afternoon."


    She glanced back at the pots and pans on the stove. "In a moment. I think the stew is good already. The bird is in the stove, cooking. Did you invite the guests?"


    Dime''s mate. I remembered we were cooking her. The sky-lord didn''t seem to mind. I didn''t know if he could even understand it. Maybe it''d be my Pinchy. I''d cry from both sorrow and pleasure at the tender meat. Yeah, how low had I fallen? Comparing myself to a guy that would eat himself if his head was a donut.


    I shook my head, "There will be no guests, Belle. We will eat it for dinner, but it will be served for everyone. I know it might not be enough for everyone, so make a second type of main dish."


    "Right," She went into the pantry to get something.


    Arwia came around me. She seemed concerned, "Sandra, what is going on? Sky-lord is a type of meat even the richest have trouble getting their hands on. With such a dish it wouldn''t be strange if you wanted to invite the Enshi to feast."


    Yeah, I could probably visit the King. And then get invited to his harem. But regarding what was going on, I wish I had a better picture. I was stumbling in the dark. Maybe the answer was obvious, but to me, being tossed into this strange world where almost everything smells like blood and waste and half of it was out to eat you in one capacity or another, was too much. I didn''t have the stability to focus. Maybe after spending more time here, getting some projects done, getting used to it, putting a damn lock in my bedroom, I could know what to do.


    "I''d rather avoid meeting the nobility and royalty at all costs, if possible. I don''t think there''s any profit in meeting them. Because they would expect to get something out of me and honestly, they have nothing to offer me. I can''t have that."


    Maybe ''they have nothing I need right now'' would be a better way to phrase it. And anything they gave me would come with strings attached. They had morals, they had laws, but one field they lacked desperately, one that could be considered to be still in the stone age was ethics. They didn''t have Aristotle, Confucius, the other Greek and Roman philosophers. It shows that their military and weaponry is more advanced than the other civic achievements. Their legal and government systems were still in the bronze age.


    It felt like some stupid A.I. was playing CIV using some outdated script.


    "I understand," Arwia nodded sympathetically. "They would use you."


    I just nodded. "There are people I want to share this meal with that are more important to me than the Enshi. You and Belle. Aristunn and the guards. Rimush and the kids. Hesha-Doka, Tullius, Sere-Naha, and Kali-Maru. Even Nanna if the witch was around. Arwia, I need you today more than any day before this one. Please stay with me and give me advice. Can I tell you what I''m planning to do? Please tell me if that''s too stupid."


    While I explain my plan to her, I take Arwia to a walk through the back courtyard and we eventually wander into the former slave pens. The metallic dark gray floor is the same. I was afraid the silicon would oxidize and turn all to silica but it seems that the oxide layer grows outward and after a while, oxygen cannot reach the contact surface anymore.


    "So, what do you think? Will it work?"


    She nodded, "Yes, but the first part will have two effects. They will respect you and it might mitigate their grudge, but they won''t stop fearing you. In fact, they will fear you even more if you show them your might."


    I crossed my arms, hugging my elbows. "Should I do it?"


    "Yes, I think so. I think respect is harder to gain than it is to lose fear. You even have the magistrate''s permission to do it."


    I smiled at her. "See? That''s what I need. Now let me see if I can do something for this soap."


    I used another PH strip on the soap since it was still possible to stick one in it. Eleven-ish.


    Acceptable since the saponification was still underway. I went to one end of the bamboo mold and placed my hands on the gelly soap. I wanted to feel it, pick up the soap''s resonance. I could feel the water, the lye, the glycerin. It was still reacting slowly. After I felt comfortable identifying the resonances, I focused Decompose on aging the soap. Yes, maybe aging was a good term. Accelerate the natural process. I took care to not affect the cellulose of the bamboo.


    The soap gel shriveled and cracked. I wetted my hand with water from my canteen and took a dry piece. It lathered when I scrubbed so It was okay. Looking back at what happened, I might have dried the soap too fast. But it was soap. The amount of free lye was very little. Maybe I should add more oils, or the essential oils would take care of that. For the first time, I thought it was okay. I rinsed my hand and dried it.


    I tested on a second mold but this time I concentrated on letting the water out too. Speed up just the reaction between the oil and lye. It was harder but doable. The soap hardened but it still felt soft and moist. It would have to cure. And since I was afraid to break the soap if I dried it too fast, I''d trust the hot and dry weather to do the job for me. Using Decompose on the soap was not very useful since I was cutting one day out of a couple weeks.


    I took the two pieces I worked on out of their molds anyway. The cracked one could be put to use immediately and the other I''d cut into pieces and try curing them slower without cracking. The bamboo underneath the one I dried felt different and while bamboo was cheap it was a waste to damage it if I could avoid by drying the soap outside.


    Before returning to the house, I had to prepare some chemicals. I took my steel bucket, filled it with pure water and dumped a thread of magnesium using Decompose in the same way as I did to make my gold choker but taking care to loop it around the border so the magnesium wasn''t all at the bottom of the bucket. Then I dissolved table salt until it saturated. I placed the back of my hand on the water, keeping the palm dry. Then I imagined a series of ant trails that would pull the sodium from the solution and focused Decompose on the sodium metal. Timid streams of metal flowed up from the solution, converging into a puddle of sodium on top of my hand. The chlorine reacted with the magnesium but since I was removing both ions slowly, no oxygen or hydrogen formed.


    The magnesium chloride was six times less soluble than the sodium salt so it started to precipitate. Removing the more reactive sodium also cooled the solution, causing more of the salt to precipitate. I had no idea how much sodium I''d need but I saw the large chunk and thought it was more than enough. Overjoyed for finally remembering a way to obtain the sodium without releasing chlorine, I went to the second stage of my plan. I took one of the condoms Theresa gave me and cleaned the lube with a towel. Then I put the sodium inside and tied it without any air. I cut the excess latex and stored both parts.


    After that, I retrieved the excess magnesium, filtered the water with Decompose and stored the magnesium chloride in one of my sample tubes.


    We went back to the dining room and ate lunch with the children. I wanted to start a conversation but I had no idea what subjects they would like to talk about so I went straight to putting my foot in my mouth, as usual.


    "Children, I have something to tell you. After we finish eating, we are going to hunt a monster," I told them.


    Amusement, fear, terror, curiosity, disbelief. These five emotions and many more were stamped on the children in varying degrees. I sighed and continued.


    "Don''t worry, it will be perfectly safe. We will have Arwia and Aristunn and four other guards with us. Let me tell you a story. When I challenged Hama-Tula before the magistrate, I was a fool, for I didn''t know the customs and the ways of your people. Even when they tossed me in the river, I still thought it wouldn''t end in death. But in the river, I was attacked by a terrible monster, one that lurks in the pit beneath the pier of judgment and devours all that is tossed inside.


    "You see, that monster denies people a fair trial before the gods. That abomination kills everyone that is thrown inside. One could say that the gods are aware of the monster but there''s no fairness in such a trial under the water, bound by tight ropes, unarmed, blinded, and facing such a monster. I talked to the magistrate, and he authorized me to right this wrong. And that is what we are going to do. You, Rimush, as Hama-Tula''s firstborn, you will be the one to strike at the monster with a weapon of my own design. You will avenge your father and put an end to the grudge between me and him. Put his spirit to rest."


    There were tears in their eyes. I spent a lot of time since I left the magistrate''s office thinking of what to say, what to do. Giving them the opportunity for closure, turning their grief and resentment away from me, forging a bond through memory, I thought of all that. Whether I should do it or not. Back on Earth, that would be considered objectionable, child safety, exposure to violence, etc, etc. But this was not Kansas anymore. They had another mindset. A particular set of challenges. A different morality.


    "Is this true?" Rimush asked, fighting to keep the tears at bay, unlike his siblings. "Did father really die to an opportunist muck-dweller and was denied a fair trial?"


    "Yes and no, Rimush," I replied. "He had a fair trial because the magistrate said so. But the monster killed him, and not the river. We could challenge his ruling though."


    I had to safeguard myself too. If I declared the trial to be not fair, it would strip the legitimacy of everything I accomplished. And the magistrate''s word was absolute. Their laws stated that a magistrate''s ruling could be challenged before the Enshi, but I doubted someone would do that.


    He shook his head. "No. Father was a fool for trying to force a maiden chosen by the mighty Tarhun. If that monster is real, we will be forever grateful for the opportunity to avenge our father."


    His siblings quickly agreed to Rimush''s words. I clapped my hands to approve what he said as it was custom.


    "Let''s eat. Transport will be soon here to take us to the river."


    Lunch was fish cooked over the open fire and a vegetable stew made of peas, beans, and leek. After we all ate at the same table, Arwia took the children to their rooms to dress in the new clothes Tiwatura bought for them.


    When he gave me the falconry bracer that doubled as an archery bracer as well, protecting the forearm and the hand from the arrow and the bowstring, I learned there was a shop that sold child-sized gear for the scions of the upper echelon. I sent him to buy adventuring clothes for all the children. Leather trousers with plates of boiled leather sewn over the thighs and calves, gambesons, and for Rimush, an arming doublet with golden thread embroidered that was a big oversized for him but would fit for the next two years at least. It had straps to tighten around the body and the sleeves could be folded. It seems the articles from that shop were made with growth spurts in mind.


    I wanted to go back there and commission some boiled leather skirts. But that would have to wait.


    While everyone got dressed, Brandon arrived with a carriage. It was one designed for town use, with seats both inside and over the roof, pulled by two horses.


    "Brandon! Thank you for bringing the carriage but didn''t we agree you''d have lunch with us?"


    He smiled apologetically. "I''m sorry, Sandra. A scout returned with an important report, I was drawn into the planning room with the other officers."


    I felt the concern in his voice. Was it some big trouble? "What is wrong? Oh, sorry. If it is a secret, nevermind."


    "No, it is not a secret. One of our scouts saw some army maneuvering in the southwest. It is too far to be of any concern now, but we must be on alert."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    That''s... concerning. Would we get involved in a war?


    "How far away are they?"


    "Several weeks in a regular army''s marching speed. Don''t worry, it won''t concern us. They are small."


    I''m sorry, but my paranoia is too strong. I was about to say something when the children came running, eager to show me their clothes.


    Brandon snickered, "It seems someone else is also raising a personal army. You need to update your armory though," He pointed out that none of the children carried weapons.


    I punched his arm. "Oh, shut up! They are lovely. My army will kill their enemies with cuteness. And a little help from yours truly."


    He glanced at me with a raised eyebrow but probably applied his golden rule of no-engagement and refused to reply. I fought back the urge to tease him and let the issue settle.


    "Okay, pipsqueaks," Brandon shouted. "Choose if you are going inside the carriage or on the roof. But don''t cry if you go on top and fall down!"


    I punched him again. He pretended to not even register it. "You won''t fall. There''s a railing up there, just hold on to it."


    The boys all wanted to ride on top and the girls inside... Ugh. On the carriage, dirty mind.


    Brandon went on the coach seat with the driver, Arwia went in the cabin with the girls, and I refused to take the dicky seat at the back. Begone impure thoughts. Instead, I went with the boys on the roof. Dime also followed us from above, circling around the carriage and scaring all other birds from the sky.


    The ride to the river was animated. Brandon taught the boys some marching songs and they were singing out loud like a platoon of soldiers while the girls inside were pretending to be princesses going to a ball. I took my iPod and opened a beatbox app. It had a default marching song beat and I put it on the speakers. After a little surprise, they resumed singing with the synthetic drums on the background.


    The carriage reached the river, not a soul to be seen around. We got down and gathered.


    "Okay. The monster lives right below that pier," I pointed out. "I''ll need a moment inside the carriage to finish preparations, you stay around here. Carriage driver, please take the horses away from here. Tie them up at least a hundred paces away from us."


    The driver nodded and went to detach the animals from the vehicle.


    I had to finish my weapon. I took one PET soda bottle with a cap and cut off a sliver of the bottle and the cap. Then I filled the bottom with aluminum and placed the sodium wrapped in latex inside. To finish it, I poked several large holes for the water. I wish I had a heavier metal I could sacrifice but the others were too valuable. And even if I weren''t out of lead I wouldn''t use it because it would poison the river. With luck, I''d be able to recover the bottle, cap, and condom for reuse.


    I went outside and placed the samples and the trapped bottle on the ground at the same time, taking a step back. Nothing dissolved. Good.


    "Arwia, take these three objects here and hold them for me. Rimush, you carry this bottle."


    I couldn''t touch any of the parts or the other would dissolve. They took the pieces.


    "What should I do with this, miss Sandra?" Rimush asked.


    "Now you will walk to the pier and then toss the bottle down. Run back when you do. Better yet, put it down."


    He obeyed and I took my climbing seat. It took a little goading to make him wear it. I then attached a rope and let Brandom hold the tip wrapped around his strong arm.


    "Oh, I see," The captain remarked. "This way we can pull him if something bad happens."


    "Is brother Rimush going to be safe?" Belili asked.


    "Yes, if you all want to help, hold onto the rope and if he falls or something pulls him. But wait until I tell you to go."


    I went to the carriage and set the GoPro on the footrest of the cabin. I adjusted it until It had a good view of the pier and started video recording.


    "Nobody stays in front of that black box," I warned them. "Rimush, let me check you one last time."


    The only exposed parts of his body were the hands and arms. Rimush and I tested the rope and he went on his way. With a large gulp of air, he steeled himself and walked to the pier. We followed about fifteen meters behind him, keeping some slack on the rope but not too much. He reached the pier and walked until one meter from the edge. Then he lifted the bottle and looked behind him.


    "For our father!" He shouted and tossed the bottle down.


    "Fly, you fool!" I shouted back at him, in English.


    "Run, Rimush!" Muranu broke his usual silence and shouted.


    Rimush broke into a dash when he saw the water beneath the pier stir. A long black tentacle slapped the pier behind him and the children started to pull the rope. Then Brandon braced both arms on the rope and heaved, causing Rimush to trip and children to scatter on both sides. Rimush screamed as he was dragged quickly over the dirt and grass while angry tentacles sought flesh on the surface.


    "Arwia, give me the squishy ring!" I told her. "Keep the two slivers though."


    I stored the latex ring and prayed for the rest of the condom to dissolve. Pidda, Kiya, Muranu were helping a dusty Rimush back on his feet when a loud sucking noise came from the water. A large plume of smoke rose right after, followed by jets of fire. Water splashed everywhere.


    "Sandra?" Arwia called. "Should we run away?"


    "That''s a great idea!" I shouted. "Everyone, behind the carriage!"


    The children screamed and ran away. I held Arwia back and took the plastic slivers from her, sending them to storage immediately. She ran and only Brandon and I remained behind.


    "I''ll hold the monster back!" The rockheaded captain drew his sword. I saw the rope scurrying away with Hapiya and Gadudu carrying end Brandon released.


    I shoved him away. He didn''t move. "The monster is about to explode! Run away!"


    He didn''t freaking budge.


    Have you ever seen a depth charge exploding from the surface?


    I didn''t, but I was sure it would look exactly like what happened. A huge explosion raised a plume of vapor, water droplets and fire at least a dozen meters up. Then a secondary burst spread river muck, bones, wood splinters threadbare rotten rope, and tentacle monster bits everywhere.


    Everywhere.


    Including the carriage, the stupid captain, and me.


    I was glad there were no glass windows because it would break. Everything went quiet as a shower of dirt water washed over everyone from above, including the people hiding behind the vehicle.


    Everything went quiet for a few moments and then it exploded again, a bit upriver this time. The sodium must''ve been ejected upwards by the explosion and fell back on the river. This one was weaker though so only Brandon and I took a second bath of river sludge.


    Dime screeched, dove and plucked a tentacle from the ground. The children were screaming and crying their lungs out. I saw a black tentacle full of hooks and suction cups flailing on the ground next to the wheel of the carriage and the GoPro. I took Brandon''s sword and stabbed the tentacle before I retrieved my camera.


    I knew I did well buying the waterproof model.


    "By Tarhun''s might, Sandra!" The angry guard captain shouted. "What sorcery was that!"


    I suppressed a joke about the power of friendship and just shrugged. "I didn''t think it would be that powerful, but at least we killed the beast!" I raised the sword that was skewering the tentacle.


    Brandon retrieved his sword. "Are you hurt?"


    I shook my head, "I''m fine. Even if I got scratched, it would heal right away. And you?"


    "I''m fine." He answered curtly and sheathed his sword after cleaning the monster ichor. He was clearly upset at me.


    The chaos took a lot of time to settle. I placed the tentacle on the closest thing I had to an evidence bag. It was blue, thin and held a hundred liters. I went around collecting tentacles. I got five. Rimush came out from behind the carriage, his siblings in tow.


    "It was true!" He shouted. I could see he was trembling. The children behind him were sobbing. "That was the monster that ate our father! Hama-Tula is avenged!" Rimush roared.


    Nobody cheered. I could see he was clearly shaken but trying his best to sound brave. His siblings timidly came back to the front.


    Arwia came from behind the children, holding Mot and Bibi by the hand. Gula was hidden behind the former barmaid.


    "Brother, look over there!" Muranu shouted.


    "What?" Brandon turned around to watch his younger sibling run to a patch of grass.


    He raised something round and hairy on both hands. "This is father''s head!" He yelled, full of joy and pride. "I''d recognize the scar behind his ear anywhere!"


    I gagged. The man''s body spent a week underwater being slowly eaten by the monster. One of the worst sights of both my lives and I saw the merchants gutted by the courthouse guards.


    "Everyone, look away. Rimush, come with me." We went and Rimush confirmed the scar with a silent nod and tears. I used another evidence bag for the head. "We will give your father a proper burial," I promised.


    Both Rimush and Muranu bowed to me. I clapped both boys on the shoulder and dragged them back. Brandon was arguing with the carriage driver about the damages.


    "Sandra," Brandon called me, "What are you going to do about the damage to the vehicle?"


    "My apologies for the damage. Are the horses alright?" I bowed to the driver. "I''ll buy the carriage. How much is it?"


    "Two gold mina!" He said with a smirk.


    I knew he was robbing me but I shook my head, throwing sludge around. "For that price, you better include the horses."


    "Three gold mina. Those horses are of a special breed."


    "Three gold mina and you never speak of what happened here to anybody. And that settles everything between us. You will still drive us home."


    "Agreed."


    I summoned my handbag and took three hexagonal gold coins. They had a large hole in the middle. He examined the coins and put them inside his tunic. Some secret pouch or something like that, I guess.


    The trip back was silent, somber. Everyone held a solemn silence. I leaned over the coach seat and tapped Brandon''s shoulder.


    "How can I help you, Sandra?" He asked without turning back to face me. I knew he was angry.


    "How are burial customs in this land?"


    "Dig a hole, put the corpse in, cover with dirt."


    "You are angry," I stated.


    He turned around. "Yes, I am. You blew up the pier. I expect you to pay for that. You threw gurs of mud everywhere. But you did right and killed the monster. But you are still paying for the pier."


    "That''s fine," I shrugged. "I have a lot of gold."


    The coach driver flinched at the word ''gold'', obviously greedy. Dime decided to land on the roof railing. He was spotless clean except for the bandanna, that was stained with monster ink.


    "I have a sky-lord and can also wield mighty powers to blow up my enemies," I added to the driver. He shrunk a dozen centimeters. Dime chirped and I scratched his head. The children didn''t seem too scared of the bird anymore.


    "I''d never think of harming the lady," He mumbled.


    "Driver, take us to the market," Brandon suddenly decided. He turned around to look at me. "A friend of mine owns a bathhouse. I think we should wash everyone, what do you say?"


    Was that an olive branch? I think it is. I smiled back. "Yes, that would be wonderful."


    The driver took a turn and went to the center instead of back home. After a couple twists and turns, I noticed people on the dirty side would avoid the carriage like the plague. Were we stinking? You can bet we were. The bathhouse was big, it used up one whole block. I couldn''t smell anything but I was imagining lavender and sandalwood and incense and mint and eucalyptus. Anything but river sludge and monster ichor.


    An old merchant was waiting for us. I could tell he was a merchant because they all dressed in the same style. Not like I hovered my mouse pointer on him or anything like that. Brandon jumped down to greet him. Then he turned to point at me.


    "Sin-Gasit, this is lady Sandra Rinaldi. We are in dire need of your facilities."


    "Yes, yes. The famous Lady Rinaldi, the bane of greedy men... Oh, master Rimush. A pleasure seeing you here."


    Rimush was not amazed. "Honorable Sin-Gasit, I''m honored you remember me." But he was super polite anyway.


    I waved at him, "Hello. We were, like, monster-slaying, and things went a bit out of control. Nobody is hurt, hooray?"


    "Oh, was it that large blast by the river? We saw the smoke from here. What a mighty sorcery that was!"


    I seriously thought about letting them think it was magic. I couldn''t though. And if it weren''t for Alfred Nobel''s cautionary tale, I''d weaponize the heck with the power of chemistry. I sent a mental command to Dime. He should perch on the roof and wait for me. The bird took off and I replied to Sin-Gasit.


    "That wasn''t magic but nevermind. Can we use your bathhouse?"


    He clapped his hands. "Of course, of course. It is one copper mina per person."


    I took four silver shekels and gave it to him. "Keep the change. We are too dirty. The driver is coming too."


    Sin-Gasit opened a broad smile. "Yes, yes. The lady is generous. Please, this way."


    I noticed that two young men took the reins of the carriage and drove it to a back street as we went inside. I could hear the sound of water splashing and the moisture in the air. We went inside and there was a large rectangular bath with several people. Men and women naked, soaking in the warm water and talking. Sin-Gasit pointed at a side chamber that had no front wall.


    "Please wash away the sludge in this chamber. The slaves will bring water and soap. If you excuse me."


    Several bronze kettles were sitting on top of a slab of rock with burning coals underneath. The smoke went all to the back, sucked by some invisible chimney. Soon some slaves carrying buckets of water and wearing only a piece of cloth wrapped around their waist and tied up, like those Egyptian shenti. They poured water from the kettles into tubs, checked the temperature, poured cold water and refilled the kettles. They all had slave brands.


    "Masters, allow us to wash you," One of them, a man that seemed in his late thirties or early forties announced.


    I saw all the kids taking off their clothes. Brandon and Arwia too. And I realized as I looked around. There was no division by gender. Everyone was getting naked to bathe together. I... I had no idea what I should do. Arwia came close to me.


    "What is wrong, Sandra. Are you bleeding today?"


    I looked at her with disbelief. The girl was butt-naked and it was like nothing was wrong with the world.


    "I heal super fast and I wasn''t wounded in the explosion. Why would I be bleeding?"


    She pointed downwards over her stomach. I blinked twice, trying to figure out what she was saying. Then it clicked. Aunt Flo. I had no idea. It was day thirteen of my new life. I had all the secondary sexual traits well-developed. Right, not as developed as I''d like sometimes but I was comfortable in my own skin. Would I have periods? Probably yes. When is my next one? I had no idea. It could take a whole month, it could be tomorrow.


    And I didn''t bring tampons. I had a pack of panty liners but those were for everyday use, not for periods.


    Worse yet, Arwia distracted me and I couldn''t see Brandon naked. He was already inside a tub. Dammit. Sin-Gasit''s slaves were washing him. Dammit. The children were three in each tub, frolicking as if everything that happened by the river was a bad dream. It was good. They were resilient. There were two unoccupied tubs. I pointed at the one with a guy.


    "Arwia you take that one."


    "Okay. Have a nice bath," She nodded and went away.


    That way I''d be served by a woman and would also be behind Brandon. I stored my clothes and removed the training tunic when I reached the tub. One lady had a cloth and a scented bar of soap. She greeted me and rubbed my body with the soapy cloth. It was weird being washed by someone else and I was in a sour mood. After she rinsed me with cold water, I entered the tub facing Brandon''s back He had no scars on his muscular back, a sign of a brave warrior.


    I had a massage and I swear I tried to enjoy but the combination of everything made it difficult. Once the massage was over for the kids, they jumped out of the tubs and ran to the big bath. I could see that Gula, Bibi, and Mot were bashful but they followed the pack.


    Arwia got out of her bath next and she leaned to whisper in my ear, "You should not worry about the captain seeing you naked. From what I heard, he already saw everything during your trial."


    I splashed water on her. She squealed and ran away. I bade my time. Eye candy or bust.


    And my patience was rewarded. Brandon stood up from the tub, in all his blonde hunkiness. I was not disappointed.


    He caught me in the act of ogling and smiled. "Are you going to stay there? Come, the water in the central bath is very good."


    I threw caution of the window and stood up. I felt his heat vision on me. Call me Amy or Margot, anytime. Unfortunately, it didn''t clear a tall building in a single bound.


    "Would you escort me?" I purred with what I thought was a sultry tone.


    He chortled. I froze. Then the magic wore off as a whiff of cold wind reminded me that I was naked before the very naked and neutrally-stanced naked guard captain. I covered my unmentionables and my cheeks burned.


    "I... I... I..." I broke.


    "You can''t be out here in the cold!" He said that then he picked me up. Full bridal carry. "See, you are trembling!"


    It wasn''t from cold. But I wouldn''t correct his mistake. He gently placed me in the hot water and sat next to me. I didn''t move. I heard some water splashing nearby and Arwia shouting, probably the kids doing what kids do in summer. I couldn''t move. Brandon was saying something and I had no idea what he was saying. My brain became jelly. I would probably call myself stupid for a month because I totally blew it.


    Before I knew, it was time to get out. Arwia wrapped me in some clothes and took me to a place where we could sit and put on some clothes. My head was spinning.


    "You spent too much time in the water," She told me.


    "Ba-Brandon," I mumbled.


    "He went away. Did you faint?"


    That was a very convenient excuse, actually.


    "I wish."


    Arwia wrapped another cloth towel over my shoulders and smiled. It felt like she was hugging me.


    "Let me guess, in your world men and women don''t take baths together, right?" She whispered in my ear.


    "You''re a smart girl. That''s why I hired you."


    "It is not hard to tell when you didn''t peel our eyes away from his manhood," She giggled. "It is so refreshing to see a blushing maiden."


    "I am not..." I interrupted my protest halfway. Why the heck was I acting like a high-school shoujo protagonist? Yeah, I wasn''t a virgin, I had one boyfriend back on Earth. #Orz.


    I better shut up.


    I summoned a change of clothes from storage and dressed up. The moisture from the bath? Decomposed. Arwia put on the same clothes she was wearing before. It seems that while we were in the bath, they took the clothes and washed them. How long did we stay there? No idea. Outside, I could see it was sunset already.


    We had less than one hour of light. The kids were waiting by the front door. Sin-Gasit too.


    "Milady Rinaldi!" The elder merchant called me. "Captain Brandon told me to get a driver for your carriage. We cleaned it to the best of our ability. I can recommend a friend of mine to repair the damage but Goru-Ka will take you safely home. He is a good runner and will come back to me on his own so you don''t have to worry."


    I was seriously impressed by the service. "Honorable Sin-Gasit, I''m impressed. Please, tell me how much I owe you?"


    "I wished to give it as a courtesy to the lady but I know your heart won''t allow it and I respect you for that. One silver shekel?"


    I had no idea if I should haggle up or down. I took two silver shekels from my purse. "In my land, it is customary to give an extra to the people that did a great service. Please make sure the coin reaches the ones that served us today."


    Sin-Gasit was a merchant, and while these merchants had a pretty decent honesty rating for such a primitive society, I smelled a weasel. Especially because of what he said next.


    "Ah, the lady''s heart knows no bounds. I am humbled. The slaves will sing of your generosity tonight."


    I raised an eyebrow. "If you can''t give them money, at least make sure to give them good food. You can do that, yes?"


    He clapped his hands. "Yes, I''ll give them one meat meal in your honor."


    "That''s acceptable. Sin-Gasit, it was a pleasure to be in your care. We must make haste though, or we''ll miss the light."


    He seemed to have remembered something. "The captain told you to go to the courthouse tomorrow instead of the garrison."


    I nodded. He probably wants to close the monster case. And make me pay for the pier. "I''ll be there. Thank you."


    We got on the carriage and returned home without any further complications. Dime grew bored of waiting and flew back home on his own. I still couldn''t believe he ate a tentacle. The driver handed the vehicle to Kanu-Kasu at the gates and the seasoned caravan guard showed his skill as he took the vehicle to the back.


    The kids started to yawn as we reached the safety of our home. Inside, Belle-Sunu had the sky-lord served for us. The lure of the exquisite meat was not enough to overcome one basic fact of life that was immutable even between worlds.


    Stress tires people. Playing with water tires children. My flock of fledgling humans was barely standing on their feet. Some of them went to the cushions of the sitting area and crashed. Even Rimush was wobbling.


    He yawned, "I think I''ll retire to my room. I''m not hungry. Goodnight."


    I tried to see if Arwia had any moral support. She shook her head, "It is better if we let them sleep. It is a shame they won''t get to eat the food."


    "Okay," I pointed at the children sleeping on the cushions like a litter of puppies. "Take them to their beds. I''ll see what I can do about the food."


    I went to the dining area, where Belle-Sunu was worried. "Sandra! The children, what did you do to them? What are we doing with the food?"


    "I''ll tell you everything. Now, It would be a shame if they can''t eat the sky-lord. I''m storing it for later."


    I took two disks of copper from my metal stores. I used Decompose to sculpt a cage with round corners and edges around the tray with the roasted eagle and wrapped it around one of the plastic bags that had restored themselves from previous use. Then I stored it. If my theory was correct, it would be still warm when I summoned it again.


    "Too bad we don''t have a fridge," I absentmindedly commented with a yawn.


    "I can''t get used to your powers," Belle commented. "Are you going to eat?"


    "I''m sorry, Belle. I think I''m going to sleep earlier today."

 day 14

    I could still feel the sticky river sludge. Feel the tentacles wriggling. I really hoped it wasn''t from my storage. It''d really suck if the tentacles were moving there. It would mean a lot of things I didn''t even want to think about. I checked, and it wasn''t. Just my memories from yesterday. And probably some tentacle monster nightmare. Damn.


    Things backfired miserably yesterday, didn''t they? Everything, from the sparring to the river monster to the bathhouse. I could taste bitterness in my mouth from how much they hated me now.


    I got up and turned on my lantern. It was still night out but I think it won''t be long before dawn. I went to the water basin in a corner of the room and did my morning routine before changing my clothes and sending Dime the feeling that I didn''t want to see a rat. Above my room on the roof, the bird cawed in acknowledgment, so I threw the window shutters open. I could hear a female voice humming coming from the kitchen. When exactly did Arwia wake up?


    She''s cooking for twenty-nine people. That''s a lot of food. Maybe I should hire some help? Sere-Naha and Kali-Maru take care of the laundry and the cleaning. Hesha-Doka and Tullius the garden and the backyard. Arwia watches over the children and the guards take turns guarding. Maybe I should ask her if her workload is adequate.


    I closed my shutters to avoid insects and debris filing in and went downstairs to the kitchen. Belle''s humming stopped when she saw my light.


    "Sandra?" She asked.


    "Hello, it''s me! White light, right?"


    She guessed right. Her next line confirmed my suspicion.


    "Yes, I doubt anyone that''s not a powerful mage could make such a light like yours."


    "Belle, I wanted to ask you, do you need help making the food? Because I see you all the time in the kitchen. You are cooking for almost thirty people."


    She shook her head, sending her short braid swinging around under her headband. "No problem at all. I''m used to it."


    "You don''t think the house is understaffed?"


    "No. Some of the young girls help out."


    "But not the boys."


    Another denial. "No. They just loiter and play during the afternoon. Why?"


    "They should do chores too if the girls are helping. Maybe excavating. Or training to fight. I''ll talk to Aristunn and Arwia later. Can I have something to eat? I skipped dinner yesterday."


    "Sure. Take a seat, I''ll finish your breakfast soon."


    Breakfast was rye bread, hard cheese, and sausages. Belle-Sunu does her best but there''s not much variety to their food. It was still good and I cleaned my dishes while the sun rose in the east. I won''t even bother if that''s the east or not. Oh. I have a compass on my phone. I summoned the device and checked. North pointed to the north. At least that sliver of normalcy. The moon was shot down. That''s insane.


    I saw movement in the guardhouse and I went to call whoever that was here. It was shamash.


    "Good morning, Shamash. Would you please fetch Aristunn for me? I need to talk to him."


    "Right away," He nodded then fidgeted a little. "Sandra, I want to take those horses to the caravanserai to get them checked. And I know a person that can clean and do the minor repairs to the carriage. I''d need two silver minas for everything."


    "Okay," I said without even blinking.


    Shamash stared at me as if I should somehow suspect or doubt him. I summoned my handbag for the two large silver coins and extended my arm with the coins. He took them.


    "I trust you, Shamash. Until you give me cause to stop trusting you. You''ll depart with us soon."


    "I''ll call Aristunn right away."


    He went away. Was Shamash up to some weird business? I had no idea but I''d check later. I looked at Belle and she caught up.


    "Aristunn is trustworthy. You don''t need to worry." She spoke then went back to the bubbling stew.


    That''s another thing. Meat takes days to cook. Beans take days to cook. There''s no pressure cooker and the meat is tough and gamey. I used the time I had to browse more random places on the picture database. I wanted to find another town, this location here or the crash site of the moon. Unless it fell on the ocean, that would suck. The exploration of the outskirts of that huge city reached a dead end. It was only connected to the satellite towns and villages.


    After a while, I stretched and found both Arwia and Aristunn watching me. I sent the laptop to storage with a wave of my hand and smiled.


    "So, Belle told me the boys aren''t doing any chores in the afternoon," I said, looking at Arwia.


    "Yes, the girls help with the house chores, but the boys are just being boys, I guess."


    The eternal dilemma. Since girls are more agreeable than boys, the former gets the chores while the latter horses around.


    "Well, I have an appointment at the courthouse this morning. Aristunn, go and buy some training swords. Maybe we can do some training in the afternoon. I bet they will like it."


    Aristunn nodded. "I will see to it. It will be good to put some discipline in the kid''s hearts."


    I gave him a gold shekels and the eunuch went on his way.


    "Arwia, how are the children? Did they talk to you about yesterday?"


    I knew I''d totally blown it. Both literally and figuratively. The children hated and despised me. I was steeling myself for the harsh truth, that they spent the night awake crying and screaming of the terrors I put them through.


    "It was hard to make them sleep. The girls didn''t stop talking about the carriage ride and of the captain in the bath. Especially the three that came from the caravanserai, they never dreamed they would experience that. The boys were amazed at the magic you used. I only heard the inn patrons talking about magic, and I never heard of a spell that powerful. You rescued their father''s body and they are very thankful. Even Pidda praised you."


    The second son that couldn''t hide his grudge. He thought I was responsible for his father''s death and he wasn''t all wrong. I had a hard time believing what Arwia said. Were the people of this world made of sturdier material? Or was it the exposure to danger and constant death that bred in them such stoicism?


    "You are joking with me, aren''t you?"


    Arwia shook her head. "No. It was scary to see you burn the river, of all things. But it was reassuring to see to what extent you''d go for us. You took me from the hands of that terrible man. You released and even gave some money to the people that wanted to leave. You hired guards. You feed us meat almost every day."


    I raised a hand. "Wait, almost every day?" Emphasis on almost.


    I hear Belle shout from the kitchen, "It is not healthy to eat much meat!"


    Damn freckles are eavesdropping on us. But who am I to disagree, "Thank you, Belle-Sunu!" I turn back to Arwia, "you were saying?"


    "You cared for the fate of their father. You even rescued his body."


    Or what was left of him. Anyway, I had a picture of what was happening. And I suspected a certain lecturer put in a good word for me. I clapped my hands.


    "We are burying Hama-Tula''s body this morning before I leave for the courthouse. Go and get everyone ready, hands washed and teeth brushed."


    Arwia went down the corridor to the children''s bedroom. After she was gone, Belle leaned on the archway to the kitchen.


    "What she said is true, you know? And I thought it was sweet of you to take them in that monster hunt to share the experience."


    Experience? Share the Exp? Startled, I stared at her. "What do you mean by Experience? Will they level up?"


    Belle tilted her head. "What? Are you moving them up to the second floor?"


    Is this another translation glitch? "No, I mean as in levels and classes," I said slowly, measuring the words to see in which language they''d come out. It was all Modern Akkadian.


    "I think that moving them to the second floor is not necessary. And yes, we did go up in class, since we are no longer slaves," She said rubbing the scar on her forearm.


    I chuckled. Silly Sandra thinking this would be like those LitRPG isekai stories. "Thank you, Belle."


    "Anytime, Sandra. If you excuse me." She waved and went back outside.


    Just to be sure, I mumbled: "Status open!" And nothing happened.


    Belle came back with a basket of bread, a tray of sausages and a cheese wheel stabbed with a knife. I took my cue and went outside. I found a good spot on the east side of the inner courtyard, a bit out of the way but not hidden. This would be Hama-Tula''s resting place. I Decomposed the ground, pressing the silicon to the sides and creating a thick box, not large enough to fit a coffin but I only had ahead. I made a bowl out of silicon for whatever was not silicon. A few tablespoons of salts and metallic oxides, nothing of note. There was an excess of silicon and I raised a headstone. Then I wrote an elegy in Akkadian.


    <blockquote>


    Here lies Hama-Tula, merchant, father of nine. Blind greed was his downfall.


    </blockquote>


    I would put the date of birth and death, but I had no idea of the calendar. And since the only person that knew what time of day was it was the Enshi, I wouldn''t know it so soon. With my spade, I dumped a hand of dirt into the hole, prepared a lid on the side and another pile of dirt to properly bury the head. Satisfied, I returned to the dining room.


    And just in time. The kids were already in the dining room sating their ravenous hunger.


    "Good morning, Miss Sandra!" Kiya greeted me with a smile.


    She was so mature and strong. Even though she was two-third of the age of her older brothers, she was the one to console and give them a nice word of encouragement.


    "Hello, Kiya! How are you? Did you sleep well?"


    "No. But Arwia talked to us a lot and she made us see your reasons. We are thankful for your care."


    I wonder what she said, but I never got the whole story. I was really thankful I had hired Arwia to help me with the children. I had little aptitude with children. Some would say ''but you''re a female!'' to what my reply was, ''well, maybe that instinct is still dormant or my DNA is defective''. My money was in the former. I really hoped I could become a caring mother. Still not there.


    One by one the other siblings plus Mot, Gula, and Bibi finished their breakfast. They were all well-dressed and I suspect the latter three borrowed some clothes from the other girls. Regardless of their apparent lower standing, they also made their life mission to see that no food would be left behind. I just watched them eat with gusto. Arwia came back near the end and snatched the last loaf of bread for herself.


    "Okay, everyone," Arwia demanded their attention. "Sandra has something to say."


    "I know we started on the wrong foot, and yesterday will be a day each of us will remember forever. My opinion of the former master of this house doesn''t matter. Whatever person he was in life, he was your father and a human, he deserves to be treated with dignity. Let''s go outside and give him a proper burial. Arwia, get one of Banunu''s shawls."


    Everyone nodded and I led them to the place I prepared.


    "Rimush, as the first son, is there anything you want to say?" I asked. "Any last words for your father?"


    He glanced at me with glistening eyes. "He can''t hear me."


    I used some of the time I had to read what I could about Mesopotamian religion. Even though they had millennia to develop in this world, the people migrated by Tarhun and his pantheon from Earth held most of their beliefs alive with little change. From what I could infer from the conversations I had and that data, they believed that the dead would just go to the underworld.


    "No, he probably can''t," I replied with a soft voice. "But soon you will be the head of your own family. Your brothers and sisters will look up to you for guidance. They already do. You have a heavy burden, Rimush. To carve out your place in the world with your own hands. I''ll help where I can but that''s your task. You knew your father the longest. Talk about him to your siblings."


    I''d like to say that it was okay to only talk about the good points but that was my stinky opinion. And I was too biased to give any kind of suggestion.


    "Father was..." Rimush started, his voice quivering. "Father might not be the best father, but he was the only one we had. We didn''t starve, we didn''t suffer under his rule. I think he was too worried about status, about showing off his wealth, and about getting every advantage possible. I... I think..."


    "It''s okay to cry, Rimush," Arwia held his shoulders.


    He turned around and buried his head on her chest. Arwia hugged him and we heard muffled sobs.


    "We honor him as it is only fair to do to our father," Muranu took over the service. "And we also grow wiser with his last lesson." He stared at me. I took a step back. "Know your enemy. He tried to capture someone stronger than him, and paid with his life."


    "Brother," Pidda came after him, also looking my way. "He died because of the monster. I''m sorry, miss Sandra, for suspecting and hating you. I am sure the magistrate would have sent divers to take him out once it was proven he was wrong. It wouldn''t have changed the outcome for you, but at least he''d be alive."


    I was impressed at several things from his line. First that he forgave me. Pidda never looked at me in the eyes before. Second, that the magistrate would rescue Hama-Tula if he failed to surface. I was pretty sure he wouldn''t do the same for me. Third, his certainty in stating that. Were Hama-Tula and the magistrate friends? Fourth, how mature these three brothers were. It is hard to think of them as children when you compare them to modern Earth teenagers. Muranu wasn''t even in his teens yet. But adolescence is a social phenomenon. One that was stretched well into the twenties and graduation in some cases back home.


    They didn''t have this. At fourteen, a boy was a man. I remembered a video about tribal rites of passage where the boys had to run through the forest, hit a hornet''s nest and run back to the village. On the same day, they departed as children and returned as men. There was no in-between.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    "Arwia, the shawl," I called.


    She dragged Rimush with her.


    "Rimush, raise your arms like this, as if you were carrying a box leaning on your chest. Arwia, could you please put the shawl over his arms and hold the middle from below."


    He did, and Arwia placed the shawl over his arms. I summoned the plastic bag with the head, properly tied up because nobody needed to smell that. I put the bag over the shawl and tore out a piece of the plastic, handing it over to Arwia at the same moment I released the bag. To finish, I pulled the ends of the shawl and covered the head.


    It was my turn to speak.


    "I didn''t hate him. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn''t wish for your father''s death, Rimush. But I had to fight back. I tried my best to help you. I know I failed in several ways and I hope the nine of you can forgive me. Pidda, thank you for your words. I promise to keep you here, give you an education, training. Furthermore, the girls can choose to leave when they reach the age of majority but I''ll set one rule. Your prices will be entirely converted into dowries."


    I decided I won''t start a revolution. That means acceptance of their social values and that I''ll work within the system to subvert it. That''s the first step. I will charge dearly for my girls, but the money is theirs. I''ll call it to myself a wedding gift from the bridegroom family to her. I''ll even add gold of my own to the pot. The same amount I''ll give the boys when they marry - for the first time.


    Rimush rose to say something but Arwia grabbed his shoulder. "Rimush, just put your father to rest. Everything else can wait."


    He nodded, knelt next to the grave and placed the shawl on the dirt.


    I handed him the spade. "Take just a bit of dirt and gravel. Let your siblings all put dirt on his grave."


    The spade went around, each child put a handful of dirt on the grave. Once it returned to me, I finished the job and moved the lid, welding it shut with Decompose. I fought against the custom of saying prayers to the deceased. They didn''t do that.


    The children spent some time staring at the grave and then left. I held Arwia back.


    "Arwia, thank you. I really appreciate the talk you had with the children. I owe you a big one."


    She smiled and hugged me. "You better remember that. I intend to call it in."


    "Anything, my friend." I took the piece fo plastic from her, triggering the destruction of the bag and allowing the dirt to decompose, lowercase D, Hama-Tula''s remains.


    He taught me a great lesson. A tragic one nonetheless, but indivisible from who I became. Making sure his children live well was my way of paying back. Rest well, Hama-Tula. May your gods have mercy on your soul.


    "For my enemy is dead. A man as divine as myself is dead," I sing Walt Whitman''s verses under my breath.


    <hr>


    I went out with Shamash and Lipit-Ea. Shamash would get the horses checked and Lipit-Ea was my escort for the morning. We went to the courthouse square and it wasn''t hard to spot the blonde mountain of muscle shining under the scorching sunlight. Dime didn''t come, he decided to take a morning nap. I suspected he ate too many rats. The mighty eagle will get fat.


    "Brandon!" I called him.


    He turned and waved. "Sandra. How are you? Feeling better? You seemed really tired yesterday at the bathhouse," He asked with genuine concern.


    I wanted a hole to hide my head in. "Oh, it was nothing. Maybe the water was too hot."


    "You might want to check with master Samus. It could be a sign of magic exhaustion or some other disease. Maybe there was poison in the river water or the monster... Speaking of the monster, do you have the evidence there with you?"


    I nodded. "Five tentacles and everything recorded on video. And there''s a precedent showing that video evidence is admissible in court."


    He made a confused face. "Vi-De-O?"


    Way to go, mighty Tarhun. At least let me know I''m using words that don''t exist.


    "It is a word in my language for a visual recording. A moving picture. Here," I summoned the clean GoPro and showed him the video.


    He looked like a child watching their first cartoon. I didn''t remember if I showed him a video before, but it seemed like the first time.


    "This is amazing. Come, let''s go. The magistrate is waiting for us."


    "Okay. Lipit-Ea, please watch over the passersby, don''t let Penny harass them." She snorted in annoyance. I hugged the mare and patted her face.


    We went into the courthouse. Putting on my gold jewelry was the right decision. They were making way for both of us.


    "That reminds me," Brandon said, "After the magistrate lets us go, we should drop by Madam Cloe''s Atelier to order you some clothes. You need to dress up to your station."


    And what, for crying out loud, was my station. But more importantly, did he just diss my wardrobe? I know I brought only camping clothes and the three dresses Theresa smuggled - plus the JK uniform - but he had no right to say so. His unabashed honesty was infuriating.


    News flash. Callous guys that speak their minds usually don''t get laid.


    "Sandra?" He asked. "Is something wrong?"


    I showed him a fake salesperson smile, "No. Oh, look, we are here."


    The same room where the three merchants met their fate. I took my iPod and started recording audio before slipping it into my pocket. I had no way to leave the camera in a casual place to record video.


    The guards at the door stared at us for a while before they opened the door. Strange. There weren''t these guards the other time. Was the security upgraded or is it for some other reason? I knew the magistrate was pissed at me because of all the headache I caused him but did it justify these two brutes? Anyway, we entered the room and the magistrate was standing up in the middle of the room with eight guards around. All armed and armored to the teeth in their fancy chain hauberks.


    Maybe even the teeth. Their helmets covered their mouths in deep darkness. Or they had a black cloth over their mouths.


    "Well, well. Look who we got here. Miss Rinaldi. I would like to say it is a pleasure to see you but magistrates don''t lie. You destroyed public property in wanton vandalism. And I am going to give you a penalty. Twenty--"


    "Objection!" I shouted to interrupt him. His level of annoyance rose sharply but he shut up. Some of the guards shifted their stance. "I did destroy the pier but it wasn''t wanton. It was collateral damage to destroy a monster you authorized me to. So, I''ll pay to have the pier reconstructed."


    He became even angrier when I said I destroyed a monster. "And I assume you have proof. Out with it."


    I summoned the bag with the tentacles, ripped off a piece and sent it to storage before I tossed it down on the ground, the plastic disappearing and the tentacles splashing around. Too bad they weren''t twitching anymore. The magistrate''s face went pale. His eyes widened and I could swear I saw sorrow under his scowl.


    "Inky!" He shouted.


    That''s a pet name if I ever heard one. "Inky? You knew this monster, magistrate?"


    "There''s the proof you needed, honored magistrate," Brandon added. "I recommend a fine for miss Rinaldi equal to double the cost to rebuild the pier."


    I glanced at him, wondering on whose side he was. But the way this conversation was going, maybe paying double was cheap to get out of trouble. Because the magistrate''s face recovered its color and it was an angry red that screamed murder. A theory appeared in my mind. Pidda said Hama-Tula was friends with the magistrate. The judge even asked the merchant to check on my ropes. I remembered how tight they were. He seemed dismayed when I turned around the case against the three merchants. And he gave me permission to go after the monster. I remember how it sent its tentacles to catch Rimush on the pier. Did that monster attack lonely people that go to the pier? Was he expecting me to try it alone or enter the water to get the monster? I doubt he was expecting me to just bomb the thing from outside of the river.


    There was an awkward silence. I considered most breaks in conversation as awkward anyway. The magistrate seemed to be considering his options and the guards were tense. I glanced at Brandon next to me and he was also in a state of readiness like Clint Eastwood, ready to draw and shoot.


    The magistrate was apparently tired of keeping the charade up. "You killed Inky!" There was a pain in his voice.


    "Yes, I''m sorry I killed your man-eating pet, honored magistrate," I told him. I wasn''t scared of the guards, I had Brandon with me. "But didn''t you think it was wrong to cheat your river trial by having a monster kill the people you threw inside?"


    Even the magistrate''s guards reacted to my accusation. I knew I was playing a dangerous game but I was tired of taking crap from people in power. Me and Brandon here, against the magistrate and his guards, it would be like Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley against Andy Serkis and his royal guard. A totally badass scene even though I liked the original ones way more.


    "Your stunts wrecking the peace of this city end now. You are a threat to everyone. Guards, seize her."


    The guards hesitated. Maybe there was hope to turn them around. I was quick on my comeback. If their code of laws was still similar to the Earthen Mesopotamian laws, and I had no reason to believe otherwise, there was one card I could play.


    "And you committed several mistrials, cheating with your pet monster, including using the monster to murder people! You broke the code you swore to protect, magistrate! Guards, arrest this man!"


    Brandon looked at me sideways with a raised eyebrow. He was keeping as many guards in his sight as he could. Knowing he had my back did flip all the bad evaluations he had with me. A fight was about to break out.


    "What are you waiting for, you wretched useless guards! Kill her!" The magistrate shouted with a lot of B-movie villain anger.


    Okay, the time to be sassy was over. The guards obviously wouldn''t go against the magistrate and if a fight really broke out, Brandon would be hurt. They were betting on us dying and the case would be over.


    "Wait, wait, wait. Hold it. We don''t need to fight right away, do we? Can''t we talk about it?"


    "No," The magistrate replied. "Captain, arrest this woman!"


    He said that to Brandon. It was the time of truth. Whose side would he pick? The traditionalist, lawful neutral guard captain? He opened his mouth but I wouldn''t let him choose.


    "Brandon, leave us. It is between the magistrate and me."


    It was a huge gamble right here. I was betting on several things. I had a lot of options to fight back if he was not here to be affected. And if I got Brandon out, I''d have a witness for later. And I would protect my... friend. From both physical and political harm. He couldn''t regenerate and he didn''t have a helmet or armor on. It was better for Brandon to leave.


    "Sandra..." He tried to grab my shoulder but I dodged. Four years training a martial art that focused on dodging the shit out of stronger opponents. And I was limber than ever due to my divine boons. I could even do the pretzel for him later.


    "Just go. I''ll meet you in half an hour!"


    Big blockhead, go away. I can''t fight them if you stay here. We exchanged a gaze and he faced the scowling magistrate. Scowling and amused. I could see the gears turning inside his wicked head. With Brandon out, it would be his eight burly guards against one girl. That was the kind of guy that liked to stack his deck.


    "You are dismissed, captain. If you don''t have the discipline to follow orders--"


    Brandon cut him this time. "You do not command me, magistrate. Since the issue is between you and Sandra," He roared, clearly pissed at both of us. The magistrate snickered when he called me by the first name with such a passionate voice. I wanted to do a Carrie Fisher and get a ''for luck'' kiss. But I didn''t. Coward. You''ll die a virgin in another world. "I''m leaving. Half an hour, Sandra. It is the time I need to call in a guard detachment."


    I nodded and gave him what I thought would be a reassuring smile. I needed one and he smiled back. Yup, I''d die for another smile like that one. Brandon left and the magistrate clapped. I readied a plastic trash bag and the ziplock with the magnesium chloride from my storage.


    "Kill her slowly," The magistrate hissed. "Make her suffer for all the humiliation and losses I incurred. She must pay for Inky''s death!"


    I put my hand in the ziplock bag. "You stop right there. The magistrate is obviously abusing his power and it won''t end well for you. I can kill everyone in this room with this powder."


    I was bluffing. I wouldn''t release a deadly cloud of chlorine. It would put me at the same level as some terrible monsters from Earth history.


    "She is obviously bluffing!" The magistrate roared. "Obey my orders!"


    I Decomposed only a bit of the chlorine by first separating the magnesium into metal and then repelling the chlorine away from me. A puff of yellow-green escaped the bag and I kept focusing Decompose on moving it away from me. The gas that escaped the bag mixed with part of the sweat in my arm and it stung my skin for a bit. Humans are very sensitive to chlorine. We can smell it in the air at 3 ppm. It smelt of a recently-treated swimming pool.


    "I''m not bluffing. You, honorable guardsmen of this courthouse, think for yourselves. Are you here to protect justice or an insane judge? You used a monster to interfere with trials. You are no magistrate, you are a parasite hiding in these halls. I''m going to defend myself here. I''m going to release more of that yellow cloud."


    The guards didn''t come at me. The magistrate was angry but he was no idiot. Even he could smell the chlorine. Another pregnant silent pause and he relaxed his stance.


    "Take your hand out of that bag, girl. Guards, return to your stations."


    Strangely enough, now that he backed off, I got extremely annoyed. And I threatened to release the chlorine without even putting the blue bag to cover my head. I''m a walking chemical terrorist. No. I just did what I needed to do to defend myself from injustice. Yeah, let''s lie to ourselves like that.


    I knew I was scowling but I couldn''t avoid. I stared at him and asked, "What happens no, magistrate?"


    "You are fined in one gold mina for the destruction of the pier," He spoke with his arms crossed and shoulders were thrown back as if he was looking down on me.


    I would have to use both hands to take the gold out. To do that, I''d have to take my hand off the ziplock of magnesium salt. So I sat down and after placing the open ziplock on the ground, stored it. A pile of salt dropped on the floor. This way I could release the chlorine anytime. I wasn''t too worried about losing this material. I summoned my handbag and drew a hexagonal gold coin, dismissing the bag immediately after. I tossed him the coin and he effortlessly plucked it from the air.


    "Anything else?" I asked from the ground.


    "You accused me of a mistrial. That''s a serious accusation," He told me and pointed at a guard. "You, go call senior magistrate Sun-Goro."


    I had no idea what he was up to. Once the guard opened the door, Brandon came back inside.


    "What is this foul smell? Sandra, why are you on the floor?"


    I just turned around. "I paid my fines!" I told him. "And now we are settling a mistrial accusation."


    He did a double-take. "You are what?"


    I knew I''d screwed up again when I saw Brandon''s jaw agape. "That guard went to get a senior magistrate."


    Between Brandon''s disbelief and that magistrate smug smile, I just rested my case. I had the whole conversation recorded. We waited there in silence until the senior magistrate arrived. And when I say senior, I meant senior. The guy could date Nanna.


    "What is going on here?"


    The smug magistrate pointed at me. "That woman accused me of a mistrial."


    The elder glowered at me. "Stand up, girl. I hope you have evidence."


    I glanced at the magistrate, then pointed at the tentacles. "Those are monster parts. That man raised a monster under the pier by the river where he often took people for trials. He let the monster eat the people thrown in the river, therefore ruining the fairness of the trial."


    Not that it was fair, to begin with. The younger magistrate said nothing.


    "Do you have more evidence than that?" Sun-Goro asked.


    I played the recording of our conversation. Sun-Goro looked at the younger magistrate, that wasn''t expecting to be recorded.


    "Guards. Seize this youngster," He pointed at the younger one. "And you lady, what should I do with you?"


    I stood up and bowed to him."Honorable elder magistrate Sun-Goro, I''m Sandra Rinaldi. I did my work and paid my fine of one gold mina for the destruction of the pier. Let me go home."


    He raised an eyebrow. "That''s a lot of money."


    "If I can get that man away from my heels, that''s money well spent."


    Abil-Kisu''s money bag was heavy. Hama-Tula''s secret stash too but that gold had to be minted or traded for coins I could spend. I would probably save it to make jewelry for sale.


    "You did a great service, lass. I thank you," He nodded then turned to the former magistrate, "You are sentenced to death."


    The guy tried to struggle against the guards. "I invoke the right of trial! I demand a trial! I also invoke my family''s kiddinutu."


    The last word was strange at first but it was because of his pronunciation. Like he bit his tongue. He meant a sort of ''privilege''.


    "What is that?" I asked Sun-Goro.


    "He is the Enshi nephew," He replied without looking at me. "What trial do you request, Enshi Mar-Aji?"


    Another ancient term. It meant honored nephew when the nephew was part of the succession line to rule the city-state.


    "The deep trial," He said as if shouting ''Aha! I win!'' to me.


    Sun-Goro looked at me. Brandon was pale. He mumbled something and waved his hand in front of me, making a concentrated face. A bead of sweat dripped down his brow and then I saw pretty lights and everything was fine.


    I mean, really, really fine. Sun-Goro would take care of everything, I just needed to follow his wise guidance. Something was off but I could quite poke it with my finger. Probably the chlorine. What a fool I was. Trying to start a fight in the courthouse, the most peaceful place of all!


    I wanted to know what the snotty magistrate meant so I asked the magnificent and wise senior magistrate. "Honored senior magistrate Sun-Goro, what does it mean?"


    "It means we are throwing you into the deep hole in the Earth. If you get out, he will be thrown too. Usually, the one that requests the trial goes first but he has this privilege due to his high birth."


    Oh. Cool. I really wanted to go spelunking. It sounds like a nice place, this deep trial. If the great Sun-Goro thinks it is fine, then who am I to argue against? I''m just a lousy troublemaker on the path of reformation!


    The guards closed in. I raised my hands. "I''ll go. How long do I have to get out?"


    Wise Sun-Goro raised an eyebrow at me. I could sense his curiosity and annoyance because I asked a stupid question. I shut myself up and behave like a good girl.


    Brandon protested, "Sandra, nobody comes back from the deep hole. It leads to the underworld!"


    "Silence, captain," Sun-Goro uttered and Brandon froze. Such was the might of the senior magistrate. The old man looked at me. "One year and a day. If you come back in less than a year and a day, you are innocent and we will throw that man."


    How deep was that place? That was the reason I never tried to participate in game shows. I had this tendency to jump the gun, it was a fault in my decision-making process to reach conclusions with incomplete data. Funny how it never happened when I was doing research. Only in my life choices. But I was brimming in excitement at the prospect of JUSTICE!


    But still, there were some details I needed to ask. "What about my household and my people?"


    The magnanimous Sun-Goro glared at me and focused. It seemed he had a migraine. I had some pain medication in my first aid kit, should I give him some? I must take good care of Sun-Goro, such a bastion of society.


    "The challenger will pay for the expenses. After all, he will own everything if you don''t come back in the set time."


    And I knew from the face the former magistrate was making, that Sun-Goro had been extremely generous with me by giving me a year to get out. If I survived the fall.


    "What happens to him? Won''t he escape?"


    But the impudent me still had questions to ask. And I did even though I should abide by the infinite wisdom of Sun-Goro.


    "He would be a disgrace to the Enshi if he did. But I understand his concern. For one year and a day, that man is to become the captain''s slave. His possessions will be seized and kept in my custody. Is that satisfactory, miss Rinaldi?"


    "I accept!"


    I beamed at him and the all-powerful awesome super-duper-cool senior magistrate smiled. The chlorine might''ve melted my brain. But after I heard of this trial, it was as if I was compelled to go there. I needed protection. And I knew just the place to go.


    "Brandon..." I approached him.


    He sighed. "I hope you know what you are doing, crazy woman. I pray to Tarhun that he may protect you."


    "Thanks. I''ll come back soon. I promise. Thanks for trusting me. It meant a lot."


    They took me through the back of the courthouse. I couldn''t even talk to Lipit-Ea. My only hope would be Brandon. He had to take care of things. I was getting that strange tunnel vision again when only my goal was important and everything else faded into the background. It was exactly like some external power was pushing me toward that. I only noticed it after a lot of introspection so at the moment.


    I could barely move around. One of the guards held my arm.


    "Are you ready?"


    I nodded. They took me outside the town and after an hour of walking to the southeast, I reached a large crevice in the earth. It seemed deep. Really deep. I saw Sun-Goro, Brandon and the former magistrate. Sun-Goro nodded and the guard pushed me inside.


    FOR JUSTICE!


    Wait a moment what the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...


    ....


    Damn. Sun-Goro is a sorcerer and a mind-bender, isn''t he?


    ...


    I fell. Then I hit some rocks on my side. It hurt but not too much. Then I hit more rocks with my back. It hurt a lot. Then I hit rocks with my head as I tumbled down. I got dazed and confused. I think I hit rocks several more times.


    And then I lost consciousness.

 Week 2 - Cast

    The Harbinger -


    Historical figure shrounded in mystery. Caused a great war between city-states, destroyed the moon, and won due to unconventional weaponry. It is said that the consequences of his actions bring ruin and despair to the land even one hundred years later.


    Shamash -


    Nineteen years old Eunuch guard offered to Sandra as part of the payment for the merchants'' properties she didn''t want to keep. Born to the people of the forest to the north, was enslaved when the Akkadians attacked and burned their habitat to flush out that troublesome group. Bought by Abil-Kisu at the capital, he served the merchant lord until he was sold to Sandra and released by her. Sandra believes he reports to Abil-Kisu about her activities but she doesn''t mind as she don''t think she has anything to hide. She promised him to one day grow a forest.


    Ananu -


    Twenty-two years old. Another eunuch guard offered to Sandra as part of the payment for the merchants'' properties. Hailing from one of the satellite villages near Es-Kina, he was sold as debt slave by his father twice. After a punishment with a whip went wrong, he had to become an eunuch or risk death from a festering wound. He sold himself to Abil-Kisu to gather money for his sister''s dowry.


    Hesha-Doka -


    One of the two elderly groundkeepers and gardeners of Sandra''s estate. Likes to care for the flowers and lawn. Has a strong grandfatherly vibe.


    Tullius -


    Another elderly gardener of the estate. His facial features are more eastern-European than middle-eastern or Turkish. Is a refugee from a faraway land, escaping the curse of the Death Snow.


    Sere-Naha and Kali-Maru -


    A pair of old ladies, appearing older than their real age due to the hardships of the life as a slave.


    Lipit-Ea -


    A free sailor in the coastal city-state of Binur to the south. Captured during a war and made into an eunuch slave, ended up in Hama-Tula''s guard retinue until he became Sandra''s guard. Longs to see the beach and sail the endless ocean again.


    Tiwatura -


    Strong as an ox, this former Village Chieftain lived with his people by the Dragon River to the west until he was captured and made into an eunuch guard. Knows how to navigate the political scenario. A bit of a braggart but with a heart of gold.


    Dipa-Tsu -


    This eunuch guard was born a slave in the house of Hama-Tula and is very loyal to that family. He wishes to follow Rimush once he becomes 14 years old and becomes an adult. Sandra is okay with that.


    Huzzi-Ya -Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    A former gladiator at the capital arena, ended his career in the entertainment murder industry due to a leg injury that compromised his mobility. Became an eunuch guard in Hama-Tula''s estate. He still has fight in him.


    Sin-Ma-Sihu -


    With light brown hair and a dark brown skin, he doesn''t match any ethnical group from Earth, giving this eunuch an uncanny air. He was captured by slave traders in his homeland and shipped across the ocean as merchandise. Bought by Hama-tula, he decided to stay by Sandra''s side. In his words, ''a good shot with a bow''.


    Muta-Nani -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. He claimed to be deadly with a scimitar and that he would slaughter the Lady''s enemies. He was rejected outright.


    Usalla -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. Very religious, he called Sandra "Tarhun''s Blessed Maiden" and would defend her like a zealot. - He was rejected.


    Atta-Li -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. Swore to protect her household. He was hired.


    Kanu-Kasu -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. A well traveled cavan guard with eight years on the road, he knows a lot of the world and is very good at haggling. Hired.


    Manni-Manna -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. A sorcerer that was fascinated by the amount of magical energy he could sense from Sandra, was rejected because she was afraid mana-hungry swordmasters would come for him.


    - That''s what you get when you use random name gens. ED.


    Iru-Nasu -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. He claimed to be good with children. Was rejected because she already had Arwia as a nanny.


    Zinwa-Seli -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill.Claims to have the gift of night eyes and likes to keep watch under the stars. Also boasts that no caravan he worked with was robbed at night. Was hired because of his good reputation with caravaneers.


    Lah-Ueri -


    One of the eight candidates for the positions of eunuch guards Sandra had to fill. Worked in the mines for ten years but "jealous miners" (jealous of what?) damaged his genitals during an assault. He changed careers as eunuch guards die less than miners. Hired because Sandra is also interested in mining.


    Pidda -


    12 years old. Second son of Banunu. Idolizes his father and resents Sandra for getting him dead.


    Belili -


    10 years old. Daughter of Banunu. Shy, she looks up to her brothers for guidance.


    Muranu


    9 years old. Son of Rubati. He is cunning like his father but more the type to silently analyze and strike at the right moment.


    Kiya -


    8 years old, daughter of Banunu. Very close to Anaya and five months older than her. She acts as an emotional support to her sisters.


    Hapiya -


    7 years old, son of Rubati. He is behind the others in his writing lessons because he has poor motor skills.


    Gadudu -


    Also seven years old, son of Banunu. He is afraid of Sandra.


    Gula, Mot, and Bibi -


    Three young preteen girls of unknown but close age that were rescued from the slave trader by Sandra. They show clear signs of psychological trauma and submissive conditioning but are opening up as they interact with the other children.


    Dime -


    A big eagle with green feathers around the neck, like a mallard. He weighs eight kilograms and has over two meters of wingspan. His nest was attacked by hunters trying to avenge the sheep he and his mate ate. The mate died as was cooked by Belle and the eggs were broken by arrows. Sandra named him after the USA coin but his name was misheard by the natives as Diim-me, that in Modern Akkadian means "Bloodstone". The bird considered itself the king of the skies and the pecker of all eyeballs. Since it could peck the eyeballs out of any other creature, it was obviously the lord. Everything changed when he found Sandra and failed to peck her eyeball out, twice. The deep dive in confidence led him to consider Sandra the only one capable of pecking his eyeball out. So he bonded with her.


    Sin-Gasit -


    An elderly merchant that owns a bathhouse near the central market.


    "Honey Cake" -


    Penny-Gu the caramel mare is named after a very delicious pastry the Akkadians bake. Silly Sandra wrongly thought she was named after the coin.


    Inky -


    A tentacle monstrosity that lurked under the pier of trials. Turns out it was the pet of the magistrate and he used his trials to feed the monster. Totally unfair. I mean, throwing people tied up to a rock in a deep river bend? Totally okay and just. But not with a flesh-eating tentacle monster full of spikes. No, sir.


    Senior Magistrate Sun-Goro -


    A senior magistrate - turned out there was more than one - that has little patience for frivolities. He waited for a long time to get rid of the other magistrate (the one that killed the merchants) and Sandra was the perfect tool for that. He is a sorcerer specialized in mental manipulation.

 Depths 1

    My world spun. I felt dizzy and damp. Everything was dark. I felt cold. I wasn''t out of air but my body felt sluggish. I was lying on my back atop something hard. Stone? The air felt stale. My thoughts moved like molasses inside my head. What happened? I buried a man''s head, went to the courthouse and then...


    I was thrown into a hole in the ground. A deep crevice. I might''ve broken several bones but I didn''t feel pain. Just hunger, thirst, and this dizziness.


    I needed some light. I summoned my phone and turned it on. The LED screen flashed to life and the first thing I saw was the hour. It marked 23:57. Then I unlocked it and turned on the flashlight. I see something that almost stopped my heart.


    I was inside a cave. The irregular rock formations of the roof went up and down at the flavor of the rock, and I knew it was a natural cave. There was no light beside my phone. I turned around to lie on my side and touched the rock. If I was in a cave and the air was stale, there was barely any to no oxygen to breathe.


    Frightened, I screamed but no sound came out. I was too weak. I felt as if I was paralyzed.


    I Decomposed oxygen from the rock. A lot, the fastest I could. Then it hit me. It felt like I took ten ibuprofen pills. A dozen good gulps of air and my mind was thinking straight, the sluggishness was gone, and my body was working as it should again. And it meant I needed food and water. Immediately.


    The wracking pain was terrifying. My throat was parched, I felt my skin dry and shriveled. I hoped it was just my impression. I took my canteen and drank short sips. I couldn''t go all out even though I desperately desired that live liquid.


    My mouth tasted like I drank sewage. Maybe I did. I washed my mouth but swallowed instead of spitting. Let my body handle the filth.


    I spent a lot of time in there, slowly draining my canteen. Life came back to my body but my stomach craved food. I summoned the cooler bag and checked inside. I had food for two days if I rationed what I had. It would be hard. I took a pack of salted chips. After the first bite, the synthetic taste of onion and garlic was too much. I devoured the bag and then another. Only when I saw the silver bottom of the inner lining of the last package I came to my senses.


    I had to ration my food.


    Stupid.


    I felt my stomach churn and stood very quiet. The only thing worse than eating half my food in one go would be to lose it. I had nowhere to run. I just closed my eyes and hoped it was all a dream. My imagination playing tricks on me. But it wasn''t.


    Sated, I fell asleep.


    I woke up hearing a door slam. Did it happen in my dream or was there a real door in this place? At least I felt good. The air was stale again and I had to get moving. I had no idea where to run to but I could always explore. I wondered if I would ever see the sun again.


    No. Begone dark thoughts. I was freaking alive, fed, hydrated. There was nobody to save me but myself. Time to fight for my life.


    I summoned the lantern and turned it on in the dimmest brightness. Now I could see the whole tunnel. It was not straight and very irregular. Only where I Decomposed oxygen to breathe it was smooth. I could see flickering reflections on one side and I knew the tunnel was damp. Was it water?


    Before I explored around, I checked myself with my makeup mirror. I was a mess. Covered in dry blood and grime. I had a big blood clot around my crotch. It stained the rock where I was sitting. And it smelled like something I knew very well.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Aunt Flo sent her regards.


    It gave me a perspective of how long I was down here. At least one week, maybe two or more but not more than a month and something. Damn. Damn.


    I stored whatever clothes could be stored in the way they were. It left only the linen dress. Damn, damn.


    Angry, I Decomposed the dress, the blood, the grime, everything. Punch out the oxygen because it is good to breathe and all that is left are hydrocarbon compounds. I could smell LPG like a leaky gas stove, gasoline. Smart girl. Damn!


    I couldn''t even stand up. There wasn''t enough room. I shouted, "Begone, carbon."


    Graphite dust fell around me. I was naked but I kept pushing all and any carbon away from me. I rolled around and saw that all my objects were lying around. Bad. Bad. I left the food bag out for some hours. I swept them back into the timeless storage.


    Focus.


    Focus.


    I was unhurt, naked, in the dark except for the lantern. That was also bad. I had to ration my energy. Once I was out of light sources, a Grue would eat me. My sense of humor was back. Not now! I was unhurt but I could tell my hair felt longer. Wilder. Probably a side effect of spending too much time here, unconscious. There was no airflow, no wind in this cavern. The air was stale and there was no oxygen.


    How did I survive without oxygen?


    Was it my regeneration healing the effects of anaerobic metabolism? My body eating itself and regenerating, like being both the eagle and Prometheus at the same time. That was the best explanation.


    Fortunately, I had the perfect solution to the lighting problem. I had a hand crank flashlight. For as long as I could wind it, I''d have light. And the battery was full. I wrapped the flashlight in a white handkerchief and tied it around with a scrunchie. I wanted a dimmer and diffuse light.


    Next, the whereabouts of the ones aboveground. While I had no x-ray vision, I could still sense Penny and Dime. Far, far away. Just a distant ping. Like when you know which way is north in London and then you point southwest to your hometown.


    It was good to be able to sense them. It meant both were alive and also that I had a heading. I knew which way to go. The downside was that I was pretty sure I couldn''t get there in a single day. Being lost in a cave and all that jazz.


    I needed clothes. My boots were caked in blood so I took the sneakers. Cargo pants, long-sleeved shirt, a jacket for some extra protection. So far, so good. There were no caves in Devil Ridge so I didn''t take my helmet with me. This section of the cave I was in was not tall enough for me to stand up and one of the biggest dangers in a cave is bumping your head. You''d think people had some extra senses regarding head positioning, but it turns out that the environment where we developed had little to no danger to the head. Except for some wild animal bashing it.


    I needed a helmet. After pondering for some time, I decided to make one. From the metals I had, one stood out as a good candidate. Titanium. Almost as strong as the steel they made and forty percent lighter. And I could shape it with Decompose because it was a pure element. While it wouldn''t be much good in a fight, I just wanted something to stop my scalp from scraping the low rock roof.


    I spent quite some time shaping half a disk of titanium into a helmet. It scored minus four for style but a solid ten for cost and a nine for useful. I put the hood of my jacket over my head and the helmet over it. I looked like a medieval hobo but that was fine.


    Now, which way to get out? Left or right? To the left I had water. I crawled there and found a briny pool. The water smelled of rotten eggs and full of sulfur compounds. It was also murky. From the way I see it, I might''ve climbed out of this pool and crawled to where I recovered my senses. That meant I could find my way back if I went into this pool.


    Something told me it was a bad idea.


    I could swear I saw something moving in that water. Given my track history with things moving in murky waters, I really didn''t want to dive in there. I could go around but the presence of water here meant I could be below the water table. Digging around could be disastrous.


    All that was left was to go to the other side then. I turned around and crawled ahead. The ground was irregular and faulty. It felt like this tunnel here wasn''t traveled, ever. Jagged shards of rocks sprouted from everywhere. The area around the water was smoother, probably from the water, which told me that the water level could rise.


    I could see stuffed salt deposits that sprouted from the rock from too much hydration. Colored veins. I was inside a mine. I could see red clay with galena ore. Lead. Given what I faced and where I used the almost hundred kilograms of lead I obtained, I could use more lead.


    To go further, I''d have to use Decompose to smooth the ground or I''d ruin my clothes and bleed myself dry. What is the problem with some looting? I Decomposed my path and part of the walls and roof. A lot of lead, aluminum from the clay, sulfur, and iron from the pyrite and some copper. The silicon was used as paving for my passage.


    After going ahead for a bit I heard a creature creeping from behind. Something wet slapping on something hard.

 Depths 2

    A grunt and a gurgle from a few meters behind me. I turn around, still crawling on the ground, fearing what is coming. If I have to fight here, things will be really bad. The last thing I need is a creature creeping up behind me. I see a patch of blue skin, head with a coarse sparse black hair peeking from a corner of the tunnel. I think what I can do to prepare myself and blocking the tunnel is my first thought. I start to Decompose the silicon to raise a wall but the critter decides to attack.


    I was out of time.


    The critter is about one meter in height, with lanky long limbs and a slouched stance. It could reach as high as a human if it straightened itself. It is blue, covered in that coarse hair and has claws on its forelimbs. A long tapered snout and a lot of eyes all around its head. It growls and gargles as it runs toward me to attack.


    I call my frying pan and dagger to my hands. Some of its eyes swivel to see the light reflected on the dagger. It comes clawing, I block them with the pan. The height limit means both of us can''t maneuver well but the critter has the home advantage. I really didn''t want to hurt or kill the creature but it is trying to kill me, my empathy perk is not working and there''s nobody to save me from the beast. I dismiss the dagger and prepare myself.


    It rolls to a side and darts a claw at my now defenseless side. I jump forward, making its raking claw aimed at my shoulder hit my ribcage but it puts me inside my range. I re-summon the dagger and slash the inside of its elbow joint. I feel a sinewy resistance from its tough tendons. The other arm moved to protect its scrawny chest. I bash the back of the claw to move it aside with the frying pan and slash the joint again. This time I manage to sever the biceps tendon, making the arm useless. A flash of pain comes from my flank where it scratched me.


    I''m fighting for my life inside a cave. Don''t blame me.


    The blue thing goes into a frenzy, opening its maw and displaying rows of tiny serrated teeth, reminding me of a shark. it jumps toward me and for the lack of a better tactic, I headbutt its mouth, hoping the titanium helmet can hold. The teeth grind against metal and I see an opening. The critter grabs my neck and keeps gnawing the helmet. It is strong and I know I''ll have trouble getting out of its grip.


    It is now or never. I won''t have another chance against this many-eyed thing. Its other arm flails at its side, the thing too dumb to notice it is incapacitated. I wait for it to rise and stab its armpit. I hope the heart is on the left side.


    A sharp shriek with a lot of puke rings on my helmet. I twist and turn the knife, driving it deeper. Its dark red blood spurts from the wound and the claw around my neck weakens. I pull my head out of the helmet and rise to gain some leverage to finish it.


    I hit my head on a rock and blood starts to come out.


    The critter frenzies when it smells my blood and uses the time I gave it to grab and yank out the dagger, sending it clattering against the tunnel wall. It turns to run away and I see it has a lot of eyes on the back and top of its head too. The monster runs a few paces then falls down.


    It screamed its death throes, spasmed and went limp.


    And once more, I''m covered in grime and monster puke. Blue troll. Diet: stinky fish.


    Eww! Eww!


    I store my jacket, shirt, and bra, Decomposing everything organic on or around my upper body, including my own blood from where I hit the rock. After that, I crawl to retrieve my tools. I send the knife and frying pan back to the storage but I need to check the helmet. Some of the teeth managed to pierce through the titanium. Otherwise a lot of dents and scratches. I decompose the filth from it and get more titanium to repair and strengthen it by increasing its thickness. Maybe add a wavy pattern along its top. This way I can increase thickness while saving material.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    After that, I made a path to the hopefully dead monster. I know I should get away but I''m curious. I mean, it is humanoid enough and it is my first real monster in another world. The others were mutated animals. The thing obviously came from the water. Its feet are webbed.


    I use my spade to poke it from afar. Now that I think of it, the spade is a much better defensive tool than a frying pan. It is dead. Both the monster and the tactic to defend me with the pan. The thing has a lot of eyes in rows around its head. One right on the crown, then six, then twelve that go all around, and finally three rows of seven that start at the base of its snout and go around the back.


    Forty eyes. My first real kill.


    It is a common trope that these monsters have useful materials in their bodies. Maybe this one does too. Only one way of knowing. I summoned a plastic trash bag and sent the body to storage. Back to my merry tunnel, to crawl away.


    I put my clothes back on, Just cutting off the part of the jacket that got stained by fish-eating monster puke. I resume my crawling-Decomposing routine, moving deeper into the tunnel, following the slope up.


    After what felt like several hundred meters, the tunnel starts to widen and opens into a proper mine. I can see timbers bracing the walls and roof but some parts have caved in. But it means I can stand up, finally.


    I can see trails where water seeped and pooled at the end of the mine tunnel. This place must be ancient because the tunnel I crawled in from was made by water dissolving a path through the mineral veins. Secondary deposits must''ve formed inside that pool. The air is very stale, fill with a heavy scent of decay and mold. The timbers are completely rotten, standing up just because there''s nothing to knock them down.


    I can''t have a cave-in close the tunnel behind me, or can I? It will cut the way back and hinder the blue monsters from coming out through the tunnel. I can clear a cave-in with Decompose so to me it is just a minor setback. I Decompose a path through the stone around the timbers and wrap my climbing rope around them.


    It also helps that I have to keep Decomposing rocks to oxygenate the air. I leave the rope there and go form a shelter from the cave-in further down the mine tunnel. Decompose the rocks and shape the silicon into an egg-shaped cocoon, open in the front. I go inside, close the egg shut except for a hole and pull the rope. The timbers break in the middle and the roof over the timbers comes down with a mighty rumble. A could of dust rises and I quickly store the rope and shut the hole.


    After the rumble settled, I waited for several minutes before I opened a hole in my egg and go outside, forcing all silicon and lead away from my face. I shed light on both sides. The cave-in was bigger than what I thought. A lot of rocks came down, I can see small shards of granite and specks of mica intertwined with quartz embedded in the rocks. Also hematite and magnetite.


    Was this an iron mine? Against my fading caution, I go check on the minerals. For a moment I forget I am trapped in a damned abandoned mine. Or just the trapped part. The beautiful dark lines of the magnetite playing with the red hematite, mixed with the quartz formations and the red clay entrance me. I get my portable lab and retrieve the pick and mallet. I know I can use Decompose but nothing beats the thrill of splitting rock with the pick. I spent a lot of time hitting the rocks, breaking samples of the prettiest ores. The quartz too. It would be nice if I could polish the quartz using a tumbler. They seem low-quality though.


    I find a piece of green fuchsite. Another positive point of mining on my own and not Decomposing everything is to preserve these rare finds. If I used Decompose on the basic elements, the fuchsite would be destroyed. I keep breaking rock, mining, Decomposing the uninteresting chunks and building quite the pile of silicon pieces and also iron nuggets.


    Another vein and I find titanomagnetite. I hum an old tune about a Kentucky miner a friend taught me. I take my iPod and play the song by "Tennesee" Ernie Ford in the deep voice of Johnny Cash.


    <blockquote>


    I was born one mornin'' when the sun didn''t shine


    I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine


    ...


    You load sixteen tons, what do you get?


    Another day older and deeper in debt


    </blockquote>


    I broke one last rock singing the chorus'' last line, "I owe my soooul to the company stooooore!"


    I wiped the sweat off my brow, tired and happy. I had a pile of iron, lead, aluminum, and some titanium, sulfur and a pile of ''unknown ores, oxides, and salts'' I had to identify later. I marked my samples and stored them in the portable lab with the tools. I checked the fruits of my labor and gasped.


    You can guess what happened, right?


    I cleared the cave-in I caused. And some blue critters came to check on their friend.

 Depths 3

    Blue trolls. Until someone tells me the name of these things and convince me they are not trolls, I''ll call them that. Long limbs but one meter tall, slouched, cragged slimy skin, webbed feet, shark teeth, forty eyes, raking claws. Blue, hairy, disgusting. And gills. They have gills that are flaring right now. Two of them crawl out of the leaching hole I crawled out from. Their moist skin reeks of rotten eggs, courtesy of the sulfuric brine pool they live in.


    I will have to fight. If these things with forty eyes get me, that''s it. Bang. The end. No second chances. I jump to psych myself. Go, girl. I''m fighting for my life, no time to be queasy.


    They smell me and growl. I check the ground below me and it is irregular enough to guarantee I''m screwed it I try to depend on mobility. Thankfully I know one thing creepy forty-eyed trolls that lurk in the dark depths dislike the most. The two trolls run to attack me, mouths open and claws ready. I summon my tool and ready it to strike.


    I bet blue trolls hate having their picture taken. I snap my phone and take their photo, the flash on. My invulnerable eyes only register the sudden glare for the moment and I''m back to normal sight from the flashlight. While the trolls are stunned, I run forward, swapping the phone for the survival knife and try to slash their throats, Yuno Gasai style.


    The first one falls on its back with an open carotid but the other one has time to react and blocks my slash with an arm. I cut his skin but it is just a flesh wound. I hope he''s not as resilient as John Cleese.Ugh. My flank was burning. Was that claw poisoned? I bet one gold shekel.


    The backlash comes right afterward. The troll slammed me with one of its long, strong arms and sunk its claws on my side, below the ribs. I raise the knife and slash at its eyes, popping three of them and causing a white jelly to pour out of them. It shrieks in pain and tries to bite me. Blinded and in pain, it misses. I slash and pop three other eyes. It grabs my jacket and pulls me sideways, making me trip and hit my head on the wall. Fortunatley I have a helmet.


    The angry troll sniffs and jumps over me. I lift my leg and kick it, sending the ferocious but lightweight critter to the other side of the narrow tunnel. It gives me time to get back on my feet. We face off. Well I face it off. The troll is still blinded, oozing the jelly from its popped eyes and trembling. It seems the eyes are very sensitive. It sniffs the air and jumps.


    I shouldn''t have discarded the magnesium chloride . I bet that moist monster would love some acid burns. I speak with such cruelty because I am pretty sure these monsters aren''t intelligent. I need more data points though to be certain.


    It came from above with its claws ready. It had the strength of an adult man and the weight of a children. I freeze and hesitate. It comes down on me and upon ontact, starts to claw savagely. The bite comes and I headbutt its mouth. The teeth start to gnaw on my helmet and I remove it from my head. My left arm burns. I tried to protect the right side or else I''d have no way to defend myself. I stab its muscular belly several times. The survival knife was not meant to stab.


    Fortunately, the titanium helmet was stuck inside its mouth, and he gave up on clawing me to remove the object. I was amazed at its jaw strength. The teeth were cutting into the titanium. Titanium has a Mohs hardness of 6 and that meant these teeth were harder than your average high school freshman during mixed P.E. classes.


    Joking and wincing at my own bad puns took my mind away from part of the pain. But I was wasting time best spent murdering monsters.


    Damn.


    Don''t want to. While I churned the inner turmoil of my modern views against the crude reality of a monster-infested world, it clawed my cheek. I kicked its shin and slashed a large gash on its belly. Blood poured from the open wound and I took the time to stab the knife inside its guts and twist.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    The thing screamed its death throes and I kicked it away before it had the opportunity to puke over me again.


    Damn.


    It dies without vomiting. It''s a win in these filthy depths. I bag two more corpses and check the helmet. It is bent, the blue troll was able to crush the metal. If there was a human head inside the helmet, it would be pretty much brained. And dead.


    Not me.


    Tired, I carved a seat out of silicon and rested. I needed time to regenerate my arm. I gave up on trying to keep tidy clothes. Welcome, filth my friend. Disgust is a bio-social reaction to avoid contamination and disease. I was highly resistant to the former and immune to the latter. I dozed off while I waited for my wounds to close.


    Smart girl. Not.


    I woke up startled by more grunts, growls, and gurgles. It seemed a lot of blue trolls were coming up from the drain tunnel, to check where their missing friends were. I focused on hearing their sounds, to see if it was any kind of language. If it were, I was supposed to be able to listen to it. Unless Tarhun really stiffed me. I couldn''t make sense of their gurgling, growling, and grunting. Ok, not sentient. They didn''t wear clothes or use tools anyway. Their paws were good for clawing but terrible for handing objects.


    I felt weak, hungry. Thirsty too. I would probably have to go back down there to get water. Briny or not. I had a good survival filter and Decompose. I almost died to two, what could I do with a lot of them? Should I run down the tunnel? Would they give chase? Was there anything else down the tunnel? Should I have spent time mining instead of securing my location? Don''t miss next week''s chapter. If I survive.


    One blue troll entered the tunnel, sniffing. Then another, and two more that were bickering. One of them had a popped eye, oozing the clear gel. I really hope it didn''t eat its veggies. At least the eyes weren''t blue. Just a deep pool of blackness, made to swallow all light.


    I summoned the lantern and the knife. I''ll hit you with all the grudge I can muster now but I won''t walk slowly toward your doom. 9999 damage. They glare at the flashhight and hiss. The last two enter the room and I face off against five of them. I crank the dimmer of the lantern all the way and it shone with the power of a hundred bright LED. The monsters were confused and afraid.


    I charged. They tried to cover as many eyes as they could and I noticed they didn''t have eyelids. Just some nictating membrane. I drove myself into a frenzy and slashed as many eyes I could. They screamed and clawed around. I backed off. One troll clawed another and drew blood. They started to fight among themselves, shouting, gurgling, biting and clawing at each other in a way that I won''t put into words.


    I couldn''t even look.


    More gurgling. It sounded like they were calling for help and more blue trolls were anwering from the tunnel. Two larger and darker trolls came into the tunnel, shielding their eyes and looking at me. These seemed more inteligent. They slapped the others, gurgling something and they stopped infighting. Three were on the ground, badly hurt and probably bleeding to their deaths. The big ones growled menacingly at me. The others made way, hugging the wall to let the bosses through.


    These creatures of the night and dark cried some sort of call.


    The ruckus was big but I felt something I shouldn''t. An air current coming from behind me. I turned around to see figures well beyond the reach of the light shuffling. A lot of them. I looked back at the blue trolls and they were running away. They didn''t even bother to carry their wounded.


    I turned around to look at what I was looking at.


    Call me Lauren Cohan, because it seems the dead were walking in their masquerade.


    Dozens of what I could only call zombies shuffling down the tunnel, slowly. I took back the crank flashlight and brought the big guns. A directional 12-LED one. I shoot the beam of light on them and unfortunately they didn''t burn of flinch. Their skin was rotten and moldy, their eyes dead in the sockets. A bona fide undead horde. Jaws slacked, teeth crooked and warped but still filthy and deadly.


    Zombies to the north, blue trolls to the south. It seems I would not escape the alien''s jaws this time.


    Like I would let that be the end of my life.


    It seemed all of them were out to get me. Monsters closing in on every side.


    And they would get me, unless I did something. So I ran and followed the living blue trolls. I reached the leaching hole and ducked to get inside. I moved one meter inside and touched the roof. Go, Decompose! I poured the most power I could to move silicon. Shift the rock and move the silicon to close the entrance. Dust from the other components of the rock that weren''t silicon fell and covered me but I ignored it, closed my eyes, and focused. Move, block the gap. The blob of silicon moved like a very viscous fluid. The zombie horde was a few meters when I finally closed the gap with enough silicon I believed they wouldn''t break through.


    Now was the time to go back to the pool and cuddle with the amphibious trolls. Close together.

 Depths 4

    Between the mindless undead horde, I hoped it would be mindless, because a sentient undead horde was even more frightening, and the blue trolls I already proved I could kill and blind, the choice was easy. Plus, even they feared the undead so the sensible choice was to flee along with them. Yup, that''s what got me here. I was back in the leaching tunnel that was formed when water from the mine seeped into the mineral veins, dissolving them slowly over the centuries and sending the salts and oxides down into wherever water goes from here.


    I heard the undead feeding on the three blue troll corpses left behind and moved a sensible distance from the mostly closed-off tunnel. I didn''t seal it shut because it would be stupid to close myself in an air bubble.


    Air bubbles... Wait a second. The mine tunnel didn''t seem like it would flood very often. While it was obviously exposed to moisture given the poor state of the timbers, I didn''t see rivers flowing down that tunnel. That would create a water line and there was none. No. This leaching tunnel was created from the bottom up. I remembered what Tullius told me. The water table level varies wildly with the seasons. The water level would rise all the way to the tunnel. Over the course of the centuries, the water rising and falling here washed away this tunnel open until it met the mine since both followed the mineral veins in the ground.


    This meant that the water below was connected to a series of tunnels and passages. That might include the warrens of the blue trolls. I didn''t check but I think they are amphibious. Either through the skin of through their gills, they can breathe water. When I fell, I must have plunged into the water and washed up here. It might mean the water level was where I stood before it dropped to where it is now.


    If that was true, the drought on the surface must''ve worsened. And I didn''t finish the storage. I hope everyone is alright.


    There was another problem. If I was partly underwater when I washed, that meant the blood I found was only the last period. The estimate that I was here for weeks but less than a month was false.


    That scared me even more than the ghouls in the mine would.


    I had to get out of here. And that meant going up. If this water pool was connected to the water table, I had little fear of finding a pocket of water that would flood me because the water table would just absorb the water like a sponge. And once I went above the level of the mine, I could even hit a river and the water would have a place to go. I''d bet the water table rarely rose above the first set of timbers.


    Decompose time.


    But before I worked, I needed to remake my helmet and replenish my energy levels. I shaped the titanium back the way I wanted, making the helmet even thicker now. It was heavier but still useable. I stored the lantern and took the crank flashlight. I spent quite a while cranking it to recharge its batteries. The undead was scraping and gnawing the bones of the blue trolls and while I was hungry, there was no way for me to eat right now.


    After the flashlight was properly charged, I shifted, widened, and squared a room. Decompose the silicon dioxide, release the oxygen because I needed to breathe, mold it back and obtain the other materials. I knew I could go through a few tons of material per hour at my current skill level with my power. The undead was bashing on the passage to get to me but so far my silicon was holding.


    I had a room I could stand up on and move around without fear of brushing against any jagged bits of rock. The floor had a slope to let any water seep back into the pool. It would be easier if I could just pop cubes of stone. I had a mending iron pick but it wouldn''t work for that.


    I was brimming with energy, courtesy of the excess oxygen. Part of it would seep into the mine and part would dissolve in the water but being heavier than nitrogen, it would do so slowly. I wasn''t at risk of intoxication, I guessed, because it wasn''t fully closed. Time to go further up.


    I sensed Dime and Penny''s location and chose a side that would take me closer to them. Then I lowered the floor into a basin below where I''d dig, to catch anything that fell down.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    To avoid any ambushes, I also shaped some aluminum-covered spikes pointing toward the pool. I used the Dremel to sharpen the aluminum tip. Now the blue trolls would have to hurt themselves to get through. It wasn''t a perfect trap but would deter them.


    I moved the silicon of the wall away and started to dig with my power. This was bedrock, almost devoid of any interesting minerals. I shaped a staircase with a lower chute running on the left to catch anything that fell down and take it to the pool. It was tiresome and bothersome work. First I had to make room on the sides for the silicon that would come from ahead, Decomposing the rock. Then decompose ahead, moving the silicon to the sides. I would still get a few aluminum and iron particles. Some alkaline earth oxides too. These, I dumped down the chute.


    I worked fifty steps up when I grew too tired to continue. That put me above the mine tunnel where the undead lurked. Ten meters in height? How far was I from the surface? I bet it was a lot. The air was thick with oxygen. I went downstairs to check on the room below, Decomposing up the ceiling up so I wouldn''t bump my head. Once I got downstairs, I felt almost drunk. Yes, this was bad. too much oxygen.


    If only there was something flammable to consume some of this oxygen, like dry corpses. I needed something to kickstart the process. I took the dress I was wearing when I was dumped in the hole and ripped a good portion of it. Now I needed fuel. For that, I used a blue troll corpse. Decompose could get me the compounds from it if there was anything that had that compound as a portion of its structure. I could extract water from alcohol because it had both hydrogen and a hydroxyl to give. I could extract glucose from plant fiber because it was made of it.


    It meant I could extract gasoline from fat or organic tissues. So long it had a chain of eight carbon atoms surrounded by hydrogen, it would work. Or that was the theory. I had to try.


    I shaped a rod of aluminum and wrapped the cloth around the head. Then I Decomposed the corpse of the blue troll to extract gasoline. It took some time but I managed to get the fuel. Once I had a sample, it was much easier to lock on the signature of the compound. I extracted a quarter of a liter of fuel from the corpse and soaked the rags. Some bodily fluids and leftovers from the fat Decomposition seeped down past the spikes and into the water pool.


    I went up the tunnel and saw the undead still scraping at the silicon. I could see bonemeal falling down the sides as the skeletons and zombies were not harder than the silicon. They were grinding themselves against the material I left behind. Oh, no. Even worse than that as the oxide layer over the silicon was quartz that was even harder than the pure silicon I left behind.


    I used Decompose to open up a spot where I could stand up. Then a hole to look at the undead on the other side. They were shuffling around, pressing the bodies against the silicon to get to me. Time to burn. The hole was slanted down and outward. I poured the excess gasoline down the hole and prepared to light up my torch.


    I needed fire. It was easy for me. I just needed some sodium or potassium from the salts around me smeared on the silicon. Then I touched the torch next to it and spat on the metal. Whoosh.


    I shoved the torch through the hole. A zombie or ghoul, I wasn''t able to identify them apart, yanked the torch from me. I let them and crawled back to my staircase. It was... terrifying. The undead did no sound but the rattle of bones. But in the high oxygen atmosphere, they burned like a pyre.


    I could smell the ashes and burnt flesh along with the burning mold. I went up the stairs but had to lean on the chute and throw up acid and bile. I had nothing else in my stomach.


    On the top step of the stairs, I waited. I took my water bottle and refilled my canteen. Then I took a swig from the canteen, washed my mouth and spat on the chute.


    That was the foulest stench ever. The undead was rotting for who knows how many thousand years. Their funk was unbearable, especially when burnt.


    The rattling noise died down. Just faint whiffs of smoke rose up to meet my nostrils. After I calmed myself, I dug up a sideways tunnel that led into a room for me to sleep in. I then carved a groove along the sides of the tunnel and filled it with a wall of iron. There were gaps on the top and bottom for gas exchange but otherwise, it was a solid slab of metal.


    I drank my fill of water and then noticed there was a little problem. I had to go. And the nearest toilet that matched my standards was a reality away. I could use the chute but it would also ruin everything collected down there. Then I remembered I already ruined it and I went to carve another room on the other side of the room downstairs.


    The smell of smoke was there, clogging the whole tunnel. Without wind, the smoke went down and settled here. Well, If it''s carbon, I can deal with it. I just collected the floating soot and dust, leaving the carbon dioxide. I was going to make a ton of oxygen. I needed other gases around.


    After doing it I had no choice but to Decompose after myself. Well, I already was leaving more than footprints, I already took more than pictures, and I already killed more than time. At least something I needed to do. I also took care of my stomach discharge fluids, if that mattered. At least to me, it did.


    Dignity saved, I went back to my "room". I reformed the iron wall, ate half of my remaining Earth food and set my bedroll on the ground. I wrote a bit on my laptop before I went to sleep.

 Depths 5

    I woke up refreshed. Then the reality of my condition hit me and I cried a little. Then I remembered where I was and what was around me, and I shut my trap and swallowed my tears. Monsters on a side, undead on the other. Who knew how many meters to the surface. Scarce food. Contaminated water. In order of most to least worrisome problems.


    The mine should connect to the surface. There was wood in the tunnels and as far as I knew, not even here it grew underground. There was the undead situation though. While that entire horde apparently burned, I had no idea how many undead there were in there. But I couldn''t just dig upward indefinitely. I''d run out of food before I broke through. And releasing all that oxygen wasn''t a very smart idea. While I knew my silicon was super strong because it had little faults.


    Let''s explore the undead-infested mine.


    Yay! Not.


    Orz.


    I recovered my iron and went downstairs. Look at me, I had a cave duplex residence. With a swimming briny pool full of monsters, and neighbors that didn''t complain about the noise. I reached the lower level and went to check on the spikes. I Decomposed the ceiling along a path so I could reach the water without having to crawl. The smell of smoke was faint now. The blue trolls didn''t come to harass me but did they test the spikes? Did they break the spikes?


    No.


    I screamed when my flashlight hit the scene. They had rammed themselves against the spikes. I found two dead trolls impaled. They were already drained of blood, making the briny pool murkier. I bent the spikes to access the bodies and stored them in another plastic bag. My limit was three bodies per bag. There was something in the back of my mind telling me I''d end up eating them but I fought back both the thought and my stomach. I didn''t eat because I had to ration my food.


    I moved the spikes back and created another feature in the brine pool area. I opened a side-channel too narrow for even the smallest troll to go through and another pool on my side. This way the water would drain there and I could use it for myself without having to cross or mess with my spikes. I really hoped that after losing seven of their numbers, they were scared enough to avoid this area.


    I returned to my room, used the privy and cranked the flashlight. I adjusted my titanium helmet. It was bullet-shaped, with a disk around the top, and had a nose guard it would be harder for the trolls to chew through this one now. I checked my water. I still had two liters. That would be enough for a day of exploration. I summoned my phone to track time.


    The midnight hour was close at hand.


    At least on the phone''s clock. It changed to 23:57 to 23:58. I slid it into my pocket and opened a path upward. No more crawling for me. I looked through the hole but all I saw was burnt bones. The entire tunnel was singed with soot on both sides. Had I stayed behind, I''d have been burnt by the flames. I Decomposed part of the wall for me to slide to the other side and closed it behind me. That was a good policy. Let''s make sure nothing was coming from behind me.


    I tiptoed across the charred bones and walked down the tunnel carefully. I was running my hand on the left side, leaving a trail of silicon along the wall. There might be traps, both natural and artificial. The tunnel went straight for about a hundred meters, with rotten timbers along the way. The state of the timbers was better as I went by, proof that the moisture came from the leaching tunnel. The tunnel went on and then split in two. I could go ahead or turn to the right. Checking for the air current and quality would lead me back to where I came from. The air was stale but breathable.


    And no, I didn''t remember to track the undead horde. Big mistake, I know.


    I Decomposed an alcove to the left and used the silicon to shut the side passage. I even made a bench on the alcove to sit and rest. I didn''t need to rest yet so I went onward, following the left-hand rule. This tunnel went on for another couple hundred meters or so and then it opened into an abandoned mining area.


    Rusted pickaxes, wooden minecarts, dust, ore. Ladders, shovels. This place was large, it went one meter up from the tunnel roof and five meters down. I could clearly see a fault line going around and the walls were painted several colors, denoting the richness of its veins. I could see the hematite, magnetite, quartz, and a green patch that must be copper. Also the coppery red of the lead ore. The ground was impossible to see, being entirely covered with what seemed like a fine and dry silt. They hit a vein, probably a very rich vein, and dug what they could. The state of the tools showed that it was abandoned in a hurry.


    Or never at all.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Maybe the undead I killed was the reanimated remains of the miners. I carefully walked down the slope and reached the silt. It was very soft and my feet sunk in it. Then hell broke out. The miners that died didn''t leave this place. They stayed lying down with their clothes and tools waiting for the living to disturb their rest. And that living one was me. A dozen very dead, very desiccated, and very thirsty for flesh and brains undead miners rose. They were slow but they could take all their time.


    I wasn''t moving.


    My blood left my limbs. My brain went on vacation. The silt billowed around, cascading out from their semi-buried bodies. I could just watch and clutch my flashlight. Yeah, if that light went out, I was doomed.


    They crawled in search of blood. My blood.


    Then they stood up. I mewled a faint scream.


    Maybe I didn''t have the soul for getting down.


    Or the bravery to face a ghoulish horde out in the open. I doubt anything could thrill me more than these undead were already doing.


    I could swear my heart stopped. But I didn''t want to face the hounds of hell or rot like a corpse along with these shells.


    I shoved the scream back down my throat and ordered my body to move. I ran to the slope. Then I slipped on the fine silt and fell on my face. Or would if I hadn''t the helmet protecting my nose. It tilted my head and I slammed my forehead down. I tried to climb back on my feet but it was too late.


    One of the undead grabbed my ankle.


    Grisly undead from this underground tomb were closing in to seal my doom. I clawed for purchase and kicked the dried hand holding my leg. I was trembling with fear. My body was shivering even though it wasn''t cold.


    I could swear I heard a whisper about something happening to me tonight.


    I couldn''t resist their evil. Another hand grasped my other leg. Panicked, I looked behind me. The ghoul was about to bite me. Bones and teeth made of calcium. Reinforced by whatever necromantic energies animated that dead matter. I wish they would crumble back into the dust where they belonged.


    "Get off me, rotten bones!" I roared.


    I could feel a great power leave me. And the calcium moved according to my will. I Decomposed the bones holding me and the teeth about to bite me. My breath was ragged and I was inhaling silt dust. No good. But the hands were softer now and I kicked them. Felt like rubber and they crumbled. I released the flashlight, crawled up the slope and walked on all fours before I got enough speed to stand up and dash.


    I thanked myself for the bench. It was all that spared me from lying down on the floor because I had to stop and follow the grove I left on my way in, now on my right.


    That was some thrill for a night. An eternal night.


    I tapped around until I found and sat on the bench. I turned on the lantern and tried to breathe. Because I Decomposed more stone to allow me to lean back, I had oxygen. My mind was swimming over the facts, trying to make sense of what happened. I was able to use Decompose on the undead. They weren''t living matter, right? But whatever power animated them resisted me. I drained myself to destroy one maybe two undead. There were ten to go.


    I was no mere mortal.


    I drank a quarter of my canteen. I could feel my strength returning. I could hear the undead coming my way. Enough running away. Enough fearing. Enough running away.


    I intended to fight and stand my ground. I had to. They were taking their time to reach me. I took my metals. A cylinder of lead. A handle of aluminum. A coating of titanium. A heart carved into the titanium because why not?


    A baseball bat to lay rest to the dead. Totally non-standard. I thought about putting spikes but they would be a liability. The undead felt no pain.


    I stood up and took a few training swings. I adjusted the handle, made a pommel with a lead ball inside. A grip for my fingers once I found the right balance. No more R&D. My practice targets have arrived.


    I shouted a stupid anime warcry and charged. If I had time, I should''ve donned my sailor uniform but then I''d have to use a spear. The first rule of fighting the undead. Go for the head. Always. The leader of the pack, the one with the Decomposed hand had its skull crushed with a satisfying crunch. Maybe I''d already lost enough SAN to be immune to their effects. I wasn''t scared. Booya! You are not scary when I can crush you!


    The next one came lurching. I swept at its legs and tripped it on another undead. Next swing I broke the arm of another zombie. They were slow so I named them zombies. I kept breaking undead when an opportunity presented itself. I left the lantern on the bench so I couldn''t go too far away.


    Another zombie approached, I timed and gave him a Ben??o kick, shoving it backward and making it fall on its back. I jumped after it and smashed its chest with a two-handed swing. Splinters of bone flew around and even nicked my face. I barely registered the scratch. The zombie tried to raise its hands but the cohesion of its chest was gone. And moments later its skull too. The arms fell limp.


    Skull it is.


    I bashed and crushed. With my agility, it was child''s play to dance around them. On the last zombie of the dozen, I waited for it to lunge and bite the air before I grabbed its scalp and Decomposed its skull. I shoved my power in a violent way and felt the resistance of its necromantic energies. I was stronger. I shouted and pushed. The skull caved in and without the calcium to give bone its hardness, it was really like rubber. But the dry collagen crumbled. There was no brain inside.


    I took the LED headband to go back and retrieve my flashlight. I also took a couple pickaxes. Steel. Then I went back to retrieve the lantern. I shut down my extra lights and stored them. Then I heard the slow clapping of hands. I turned around and before the weakest light could shine on the source, I saw to red pins of light at head level. Then I illuminated a skeleton draped in fine robes. Gold-thread, real gold.


    "Magnificent," It spoke. It wasn''t modern Akkadian. "Magnificent."


    I said intelligent undead were way scarier, right?


    Then it unhinged its jaw wide open and laughed.


    "AHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! AHAHAHHAHAHA! HAAHAHAH! AHAHAHA!"


    Thrilling. Not.

 Cuz this is...

    How does a cackling skull cackle if it has no throat to cackle with?


    No idea. Magic is the catchall answer. But as truthful as I can be, it was cackling. I had no mouse pointer because reality, duh, but I was sure that thing''s tooltip would say ''Lich''. Undead sorcerors seeking eternal life in undeath. I think it is eternal existence, not eternal life because they are un-DEAD. But whatever rocks their boats. The only problem is that, as legend had it, becoming a lich involves heinous acts that only evil people could do, and they are not even people anymore.


    That was all my guess and also the reason I thought that the stairway to heaven was a good idea. Not heaven, just the surface but when you are in the bowels of the Earth, everything feels crappy and the surface sounds like heaven. So, this lady wasn''t sure if all that glitters was gold but I''d buy one. Or make if the lich let me escape.


    "I''m glad I was able to entertain you, sir," I told the lich with a bow.


    Against my best wits. That was on vacation ever since I decided that wrecking an undead horde with a non-league-approved baseball bat was a good idea. If I got out, I''d take a week of vacation. Without bleeding too. Yeah. I could count on one finger the days in this second life of mine when I was awake and didn''t see blood.


    "My, my. What a polite girl," The lich snickered. "And you speak the ancient language too! Amazing. I was pretty sure nobody on the surface could speak it. Tell me, where did you learn it?"


    I looked at him. I opened my mouth to say but then I closed it shut. I had no idea this lich stance regarding Tarhun or the gods in general and usually the undead and the divine were at odds with each other. So better keep my trap shut.


    The light on the left socket of the lich flared stronger for a moment. The feeling I had was that it was the equivalent of raising one''s eyebrow. Except he was bleached bones, so there''s that. And everything about him was masculine. The body stance, the pattern of speech, the voice.


    He shouted with a booming voice, "I said, tell me where you learned this language, girl!" I could feel a chill wind wash over me, making every bone in my body ache.


    It was better to tell him, right? Wait, no. I wouldn''t mention the gods until I could know it was safe. But I should say, what was the problem.


    No.


    I raised my head and stared at those pinpoint sources of light. "I''m sorry. I''ll tell you where I learned the language. Right here, a few minutes ago when you spoke. What is this language called?"


    He tilted his skull just a bit then returned to his haughty stance. That pile of bones really needed a chiropractor. Preferentially one with dinosaur hands. A good book by the way.


    "You speak the truth. Amazing. And this metallic protection... Hard and covered in seamless crystal. Amazing too."


    He touched the silicon bars I placed on the intersection. The fact he could tell the silicon was covered in quartz was astonishing, but it also showed he didn''t know what material that was. Pure silicon indeed had a metallic configuration but it wasn''t quite it.


    "Honored sir, could you please tell me of a way to the surface?"


    He stopped examining the bars and stared at me. It was unnerving. "The surface? I don''t think you''ll go to the surface. You hurt my children and now you have to pay for it."


    What could I say? When in doubt, ask. "I don''t know if your children were the undead or the blue..." there was no word for trolls in that language. "creatures from the water, but either way they were trying to hurt me."


    "The water goblins. No, they are a pest. The undead, obviously," He puffed up his non-existent chest.


    Water goblins. Not trolls. Good to know. It still didn''t clear my way because I killed way more undead than goblins.


    "I need to return to the surface. Would you take me there?"


    "NO!" It shouted. "You are my prisoner and I will get what I want from you before I leave your soul depart at the end of times."


    I was feeling dizzy again. I reached for the wall next to the alcove and Decomposed more rock to get oxygen. I was getting better at it and In a couple moments, I''d Decomposed about a tenth of a cubic meter.


    I knew the lich was watching carefully but I had to breathe. "You transmuted the rock into air!" He squealed, its voice breaking. "That is the strange metal! It is rock without air!"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Smart one. Then again, dumb people don''t reach an immortal undead existence.


    "Do you seek knowledge?" I asked him. Maybe I could bargain with that lich.


    "Yes, of course," He said matter-of-factly as if I had asked the dumbest question ever. Maybe I did. "What knowledge do you offer?"


    "Promise to lead me to the surface and let me go unharmed. I will teach you about every single ore or rock we find on the way. You will learn about dozens of elements you never heard of."


    The red lights flared at the mention of elements. I don''t think that the word elements meant what he thought elements meant, but that was his problem. I was half-expecting that lich to screw me and not hold his part of the bargain but I had little choice.


    Like fighting the lich. It was undead but it was sentient. Was it okay to kill it? I put my hand in my pocket while the lich pondered about my offer and checked him with Tarhun''s tablet. No reaction but his gaze went to my pocket immediately.


    BIg blunder, he can sense magical energy.


    "You used divine energy right now!" He lifted an accusing finger. "You have a covenant with the gods!"


    The lich was hysteric. The lights flickered on and off like an accelerated heartbeat. I got a hunch that they betrayed his emotions. It didn''t seem like a voluntary act.


    "I''m sorry. It was something harmless."


    "So you admit! Tell me, girl, WHAT DEITY DO YOU WORSHIP?"


    I felt that cold chill hit my skull and ricochet inside. My mouth opened on its own and I got a hint of what he was doing. The bastard bone-man was using magic on me. Compulsion magic. That was the third spell he hit me with, but now I knew how to resist. I knew how to tell if I was under the effects of mind-bending magic. So I stood my ground, focused my mind and propped my jaw shut with my thumb. I stared back at these unliving eyes and answered.


    "I don''t worship any deity in particular."


    "LIAR!"


    This time the wind blew strong enough to ruffle our clothes. His robes fluttered around, the eye lights flared like lasers, I could feel fear run all around my bones. I felt like peeing and running at the same time. I held on both. Maybe I dripped a bit. Just a bit.


    "Not a lie. Or do you doubt your compulsion magic failed?"


    Good job, Sandra! Hit him on his metaphysical balls and cave in his wizardly pride. It always works so well with mad mages!


    The red light of the lich scanned me from head to toes. "You have divine protection! You are an exorcist!


    "YoU cAmE HeRe tO dEstrOy Me!"


    It waved its hands and I could see a blue glow around the bones. The silicon barrier cracked, then broke, and pieces flew all around away from him. I crossed my arms in front of my face and Decomposed the silicon away from me. I still felt the shards hit me, but they were blunted and spread around by my power.


    My fight or flight response triggered. I ran in the lich''s direction, intent on using Decompose on him just like I did with the zombie. He waved a hand and I flew backward, slamming my back against the alcove wall. I hit the bench with my butt and fell forward, falling as a triangle supported by my face and knees.


    I stood up, spat blood, and ran ahead again. The lich roared, then plunged its hands on the ground and raised both hands up like some cheap prestidigitator signaling something was about to rise. I felt vibrations from the ground and an image flashed in my mind. Spikes of stone.


    I jumped and focused on decomposing silicon beneath me. The spikes came out and the few that were aimed at my feet and legs spread around as if a play-dough cylinder was suddenly thrown head-first against a wall.


    "KNEEL, MORTAL!" The lich commanded.


    The cold wind once again froze my brain and I saw the bones of its hands and skull shake. Why not kneel? It was such a polite request. This lich could be my friend and showing some decorum to the master of these mines turned catacombs would surely earn some points with him.


    So as it was proper, I knelt before the eternal existence before me. I was but a bug before...


    FUCK YOU.


    I stood up and instead of attacking, I just glared at the lich. Inches away.


    "Stop messing with my mind, sack of bones," I hissed at him. "Get me out and you can keep ruling over the other sacks of bones that shamble around these dead tunnels. Try to mess with my mind again, and I''ll show you what the lack of a single element can do to bones."


    Someone give me my low magic setting back, please?


    The lich took a step back. "Insolent bug. I will crush you now."


    It raised a hand, the blue glow once again manifesting around the bones. I grabbed it and Decomposed the calcium out of the wrist bones. It hurt. It felt as if all my blood was going to rip my skin apart and depart the body through the gash. I knew I had to press and win against the necromantic power animating the undead. So I did. I bled unconscious for god knows how long in that tunnel. If I went down, those bleached bones would go with me.


    I felt like I broke through some barrier and the calcium came out on the other side, between my fingers. I broke the soft dried collagen bones, and the blue glow snapped.


    The magic flowed back to the lich and struck over where its heart would be. The lich threw its head back and its jaw unhinged.


    "Gaaaaaaa!" It screamed in pain.


    True pain. I doubted it felt real pain in centuries. The lights flashed blue and back to red but they were dimmer. It gave me an idea. Why the heart? I seized the moment of vulnerability while the lich held its severed wrist bones to shove a hand over the chest, Decomposing the robes - I felt a mild resistance but I was working with carbon, one of the elements I knew best - and shining the beam of light from the flashlight inside its ribcage.


    A shriveled heart was beating soundlessly inside its chest.


    I spent a lot of energy to Decompose the wrist. But from the shine in the lich''s eyes, I knew he was also close to being OOM. He glanced down, my hand right in front of the hole of his robes.


    "No!" It gasped in disbelief.


    It tried to run away. I dropped the flashlight and grabbed a rib. I shoved my hand through the ribcage. I reached for the heart.


    Then I did like Josh Brolin. A snap of my finger and it crumbled.


    The light in the sockets went off.


    The bones clattered in the ground.


    The robes fluttered down, now hanging on the rib I was still holding.


    I used up all my energy on that last Decompose.


    I fainted.

 Day ?

    I woke up in pitch-black darkness, sore from sleeping over a pile of bones. I woke up because something was gnawing on my leg. I screamed and kicked, the thing let go and ripped a chunk of meat off of me. Worst spelunking ever. 0/10 I would like my money back.


    At least my life.


    I shouted, screamed, screeched, wailed, kicked, flailed, tossed, turned, and then I saw a series of faint glowing lights around a round thing that was moving, gurgling, screeching and afraid.


    A blue troll or water goblin as the lich said. And the critter was eating my leg. Funny, its eyes were bioluminescent. Good to know. I gritted my teeth to ignore the pain and summoned my phone. Twist, turn, open the camera app. Press the red button because the flash is already in the ON setting.


    BANG.


    The water goblin wails in pain as the sudden light of the LEDs burned its sensitive retinas. I wished I had a gun but that wish lasted for one second. Instead, I summoned my hatchet and threw it at its head. It hit on the off-spin and just bashed the critter a bit back. I couldn''t stand up, my leg was missing half the calf and I had dozens of small cuts from its shark-like teeth.


    And it hurt like hell.


    I summoned the bag of metals and tossed them at him, one by one. Each one of them had three-tenths of a liter in volume and different weights because of density. I threw copper, magnesium, titanium, tin, nickel, iron. Humans are very good at throwing things, it is some evolutionary trait we picked up along the way from the isolation of the caverns to the facebook pages. A full circle as I reckon.


    The water troll got bored of being blind and getting hit with metal and ran back down the tunnel. The tunnel I swore I had closed. I could still feel the lich''s robes and bones underneath me, worst bed ever. But the point was that I hadn''t moved from where I fainted after going all-out against the ancient and millennial undead.


    Not talking ''bout my generation here. I''m barely one.


    With nothing better to do besides laying on the lich''s remains and waiting for my calf to regrow, I took the lantern and lit up the tunnels. Nothing changed from when I fought but I was hungry as heck. And also in freaking pain. I thought of pulling a Hugh Laurie and take an opioid painkiller I had in my first aid kit but the leg would''ve healed by the time the medicine hit. So I just waited, in the dark, listening carefully and with the camera app ready to shoot at the first sign of a water goblin.


    I liked the ''blue troll'' way more, but I wouldn''t just make up another brontosaurus.


    I cried while I waited for my leg to regrow.


    I was seriously dehydrated and the air was stale again. I could feel the dizziness. I touched the ground and Decomposed a hole in the stone. Much better. I felt my foot and could move the leg slowly. I shifted to a sitting position and summoned the lantern. The light was weak. Then I saw my hand-crank flashlight and retrieved it. The device was dead but I cranked it to distract myself. The disks of metal were everywhere. And my hatchet. Stupid monsters.


    I had charged the flashlight halfway when I heard gurgling coming up the tunnel. I stored everything and waited in the dark, phone ready to snap some ugly monster''s mugshot. The one that chewed on my leg came back, leading the two larger goblins.


    Flash! Ahhhh!


    And more metal disks flew at them. They ran back. I cranked the flashlight again. The phone marked 01:48 hours when my leg fully healed. I could still feel phantom pain but it would disappear soon. I turned on the lantern and placed the phone in my breast pocket and the flashlight in my storage. I wanted to keep track of time. The phone was at eighty percent power.


    With the light from the LED lantern, I retrieved my stuff. I checked down the tunnel but no water goblins were in sight. After I retrieved everything, I went back down the tunnel and checked. The damn amphibious goblins gnawed and clawed the rock until they opened a passage. I widened it so I could get through and walked down the leaching tunnel to check. They had taken over my staircase. I saw a whole clutch of water goblins run down the stairs and into the brine pool. The whole place smelled of goblin dung. But I had to replace my water supply and it meant reaching the brine pool.


    After the last goblin fled, it was one of the big darker ones, I checked up the stairs and saw several piles of rocks on the steps. The whole place was a mess. Dung and some slimy kelp and fishbones. The stench was unbearable so I sealed the staircase shut and Decomposed all the organic matter back into graphite and saltwater.


    I should''ve made more gasoline and burned it all.


    With enough oxygen from Decomposing rocks, knocking floating scents, and raising the roof around the tunnel, the air became breathable enough. It smelled as much as the streets of Es-Kina. I walked to the brine pool and saw what became of my spike trap. The goblins learned to gnaw the base of the spikes and break them. I could see some of them swimming near the tunnel mouth. Probably waiting in ambush for me to come and drink water. As if.


    I Decomposed a lot of silicon and poured it down the hole. Once it came out of my immediate area of influence, it stiffened again and dropped down as pellets. But most of it kept bound to the silicon already being moved around. I shut the whole pool except for some small channels. I could access water but the child-sized goblins would have to dig their way around. And then I dumped even more silicon on top of that.


    The oxygen in the leaching tunnel reached dangerous levels and I was forced to stop.


    To make things worse, breathing this much oxygen would send my metabolism to the stratosphere and make me consume even more energy. I did what I could. I opened the staircase and prepared the basin at the end of the drain channel to receive what was coming. I went up the stairs, Decomposing all organic matter into hydrocarbons. Methane, octane, all the ~anes you wanted from one to eight. I kept it to liquid chains though. Nothing above octane. I had to focus Decompose into pushing the hydrocarbons away from my nose because the smell of methane was unbearable when I reached my room and saw what became of it. Breeding warrens. Fortunately, I was spared of the moral dilemma of murdering the man-eating younglings. They left none behind.


    The choice would be easy because I hadn''t forgotten the pain in my calf. I was grumpy like an old cat forced to run.


    I went back down the stairs and saw the pool of gasoline that collected in the basin. Sodium, a drop of water squirted from afar and you know what happened, right?Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    The whole staircase lit on fire. Since there was so much free oxygen, it all burned almost perfectly. There was almost no smoke odor.


    Speaking of odor, I must be stinking filthy. Still better than the available water. Which I had to purify. Putting that filth in my filter was a sure-fire way to ruin it. And I had no idea if it would restore itself. I paused to think and decided on a strategy. I carved a basin next to the water. It was close enough that I could put a finger inside the basin and a finger inside the brine water. Then I used Decompose as I did for the sodium. I imagined a path going over my hand where water would flow. The clear liquid climbed up from my thumb, over my hand and dripped down my pinky finger. Soon the basin was filled with what could be called distilled water.


    Then the assholes goblins smashed something in the channels that caused the water level to suddenly rise and contaminate my water. I rose the wall separating the basin higher than the water splashed and opened a side channel to draw excess water away from that wall. I did it once, I could do it again. I went around the basin of formerly pure water and did the same but with a smaller basin. Just one or two liters. I washed my hand with the dried soap we made and a burst of loneliness assaulted me. I would go away after I was done here, no use trying to make something that would last. And the goblins would just use this as a spawning pool.


    I filtered more water into the secondary container and then placed the hose of my filter in it. I squeezed the hand pump and the filter started to work. The water came out of it and I refilled my canteen and the bottle after drinking my fill. I was back to five liters of water. I also filled some of the plastic soda bottles with non-filtered water for other uses.


    And then I stored all my items and took a bath in the basin. A well-deserved one, I must say.


    I thought of dumping the soot soap I bought at the market in the brine pool but that would be an asshole move. The ecosystem down there didn''t deserve that. Refreshed, I put on the spaghetti dress, some yoga pants, and the hiking boots. They were filthy but only on the outside. With clean socks, I''d not see the difference. I Decomposed the soap left in the tub and climbed back to the cave tunnels. I shut down the entire leaching tunnel with meters of pure silicon.


    Then I went back to my alcove, created a table, sat down and ate the last of my food. Now it was surface or bust. Maybe I could eat some undead bone marrow, but I was afraid of what it would do to me. I had the goblin corpses stored too but just eww.


    Surface or bust was a good motto.


    The threat of starvation would surely drive me upward, I just hoped it wouldn''t be towards heaven. I retrieved the lich robes and bones. I saw something shiny among the vertebrae, it was a necklace with a beautiful sapphire.


    To the winner, the spoils.


    I walked for hours in the mine tunnels. The lich kept the tunnels well-maintained but now his workforce was gone. In several places, I saw piles of bones and decomposing dried flesh. When the necromancer died, the energies powering his undead waned and they crumbled. Good to know. At least his dungeon, for these former mine tunnels were nothing else but a dungeon while he ruled it, his dungeon didn''t crumble.


    I really hate these senseless demolitions of the villain''s lair. I mean, this is a perfectly fine mine.


    Was that coal?


    I saw a mineral formation on a wall, a dark striped ore that in the dim light resembled coal. I doubt it was because the miners wouldn''t leave coal in the walls. This world could not even have a coal level, as it was the product of a fortuitous geological and evolutionary phenomenon. The plants developed lignins before the microbes could eat it. For around sixty million years, give or take a tenth of that, the trees that died weren''t fully decomposed and eventually, they were buried. They transformed into coal over the next millions of years with the pressure and the lack of oxygen. But if an organism was able to digest lignin from the start, the coal deposits would be smaller or even non-existent. Given that the population of this world was transplanted and some of the animal and vegetable biodiversity also came from Earth, there''s a chance this world never got the chance to develop coal.


    I also suspected some areas were terraformed. Some geological structures I saw on the god-satellite photos were too odd. And that meant Tarhun did a crappy job with this region. There was a vast grassland to the north that should absorb a lot of water, why the drought?


    I doubted I''d have an answer. Time to stop digressing and examine the ore. Pickaxe time.


    I broke samples of the ore and checked. The ore had a monoclinic crystallization and Decompose told me it had iron and manganese resonances along with oxygen. Something else too. I checked around the vein, it had quartz and was in a large granite formation. Clearly igneous. This was once a fissure that filled with lava and water in ancient times.


    I broke another sample and Decomposed it. Away with the iron, the manganese, and the oxygen. I was left with a mote the size of my fingernail of a dark silver metal that was extremely dense. Very dense, like one of those nice metals that make people rich. It was in the transition family, that was obvious. It was hard. It could scratch the quartz.


    I forgot my conundrum and jumped in glee.


    What the heck did I find? Dense, hard, transition metal, and obviously had a high Z value. I pulled my iPad and checked. Except for gold and mercury, it could be any transition metal in period six. Hafniumor tantalum, no. They were too light. The sample I had was as dense as gold. Tungsten, maybe. Rhenium, too rare. And then the platinum family. Osmium, iridium, and platinum. The first and the last were white-ish while iridium was darker.


    Tungsten or iridium, place your bets.


    Iridium is usually found with platinum and is very corrosion-resistant. No way that most noble and rare metal would be mingling with the peasantry likes of iron and manganese. The winner is tungsten.


    Tungsten. It was mouth-watering. A tungsten mine was almost as valuable as a gold mine. The miners ignored this vein because they thought this was a low-quality iron ore. I bet smelting this tungsten ore for the iron was a bitch.


    I was so going to claim this mine.


    I wanted to get all the tungsten I could. But I had to see daylight or I''d become the next lich. I snapped a photo of the vein and went on my way.


    I wandered and mapped the tunnels, trying to find a way up. I followed the left-hand rule, leaving a band of silicon on the irregular tunnel walls. I checked the ceilings, for collapsed shafts, sifted through the rubble piles and checked the roof for any signs of a way up. The mine was gigantic. Kilometers wide. I followed the larger tunnels until they shrank. The main tunnel, logic dictated, would remain wide.


    I gave up when I felt like it was time to sleep. I was tired of walking around. The dismantled undead even lost its creepy appeal after a while. My legs hurt, my arm hurt from cranking the flashlight. I returned to the largest hall I found, one braced by several timber squares and with a wooden roof.


    Oh. Stupid me.


    I made a staircase to the wooden roof and pushed the timber up. It moved. I put it over the next one and repeated the process. There was my shaft. it went up for a couple dozen meters. I could see the thick nails where a ladder was once secured on, but no more. The lich probably had the ladder removed, fearing an invasion.


    And now it was going to get a solid aluminum ladder. The third most common element in the crust. For every three silicon kilograms, one kilogram of aluminum. I had a lot from decomposing random rocks and clay. And since the ladder was going to be solid, it didn''t have to be too thick. Enough to bear my weight with some safety slack. I started to mold the metal, creating the steps from two holes on the ground underneath the shaft.


    Since I could move the atoms as I wished, I could also bond seamlessly two pieces of metal. Move the air away, then the oxygen from the oxide layer and bang. The metal thought it was always a single piece. Decompose enacted the same thing that happened in a vacuum, cold welding. And since I could make the atoms flow freely in my range of influence, the metal crystalline structure was normalized as well. The crystals reformed once I removed my influence.


    That''s how I made my gold necklace and how I was making my ladder. I ran out of aluminum several times but my drive to go up and reach the surface was stronger than my tiredness. And my couple dozen meters estimate was off. Make it several dozen meters. Or a hundred. I had no rangefinder. Who could tell?


    I could triangulate but I was not interested in the world below. Upward was the name of the game. I reached another dusty and stale hallway with several tunnels. I heard not a sound. It was eerie. I was too tired to explore. So I did the sensible thing any Minecraft player would do.


    I went back halfway down the ladder, dug out a hole and slept in it. Let''s hope the mobs can''t climb ladders also.

 Day ??

    If any monster came near the ladder, they didn''t climb it. I was hale, healthy, and starving. I drank water to distract my hunger but I couldn''t withstand that for too long. I wasn''t some sort of super-soldier that could ignore these things. I did some very unorthodox things since I came here but I was forced. I had no choice otherwise I''d have to let them kill me.


    I refused to eat goblin.


    The plan was to dig straight up. Just that. go up to the next level, build a ladder until the roof, and dig straight up. Dumb, forceful, unladylike. Just like starvation. The rationale was that I''d survived being thrown in that fissure, washed down the underwater lake to some leaching hole elsewhere for some strange reason, defeated a lich, and now owned a very nice mine. So, whatever comes down at me while digging up, I''d take.


    Unless I hit some gravel deposit. Everyone knows that placing gravel where one digs straight up was the way of the game to tell you to screw oneself. Before the terrible and totally bullshit buffet world creation, I would zero gravel and dirt placement below Y 40. It was completely senseless to have gravel at such depths. The pressure would compress that gravel and dirt to rock in a few centuries. That was the level of realism I liked in my blocky sandbox mining and crafting games where you could punch the base of a tree and leave the rest floating. Deal with it.


    I actually had to quit playing after my freshman year. Too much homework. It was also when Andrews recruited me. Asshole. I hope you didn''t burn to death. It would be way nicer to live the rest of your life as a blind burnt creep.


    Let me have at least that grudge.


    I had a strategy. I would dig a cylindrical shaft, and create the foot and handholds out of silicon. Then I would split the shaft into six pieces of pie, and dig up an arm''s length on each sixth before going up. This way, if I hit something that flowed or fell, I would only affect one-sixth of the hole. I could hide in the other five-sixths.


    With my luck, I''d dig underneath the river.


    Before I started digging, I decided to go sideways ten meters and then go up again at every thirty meters. This way a fall wouldn''t be so catastrophic. Up I went. Up I went. A hundred meters. Two hundred meters. The bedrock changed. A good sign. I went up another hundred meters. I was inside some solid chunk of gray rock. Too uniform. But I kept the plan. I went up.


    And then I felt a surge of joy. It was not from me, it was from Dime. I could sense the glutton eagle flying straight to me. Funny. It was level. Now that he was closer, I could tell the direction, it was like he was flying level with the ground.


    Or I was way above ground level. Did I get out on the plateau? Only one way to know. I stopped and let Dime approach as much as he would. Then he stopped right above me. And then I felt Penny coming too. She was below me and since horses didn''t fly, at least last time I checked, it meant I was above ground level. near the town too. I kept going up. Up. Then the rock below crumbled and sunlight filtered down.


    I almost fell down the last stretch of twenty meters. Dime pecked the rock, trying to free me. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I heard the eagle chirping, desperate to rejoin with me. I Decomposed the rest of the rock and pushed up.


    I got out and laid down on my back, watching the blue sky. It was mid-afternoon.


    I was at the top of the very rock where Dime and his mate made their nest. How fitting!


    Hell yeah!


    And I knew just what I needed to make it perfect. Metal music.


    My speakers on maximum volume, the iPod filtered by genre, I even carved a small acoustic dome pointing at the town. I selected the perfect song and prepared myself.


    Hit Play.


    The bass started its tune alone, then it was joined by the percussion and guitar at the same time. The melodic line was one almost anyone on Earth would recognize.


    And then David Bickler''s voice rang.


    <blockquote>


    Risin'' up, back on the streets,


    Did my time, took my chances!


    ...


    It''s the eye of the tiger, it''s the thrill of the fight


    Risin'' up to the challenge of our rival


    </blockquote>


    And of course i jumped up, pumped my fists, headbanged, and sang my lungs out doing a lousy air guitar. The song ended. I cupped my hands and shouted.


    My voice broke miserably as I shouted to the world. "EYE OF THE TIGER, BITCHES!"


    The iPod didn''t relent. It played three more songs, then it shuffled again and the British guitars of Adrian and Dave were soon followed Steve, Nicko and Bruce Dickinson''s voice. It couldn''t be more fitting.


    <blockquote>


    Hand of fate is moving and the finger points to you


    ...


    Nothing you can contemplate will ever be the same


    ...


    Your time will come, your time will come!


    </blockquote>


    "YOUR RECKONING IS COMING, ASSHOLES! YEAH!"


    I was jumping, screaming my lungs out. Dime was flying in circles around me, screeching his own war song. I would go to town and no more good girl. The iPod played other metal songs. I did my war dance and exorcised my inner demons with the finest metal that followed.


    I sensed Penny at the base of the rock, she was anxious. I paused the music, stored my tools. Better do that before some god accuses me of devil-worshipping. Which by the current rate would amount to nothing, screw them.


    I went over the edge and took a look around. A small crowd was there with the carriage and several riders. I saw Arwia, Aristunn, Nanna, Brandon, the children, Belle, the guards, the elders, the whole crowd. That was a loaded carriage if I ever saw one. I laughed as I imagined all those people coming outs of the vehicle like a bunch of clowns.


    "Sandra!" Brandon shouted from below.


    "I''m alive!" I shouted back.


    "Yeah, we can see that!" Nanna grumbled. "And with your weird musical stunt, the whole city also knows!"


    "It''s the power of metal!" I yelled back. And acoustics. "I''m coming down!"


    I had half a mind to jump so he could catch me. Seventy meters. To hell with it. I survived too much crap to not take this dive. I summoned my climbing gear. Better get it done before the adrenalin ran out and I came back to my senses.


    Dare to be stupid. Let''s go, Weird Al.


    I hammered two pitons on the rock, a few meters away from the edge. Then I shaped two bars of titanium thicker than two of my fingers. Then another bar connecting the previous two. I connected the three pieces with solid loops and also around the pitons. This way it could move around I lifted it and tied a highwayman''s hitch around the crossbar. I put on my climbing harness, re-adjusted it for me since the last person to use it was Rimush, attached myself to rappel down and then I threw the rope down. Fifty meters minus whatever the knot used up. I would fall for the last twenty. Probably break a bone or two. I checked my helmet. Firmly strapped.


    I was going to kiss the ground like no pope ever did.


    I couldn''t even YOLO anymore.


    Then I jumped down and did like Tom Cruise in any of his spy movies. I ran down the rock face. Before the rope ended, I tugged and controlled my descent until I stopped a couple meters from the end.


    I swung left and right. I walked along the rock. I looked down, grilling like an idiot and waving at my people. Penny was throwing a fit. The kids were frozen, aghast with my stupid stunt.


    "You crazy woman!" Brandon chided. "Haven''t you fell down too many rocks already?"


    "Apparently not!" I shouted back. "Can you catch me?"


    Brandon was coming. How sweet. But Nanna held him back.


    "Are you crazy? The girl will break all your bones. Come down on your own, crazy woman! And don''t jump or I''ll curse you."


    "Nanna!" I called her.


    "What do you want, woman? Get off that rock, what the heck did you eat to get this crazy?"


    "Nanna, I love you, you grumpy witch!"


    "Bah!" She scoffed.


    Saddleless Penny came and stood exactly underneath me. I couldn''t pull a Zorro from this height so jumping was no longer an option. I relented to climbing down and created some nice hand and footholds for me. Then I climbed until the end of the rope and free climbed the remaining eighteen meters or so. I didn''t go all the way down because Penny insisted to stay under me. I jumped on her bareback and held to her hair and clenched my legs around her flank.


    Penny reared and whinnied. Cue in cigarette brand. I hated cigarettes.


    The mare clopped over the rocks like a mountain goat and returned to the road. Arwia and Belle dragged me off the horse and I was crowded by people. I tried to hug everyone. I left the best for last.


    I jumped on Brandon''s neck and smooched his life out. He was a terrible kisser.


    And I didn''t care a bit.


    I would teach him to tie a cherry stem if I could, but my stomach growled. Right, food.


    "Hurry, peel her off of him before she cannibalizes the guard captain!"Nanna urged my eunuch guards. They didn''t move.


    "I''m starving! and I won''t eat him!" For now, I mean. I whined then I let go of my blonde hunky pile of muscles.


    They laughed as if I was telling a joke. I was quickly surrounded once again.


    Belle asked, worried. "What did you eat while you were down there, Sandra?"


    "The food I had with me until it ran out."


    She shoved Arwia. "See? I told you. She took the sky-lord I roasted," She bragged, "I bet it helped her survive!"


    Eh.


    "Eto.... [¤¨¤È]" Confused, I mumbled in Japanese. "[¤Ê¤Ë]????"


    Did I frigging had a roasted giant eagle with full dressings in my storage the whole time??????


    Of course, I did.


    Dumbass.


    "But she couldn''t have survived all this time with just one bird, no matter how big it was," Arwia retorted.


    "Excuse me, but I couldn''t count the sunrises and sunsets, how long did I stay under the earth again?"


    They all stared at me.


    Nanna was the one to reply, in her usual rude way, "Four whole months, stupid girl. Four whole months!"


    My jaw unhinged. Thankfully the muscle kept it from falling down on the floor. What should I make out of it? Did I spend four months in there? Four whole months?


    That was... impossible to comprehend. To me, it was what? Three or four days? Did it take that long to heal my wounds? How long did I stay underwater without drowning? Or better, without dying from...


    Well, I already established that my regeneration was fighting back the destructive anaerobic metabolism. But my brain should''ve melted. Died from hypoxia. I felt perfectly fine, I didn''t have any memory lacking. I could even remember what I did while under the mental influence of the senior magistrate Sun-Goro. Yeah. I''ll get my drawer labeled ''10 craziest things that happened to me ever since I reincarnated'' and knock this as number minus one.


    There, problem solved, a perfectly logical explanation found. A wizard did it.


    Another grumble from my digestive system and I had to try to solve it. I couldn''t summon the sky-lady to eat because it would break Belle-Sunu''s heart.


    "Food. Food. Food. Food." I went into broken record mode.


    "Okay, everyone. Let''s go," Nanna clapped her hands and threatened to shove the children. "The lady is hungry and I don''t want to bake under the sun. And by the way, Sandra, are you going to leave that most colorful rope hanging there?"


    I followed her hand and indeed, my most colorful climbing rope was really hanging on the cliffside. I sent a mental picture to Dime and the eagle tugged the upper end of the rope with a perfect swoop, releasing the knot and making the rope fall down in a heap.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "I''ll retrieve the rope," Aristunn said. "Don''t worry."


    I mounted Penny bareback and followed the carriage. Oh, how wonderful the sun felt on my face. To see that I had people that cared about me. I couldn''t wait to tell them about my adventures. I would have to stretch the three-sided war between water goblins, undead and me to fit a four-month narrative. And probably find somewhere to eat the roasted and probably still warm sky-lady hidden.


    But it was just my luck to get out of the mine on the top of that hill. There was almost nobody that would climb it and with that, the claim to the mine was mine due to secrecy and difficulty of access.


    On the carriage, I heard Nanna talking to Arwia.


    "I told you she was alive! It was easy to tell. Just look at her animals. Bonded animals, I might add. The eagle kept coming back and perching on the balcony. The horse also behaved erratically. You could tell both were worried about the fate of their mistress!" The witch argued.


    "Yes, but how could you tell they stayed there because they were worried and not simply from habit?" Arwia pressed.


    "Because the sky-lord would never stay in the city and refrain from attacking people! Those birds are highly territorial and think themselves as masters of everything below them. They would steal children, attack livestock. But instead, the bird only ate vermin. And it waited. Sometimes it would go for a flight for a few days but always came back. They were waiting, I tell you."


    "It makes sense. I thought sky-lords snatching little children was just an old wives'' tale spun to scare them into obedience." Arwia replied.


    "Heh. And it was easy to know when she came back. Just let the animals loose and follow them when both ran toward her like the world was about to end!" The witch cackled with unbridled mirth.


    Nanna is mean but also wise and loyal. Even her presence here serves as proof of that. She had four months to go away and I doubt anyone would bother her for that. Instead, she watched my animals and used that as evidence I was still alive. Brandon too. He must have been close at hand because of how fast he responded to my resurfacing. And I can think of some people that might have stood on my side. Masters Samus and Aran, Abil-Kisu. Maybe even Bero-Mabii.


    I lean and caress Penny''s neck. I have zero fear of slipping and falling down even if I went asleep. Now that I understand my bonds better, I can tell what kind of feedback is going on between both of us. I know that if I start to slip to a side she will move to correct that. I know instinctively how to make minute adjustments to my body to stay on top of my horse.


    I sniffle and blink away a few tears. The emotions are too strong. I''m free. I''m surrounded by loyal people. They held together for four whole months. That''s insane! They came running at the first sign that I was coming back. I cry and laugh at the same time.


    I''m going to hit that magistrate so hard he''ll never sit again. We entered the city and my guards assume a box formation around the carriage and Penny. Dime soared and circled around right above the rooftops, screeching menacingly and watching for anyone hidden on the roofs. I knew that because that''s what he was thinking. Penny was also looking around for any armed or threatening people.


    I didn''t spare a single thought at human ambushers. I survived the drop. I survived the blue water goblins. I survived the undead and their lich master. I freaking dug three hundred meters up and freed myself.


    The people make way for our convoy and watch. The carriage is posh and fully restored. I wonder, how did they support themselves? I must owe a fortune in wages. We skirt the central district and take a shortcut home. It is late afternoon and people are coming back from the fields, it is a busy market hour as they try to get their shopping done before sunset.


    I saw my gates, my wall, my villa, and my tall bamboo groove. That last one is new. Dipa-Tsu and Sin-Ma-Sihu are manning the gate. They open for us and bow to me.


    "Heads up!" I cheerfully tell them. "If anyone should bow is me to you. I''m grateful. Thank you, guys. Now, shut this gate after us and come inside. I doubt someone will be as stupid as to mess with me today. I''ll have Dime keep watch over us."


    We dismount and I have everyone gather in the rear courtyard. The children unceremoniously sit on the ground and the adults make a half-circle around them. I feel like I was about to give a TED speech.


    I took my time to silently look at each one of them, making sure to meet their gaze. I was crying. I don''t think I really stopped at any point ever since I saw the sun.


    "Thank you," I mumble between sobs and what I could classify as cat noises and sniffling. "You held everything together. You didn''t give up on me." My legs give up and I kneel. I caress a tuft of grass. I look up at the sky, I reach out with my arms.


    Then Bibi, Hapiya, Gula, Kyia, even Gadudu, and all the little kids run to embrace me. They were also crying. We fell down on a heal like a litter of puppies in winter, bawling. I tried to hug that mass of little tykes and kissed every cheek and brow I could reach.


    My children. My clutch. My wards. Up in the sky, Dime screeched in approval. We stayed there until it got uncomfortably hot. They let go on their own.


    "Okay, let me talk," I said as I stood up and straightened my dress. "Before I was thrown inside, that stupid magistrate Sun-Goro used mind magic on me---"


    Nanna''s maniacal cackling interrupted me. She straightened up and smiled, "Serves that pedantic idiot well! Ha! He used so much power to control you he burned out!"


    I did a double-take. "What? Nanna, can you explain what you meant?"


    She gave me a stink-eye. Or a glance. Or a glare. Hard to say when it is about her. "Girl, you know you have an absurd amount of magical power, didn''t I tell you that?" I nodded. She continued. "Affecting a person with magic is already hard, affecting someone with magic is even harder. Affecting YOU with magic," She waved an accusing finger at me, and I could feel bitterness in the sentence, "Is tantamount to suicide! But that old haughty imbecile had to ignore the first thing sorcerers learn, didn''t he? He had to push and cast his spell to blanket over you. Ha! I shiver at the thought of the strain it put on him!"


    That... If I recall right, he seemed surprised when I talked back after he ensorcelled me. And he was clearly straining. I dismissed it at the time because I was not in full control of my mind and it could be just him being tired, but now that Nanna put it that way...


    "So, what happened to him?"


    She threw up her arms, "He burned out, did the depths make you deaf? Oh, the uneducated masses. When a sorcerer uses too much magic, the magic takes a toll on their body!" She stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You can either cast a spell with the normal amount of energy you can safely use or you can strain the magic to make sure it takes hold. And the idiot did the latter even though he could clearly see you had a hundredfold more magic than him."


    Replaying my interaction with him, I could tell at least two moments when he tried to be very convincing and was flustered when I just acted on my own. Then he put a real effort and then my mind was overridden. It was terrifying in hindsight. He could''ve done almost anything to me. Like trying to murder me by throwing me in a fissure. Or worse.


    "I think I understood that, Nanna. How is he now?"


    She glared at me. "He''s burned out. Even the little brats here know what that meant, yes? Who wants to talk?" She asked the children.


    The kids winced every time the witch spoke. It could well be because they were in the line of fire and didn''t want to be showered with spittle but I could see they were afraid.


    "Nanna won''t hurt you," I told them to reassure the children, "because I won''t let it. Right, Nanna?"


    The witch and I had a little eye-to-eye silent conversation and she relented. "Of course not! I eagerly expect this daycare thing of yours to backfire in your face, girl. Several others too. But those damn gods had to bless you, right. I bet they gave you some kind of luck boon, for crying out loud!"


    I think there was something like that, indeed. Some boon that came with the bugged language package that increased luck and curse resistance.


    I ignored that for the moment. "See? She won''t hurt you," I said softly to the children. "So, who among you knows what burnout is?"


    Muranu raised his hand. "It is when the magic eats a portion of the caster''s soul to empower itself. The sorcerer diminishes in power greatly and most of them usually die shortly after."


    Spoken like an honor student. From one to another, I could recognize that. But Muranu displayed his knowledge in a humble way. He just spoke his piece and withdrew, without the smug sense of superiority I usually displayed. I had to learn from him.


    "So, is Sun-Goro dying?" I asked Nanna.


    It felt not good. One might try to paint that as poetic justice but it also denied me any kind of vindication or payback. It also freed me from getting to try something against him and even use that as political leverage like spinning lies like ''I forgive you in your deathbed'' when you really would be just kicking a dying dog. Don''t kill dogs for any reason. But it would also free me from one grudge. I could put him past me and look forward to taking care of those that were really important to me.


    No. The bitch inside me demanded smug gratification. I would at least take some kind of compensation. I wasn''t a saint, sorry. I wanted at least to make sure he would be written as a villain in this story even though he was just doing his job by following the letter of their laws. I bet he had some sort of permission to use mind magic on whoever he saw fit.


    "I doubt. That man is like a cockroach. He is almost two hundred years old, did you know? He could be my grandpa!" She cackled maniacally for the umpteenth time.


    That could also put her in the hundred-something figure. I wouldn''t ever bring that up.


    "But he now wields less magic than a snot-nosed apprentice. He could have a thousand years ahead of him and he would still struggle to get back to his former power," Nanna said in a poise that showed clearly she was not averse to kicking dogs, figurative or literal ones. Then she shifted into a serious, advisory tone, "He fell, Sandra. I know you are upset, but he is gone. He lost not only his magical power. But the captain can explain that better than me."


    She pointed at Brandon, giving him room to speak.


    "Yes, Mrs. Nanna is right," He addressed her respectfully.


    I wondered what went on between the two because they were obviously closer now. And then I surprised myself. Was I getting jealous at that old wrinkled witch? Was I already considering Brandon mine? I leave the answers as an exercise to the reader.


    "After you were thrown in, Sun-Goro forced me to spend a week confined to my quarters. He actually had to pull strings with my commander to do so. But once I got out, I went everywhere. I brought Bero-Mabii, master Samus, Abil-Kisu, and others and we presented a joint complaint on how the case was handled to the Enshi. He couldn''t just ignore us. We said Sun-Goro was trying to hurt him because the magistrate was his nephew is a Mar-Aji and Sun-Goro made him a temp slave.


    "That was his worst mistake, actually," Brandon continued. "I think Sun-Goro was under too much strain from keeping his hold over you to notice how bad it would be. It didn''t help his case that he suffered burnout while holding the position of court sorcerer."


    I tilted my head. Arwia was the one to come and explain. "A court sorcerer is a powerful magician tasked with the magical defenses of the city. Not having one makes everyone vulnerable."


    "Exactly. Thanks, miss Arwia," Brandon smiled at her.


    Damn, I was feeling very possessive. I fought the urge to chew my fingernails.


    "So not only Sun-Goro angered us, insulted the Enshi but he also deprived the city of a strategic asset. It made the Enshi''s decision easy to take. He disfranchised Sun-Goro entirely. The former senior magistrate is done for," Brandon finished his explanation.


    "Enough politics," Belle whined. "Sandra, tell us your story! What happened to you? What did you find in the depths?"


    I smiled back at her. "It is a long story. Sit down, I''m going to tell you."


    We all sat on the grass. Ananu was kind enough to bring Nanna a chair. I raised a pillar of silicon up from the ground and set the GoPro behind where I was so it would frame all of them and my back. I also propped the iPod to film me.


    "I spent a lot of time unconscious in the depths because I suffered several grave injuries while I was falling down. Then I woke up in a dark tunnel next to a briny pool of water.


    "I looked at my phone''s clock and saw it was close to midnight and I felt something evil lurking in the dark. Then I saw a sight that almost stopped my heart," I told them and showed the photo of the water goblin on my phone. The children screamed. Nanna leaned forward to take a good look at the monster.


    "I tried to scream but the terror of these monsters made me freeze as they looked right at me. I was paralyzed!"


    They were holding their collective breath. I paused and took my time to take in their faces.


    "I was alone, with nobody to save me from the beasts about to strike. I was fighting for my life inside a cramped tunnel. I fought them and killed the first two. But more came and I realized I had nowhere left to run. I wondered at that moment if I''d ever see the sun. I hoped it was all a dream, my imagination playing tricks on me but they were creeping up behind me!"


    I raised my hands threateningly, making claws out of my fingers.


    "There was no second chance against the things with forty eyes! I fought three more and retreated up the tunnel. crawling and using my power to open up enough room for me to pass through. I came into an old tunnel. The water goblins surrounded me with two of their bosses. I fought them but their cries called the dead.


    "A horde of zombies shambled toward us. The cowardly monsters fled! They left me alone against the zombies and ghouls! I thought I wouldn''t escape their jaws. I was enclosed on every side.


    "But I outsmarted them! Yes, I closed the tunnels behind me and the zombies weren''t smart enough to break through the barricade. Then I made a torch and burnt them. I set traps to stop the goblins and after some preparations, I decided to explore the undead tunnels as they might lead me to the surface. I thought that as long as I was going up, it would be better.


    "I came upon a hole covered in fine silt. Then another horde of undead rose. These creatures crawled in search of my blood. If I didn''t fight them, they would make me rot forever in my own corpse''s shell! They smelled. Let me tell you. It was the foulest stench ever. The ghouls came to seal my doom. I ran away but in doing so I found out my powers could affect them.


    "So I made myself a weapon, a club made of several metals. I left it behind though. I broke a skull here!" I swung my arms. The children squealed. "I crushed a ribcage there!" I slapped my hand on the grass. "I bashed away clawed arms, caved in teeth. It was all thanks to captain Brandon''s lessons!"


    I winked and blew him a kiss. Then I glared at Arwia, Belle, and Nanna. The message was clear. MINE! They shook their heads to tell me that they didn''t even try.


    "But my victory was short-lived. For the master of those tunnels, an undead sorcerer, a lich of unsurmountable power came! We talked for a while because he was confident he could squash at any time. And I also acted with caution. But the time for talking was over. He used his magic on me but it failed to take hold. He cursed, used mind magic but what Sun-Goro did to me made me learn to shield my mind. He blasted me to the wall but I stood up!"


    The children cheered! Nanna was pure disbelief. I intentionally left out the part where he attacked when he sensed holy power because I didn''t want to involve Tarhun in all this. In fact, I would have to talk to him about what counted or not as aggression.


    "He used a lot of magic. He even almost got me to kneel before him!" I paused. "But then I grabbed his bony wrist and broke his hand off just as he was finishing a spell!"


    Nanna''s eyes were fixed on me, reading every twitch and movement of my face for any signs of a lie.


    "His magic backfired and exposed his weakness! For that sorcerer bought eternal unlife by mummifying his heart! So I grabbed his ribs and used my power to destroy that shriveled heart that still beat because of the sinister magic animating him!


    "Then he died and all of his undead minions followed him into damnation!"


    Oops. One religious term I didn''t want to say slipped out. Oh, well.


    "A lich underneath the city?" Nanna asked, skeptical. "Do you have proof, girl?"


    I summoned the bag with the lich''s robes.


    She shielded her eyes. "Put that away!" Nanna used a begging tone.


    I complied. "Proof?"


    The witch nodded, "Proof. That thing is evil!" She accused and gave her hearty advice: "Destroy it! Girl, you fought a great evil. I... I need to think. Excuse me."


    She tried to stand up and for once, the vivacious witch looked her age. A centennial old woman. Her body way past her prime. Feeble. Weak. Tired. Concerned. She turned back to look at me.


    "Your power over matter is divine in nature," She stated as if it was obvious. "I hope you killed him for good. What happened after you killed the lich, girl?"


    "I fainted. When I used my power on him, I felt a great resistance. I had to use everything I had to destroy his heart. I fainted and I had no idea how long I spent unconscious. It was long enough for a whole water goblin tribe to settle in the tunnels around the briny pool..."


    Yes, I had no idea how long I was unconscious. It could be days, weeks even. Less than a month because I didn''t have another period.


    "But when I woke up, the bones were still there and so was the robe. I expelled the water goblins from the warrens and spent several days searching the tunnels for a way out. Then I decided to dig up and get out. The rest you know."


    She sighed in relief. "Then it is dead, really dead. He must''ve spent a lot of his magic fighting you. You did this world a great deed, Sandra. I''m thankful."


    She said my name with profound respect. Then she went away mumbling on how Sun-Goro might''ve doomed us all by burning himself but the hands of gods sent me down to kill that ancient threat. Before she disappeared inside the villa, I called her out.


    "Nanna!" I stood up. "Nanna, I''m the one who is grateful for your help. You took me in, you helped me. I''m honored to have you by my side. Truly honored."


    She looked at me and then at the sky. I could swear there was a tear somewhere in those ancient eyes. "Stupid Tarhun!" She blasphemed and disappeared inside the building.


    "It''s getting dark. I have some food prepared," Belle broke the silence. "Sandra, let''s get ready to eat."


    I met her eyes and smiled. "Yes, let''s eat. Belle. There''s one thing I want to confess. I... I forgot I had the roast bird. If you don''t mind, I''d love to share it with everyone."


    She stared at me with the pain of betrayal in her eyes. Belle looked at me from head to toe and bit her lower lip. "Sandra. Blessed be Tarhun for he made you stronger than what I could believe possible. You are healthy, right?"


    "Yes, very!" I nodded.


    "Then yes. Let''s share the food. And Sandra, we are here for you. Talk to us. Give us tasks. Don''t take it all by yourself. I..." She blinked to shed her tears. "I thought you would be lost forever!"


    I ran and hugged that freckled young girl. "Ha! It would take more than the monster-filled bowels of the Earth to get rid of me. I missed all of you so much!"


    We cried. We hugged. We talked. I showed the children the photo fo the water goblins several times, just to have them run away screaming every single time and come back a few minutes later asking to see the photo again.


    I made a dinner table with enough chairs for everyone outside out of glistening silicon. I retrieved my solar charger and battery that I left on the surface. That allowed me to plug in my dead lantern to light up our dinner.


    We ate the roasted sky-lady. It was the best meat I''ve ever eaten. The seasoning Belle used was strange but it was perfect to go with the strangely tender eagle meat.


    I retired early. I wanted to recharge my devices, to write my journal. Retake the normalcy of my second life.


    Because tomorrow, tomorrow I would start my vacation.

 Morning 17

    I woke up with the mighty eagle knocking on my shutters. I went to see what Dime wanted and fortunately, it wasn''t a gift of shared food. He just wanted me to scratch his crown. he ruffled his feathers just like a cockatiel and cooed. I heard Penny neigh ''good morning'' from the stables. To the east, the sun was cresting over the horizon.


    "Good morning, Sandra!" Belle-Sunu shouted from the courtyard.


    I waved at her. "Did you even sleep, girl?"


    She blushed, apologetical. "I''m sorry, I overslept. Breakfast is not ready!"


    Ah. Let her be. She is young. I left the window behind and sat at the table.


    First I worked a bit on my journal. I decided that skipping a hundred something days in the count would be too much so this would be day seventeen. Yesterday would be sixteen but I left the two question marks. They seemed nice.


    Next issue, wages.


    I had four months of wages to pay. That was two hundred and forty copper mina for Belle, Arwia and the guards, three hundred and sixty for Aristunn, one hundred and twenty to the four elders. I did the proper conversions and found one minor issue. I didn''t have enough lower denomination currency. So I gave everyone an eighty percent emergency bonus. That rounded everyone''s wages to the gold shekel. Twenty-nine gold shekels, I had that many coins.


    I used Decompose to make an aluminum coin carrier with a swiveling lid and clip. With the Dremel, I drilled the hinges and wrote everyone''s names on each piece. A pin through the hinge and that''s one ready. It could only fit shekels, up to six, and would easily be stolen if worn out in the open but it was a nice decorative piece. With the right application of my power and a lot of concentration, I could give the surfaces a nice mirror-like polish. Then I inserted the coins inside and filled the remaining slots with copper shekels. It took me more than an hour to finish all the sixteen pieces.


    I wanted to show them how important they were to me. Not with the money, with my hard work and something unique.


    I was admiring them when someone knocked on the door.


    "Enter!" I shouted.


    It was Nanna. The old witch walked inside and took a good look at the pieces. "There''s not one for me," She stated.


    I faced her and poked my tongue out. "You don''t work for me, witch."


    She snorted, "Only fools would take orders from a suicidal idiot like you, girl."


    I giggled. "I wanted to see you, Nanna. How was your trip to the mountains? Did you find a lot of ingredients?"


    "Yeah, if you can call some shriveled bushes ingredients!" The witch scoffed. "A waste of time. I''d rather be here to see you jumping down that hole," She cackled.


    I narrowed my eyes, "Maybe I can do it again to show you. But you''d come with me!" I said, half-joking.


    "Pass," she waved a hand.


    "What brings you here?" I asked, changing the subject. Enough teasing.


    She made a serious face, "Did you destroy the robes? Do it now if not."


    I nodded, said "Okay", and sat on the floor. I summoned the bag with the robes. To me, it was just a piece of well-preserved ancient clothes. To the witch, it was something terribly evil as she made a truly disgusted face and shied away.


    I used Decompose to remove all the carbon into a single chunk of graphite. Some water droplets and dust fell down on the floor and the gold thread remained unaffected. It seemed to be real gold. I Decomposed it into a round lump of gold and then gathered the wet dust to put away with the other unidentified powders.


    "There. Are you feeling better?"


    It felt like the mere presence of the robes stole her vigor. Like Christopher Reeve when facing Gene Hackman.


    "Much. Thank you, Sandra. That artifact was as evil as it was powerful. Your power... you purified it," She spoke between big lungfuls of air.


    I summoned my canteen and offered it to her. She drained it in large swigs.


    "Your water is the best," She quipped.


    I stood up and hugged the old witch. Then I put a big wet kiss on her cheek.


    "You are really touchy with those smoochers of yours after you got out of that hole, aren''t you, girl?" She pushed me away without much strength.


    "Marry me, Nanna."


    "In your dreams, girl," She snickered. "Anyway, thank you, Sandra. I won''t bother you again today."


    She made to leave but I held her by the wrist. "Nanna, I have something here, I need your expertise to see if there''s any use for them. Did you see the monsters I took pictures of?"


    "Yes. Water goblins. Really nasties," She mumbled but then caught on and looked at me, "You have some bodies there, don''t you? Yes, you were smart. Their eyes are very valuable and so are their teeth. the rest is just trash so we only need the heads."


    "I have three bodies. We can get the heads."


    She pointed at the window, "Outside. It will be messy, let''s go somewhere easier to clean up."


    I changed into some work clothes and followed her.


    We went to the former slave pens. She converted one of the rooms into her own witch laboratory. The smell of drying herbs was a dead giveaway. I used silicon to make a raised tub where I summoned the bodies. Decompose made it easy to cut off the heads, drain the brains and other fluids. The witch took the heads with her and I Decomposed everything else. A pool of water and salts along with a big chunk of graphite resting on the ground by the tub was what I had to show for my efforts.


    I had Tiwatura bring a barrel and I used the Decompose still trick to separate the clear water. I scooped the leftovers into the bag of whatever else. Tiwatura took the barrel away with instructions to give it to Hesha-Doka so he could use it to water the gardens. To me, that water was still a dissolved water troll. I felt like Kyle MacLachlan did. These water trolls held ninety liters of the tribe''s water.


    I should go through my leftover chemicals now. I dumped the bags in the now dry tub and started to Decompose the elements out. It used to hold only the slag leftovers but I contaminated it with everything I picked along the way.


    I took care of the very reactive or pyrophoric ones like fluorine, phosphates, sulfates, sodium, potassium, and chlorine first. They came out as salts. Then everything else could withstand air as pure element chunks. I took all the common metals next and the size of the mass of dust and chunks sharply diminished. Then I removed other elements. Like the recently rediscovered tungsten. The slag contained quite a bit of tungsten, probably from failed attempts at smelting wolframite. Tungsten melts at a temperature where iron is in a gaseous state, it''s absurd. I bet it remained stuck to the bottom of their crucibles as scrap metal. Then they scraped it off and dumped in the slag pit.


    I wondered if tungsten could withstand a dragon''s breath. I wouldn''t find out because I doubted there were dragons here.


    The next suspect would be mercury. It would dissolve most metals and form amalgams. But cinnabar wouldn''t be taken to the forge. I still got a bit of mercury, but just a few drops. Mercury would become vapor at very low temperatures so I wasn''t expecting to find much of it. The next one was undefined. I needed methods of separation or maybe just sense. I removed all the oxygen from these metallic oxides, obtaining a chunk of alloyed metals. From it, I tried to feel the resonances. It had a lot of unknown signals. I tried singling one, anyone. I locked on an element that was light. I extracted it. Not too heavy but also not too light, it was a transition metal, probably from the fourth period. I was missing only vanadium and chromium. Since it was a dark grey silver, it was vanadium. Then the next less dense metal would be chromium and I focused on it. Soon I had a blob of the silvery-white metal.


    I kept trying them and separating them by resonance. I split them by period. It was easier as elements with similar atomic weights had similar resonances. They could still be told apart like you can tell a C is not a B but they were still almost the same frequency. But if heard only one, you''d have trouble telling which one it was. That gave me a chunk of the fifth-period metals, a chunk of sixth-period metals and the others. I could also tell the transition metals apart from the lanthanides and actinides. How can I put it into words, the electron configuration gave their particular resonances a different timbre. Like the difference between a recorder, a flute, a pan flute, or an ocarina.


    I was about to separate them more when Tiwatura ran to find me.


    "Sandra!" He called as he tried to catch his breath. He seemed flustered. "Sandra, someone from the Enshi is here to see you!"


    I took a deep breath. Can I have just a day of quiet? No? I scowled. "I''ll go there to meet them. Lead on."


    I stored my stuff and double-checked to see if I left anything dangerous behind. All clear. Before I left, I took the LED headband and swapped the lamp for the GoPro.Stolen story; please report.


    I went to the sitting room by the entrance to the villa. A man with fine traces, well-groomed hair and beard and wearing the poshest toga I''d seen so far was there, sipping wine and being waited on by Arwia.


    "Mistress Sandra Rinaldi!" Tiwatura shouted behind me in a very solemn way. I glanced behind me, he was standing at attention. I winked at him but he didn''t flinch.


    "GoPro, start recording."


    The man stood up. "Ah. Milady Rinaldi! It is such a pleasure to finally meet you. I''m honored by your hospitality so far." He bowed and spoke softly. This man was one to be wary of. He had a way of speaking that was almost trance-inducing. I had no doubt he was a skilled diplomat and a dangerous person.


    I picked my linen skirt and curtsied. "Mister, you are welcome. To what do I owe the visit?"


    "I come as a friend and not an antagonist, milady," He said after probably picking up the wariness in my voice. "It came to the Enshi''s attention that you were unjustly wronged, and he wishes to make amends."


    Translation, the Enshi is upset that I survived the hole his nephew threw me in and now wants to make sure I won''t be a problem again in the future. Since I proved to be almost unkillable, assassination is off the table so let''s try to mollify her. If this guy pops a chest of jewelry next, I''m going to kick him out. Literally.


    I noticed that people won''t give you their names if they are representing someone else. It is like they were lowering themselves to a mere tool. Of a tool. I didn''t even press for his name.


    I take my time to answer him. I don''t know even if I have to answer. I can see his eyes reading my facial expression and body language like an open book. It is really annoying. And just because I thought that he looks away. Yeah, smooth guy. Danger level nine. I''d take another lich any day of the week.


    "You really don''t need to be wary, milady," He spoke out of turn. "The Enshi means you no harm. He just wants to meet you for a talk. Maybe drink tea in the gardens. They are quite beautiful in the afternoon."


    I could only feel disgusted. And fear that the Enshi would do something to harm me or my people. I wanted to kick that man out so bad. He was a sore thorn in my thumb. I had to use all my willpower to not pick him up and toss him over the wall.


    "I understand. You are too wounded. I was rude to come here so soon, after all, you spent four months in the depths," He said, sounding really apologetical.


    But I had enough of being manipulated. There was no way I would ever trust that man''s boss. I knew very well how men in power behaved and to them, they had no equals. Everyone was either a pawn or an enemy.


    Oh, well.


    The truth was, I refused to willingly be a pawn for anyone. Not anymore. If the choices were to either be a pawn or an enemy, it wasn''t a choice at all.


    "The Enshi is a very generous--"


    "Shut your gilded trap," I growled at him. "Look at me. Do you know who I am? Speak."


    I had enough. In front of me, that man was everything I hated. He was Andrews. He was Tarhun, the magistrate, Sun-Goro. Prince what''shispants. Hama-Tula. The lich. A forty-eyed blue goblin water troll.


    "You a-are Sandra Rinaldi... holy maiden of Tarhu--"


    "Wrong!"


    For a moment I felt pity at him. Was I bullying him or was he just goading me into thinking that I was bullying him by feigning weakness, maybe even his stutter was planned. I had no idea how skilled that man was, but it was quite possible he was still playing his game. Goading me. Reading me. I was disgusted and absolutely on the defensive. His mere presence was an insult.


    "And even though you are very skilled at navigating the social context and reading people, you utterly failed on winning my trust. Do you know why?"


    I was practically squinting at him and fuming. I caught my hands opening and closing on their own. Part of me told me that I was being unfair, going on the defensive from the start and failing to even listen to him.


    "I have no idea. Would you tell me?" He asked with sincerity.


    See? I couldn''t even tell if he was feigning it or not. It was impossible to establish a common ground for negotiations.


    "Go meditate under a waterfall until you find the answer to my question. Who am I? You don''t know. You have no idea to whom you are talking to and that is why you failed. And until you do, don''t come back. Tell your boss that I''m not his enemy. But if he sends another snake to my house, I''ll cut off its neck before it can sink its fangs on my people."


    Given my track record, I was probably screwing up things. I cared for him not a single bit. Whatever that guy or the Enshi or the whole army came up with, I''d take it head-on. No more meek girl. I was expecting him to open up the envelope with the threats or ultimatum but nothing like that happened.


    He knelt and lowered his head. He exposed his hands, palms up in front of him. Arwia swallowed nervously.


    "Milady Rinaldi, we are a people held together by our laws. Even the Enshi cannot go against the code. His intent with the invitation was to ask you to spare his nephew''s life. The laws are clear, he is to be subjected to the same trial you survived. If you don''t raise an accusation of mistrial against Sun-Goro before the courthouse, that will be his fate. The Enshi has a special love for his nephew as he reminds him of his beloved sister. It is in the name of that family bond that I ask.


    "I am humbled by your lesson today, mistress. You could''ve told your guard to kill me for offending you, yet you offer me learning. You showed me a path and my own shortcomings. In my twenty-five years as a diplomat, I negotiated wars, treaties, trade deals, spoke to foreign queens, princesses, kings, knights, nobles and peasants alike. But the lady before me has more nobility than all of them together."


    I wanted to tell him to stand up but if he wants to grovel, at least do a proper dogeza. I was hating how angry I was. It wasn''t a wave of burning anger, a rage that demanded the target of the emotion to be destroyed, it was... if I had to compare, the normal anger was a hand grenade. The anger I was feeling was a neutron bomb, something that would only be sated by the utter annihilation of the source of the emotion. And the self-loathing for knowing I was able to feel that added even more to that. It was a wave of cold anger. Born from the bowels of the ninth circle of hell.


    "Flattery will get you nowhere. Trust is like a small bird''s wings. Once tarnished, they won''t heal so easily. You should''ve gone to the point already. Why do I need to raise a mistrial accusation against Sun-Goro? It would just put me to another trial. And I had enough of your trials. Where would you throw me next? A volcano?"


    "Sun-Goro is a great magistrate. Only the Enshi or the Great Lugal and judge a great magistrate."


    As the uncredited voice of Erik Bauersfeld would say, ''It is a Trap!'' Their plan seemed clear now. I go, get convinced into raising a mistrial accusation against Sun-Goro, save his nephew from being thrown to the depths, the Enshi judges however he wants, and probably use the opportunity to either draw me into his service in whatever capacity he wants or to get rid of me. Since Sun-Goro is effectively retired, neutered and may be at death''s doors.


    "Do you think I am stupid? The moment I raise the accusation I am in Enshi''s hands, he can do whatever he wants with me. I would throw away all my supporters, everything."


    "That''s why the Enshi wanted to talk to you first. To make you understand he wouldn''t betray you."


    "There''s a saying in my land, you can trust people as far as you can toss them. Enshi''s words mean nothing. His promises are empty. If he is so powerful, he can call the mistrial by himself."


    "The great god Enki would be angered at such abuses. He is the steward of our lore and laws."


    "Tell the Enshi that trust is a two-way road. I invite him to my house for dinner tonight, where I will give him a way to save his nephew. He should bring priest Bero-Mabii and the priest of Enki with him. You must come as well. No guards from his side are allowed. Tell him that if he comes, I''ll show him a wonder that nobody else in this world has ever seen."


    He stood up. His act faded, his mask fell. He stared at me. "The Enshi is not a fool. If he comes without guards, you can just assassinate him."


    I nodded. "Likewise he can have me killed in his gardens. You see, you face a negotiation as if it was a battle. Someone has to win, someone has to lose. Does it have to be that way? Go. I gave you enough free counsel. My terms are clear. And I won''t stand to have my house surrounded by the army."


    "Allow him to bring just one soldier."


    Now I was the one that could read him like an open book. If I made a Venn diagram of soldiers and people I wouldn''t dare to hurt in bubbles, the intersection would have exactly one person.


    "The offer is withdrawn. Tell the Enshi that you failed to negotiate, angered me, and doomed his nephew. All because you were blind. And deaf."


    The envoy became clearly irritated. The man went for his toga pocket and moved toward me.


    "Dagger!" Tiwatura shouted. I felt him moving behind to shield me and I raised my left hand to stop him at the same time I moved my right hand to defend myself.


    "Don''t get behind me, Tiwatura! Move, I need room!"


    Too late, he bumped into me. I lost my footing and stumbled forward. The envoy''s eyes shifted to Arwia, still holding the wine bottle like a statue.


    I saw it happen in slow motion. Stupid eunuch.


    The envoy drew his dagger. The polished steel was mostly coated in a black substance along the blade and the tip. His eyes darted between me and Arwia but he went for the girl.


    He would stab Arwia before I could regain my balance.


    All I could do was pray. "Tarhun!" I shouted.


    Nothing happened.


    I fell down on the ground. The envoy glared at Arwia. The girl threw the wine bottle at him and he slashed his own throat. He cried in pain. Tiwatura tackled the envoy, causing him to drop the dagger. He punched the man''s face twice and drew his own dagger. The wine bottle broke as it struck the wall, showering me in wine.


    "Stop! Don''t kill him! Someone call Nanna."


    One of the kids, probably Pidda, ran out to the lab building. Formerly the slave pens.


    I can see what the idiot wanted to do. He would kill himself, make it seem like I killed him and give the Enshi due cause to crack down on me. He would get the same effect as if I had challenged the second magistrate.


    The man was bleeding from the slashed throat. I took the dagger and cut myself. The poison stung and burned. I focused on it and tried to learn its resonance with Decompose. Too many compounds. Organic in nature.


    I touched his throat and Decomposed everything organic on him Just punch the carbon out of the molecules. His clothes, the leather straps, the scabbard of the dagger, everything. My hope was that it would affect the poison. the wound didn''t hit any major artery or vein. All he got was an improvised tracheotomy. I could hear the wheezing of his breathing coming through the flaps of the wound.


    "Belle-Sunu! Heat a knife on the fire!" I shouted inside.


    I applied pressure on the wound but I would either choke him or do nothing. So I held him sitting up. Arwia was sobbing. Aristunn came with a rope. He and Tiwatura tied up his feet and hands. Aristunn''s technique involved several loops around each of the wrists. While they seemed tight, the circulation around the hands wasn''t compromised.


    Belle came with a red-hot knife. I took it and remembered my first-aid training. Cauterize in bursts of at most two seconds. More than that and you damage healthy tissue. I seared his flesh on both sides of the wound. Nanna came right afterward.


    "Where is the poison?"


    I gave her the knife. She sniffed, licked the thing.


    "It is a sleep potion. You can smear on a weapon. It makes the wound bleed more and sends the target to a sleep that is indistinguishable from death for four days."


    Ah. He wasn''t suicidal. But...


    "Can you make an antidote?"


    She nodded. "Yes, but why waste time with this idiot?"


    "Please, Nanna. It will save us a lot of trouble. He''s the Enshi''s envoy."


    Nanna frowned. "Okay, Sandra. I''ll do it. It will take a couple hours. I have to go to the market."


    "Tiwatura, get another guard and escort Nanna."


    Nanna went away to get her things. Tiwatura went to call a guard.


    I summoned my first-aid kit and checked. I didn''t have a suture kit. Oh. It was used up when we went hiking last spring. I didn''t replace it.


    I told Belle, "Needle and thread. Also, the strongest spirit we have."


    Arwia touched my shoulder. I turned around to meet her eyes. "I''m sorry Sandra. I was scared, I thought he would slash me," She said between sobs. I reached over my shoulder and held her fingertips.


    "Are you hurt?" She shook her head. "Then everything is fine. Bring the house down. I only care that you are okay. I''ll clean up the wine, easy."


    She was shocked. It was fine. After several minutes of wait, Belle returned with Kali-Maru.


    "Mistress, I can stitch wounds!" The elder lady said.


    "See that this fool survives, Kali-Maru, please."


    She took a curved needle, some golden linen thread. Belle poured spirits on the needle and thread. "Pinch the wound shut," Kali-Maru told me.


    I pinched it, Belle held his head and Kali-Maru did the sutures. Maybe I should ask Nanna about healing magic but she always gets evasive when I ask about magic and sorcery. I doubt there was any.


    We took the naked man to a bed and I set Huzzy-Ya as a guard. The veteran gladiator spent some time as a slave pen warden so he was best at keeping watch over prisoners.


    So much for a vacation.

 Afternoon 17

    I knew I''d have a huge target painted on my back, but that was too much. The sorting algorithm of antagonists is totally BS. But there was nothing I could do. At least the envoy is stabilized. The jury is still out on whether he will be able to speak again or not though. Or if he is going to catch a nasty infection and die a horrible death. At least everyone in my house washed their hands several times a day but you never know.


    I''m not sure if Nanna washes anything. Not asking too. But she always smells like herbs, so she was still in the top ten percentile.


    A plan was brewing in my mind. I would do this, wear that, then call these people... I''d need to get the Enshi to come to... And go pick up that thing I commissioned. Four months, it better be done. Then I''d need to face the beast and de-fang it.


    I went to find someone to run an errand for me, singing. "The hour is approaching, just give it your best, you''ve got to reach your prime..." And there I was in front of the guardhouse.


    "Atta-Li. Do you know where I can hire or buy a chariot? And a harness for a horse."


    The guard thought for a while and Kanu-Kasu shouted from inside, "Go to Hatsa-Mala at the caravanserai. He might have a chariot for sale or point you to who has one."


    I poked my head inside, "How much would a chariot cost me?"


    "One or two silver mina at most. More than that you''re being robbed. With harness."


    I gave Atta-Li two silver mina. "Get a horse, go and bring me a chariot. Also, stop by the glassblower, he should have an item for me. I need them in two hours."


    He nodded and ran to the stables. Two ticks in my checklist.


    Now I need to go to the roof of the villa.


    I''m willing to bet the Enshi doesn''t give a rat''s ass about his nephew. I asked around, rumor has it he has ten wives and dozens of sons and daughters. Most of them are abroad, as political hostages to other Enshis and the Lugal in the capital. Training. But he also has his own share of hostages so trading them is commonplace. He also doesn''t give a rat''s ass about his envoy. The guy would probably choke on his own blood and die anyway.


    Now, I need to mobilize. Gather allies. And strike when the enemy does not expect. For that, I need superiority in communications. Fortunately, I have three advantages over the Enshi. I know his goals, I have four thousand years of documented history to rely on, and I have the technology. I need to talk to the priests, Abil-Kisu, Samus, and Brandon. Any of these might leak information, so what I can tell them is limited.


    I need intelligence. I have air superiority. I climbed up on the villa''s roof, cleaned the dry rat corpses Dime left behind and prepared my recon drone. Yeah, I got a drone. It is a mix of wireless technology, magic, and biology. I mean, I strapped my phone on Dime''s chest and sent the eagle flying to stream the output of what the phone''s camera can see using a LAN videoconference app. I have a camping wifi router with three long-range and one-directional high-gain antenna. There''s also another antenna with a small parabolic dish that should be pointed at the nearest cellphone tower, but there''s no such thing here.


    Without the interference of other RF devices, my range should be closer to the theoretical maximum. The terrain and weather also help. No moisture to absorb the signals into heat. After all, the 2.4GHz is the frequency of the microwave oven.


    I set up everything and test it with Aristunn. The streaming setup is actually a LAN videoconference but the phone''s screen is turned off and against the bird''s chest. But I can both receive and transmit audio. I made a chair, table, and parasol out of silicon and aluminum on the roof, and that will be my HQ for the next step of the operation. And let me not forget about Dime''s bird perch.


    "I can hear myself on your machine, Sandra!" Aristunn spoke to the bird, hearing the sound coming out of the PC.


    "Yes, you can," I replied then muted the mic. "Now, let''s go and contact Abil-Kisu. Bloodstone, I choose you!"


    Dime answered to my mental command and flew in the direction of the merchant''s house. Another thing that I discovered is that I can communicate empathically with Dime, and send him images or feelings of where I want him to go. He recognized the place and dove, landing on a branch next to Abil-Kisu. I look at the video feed and see him approach. Two of his guards are eyeing Dime, wary and ready to throw daggers at my eagle.


    I open the microphone and speak. "Honorable Abil-Kisu, you have nothing to fear from Bloodstone, my tame sky-lord. How are you, friend?"


    Ever quick on the uptake, the merchant lord claps his hands. "Marvelous sorcery! I find myself in good health, Sandra. What brings your envoy to my place?"


    I know the gears in his mind are already evaluating the significance of this development. "I need you to go to the great market at sunset. I will show you something that will settle the dispute between me and the magistrate, Enshi''s nephew, and would like to have you as a witness."


    "That would bring me great honor, Sandra. You can count on me."


    Once he felt my relief, Dime took wing. I knew he wasn''t too cozy to remain inside those guard''s range. I didn''t have a chance to thank him. After Abil-Kisu, I also visited and invited the priests of Tarhun and Enki. I tried to find Brandon but Dime wasn''t able to see where he was even though he did two laps around the training grounds. Then I sent him on a flyby of the Enshi''s palace. Some guards shot arrows at Dime but he deftly dodged.


    I think he was hit only because he was trying to protect the eggs.


    But I had no idea what to look for. Guess I''ll just watch the feed. People dressed in nice clothes. Check. Brandon? Damn. There he was. He wasn''t confined to quarters, he was drafted into security detail in the palace. He saw Dime when he looked up. And waved at the bird. More bowstring noises were heard and Dime banked, tumbled and got out of there. I told him to go around and come back home.


    Brandon was escorting a couple of people. Two men. I didn''t know any of them but the one to the left looked like an older and fatter magistrate. Maybe it was him. I froze the frame that showed him the best and studied the person. That was the opponent I had to defeat without fighting. The ally I had to conquer without giving myself.


    I waited for Dime to return and removed the harness, setting him free. I also stored my devices but I left the solar charger and battery there. I decided to build roof access from my room when I had the chance.


    My plan was simple. I wrote an invitation to the Enshi and had Dime deliver it.


    <blockquote>


    Come to the great market by sunset. We''ll talk about your nephew there. If you don''t come, I''ll move out of town.


    - Sandra Rinaldi


    </blockquote>


    And I have little cost to make good on my threat. Even though I have the mine I really want to claim in some official capacity, I can just pack up and leave, taking my people with me. The ones that are willing to follow me. The world is vast.


    This might work because of its simplicity. He will not expect what will come his way. Cornered and with the public opinion against him, he might do one of two things. Either he will seek agreement or conflict. I''ll remove ignore from the table. If he seeks agreement, we can make a deal blessed by the priests. If he goes for conflict, he can''t do worse than the hole. There are two lines I don''t want to cross. One is murder. Even though people died when involved with me, I didn''t kill any humans yet. The other is making explosives for use against people. I won''t weaponize chemistry.


    I refuse to go down those paths unless I''m truly cornered. Like when I was ready to release a chlorine cloud because the eight guards surrounding the magistrate were ordered to kill me.


    There might be a day down the road when I''ll have the blood of hundreds of people on my hands. I can only pray I can still consider myself a human being when it happens. This world is a cruel and violent one. Where people will try to take advantage of anyone deemed weaker than themselves. Even I am not immune to this line of reasoning because it is something that stems from our most primitive instincts. If I have resources, I won''t starve and die. If you have and I can take them from you, well. The more the better, right? That only changed on Earth when advanced methods of production allowed the offer of resources to skyrocket. No more starving bellies during winter. No more parched throats during a drought.


    Enough philosophy. It is time to get ready for battle.


    I withdrew to my room and sat by the desk with a notebook. I had to prepare a video clip. I got the raw footage and fired the video editor software. Cut, splice, render. If they wanted to build a narrative suiting their goals, two could play that game. I added one of the best overhead shots of the city Dime took when he flew home as the intro. As for music, something erudite that could hold the audience''s attention and generate suspense. J.S.Bach''s Toccata & Fugue in D minor.


    And then the full uncut negotiation with the envoy. I replayed the footage once and felt an anvil resting over my heart. I acted like a bitch. I felt pity for the man. In my disgust-fueled rage, I gave him almost no openings. And boy did I sound haughty! That wouldn''t do. The masses would feel sympathy for the envoy. My lines were unusable because I couldn''t convey the context in which they were spoken. It was time for some creative redacting.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    That''s politics for you. Everything is a lie.


    So I recorded a few lines and phrases to splice as voiceovers. It helped that my face was never shown because the camera was shooting my POV. In some cases, I just recorded the same words but with a different emotion behind them. Why not add a piece of dramatic incidental music. I replayed the preview before I started rendering. Yes, that will do. Anyone on Earth would be able to tell the audio was dubbed, but I doubt the natives will. I called Dime to my windowsill and asked him to watch over the computer. While the video was rendering, I had to prepare myself.


    My battlefield was not one of the bodies, blood, and sweat. It is one made of ideas, words, and hearts. Cheesy but true. If I only avoided devolving it into violence, I will. The Enshi can have his cake but everyone will eat a slice. This world needed to learn about win-win negotiations. I entered the master bedroom. The gray mortared walls greeted me in all their irregular roughness. I needed sandpaper and time. White acrylic paint too. I had neither of the three.


    I went past it into the bathing room. The tub was shedding streams of vapor, filled with warm water. I stored my clothes, instantly revealing my naked form. I sat down with a bucket of cold water and poured it over my head.


    I used the soap, shampoo, and conditioner from Earth. Each drop was irreplaceable but I was going to face a king. Or a duke. Their political system was more like a federation of free city-states bound together under a stronger one. The masses of bodies would grow and then ground in some war. That''s how they controlled their population. I feel the marvelous feeling of clean skin, of silky hair again. The scent of the shampoo reminds me of home. And to think this was a cheap brand. I could buy one-liter bottles for the price of a fast-food combo.


    I took almost an hour to undo all the knots in my hair.


    After rinsing the soap I move to the tub. The bits of porcelain were glued forming a geometric mosaic that was easy on the eyes. I soak until the neck and look down at my skin. I had a nice tan building up but after four months in the dark depths, it all reverted back to my healthy white-ish beige.


    I got out of the bath and looked down at my longer hair sticking to my breasts. Yes, that was a dead giveaway that four months really went by. Funny enough there were no split ends. Not-a-single-one. The strands were strong, bright, hydrated, and now, clean. I dried myself using Decompose. Just as an experiment, I tried to Decompose the tip of a single hair. It didn''t happen. The hair was considered a living thing even though technically it wasn''t. Same thing with my skin. I couldn''t exfoliate or clip my fingernails with my power.


    Or the other parts. Let me tell you, these rainforests were in no danger of extinction. Four months without a razor can do that to a girl. Legs too. Call me sasquatch. And I didn''t bring a razor because I wouldn''t spend that long out in the wilderness.


    Somehow I didn''t make it through. I know exactly how lost I am.


    Now, how to shave without a razor? A sharp knife? Wax?


    Hold on. I''m onto something. Wax. That is going to hurt. Like a bitch. I get my scissors and clip the hairs short. Then I get a block of silicon and use my power to spread a layer of silicon around the area, making sure the silicon wraps around the hairs. In the area of influence generated by Decompose, the material has a fluid-like viscosity. I can even make a handle. Now pull!


    ________________________ !!!!!


    The space above is reserved for an interjection of searing pain. Maybe one or two cuss words. Be creative.


    I can''t tell if I''m happy or sad that it worked. I bled for a few seconds before my fast healing took care of the micro-lesions. I''m thankful that it also erases the pain as it heals. But it worked so now I need to finish both armpits, the legs and...


    I''m no longer in the West where girls are required to keep their pubes down. I can leave that unshaved. Theresa isn''t here to harass me. That''s a win. Except I lost by W.O.


    I wrapped myself in a towel and moved back to my room. The video was 80% rendered. Time to put on my battle gear. A pushup bra, granny panties that wouldn''t leave a mark underneath the thin fabric of the cheongsam. I put on light makeup to both save on material and avoid looking over-the-top. Nail polish, red to match the dress. Decompose to dry them, easy now that I know the compounds.


    I didn''t have high heels. Hiking boots? What decade was it again?


    I summoned the bag with left-foot shoes. I took two of the high-heel shoes that fit. Well, Lily James could wear crystal slippers, I doubt anyone would complain about my titanium ones. Using the real shoe in front of me, I shaped a copy made of titanium. Bonus points for unbreakable heels. Then I made the right shoe. I cannibalized two shoes to get the insoles and I was done. Can I add a gold plating trim and finish? Yes, I can.


    I asked Belili to help me tie my hair. Make a bun, leave some strands out for that wow effect. I use the Dremel and make an aluminum hair clip and cover that in gold. Put on my trademark gold choker with matching earrings and bracelets. Slip into the cheongsam, pull all that flesh back in place. Put on my titanium slippers with gold trims. The warranty lasts until the next sunrise or your magic back.


    I felt the world shrink as I stood on the heels. I made them ten centimeters tall. Balance? No problem! I checked my makeup one last time. Spotless. Now, off to knock some socks off!


    I check the video, it is fully rendered and encoded. I copy it to the iPad. Yeah, that will do just fine. I''m as ready as I can be. Before I leave, I put on my leather bracers. Time to see my new chariot.


    If only I could catch on fire too. I mean, I can. But not without burning.


    I go down the stairs, mindful of the high heels. Arwia and Belle are playing with the children. They see me and freeze.


    "What? Is there something wrong with me?" I ask with a smug smile.


    "You look like a princess, Sandra!" Mot shouts and comes to check my outfit.


    The other girls also come to take a closer look at me. I just stood still.


    Belle goes around, checking every single bit of my attire. "Sandra! You really look like a princess! Or a queen! I''ve seen several guests here, but never one looking as good as you!"


    I''m totally making them some jewelry. Later. I had to or I''ll be late. I go through the back door and find the chariot. And Penny, refusing to put on the harness. I reach for the mare.


    "Hey, Penny. I''m riding on that chariot. If you don''t want to pull it, I''m going to use some other horse. Don''t you want to come with me? Would you pull my chariot?" I get her fear of whips through our link. "I''m not going to use a whip on you. Why would I?"


    I couldn''t soothe her. We had to attach another horse. Thankfully the chariot had room for two, someone else can guide the vehicle for me. The best pick would be Huzzi-Ya. The former gladiator has fought on a chariot before. He hasn''t raced with four horses though. I checked the package lying on the chariot. Yes, perfect. Another tick in the checklist.


    "Your orders, milady?" He asked.


    I smiled. "Gather everyone. I have something to say before we depart."


    He went, leaving me with Penny and the other horse. I could sense Penny was anxious. I was too. I patted her neck, caressed her head. Penny wanted to come with me. Maybe I should. I couldn''t ride her with a saddle though. The cheongsam had a slit for the leg that showed almost the entire thigh if I lifted my leg enough, but it still wasn''t enough to ride a horse. Maybe sideways.


    "You want to come, girl? Will you help me?"


    Penny snorted. I could feel her determination in coming. While I had a moment with my horse, the people gathered.


    "Everyone is here, Sandra," Arwia reported.


    I turned around. These were my people. People that chose me and stood together, waiting for my return. They could''ve disbanded, they could''ve even looted the house and gone on their way. They didn''t.


    "I am thankful that you decided to stay on my side and wait for me. This loyalty must be rewarded. When I took you from the caravanserai, from Hama-Tula or Abil-Kisu''s houses, I told you you were no slaves. Some of you are at risk of being harmed by those outside, so I didn''t change your official status, but I have no slave. The children here, are my wards. Once they come of age, they are free to follow their own path. I expect no gratitude but I hope we remain friends.


    "For those that work in this house, wages are expected. I am ashamed to admit I am four months late. Because of greater force, of course. It is hard to send money from the underworld."


    They laughed at my bad joke.


    "Here are your wages, plus a bonus to compensate for tardiness."


    I summoned the bag holding the coin holders and gave them to their recipients. They saw the yellow metal and cheered.


    "Please don''t spend it all in frivolities. Try to plan and save money for an emergency."


    The women from the caravanserai, Kali-Maru and Sere-Naha, were holding each other, crying.


    Nanna came to my side. She was holding a wooden box. "The best way to kill a fool. Make him rich. Here. This is for you. Use it as a bargain item with the Enshi."


    She handed me the box. I kept looking at her, waiting to see if the witch would tell me what was inside. She didn''t.


    The witch snorted, "You can open it. It is a gift, not a trap or anything harmful."


    The box was polished and varnished. It didn''t have any engraving, just a leather hinge. I raised the lid and a soft baby-blue, almost white, light poured out. I opened even more and saw six orbs, shining.


    "This is amazing. What is this?" I asked her.


    "Enchanted water goblin eye. It draws ambient magic to produce light. They shine brighter when next to people with lots of magic. Since you were nearby when I enchanted them, these are fully charged and will last for at least a year."


    I grinned. "This is amazing, Nanna! Can you make more? How many eyes do you have to use?"


    "I was able to extract eighty-two useable eyes. The teeth also. I can only enchant six per day though. These orbs are very valuable, girl. Water goblins are rarely seen on the surface."


    I bit my lower lip and did some math. "How valuable are we talking about?"


    "These six you have there, they should be worth more than one gold mina each. If someone such as Abil-Kisu took them to the capital, he could get four times as much."


    Light is too important. Almost all Humans are helpless without light. A good source of light in this moonless world? Priceless.


    "Arwia, get me a fancy bag that can hold two of these balls. There''s no use in giving him all six. Gifts should be given sparingly and frequently, so one stays always in the receiver''s mind. A large gift will generate unbalanced expectations."


    She snorted and raised an eyebrow at me, "Said the girl that just gave out more than twenty gold shekels."


    "You''re wrong, Nanna!" I raised my voice a bit more than I intended. "Those were not gifts, those were wages. The men expected to be paid. I gave them a bonus for enduring times of hardship, that much is right. But in no way it was a gift."


    She scoffed. "Suit yourself. You and those weird values from another world."


    Arwia returned with a leather bag. "Here, put them in here."


    I placed two orbs in the bag. Some light seeped out through the seam gaps. I checked the box, afraid the other balls would roll around. There were depressions carved on the wood to hold the light balls in place. I wondered since when Nanna had that box but I wouldn''t ask. It looked old.


    "You know that unless you make a show of force," Nanna warned, "he won''t even pause to listen."


    I nodded. "I am well aware that for him I''m just merchandise or some sort of tasty morsel. Heck, for most people around here too. I have my plans. I have contingencies. If he commits to catching me, he''s doomed."


    "I''ll fight to protect you," Huzi-Ya hit his chest.


    "Maybe you should take more guards with you!" Zinwa-Seli, the veteran caravan guard with good night vision suggested.


    "You are mistaken. I''m only taking Huzzi-Ya because Penny doesn''t want to pull the chariot. If I take an army with me, there will be bloodshed. If I go alone, I can try to make sure nobody is killed. And it reminds me of one thing."


    I found him among the guards and spoke my mind with a soft, kind voice.


    "Tiwatura, you have your heart in the right place. Fight to protect. That is exactly what I want. But I am not the one that needs protection. You tried to shield me and you made me lose my footing. If the envoy went for Arwia, she could be dead now. I say this to all of you. You are here to protect Arwia, Belle, Rimush, Mot, Belili, Kiya, Gula, Tullius, every other child and worker of this house. And Nanna too. If she needs protection."


    "I do!" The witch protested.


    "She does. Protect Nanna." Some guards laugh. I clap my hands. "I am strong. Resilient. I can heal from almost any wound. I can fight. I can defend myself. You do not protect me. You protect the things that are important to me. And that includes yourselves. You protect each other. This ground where we live."


    The guards shouted a war cry that felt more like some monsters'' mating call. Maybe it was but I wasn''t too keen on asking.

 Evening 17

    I gave the box with the four lights to Arwia for safekeeping, mounted on the chariot behind Huzzi-Ya, and raised my arm. Dime landed and we departed. As we circled around the villa I gave him instructions.


    "Once we are in the great market, you''ll bring the chariot back. Don''t worry about me. I''ll have Honey Cake and Bloodstone with me."


    The chariot soon was going down the street just as the sun reached the top of the mountains to the west. I hoped I was doing not the right thing, but the choice with the least cust for me and everyone else. I could''ve bombed the Enshi from above if I wanted and he seemed to be aware of that. He took Brandon as a hostage. The situation wasn''t good.


    I needed to stick to my plan. Make my acquisition too expensive. If he dared touch me, the entire city would fight on my side. The judicial system was in shambles with two magistrates out. The court sorcerer suffering from burnout. He was in a precarious situation. He wouldn''t dare lose the trust of the people. I was sure he would attempt to use Brandon against me. That would make him also lose the respect of the army as I knew the soldiers looked forward to Brandon.


    We reached the great market and the last-hour-of-sunlight rush was in full throttle. The chariot entered the square and I straightened my back. With a mental command, Dime shouts his raptorial war cry. I look behind us and Penny is following, faithful. All eyes fall on me and my bashfulness threaten to surface.


    I channel every politician rally video I''ve ever seen and hated. I need to show confidence and power. I keep looking around. There are several groups of people looking at me, but most just take in the novelty and go on with their errands. Everyone here is super busy trying to nail the last trades of the day or getting their groceries. There''s one group of five people that don''t follow the pattern. They are wandering around, ignoring merchants and just getting the lay of the land. Stealing glances at me all the time too. I should take note of them.


    I find Abil-Kisu among a crowd of merchants.


    "Huzzi-Ya, over there. There''s Abil-Kisu."


    "I see him," He moves the chariot next to the merchants and stop.


    Abil-Kisu had seen us from far away, but he didn''t interrupt his conversation to draw attention to me until we come closer. Only when all the other merchants stopped paying attention to gawk at me is that he introduces me. Bero-Mabii and another guy wearing priest robes nod, acknowledging my presence. I hoped that was the priest of Enki.


    "Gentlemen, I believe you know miss Sandra Rinaldi, yes? The one that was thrown into the depths and returned and the person responsible for that devilish sound that took over the town yesterday."


    Well. Given who is Iron Maiden''s mascot, I can''t even rebuke the accusation that heavy metal is hellish.


    "I guess that''s me. I''m sorry if my music disturbed you, I was just celebrating the sunlight after four months fighting monsters in the depths."


    "Four months!" The merchant lord snaps his fingers. "Four months and not a single scratch on her skin."


    I get down from the chariot and take the leather bag and the convex glass disk. Dime jumps and perches on a nearby awning. Penny comes and stays a half pace behind me. I send Dime the mental image of the Enshi and tell him to go around and look for either him or Brandon.


    "To be honest, honorable Abil-Kisu, I was injured. But I''d rather not talk about it. At least not today. I''m expecting someone very important to negotiate a deal. Allow me to explain."


    I look around for a suitable wall. Once I found one, I pointed.


    "Gentlemen, shall we move over there? I''m going to show you something marvelous the likes of which never appeared upon this world."


    "Yes, yes. It will be something that will tear scales out of our eyes, I am sure," Abil-Kisu said, acting as my wingman. "Come, come, all of you."


    The other merchants seemed reluctant, but it was Abil-Kisu we were talking about. I moved next to the wall and took one plastic bag with raw silicon. I had to shape a mount for the lens and the iPad, then measure the...


    Damn, I need to know the focal distance of this lens. Should''ve done that before leaving home, actually.


    I just mount the lens next to the ground and lift a thin wall a few meters in front of the lens. Now, a punctual source at the focus will become parallel beams once through the lens. I took one of the orbs meant for the Enshi and moved it around. Once the light on the silicon became roughly the shape of the lens, I stopped. Then I asked Bero-Mabii to hold the ball in place while I built the support for the iPad and linked both together. The object to be projected had to stay between F and 2F. I left the room because I had to move it back and forth to focus the image.


    Then I stored the ball back in its pouch and formed the rest of the projector casing around the lens. I put the iPad at 1.5F and shifted the size of the legs until I could see a faint outline of the home screen in the wall. I shifted the screen brightness to maximum and set the iPad to display a landscape photo album while I waited for the day to become fully dark.


    "I need it to become dark before I start. But I will project the image of something that happened earlier to me today on that wall," I explained out loud.


    I talked to the merchants and explained what was going on here with the lens. They were also interested in the iPad but I tried to misdirect the talk away from the device. The screen shut off on its own so that''s a plus.


    On the corner of my sight, I saw those five guys watching closely. At the time I didn''t consider it strange, because I was pretty proud of my projector and thought the natural reaction would be to stop and watch. I even made Penny move so they could see it better.


    Yay for situational awareness. Or lack thereof.


    Because the next moment, I ignored them and went to make modifications to the projector. I put the speakers on the top and paired them to the iPad, and put on some ambient music. I had a music folder with Mozart for babies so that''s what played.


    Another torrent of questions regarding the music and I had to reveal to Abil-Kisu they were from my world, just as the songs I played from the hill yesterday. He was greatly interested, saying we could charge bards to come and learn the tunes. I needed to keep the merchants'' interest and the talk soon deviated on how to open an academy. A center of learning that would attract people and businesses from all over the world.


    It finally got dark and I saw no sign of the Enshi. I was expecting guards to slowly filter and mingle with the general population but it didn''t happen. I also had to encase the lights in silicon because they were getting too conspicuous. I stowed them in a corner of the projector, on the inside.


    "Okay. I''m starting the projection. Watch this motion picture." There was no word for video, film, or other related terms.


    The video started with an overview of the city. They were confused at first but someone shouted, "I can see my house!" and then the crowd was entranced. They started conversations but were soon silenced by those that wanted to hear the music. I should''ve made that sequence longer.


    It then played the visit of the envoy. Abil-Kisu recognized him, "That''s Bel-Said. One of the Enshi trusted ambassadors. I see the Enshi is really interested in you," He said then gave me another look over. "And I don''t blame him. You are magnificent, miss Rinaldi."


    I blushed at the compliment but the undertones were too grim.


    As the conversation clearly derailed, I felt bad for overlaying my own voice. I really didn''t give him an opening to explain himself, and now he sounded like a total jerk. One that came short of just kidnapping me in my own house. Then it came to the really tense part. I looked around, and the market had stopped. Everyone was watching.


    Tiwatura''s voice rang from outside the camera angle. "Dagger!" And then it all shook as I went to the ground but I was able to keep Bel-Said mostly in my field of view. It showed him drawing the dagger, then the camera moves to show Arwia dropping the wine and back to him.


    My plea to Tarhun rang loud. I heard some spectators mumbling prayers.


    I should''ve frozen the video there but I was frozen myself. The crowd held their breath and then Bel-Said cut his own throat and fell down on the floor.


    It showed me rushing to do first aid. This part had no voiceover, no music. My desperation was genuine. The first aid, the destruction of his clothes, Nanna''s words regarding the nature of the poison.


    "Treachery!" Someone said.


    "That''s the caravanserai witch!" Another recognized Nanna.


    Then us cauterizing the wound, Kali-Maru stitching the wounds, and my concerns about Arwia''s safety. My hands covered in blood. Bel-Said being gently carried to a guest room in my house and me talking to Huzzi-Ya. It ended with the veteran gladiator''s voice.


    "Don''t worry, mistress. He was a fool to try that but he will survive. I''ve seen wounds like that. He might lose his voice, but you saved the life he tried to take, his own."


    The video ended and froze on the last frame, a mirror in front of his nose with condensation and my voice.


    "The fool is alive. Enshi''s plot failed."


    That last line was added later. That was my narrative. I didn''t skew the events, just the emotions behind them. I felt bad for hiding my disgust and painting the diplomat as a jerk, but I was at war. And I was at the same time the general and the grand prize.


    Abil-Kisu said, "When did that happen? Was it today?" I nodded. "Then it explains why you were so keen on bringing us here. The Enshi cannot go over the rule of the law, isn''t it right, priest Ruto-Ka?"


    Enki''s priest nodded. "That is a grave accusation, but there''s proof. We will have to talk to the Enshi."


    "Treachery. He sent his man to her house to make it look like she murdered a diplomat!" Bero-Mabii inflamed the conversation. "She is Tarhun''s blessed maiden! You saw how her prayer saved that man''s life! She is kind and just. I won''t stand for that!"


    Shouts and mumbles of support from the crowd. I was giddy inside. My plan was working.


    And the key player was just entering the arena. A crier shouted. "Make way for the magnanimous Enshi!"


    He came. (Kita!)


    Penny-Gu whinnied and almost reared. She was skittish around those same five men and I scolded her.


    "Honey Cake, don''t harass the spectators!"


    She backed off. I wanted my crowd so badly that I made an injustice toward the mare.


    The guards were opening a path toward us. I saw the fat guy and Brandon trailing behind and to his right. I opened the projector and stored the devices and the lens, also retrieving the bag with the light balls. Finally, the Enshi came and stopped a few meters from us.


    The crier shouted, "The magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina! Lord of the city and purveyor of prosperity. All kneel."


    I couldn''t kneel with my dress. It would show my leg up to the granny panties. So I bowed a respectful saikeirei.


    "Rise," the fat Enshi said. "Miss Rinaldi, we finally meet. Captain Brandon here told me many tales of your bravery. I wonder why you refused my invitation to a stroll through my gardens and invited me here. Explain?"


    Even his voice sounded greasy to me. Up in the nearest awning, Dime was aiming to pluck his eyes off. I sent him the mental image of standing his ground.


    "I wanted to give the magnanimous Enshi this humble gift. It is a treasure from the depths."


    I extended him the bag but he didn''t pick it up. The crier took it and opened.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Two high-quality light balls. Estimated value, six gold mina."


    I had no idea if that was good or bad. My eyes met Abil-Kisu''s and the merchant nodded with a smile.


    "A rare and marvelous gift, indeed!" Enshi Es-Kina took the bag and removed the enchanted eyes from inside. The light was really pretty and calming it dispelled the darkness of the night but also cast long and sinister shadows behind me. I was entranced with the former and unfortunately ignored the latter. "We are thankful for this gift. However, I must say you murdered my envoy and you are to be sentenced to death."


    I was appalled. "He is not dead, Es-Kina!" Ruto-Ka, the priest of Enki took a step forward. "We were just shown that your man tried to kill himself to incriminate the lady, but he is alive and well."


    "She is a sorceress. She could''ve charmed him into doing that. She is the reason the town lost our court sorcerer. My nephew also fell to the machinations of that witch!" He pointed at me then broke my heart. "Captain Brandon, seize that woman!"


    I heard snickering from behind me. The Enshi''s eyes trailed to the source of the snickering and I looked behind me. The five men. Strangers. Even in this diverse city, they looked and acted like outsiders.


    Both priests tried to shield me. Abil-Kisu was the one to speak.


    "Magnanimous Enshi, I must beseech you to review that judgment. We are not in times of war, are we? This must be overseen by a magistrate. Our code must be respected," There was a veiled threat on the last line of the merchant lord. Abil-Kisu was a cornerstone of the town''s economy, even more after I sold him the assets from the four merchants.


    The crowd also mumbled some support, but they were afraid of the Enshi.


    "She even charmed the priests and the merchants!" One of the five thugs shouted. "Away with her!"


    The Enshi sighed when he heard that. There was a link between them and I felt it was the key to unraveling this situation. Solving this mystery. I didn''t have full information and my actions were limited because of that. Who were these men?


    "What is your purpose, Es-Kina?" I asked him. "Because you are the one plotting, turning friend against friend, raising false accusations and sacrificing your loyal men to frame innocent people!"


    Bad timing. I acted on impulse and as I saw his face become a scowl of anger, I knew I had screwed up. I forgot my first impression. This was not a negotiation between equals. I could never make those men consider me his equal. Because of his station, because of my gender, because of my origins.


    "I am king of this city! All that live here are under my rule. I can let live and kill at my whim."


    I put my hand on my back and called Tarhun''s tablet. I checked the Enshi, he was a believer. The five thugs too. In fact, only a few in the crowd were not. I sent the divine object back to storage and felt my confidence soar.


    "Are you throwing away the code?" Ruto-Ka, the priest of Enki asked.


    "Are you going against Tarhun''s designs? Our great god sent this woman here for a purpose! To stand against her is to stand against Tarhun himself!" Bero-Mabii exulted.


    The crowd''s mood was turning against Es-Kina.


    "Magnanimous and merciful Enshi," I said with a curtsy. "I am sure we can reach an agreement. If you only told me what is troubling you..."


    His gaze shifted from me to my side, straight were these five men were. They were the key, what could I do about them?"


    "There''s no agreement!" He roared.


    "Then I must finish my trial as the code demands. Let''s go to the abyss, send your nephew the magistrate to his part of the trial and wait for his triumphant return one year and a day. Priest Ruto-Ka, would you oversee it?"


    "I will," The priest of Enki answered.


    "Then after the trial is over, I will submit to your wise rule."


    The Enshi was a weak man. Not because he was a man, far from that, but because he was a sheltered existence. I bet he was fed sweet lies his whole life.


    "That... that... a year!" For a moment I saw fear in his eyes. And it was directed at those five men.


    "Brandon, Honey Cake, Bloodstone, everyone! Seize those five men!" I shouted.


    They were not the Enshi''s men. He wouldn''t show fear and deference to his own men, the Enshi was too haughty for that.


    "No!" The Enshi shouted and there was a concern, I might dare say desperation in his voice.


    The five thugs ran, shoving the crowd away from their path. Penny ran after them and trampled two. Dime flew from above, dove and scratched the neck of another with his talons, soaring up as the man started to spray blood.


    I didn''t think it could happen in real life. But it did.


    The other two hesitated and looked behind to see the fate of their friends. What they saw was the chest of a caramel horse bashing them to the ground.


    "Enshi Es-Kina, do you know these foreigners? Who are they? What do they want? What do they have to do with everything else here? Are they threatening you? These foreigners?"


    I blurted my barrage of questions without giving them a second thought. It all made sense now. They had a strong foreigner vibe in the way they seemed to look at everything with appraising eyes like a repo man taking your Playstation away. they were wandering the market without any goods, staring at me, and they had a clear connection to the Enshi.


    A weird theory came to mind. They were spies for a foreign power. One that was threatening Es-Kina.


    "Brandon, they are spies. Capture them!"


    I knew my animals wouldn''t let them escape but I was concerned Dime would kill them. The captain abandoned his post in the Enshi''s escort and ran. The Enshi was furious.


    "Do you still want me to call that mistrial? To save your beloved nephew that reminds you of your dead sister?" I asked him to try and change his attention to other issues. It also linked what was happening with the video I showed the crowd.


    It had the unintended effect of destabilizing the Enshi. I believed his mind was too busy juggling many variables, as his face showed several emotions in a rapid sequence. Then he blurted.


    "No! Why would I care about that betrayer and usurper that was plotting against my life with his merchant friend and the... TREACHEROUS WOMAN. KILL HER!"


    Almost had him. So there is a foreign power threatening the Enshi, the magistrate-nephew, and his merchant friend...


    Hama-Tula, he is the merchant friend. Now that makes a lot of sense. One thing I''d never understood. That tentacle monster had a lot of spikes on his tentacles, but when he went for my leg during the river trial I only felt the suction cups. It was the magistrate-cousin pet. It wasn''t absurd to think he could control his pet the same way I can with Penny and Dime.


    Then his goal wasn''t to kill me in the trial, it was to capture me.


    I felt a wave of disgust. Was everything until now because of me? Because they wanted me that much? Hama-Tula said why he wanted me. He wanted to offer me as a gift to some prince whose name I didn''t remember. It was Mar-something.


    I didn''t have time to sift my memories. The rest of the Enshi honor guard was coming to get me.


    I made my best surprised face, pointed to a street behind the Enshi, and shouted. "Hey, isn''t that His Royal Highness the Prince Mar..."


    The obese Enshi jumped and turned around. "Prince Marduk-Sapik-Ziarat? Here? Impossible!"


    He was afraid. Very afraid of prince who''s-my-bride. Not me, by the way.


    The guards stopped and returned to make a circle around the Enshi, weapons pointed outward.


    I felt dismay coming from Dime. As if someone stole his prey. Probably the prince''s spies, captured by Brandon.


    "Hama-Tula and the Enshi''s nephew were conspiring with Prince Marduk-Sipat-Ziarat!" I stated. "The Prince promised them riches and probably to instate the traitor as the new Enshi once they opened the city gates to him!"


    Whatever saved my cute ass right then would fly out of my mouth.


    "You ruined it all, woman!" The Enshi turned and pointed at me.


    "No. Magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina, you are mistaken," I replied to him. "You almost ruined it all. I can be one''s best friend but also one''s worst enemy. See the loyalty I have with Hama-Tula, Brandon, and the priests here. I befriended a God. Tarhun and I are allies forevermore. Now, I offer you my friendship, my counsel. I have four thousand years of wisdom from my world. My people achieved great deeds, they even soared up among the clouds whenever they wanted. But we also know how to inflict great sorrow and destruction.


    "I offer you my friendship, Es-Kina. I hope the wise Enshi can see the benefits of having me as a friend. I survived the depths and came out without a single scratch on my skin. My offer is truthful and without deceit. I saved your ambassador from his own stupidity. The man is alive and recovering in my guest room. And if you don''t believe me, you can ask Abil-Kisu or Brandon. Be my friend. Be my Ally.


    "I can make this city into the jewel of the world. People will speak of your wisdom and foresight thousands of years to come. Your name will become immortal. This is the moment of truth. Greatness here," I extended my hand. "Or ruin. Choose. Ask for advice if you don''t believe me. The priests are here.


    I went overboard. As I type these words, I cringe inside.


    "I see the respect and awe the people of your city has for you. Were you to walk naked through these streets, mothers would tear their babies'' blankets to make your clothes. Tarhun sent me to your city, of all the cities in this world. Why do you think that was? Those that were conspiring to betray you, who took them down?"


    I stopped because I was distracted by Dime. He was extremely dismayed that the man whose neck he cut didn''t die. Someone must''ve managed to close the wound and stop the blood loss.


    "No. Your words are poison... I can''t trust you or any woman."


    I was about to reply when Abil-Kisu gently held my arm. "Allow me," He whispered to me.


    "Magnanimous Enshi," Abil-Kisu addressed him with respect and his over-the-top flourishes, "I understand your concerns now. During the last few months, you were recruiting and drafting young men into the army, more than the usual amount. I also heard rumors from travelers and caravans that the way southwest is blocked or that a large army passed. That way lies the domains of Prince Marduk. Should we be preparing for war, my liege?"


    Some merchants went white. They are all birds of a feather. When the leader of the flock points his beak north, every other bird will follow. But the way he ended his speech was also very important. It showed determination to stay by the Enshi''s side.


    "It can all be solved if we give him that woman. One woman for the safety of the whole city!" The Enshi replied.


    I stopped to study that man. He was fat and physically unimpressive. A couch potato. This city was a major trading hub, the meeting point of all the caravans from the south going north to the capital and lands beyond across the sea of grass. The plateau I ''spawned'' on. He has obviously no military training, no conditioning, and little self-control. His was a sheltered existence, eating grapes bought with tax money.


    I didn''t have to do anything else, because Abil-Kisu nailed his coffin, "And do you believe he will march forty thousand men for a month, spending wages, supplies, food, to come here and leave with only a woman? The Lady Rinaldi is blessed by Tarhun himself and a very important person, but you can''t sate an army''s hunger for gold with a single woman, can you now?"


    No. No-no-no. There are no sating armies with a single woman, especially not this one. Hard pass.


    Bero-Mabii nodded. "He has to pay his troops even if he gets his prize. Otherwise, he will have a rebellion."


    I felt Penny approaching. I glanced behind and saw Brandon pushing the four spies bound in ropes.


    "Once you give him the woman," Abil-Kisu continued, "You will prove to him that you can be cornered and threatened. He will know you are weak and then he will attack the city. We had a bad harvest and are enduring a severe drought. The city won''t resist a siege."


    The Enshi was scared. His mouth was slightly open as his eyes darted between everyone present. Some merchants went away, packing his things. The rats would flee before the siege closed the way out.


    "And if I don''t give him the woman, he will use the fact to inflame his troops. And then attack anyway."


    "We will fight!" Brandon shouted from a few meters behind me. "The Prince can try to lay siege to our city, but we will make him pay. And Sandra can give us weapons. I am sure she knows of powerful weapons from her world."


    I felt a cold shiver run up my spine. It felt terribly wrong. I shook my head. "I won''t, Brandon." I turned to meet his eyes. "I can''t. I won''t lie to you, I know of several weapons. Terrible weapons. Weapons that can let a soldier kill hundreds of men from a great distance. But I won''t make weapons or reveal their secrets. They are terrible as I said. Not worth the cost. I won''t have that burden on my conscience.


    "If you try to force me to make weapons, I will jump on Honey Cake now and ride to prince MarLame right now. Or jump back into the abyss. I will not reveal the secrets of my world''s weapons."


    I sobbed. It was a hard decision to make. The silly me felt glad for not putting heavy makeup. My eyeliner would be running now. Then I felt Brandon''s hand on my shoulder.


    "Won''t you help?" He asked me. "I know you want to help."


    I took a step forward and rested my head against his tabard, feeling the links of his chainmail underneath.


    "I will help. But not with weapons. Not with tactics to kill with more efficiency. I know what I can do."


    There were ways to defeat an army without killing. Even Sun-Tsu had praised winning without fighting.


    "I know you will. If there''s someone that can defeat an army forty thousand strong without killing, that one is you."


    I hit his chest. "You assume too much!" I pout with my inner Natalie Portman.


    "But you will try," He stated, not asked.


    I gently pulled away so I could see his eyes, "I will try. But the Enshi is footing the bill," I snickered. Turning around and resting my back against his chest, I faced the ruler of the city. "So, do we have a deal? You hand me over tho Prince Loser''sHarem54, I''ll destroy him then come back here and destroy you. You be my friend, I help us survive this thing with the least damage I can."


    "You dare threaten me?" The Enshi roared at me.


    I felt like I was done right then and there. I came, showed my video, spoke my mind, negotiated my freedom, unraveled the conspiracy plot. The Enshi now had a siege panic to handle. Abil-Kisu was right, the town wouldn''t survive a siege. Not without leadership.


    "No. Not at all. Just telling you what is going to happen. You can choose your path. I surely will choose mine. I apologize."


    His scowl shifted. "Arrest her, captain," He told Brandon.


    I felt his hands on my shoulders. I looked up, from where I was it seemed he was conflicted, but who knew? I couldn''t read him.


    "I''m sorry, Sandra," He mumbled as his grip strengthened and pinned me so hard it was painful. In more than one sense.


    Asshole. I heard Nanna cackling right on my ear, telling me how foolish was I to trust him and how much of a traditionalist he was and that I would NEVER be able to either accept him or shape him into the man I wanted. The Brandon I was ''infatuated with'' as Abil-Kisu put was a construct of my mind. He too believed that I was not a person but a breeder or a tool or whatever.


    I was probably rushing to conclusions and not seeing beyond my own shortcomings but I couldn''t. Biased, uninformed, prejudiced. Working on stereotypes. Maybe the Brandon I wanted was there all along and I didn''t see it but I wasn''t a goddess. I was a person with a limited understanding of the world.


    "Sorry my ass," I barked back at him. "A good commander knows when to ignore a stupid order by the sovereign. You know very well the Enshi is not in his right mind and he is dooming himself and this whole city. You know what is the right thing to do but you cowardly excuse yourself from thinking for yourself under that ''orders'' bullshit."


    And in my rage and desperation, I fucked everything up. I used one last card.


    "And you up there, Tarhun!" I challenged the heavens. "What is the thing with this indirect assholery? Don''t you recognize aggression as such just because it isn''t drawing blood? The Enshi is attacking me, unjustly robbing me of my freedom! And if that doesn''t violate our treaty, I have a few things for you here."


    I thought about it when they tossed me in the river for the first time. Why was I being punished by Tarhun worshippers? Maybe because it was a judicial trial but the monster was instructed to capture me, not harm. But the pit? The pit was pure douchebaggery. I should have some sort of diplomatic immunity. But now I noticed. The ones that threw me in the pit didn''t hurt me, the rocks did. Oh, well. If that is the game he wanted to play...


    "They are called the Bible, Quran, Talmud, Vedas, and Sutras! I am not hurting you if I just tell people there''s a lot of other gods and they might be a hundred times cooler than you, am I? They are the ones to chose to listen to religious propaganda that was carefully honed over four thousand years. You wouldn''t mind sharing this world with them, would you?"


    *KRATHOOOM*


    He does mind. Very much.


    I saw the lightning strike in front of me, blinding everyone else. I felt the static and Brandon''s grip tighten on my shoulders. Anyone could guess who it struck.


    The King is dead, long live the nephew.

 Night 17

    While everyone else was recovering from the blinding and deafening deific smite - I was deafened too but I heal super fast - I felt my spirit being lifted from me. It was my favorite curled-beard god. Present not in body but in mind. Our conversation was purely mental and took no time in the real world.


    "Delete the books," Tarhun said, visibly annoyed and worried.


    "I vow to never proselytize other deities," I swore solemnly, "but these books have important facts and information. I won''t ever mention them or let anyone else see them. And they are in a language that does not exist. If I do, our treaty is off and you can smite me."


    I could see he was reluctant to agree. Tarhun went away from Earth and could take only a handful of followers along with his pantheon when he moved. He wouldn''t want the other deities and pantheons sharing the profits from operating a world. I was playing with fire and could very well have ended my second life with that play. But that was not the way his worshippers should be treating me. There was also another issue I had to take care of.


    "Can you talk to your clergy? Can you please tell them I am a friend you invited to live in your world and not some sort of holy maiden or divine envoy?"


    "I might. Otherwise, you''d do more harm than good."


    Not my fault, is it? Better if I change the subject.


    "Say, do you want to tell me what kind of good I can do? Because I don''t think you took me by accident and last time we talked I wasn''t able to think straight."


    "Can''t."


    Can''t. Not don''t want to. My theory that he was bound by some other power seems more valid now.


    "Peace, Tarhun. Just to be sure, do you have any problem with changing the political, social, and legal systems?"


    "No. The people are free to do what they want to."


    "Right. One more thing, who''s the Harbinger?"


    The link was forcefully cut. Not by Tarhun though. I felt myself being slammed against the ground forcefully.


    The smell of burnt flesh was the first thing that assaulted my perceptions. I looked around and saw everyone kneeling. The only ones standing up were both priests, Brandon and me. Bero-Mabii was with his arms open, face transfixed staring at the sky. No light shows through. Ruto-Ka was contrite, head down in prayer. Brandon was frozen.


    Enki Es-Kina was dead. Burnt by the divine smite. I felt terrible. Minutes ago I was reaching out to him offering friendship. Now he''s dead and we have an army at our doorsteps. The city was about to be torn asunder by either the succession or the siege.


    I could hear the prayers and the sound of flickering torches dancing in the night wind. I tapped Brandon''s hand.


    "Are you okay, Brandon?" I asked him.


    No answer. I escaped his grip and his arms went limp by his sides. He was alive, blinking and breathing. But his mind seemed to be far away. Slowly, He raised a finger and pointed at the remains of the Enshi.


    "Tarhun did that." He stated. "At your request."


    "No. He made that because the Enshi violated a covenant. Tarhun and I are allies. I can''t hurt his people, and his people shouldn''t hurt me. Es-Kina did that. He wronged me. And it is not just some mere offense or slander."


    "You told me to stop. Would that make any difference? Was I wrong in following orders?"


    I shook my head. "There is a thinker in my world, he spoke once about this. It goes like this,


    <blockquote>


    "The general who does not advance to seek glory, or does not withdraw to avoid punishment, but cares for only the people''s security and promotes the people''s interests, is the nation''s treasure."


    </blockquote>


    "You should use your own head. The Enshi was acting on fear. Even though he was advised by Abil-Kisu, the priests, and by myself. Was he right? No. His actions would make me miserable and change nothing. We are still going to suffer a siege. Forty thousand. How strong are we?"


    Brandon shook his head. "Six thousand. If we have time to call back the ones stationed in the satellite villages, nine thousand. But it would take days to send messages."


    "How far are they? How long do we have?"


    "At a normal marching pace, they will be upon our walls in a week. Scouts might come to harass us earlier. Then they have to build siege equipment, another month or so. But once they are upon us, there is little we can do. But now, without the Enshi and no clear successor, I don''t know. People will desert. We won''t have much personnel to rely on."


    That much was right. I could see some merchants dismantling their booths and there would probably be a massive exodus to the north toward the capital. People would surely rather risk the grasslands to flee the siege than stay.


    Abil-Kisu recovered and stood up, "Ah... The Enshi!!"


    I wanted to go home more than anything else. Just sleep out the problem and pack up to go away tomorrow. I couldn''t. I was part of the problem and I had a duty to be part of the solution.


    "Abil-Kisu, we need to do something," I told him. "Otherwise the city will be up in flames tomorrow morning."


    "Yes, yes. You are right. The Enshi has no successor, that''s another problem," The merchant said.


    "What about the nephew? The former magistrate?"


    Having that guy become the ruler would be disastrous. Not only for me, surely. He was beholden to Prince Marduk-Raidsalot. He would just open up the city gates.


    He shook his head. "He has fallen from grace. The senior magistrate destitute him and made him a slave of the captain here. No. He can''t raise to the station of Enshi, and he must be sent to his trial."


    He said the last part with a lot of gravitas. Not just seriousness. I understood but did not agree or accept. The nephew inside that hole was the best for everyone as he wouldn''t come back to claim the throne. I didn''t want him to die. I wanted him to suffer, but not die or become a slave.


    I thought seriously about suggesting a change of government. Shift from absolute monarchy to some sort of parliament. I kept my thoughts to myself though. I said I wouldn''t spark a revolution and now it was not the time.


    "What happens then?"


    Ruto-Ka, the priest of Enki, the god of water, knowledge, and crafts answered, "Usually the Lugal would assign another person. But the process will take more time than we have. I''m afraid our best choice is to abandon the city.


    Chaos was brewing in the great market. People were breaking into houses, attacking each other, probably to settle old grudges.


    "I have to mobilize men. This will be a sleepless night," Brandon said. "You there! Stop guarding charred corpses and move!"


    Corpses... I took my hand-crank flashlight and the lantern and turned them both on. The lightning killed some of the Enshi''s aides. I mentally called Penny and Dime.


    "I will head home, honorable Abil-Kisu. I don''t think there''s much to be done now."


    "Yes, you do that. I''ll have my men escort the priests back to their temples, but there will be chaos tomorrow."


    I summoned my phone and showed it to him. "Tomorrow, I''ll send you Bloodstone here with this device. If you talk to it, we can hold a conversation even though we are apart."


    "Yes, let''s."


    I stored everything, pulled the cheongsam up and jumped on Penny bareback. I sent her the image of home and the mare galloped ahead. I turned on the flashlight to see ahead but there was no problem until I reached home.


    Someone shouted from the roof, "It''s Sandra! Open up!"


    I entered and dismounted. My dress had climbed up entirely and I took my time to pull it down. Penny walked on her own to the stables and Dime flew to his perch. After making myself presentable again, I went indoors and removed my high heels. Everyone was awake, huddling in the sitting room.


    "Sandra! What was that thunder?" Arwia asked.


    "That was Tarhun punishing the Enshi. He smote the man. Arwia, lead the children to their room. Rimush, look after everyone else. You become an adult in two months. Take as many cushions and pillows as you want to.


    I waited for the children to file out of the room before giving more orders. Everyone else, we are conveying by the front gate. Send word to all adults. Wake up whoever is sleeping.


    A few minutes later, I had the twelve guards, the five elders and the two young ladies with me.


    I retold them everything that happened. Including my conversation post-lightning with Brandon, Abil-Kisu, and the priests.


    "You are right, the city will wake up in flames tomorrow," Nanna stated, fatalistic. "People will pillage and sack everything they can. You should send word to those smith friends of yours. The first place they will hit is the smithy in search of weapons."


    "What should we do? Should we flee?" I asked them.


    While I had no duty to the city, I knew that going away was the wrong answer. It would mean saying goodbye to everyone. Brandon would die fighting. If only to save him, I''d stop this siege somehow. I wanted someone to tell me it would be okay, that there was a way to avoid chaos and bloodshed.


    "I think we should move. Go away. We leave all this behind and rebuild in another city," Kanu-Kasu suggested. He was a caravan guard and merchant. To him, life on the road wasn''t that bad.


    "We have no provisions for traveling," Belle noticed. "And I doubt we can buy anything tomorrow. It will be chaos as people try to flee north. There will be bandits and raids. The children will be endangered."


    Arwia shouted and covered her mouth, "My siblings. Sandra, my siblings. Please. We need to take them."


    "Whatever you are going to decide, Sandra, we will all be with you," Aristunn declared.


    "I don''t know where your house is, Arwia. And I won''t take you with me."


    "I know where her family lives, Sandra," Zinwa-Seli said. "I escorted lady Arwia there a couple times."


    "Okay. Then you are coming with me."


    Nanna pointed to the south, "But whatever you want to decide, you better do it fast. The fires are already starting."


    I looked and saw. There were orange lights to the south and not a single spot. The vulnerable wattle and daub buildings huddled closely together would spell disaster. I knew what I had to do.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Okay. Here''s what we will do. I am going out to check on the smithy and rescue Arwia''s family. Does anyone else has anyone that needs rescuing?"


    They shook their heads. Arwia was currently supported by Belle and Sere-Naha. She was bawling. "Sandra..."


    Nanna pulled my arm. "You will paint a target around your back if you go with a light, girl. Don''t be crazy."


    "I''ll go in the dark and take a guard with me, is that acceptable?"


    "Your life," She scoffed.


    "Zinwa-Seli, it is time you prove you really have night eyes. I''m going to change into clothes better suited to moving around. You gear up but don''t put on anything that makes noise."


    "He does have night eyes," Nanna replied. "I can see his talent."


    I kissed the witch. "Love you, Nanna. Thanks for your advice. Arwia, teach Zinwa-Seli how to get to your family''s house."


    I went into any room and stored the clothes I was wearing. I needed to go the stealthiest possible. My brown cargo pants, Sports bra, leave the granny panties, sneakers, a black t-shirt, night vision goggles. I also prepared some incendiary phosphorus bombs. Yes, I know. People were burning the town and I was making incendiaries. The world was doomed, right? No.


    My rationale was that I needed something to scare away thugs and looters. We were going to meet them sooner or later. So I took a washed condom and used Decompose to put white phosphorus inside olive oil. Then I added magnesium and aluminum shavings. My last act was to drain the excess oil and tie up the bag. I made eight bombs out of four condoms. I stored the bombs and the rings. They would burn like a flare after it left my hand and the latex disintegrated. The condom would regenerate from the stored ring.


    I went outside and had to wait for Zinwa-Seli. He had to take off his armor. He was wearing a dyed set of tunic and trousers that were dark brown.


    "Let''s go. Aristunn, keep a patrol all night. Everyone is to stay in the villa. We are not departing tomorrow. There will be too much chaos."


    Zinwa-Seli and I left and I lowered the goggles, turning them on. The green image of the road appeared and I pointed forward. We moved, avoiding people. There wasn''t a lot of people but the streets weren''t deserted. Some vandals were throwing torches into houses. I could hear screams, sounds of fighting. I had to move. The slums where Arwia''s family lived were extremely vulnerable to fires.


    We ran to the southwest portion of town, exactly the direction where Prince go-besiege-your-mom would come from. We reached the slums and several houses were on fire already. People were making a bucket brigade. We couldn''t stop. there was too much to do.


    Screams, moans of pain. I ignored them. I also ignored the budding feeling of guilt. If it were not for me exposing the Enshi''s plot, the people would have at least a quiet night. Only to be slaughtered, starved, or enslaved by the incoming army.


    It wasn''t my fault. Of that I was sure. I followed Zinwa-Seli as we navigated the maze of the slums. Then it happened. It was bound to happen.


    Some ruffians blocked our path.


    "Hey, hey. What a beauty here. The world is ending, would you like to play with us?" They were way more vulgar than this portrayal.


    One of them had a torch. "Get out of our way or I''ll have to hurt you."


    They didn''t. I heard a woman scream. That triggered me and I threw one of my incendiary pellets at them. The condom dissolved moments after it left my hand, but it didn''t burn. The pellet hit the guy and smeared his clothes with olive oil. Then gravity took hold and it fell down, drying the oil and exposing the phosphorus. Then the whole thing caught on fire, sending a shower of harmless sparks everywhere. The ruffian screamed and ran, hitting his friend and making him drop the torch.


    "Zinwa-Seli, move past them. Go."


    I went forward and kicked the shin of the only guy still standing. Zinwa-Seli threatened with a knife and he relented. We moved past them, the third guy too worried about his friends to give pursuit.


    We went past people running away, kicked the head of a guy raping a woman. It was a terrible night. Then we reached the general area of Arwia''s home and I saw a girl that looked exactly like Arwia in a bucket brigade. They all had their ankles tied to a rope.


    "Hey, you!" I called out the girl as I approached. "Are you Arwia''s sister?"


    "I am Zuska, milady Sandra," She replied politely after passing another bucket down the line. "What brings you here."


    "I came to take you and your family with me. Where are your siblings?"


    "Hey!" A strong man holding a torch shouted. "Stop talking and work or I''ll give you ten leashes."


    "Are you a slave?" I asked, shocked.


    Zuska nodded. She didn''t open her mouth though.


    "Hey, you. Woman. Stop disturbing my slaves!" The man roared.


    I waited for the next bucket to pass and crossed the line. "That girl, Zuska. How much did you pay for her?"


    "Five silver mina," The man boasted as if it was a good business. I should know, being a chartered slave merchant but I didn''t.


    "Do you know where are her siblings? Are all these your slaves?"


    "No. I bought only her," He licked his lips. Disgusting. "Yes, all of them are mine. Gotta keep them busy so they don''t think of escaping."


    "I''m taking her with me. I''ll pay you one gold shekel now."


    "Go away, woman. Before I show you what a real man can do."


    "You are probably deaf," Zinwa-Seli said, appearing behind me without a sound. "We are taking the girl with us. You either take the money or not."


    "Two gold shekels!" He chortled.


    "Four silver mina. When I reach zero, I might release all your slaves. I have a seal of release."


    Zuska didn''t have a brand because she was a temporary debt slave. But several others did.


    "Fuck off, woman!"


    The man swung his torch. I moved inside his reach and sent an uppercut to his jaw. Sagat style. Then he froze. Zinwa-Seli had his dagger poking the skin over his kidneys.


    "You heard the lady. Now, will you take a single silver shekel for the girl and let us go on with our lives or will you just die here today."


    "Don''t" I was about to tell him not to but my eunuch companion winked at me.


    "Okay. One silver mina. please. Don''t kill me."


    "Here," Zinwa-Seli passed him an octagonal and big silver coin. "Now run until I tell you to stop or you take the dagger too as a bonus."


    He took the coin and bolted, his torch fluttering over his head. Zinwa-Seli shuffled a coin pouch I was sure he hadn''t before. There we were. Civil disorders turn us all into thugs. I would talk to him later but now we had a humanitarian mission to do. The slaves were in a state of unrest.


    "Zuska, where are your siblings?"


    "At home. Father was able to sell only me."


    I went over the line and Decomposed the ropes. "All of you that are branded slaves, stay with us. I''m going to carve the release seal. Zuska, come with me. Let''s get your siblings."


    I swore that I''d pay the man if I found him again. The slaves fled, only Zuska stayed behind.


    Zuska pointed in a direction and we moved. "What fire were you fighting?"


    "None," She spoke, clearly tired from overworking. "We were filling buckets in Mauro''s courtyard so he could use if a fire broke out."


    We crossed a few streets and back alleys then reached a house. Zuska beat on the door. "Open up! It is me, Zuska."


    The door opened and a man without trousers showed up. He was wearing a tunic so his modesty was protected but it was ugly.


    "What are you doing here, girl? Did you run away?" He was raising his hand to slap her but Zinwa-Seli threw a dagger at the door.


    "I bought her, mister. And I want to buy the other three children you have. I''ll pay you one gold shekel on all three. Two if you sell me all your five children, permanently."


    They had a wick burning in a table, shedding less light than a candle. I could see the three small children peeking through a curtain leading to the second room of this house.


    "Three," the man answered.


    I summoned my handbag and took the gold. He looked inside and his eyes went wide. I extended the coins to him. "Three and you never again show up. I know your story and I don''t like it. Zuska, call your siblings. We have to go."


    "I don''t want to go!" One of the little boys shouted.


    "Muksu! Come now! This nice lady here is with Arwia. We are going to live with big sis in a huge house!"


    "Go, you brats. I''m tired of taking care of you. I can finally turn my luck around. Pay my debts and then gain my money back," The father said between hiccups.


    I had to abandon the night vision goggles and take the hand-crank flashlight.


    The children ran. None of them had shoes. I summoned the bag of left shoes and found some sneakers that even though they were too big for them, I could tie the laces tight and it was better than going barefoot. The two little kids were eight and seven. Zuska took the younger one on her tired arms and we went back. We had to stop several times and change streets because there was a riot going on.


    I looked at our guard and asked, "Zinwa-Seli, can you go and scout a path for us? The kids can''t walk anymore."


    We huddled in a side alley. A stinky side alley. I used Decompose to clean up the filth but it wasn''t enough. I also raised a bench made of silicon.


    "Let''s introduce ourselves while we wait, okay? That guy is Zinwa-Seli. He is shady but he has a great heart. I''m Sandra Rinaldi and I am from another world. Your turn, Zuska."


    "I''m Zuska, Thirteen years old. I was sold two months ago by our father as a debt slave."


    "I am Ivanika, Eleven. I was sold today... Oh."


    "That''s fine, Ivanika. I just paid your father to stop bothering us. Arwia will explain everything to you. And you, brave young man. Who are you?"


    "I''m Muksu and this is Tuwazi!" Muksu spoke fast.


    "Hey! I am Tuwazi. Let me talk too!"


    I ruffled their heads. "It is fine. Now let''s wait for Zinwa-Seli to return."


    We waited for one hour. The small kids were sleeping on their sisters'' laps and even Zuska and Ivanika were having trouble staying awake. I noticed that all of them were malnourished, and Tuwazi had a serious case of intestinal parasites. The two boys also had some serious rashes, probably fungal. I could treat all that. If there was a city still standing tomorrow.


    Zinwa-Seli returned. "Sandra, the situation is dire. The army blocked the slums, to prevent pillaging. The people here are all trapped and they are letting nobody through. In some cases, blood has been shed. The houses at the edge of the slums are burning and there''s a terrible smoke cloud. We are trapped here. If it were you and me, we could breakthrough, but with four children? Impossible."


    "Do you think we can wait until morning?"


    "I don''t recommend staying here. The fire is spreading and soon everything will be burning. What can we do?"


    I looked up. Dark clouds from the fires were already hiding the stars. Shouts and screams were the background noise.


    "We go down. We are going to dig. I am going to dig a tunnel."


    I went to a dead-end that connected to two houses that were abandoned, their doors open. I used Decompose on the ground to first raise a lip then dig down. I moved the hole three meters deep and created a ladder. Then I expanded into a two-meter cube underneath the hole. The walls were pure silicon. I didn''t gather the other materials, opting to just bury them under the silicon. I made a hook on the far corner and hung the LED lantern there.


    I returned to the surface. "Zinwa-Seli, go down and prepare to get the children."


    We moved the children down and after a few minutes, we were all in the hole. I created a side tunnel leading to the bottom of one house. This way we would have air without revealing our presence. I closed the first access and moved dirt from under the other house to cover the silicon. The fact I couldn''t move compounds with precision was a bother.


    "What are these walls made of? They are so pretty!" Muksu exclaimed.


    "Silence!" Ivanika chided her brother. "We need to keep quiet."


    "Good. Thank you Ivanika. Now I am going to create a hole for us to move. We are going straight home. We are going to walk through a narrow passage. I am going in the front, then Tuwazi, Zuska, Muksu, Ivanika, and Zinwa-Seli." If the person in front of you stops, shout. I''ll say ''halt'' and everyone stops. Okay?"


    I first made a passage large enough for us to stand up. Everyone here was short and slim. Some too slim but I could fix it when our lives weren''t endangered. I set the LED headband on Zinwa-Seli''s head and retrieved the lantern. I would use the hand-crank flashlight.


    But before I went ahead to dig, I had to lower the floor of the box I dug. There was a risk that the house above us would catch on fire. If it happened, debris would fall down the hole. I needed to make room for this debris so they wouldn''t block our way back or our air vent. I lowered the floor by one meter and a half and collected some silicon and other materials this time because it was a bother to compact all this silicon. For every three cubic meters, I would need to dispose of one cubic meter of silicon.


    I needed a boost to return up. If anyone fell down, it would be a bother but there was little I could do. I hope someone doesn''t fall down. Or the house above doesn''t burn. I would try to return and fix it later. The air was okay, there was a lot of oxygen but not enough to become toxic to us. I intended to release any nitrogen I found as we dug to help balance it but there was not much I could do. My method of digging released a lot of oxygen.


    I took my phone and started a stopwatch app. I needed to know how long I spent digging.


    I moved to the front and started digging. The tunnel was not wide enough for me to walk normally so I was advancing sideways. It wasn''t tight but I had to make the smallest tunnel possible. I knew what direction to go thanks to my adventure in the underground.


    Two hours later, we had advanced about six hundred meters. I had no idea if we were out of the slums yet but the children were too tired to continue. About our location, the only thing I knew was that we had little danger of surfacing as the slums were in the lowest part of the city. I expanded a room and took my bedroll and the thermal mat. we stuffed the children inside the thermal mat and I used my clothes as a cushion for me and Zinwa-Seli to sit on.


    "I''ll sit on the ground. I can''t spoil the lady''s clothes," He protested.


    "Nonsense. These clothes repair themselves with my magic power. Don''t sit on the cold ground. Come here, it''s an order."


    He sat by my side. "You can sleep if you want. I''ll call you later."


    I was tired but my body kept fixing itself. I drank some water and passed him the canteen.


    "What you don''t have with you wherever you keep all these things?"


    "Food," I replied right away, "And that sucks."


    "Was this how you survived the depths? By digging tunnels?"


    "Yes, it played a big part in it. I am going to dig the tunnel ahead. You lie down and rest."


    "Okay, you''re the boss."


    I stood up and kept digging the tunnel. After another hour, I had nowhere to put the excess silicon so I went back to the start, dumping almost all the silicon there. The remainder I used to block the passage for people. Another hour, another three hundred-ish meters. We should be out of the slums, but I had no idea where. Anxious to get out and return home with my new wards, I dug up. I exit in some street and close the hole immediately. I hope nobody saw the light. I switch to the night vision and peek out again. Utterly deserted. No fires too. I shut the hole again and return to wake everyone up.


    We exit the street and after a while, we find our bearings. Not far from home. I hide the cap I put on the hole the best I can and we move around the streets carefully, with our rogue scouting ahead and making signals with the flashlight when it is safe.


    After another twenty minutes, we reach our gate. Our neighborhood is all made up of wealthy people and all of them have torches along the walls and guards manning the gates on both sides. Some even had archers. We could walk normally because of the torches. At our gate, Arwia was kneeling. Ananu, Shamash, Huzzi-Ya, and Lipit-Ea were manning the gate, armed to the teeth.


    The girl sees her siblings and runs. I step aside and let them have their tearful reunion.


    "Where is Apparu?" She asks.


    Ivanika answered, "Big brother went out on his own and left home a month ago. I don''t know where he is and he didn''t visit."


    "Inside, everyone. It was a long day and I am exhausted."


    We go inside. Four more children to look after. The town still burns. Tomorrow will be a hard day and I have to be on top of my game. I retreat to my room and fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillows.

 Day 18

    I woke up late. I checked the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the window shutters and it was at least two hours after sunrise. I sat up and remembered what happened yesterday. The envoy, the Enshi and then chaos. The town was falling apart and I picked up four more kids to look after. Awesome.


    I had to act. Too little time. I opened the window and saw smoke. Oh, not only falling apart but also burning up. I need to act. Time to set the LAN up again. I prepare, brush my teeth with ash-tasting water and climb to the roof. I need to talk to Abil-Kisu. I prepare Dime with the smartphone and send the eagle on his way. I guide him to fly over the city and check how extensive was the fire damage. Entire city blocks burned. Not many blocks, but where the fire took hold, all was lost.


    I tried to see the refugee situation. Dime flew over the southern exit and down about ten kilometers. A lot of wagons and people on foot going that way. Then a fly-by and the south-eastern villages, then the east and around to see the northern plateau. To the north, the situation is dire. Thousands of people are moving through the north road. Maybe they can make it, there''s strength in numbers. North-west, I see the rock and then I tell him to fly to the south-west and see if he can find the invading army. Dime rises up hundreds of meters. I can see the mountains and a black stain on the land.


    There they are. The armies of prince xXxScorchUrCountrysidexXx. Forty thousand people is a freaking lot of people. There are at least four thousand horses. Chariots. The supply train has hundreds of wagons. They are building a road as they go. And leaving everything behind them destroyed. For two hundred meters on each side of the path they march on, nothing remained untouched. Tree stumps and trampled dirt.


    Yes, that army reaches our walls, we are done for. I call Dime back. The links are barely holding. Both the magical and the technological. I''m getting artifacts in the video feed. I''ll have to get the phone back to retrieve the full footage.


    Some people fire arrows at Dime but he is too high. I urge him to go higher and come back. I think the one week estimate was right, but a month to build siege weapons? Bullshit. They can storm the walls, ram the gates and there''s little we can do. Dime returns and goes down to weave between the smoke plumes. A lot of our army deserted.


    One thing that impressed me was the size of the city. It is big enough to have some fields inside the walls. The caravanserai, for example, has some annexes at the back where there''s even a gladiatorial arena. There are a lot of satellite villages too. Dozens of them.


    Dime comes, flies over our home and goes to Abil-Kisu''s estate. he lands on a tree. I can see the merchant lord sitting in his Pavillion with a lot of his advisors. One of them whispers in his ear and he stands up to go meet with the bird.


    He approaches the bird perched on a low branch with his hands held forward. "Miss Rinaldi. Are you listening to me?"


    "Yes, I am, honorable Abil-Kisu. I sent Bloodstone surveying the area. I must say, things are dire. I can see thousands filing to leave through the north gate. They will take a long time to cross the grass plateau. They are taking everything they can, even livestock."


    He was surprised but his admirable mental resilience overcame his feelings and he showed a laser-like focus. His words were as if it was a trivial matter. As if he had all under control.


    "They will fall prey either to those that will take everything they have to offer the illusion of protection or to robbery. I imagine a lot of them will convert to larceny along the way. I froze all my assets. I am not sending anything outside the city."


    "To be honest, if I could take everyone with me I''d go too. But I can''t. Some are too stubborn to leave. Abil-Kisu, we need to gather everyone we can. To think together, to see what I saw earlier today from the motion pictures. Where can we find a room that can be darkened enough?"


    "There must be one in the palace. We can hang thick canvas over the windows if need be. Do you want us to convey now?"


    "Yes. I have a proposal for you. Let''s join forces. You have your newborn son, I have a lot of children to protect. Let me move my people into your estate so our guards can work together to keep everyone safe."


    "Are you sure? It will leave your house open to looting."


    "That is not a concern for me. I can secure everything of value in the house, and that is just Hama-Tula''s wine collection. Let''s do it like this. Send your men here to get the wine and I gift it all to you."


    He laughs. "It shall be done. I''ll go to your home with some guards, we join and go together, what do you say."


    "I say let''s not waste time. How are your food stores?"


    "Even with your household... how many people do you have?"


    "Twelve guards, sixteen children, two men and for women. Eleven horses."


    "No problem at all. We will be invaded before I run out of food or feed. I also have a lot of stored water. Enough for more than a couple months."


    "Then it is settled. Let''s get this show on the road!"


    He clapped his hands, waved goodbye at the bird and went back to his men, shouting orders. Dime took off and returned. I packed everything up and went to talk to the people.


    "Attention, everyone. Pack up your things, we are going to stay with Abil-Kisu for added safety."


    I go around the house and the guard barracks, making sure everyone knows what to do. At the pantry, I summon the camping tent and fill it with our provisions. We had food for fourteen days. There is another source of nutrition that might help keep us up for longer. Even though by the time we run out of food we either solved the problem or are marching into doom. I go to the bamboo grove and use Decompose to cut off the stalks of bamboo.


    I won''t be caught without food in storage anymore. There''s that too. I''ll store the cushions of the sitting room too. Stuff my sleeping bag with them.


    "We are going to take the bamboo with us. Load the upper deck of the carriage with as much bamboo as we can."


    Nobody complained. They had very little personal belongings anyway. I go to the gate and meet Abil-Kisu, I ask Belle to guide them to raid the wine cellar. Now the only thing worthy of note in the house is the uranium encased in lead.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Everyone will go on foot. I mount Penny and give them one last piece of advice.


    "Take care, everyone, and remember to be understanding. We are going back home soon, once we deal with the attacking army. Abil-Kisu, let''s go."


    We ride through the streets. Abil-Kisu brought three guards and one advisor with him. We go south until we leave our district then turn east toward the garrison. Two riders detach and go find the other important people for the meeting. It took a couple hours, but all the movers and shakers of the city that didn''t flee gathered at the palace, making the otherwise spacious conference room cramped. There wasn''t even room for enough seats. There were around fifty people in total. I prepared the GoPro on the headband mount to record the whole meeting.


    Putting all these people in the same room was a terrible idea. I sat on a corner while I watched the merchants and craftsmen argue about who should ascend to the throne. There was strong support for the nephew but he was a slave now and wouldn''t be cleared until he completed his trial. Some shot glares at me as if I was responsible for everything that happened.


    I wasn''t. I admit I might''ve been the catalyst, but I didn''t provoke or acted to cause the situation. If anything, I''m a victim here. it also didn''t escape my perception that There were three women in the whole meeting. Me, a crafter, and a merchant. I also didn''t fail to notice that no priests were invited. They excluded the guys entirely.


    The endless discussion was getting heated. People wanted the nephew mostly out of spite because they knew who the nephew would favor. I knew also. Himself. I stood up and walked to the curtains to shut them. Unless they saw reality, they would waste their lives arguing. Everyone was talking but nobody was listening.


    After I shut the first set of curtains, the complaints started.


    "Don''t shut the curtains, woman. We don''t like the dark as you do!" Some merchant snickered.


    I took an enchanted goblin eye from my pocket and went to the middle of the table, balancing it on top of a glass bottle. Then I shut the rest of the curtains while everyone gawked at the luxury light source. After all the curtains were closed, I assembled the projector and played the footage from earlier this morning.


    "This, gentlemen, is the state of the city after the panic caused by the Enshi''s folly."


    "A folly you triggered," a craftsman quipped.


    I knew who was a merchant and who was a craftsman because they were on opposite sides of the room. I didn''t answer and let the footage play. It was the raw footage, without almost no editing. I cut the part that showed my little mountain, which I was going to obtain the claim to as part of the payment for my services.


    "You should pay for that destruction!" Another merchant raised his voice.


    "Yes, it is all your fault, woman!"


    I made sure to get every speaker on the camera. I''d get back at them later if the town stood. They shot more insults at me and then Dime picked up speed going southwest. Prince ScareUrChildren''s army came into view. A huge, forty thousand strong army. Gasps and shouts of indignation. Then the bigots kept spewing their ichor.


    "We should tie up that woman and give her to prince Marduk! He will spare us, the town is already pillaged."


    "Get her!" Some guy moved. I reached for the iPad and sent it to storage as my fingers brushed it. Another guy was trying to snatch the device. The curtains were thrown open and people started veiled conversations. The blurb was getting louder and angrier, but not loud enough to muffle the sound of weapons drawn.


    "Fools!" A guy in chain armor shouted.


    I didn''t pay him much attention because he was right by Brandon''s side and I didn''t want people to think I was stealing glances at the captain. But if I had to guess, he was the general, the commander of the army.


    "If you can''t keep the discussion civil, you have no place in this room," The general roared. His intimidation was the real thing. Even I got goosebumps.


    "Milady Rinaldi," Brandon said, "Please tell us your plan to stop that army."


    "I propose we evacuate toward the forest to the north. We should vacate the town and move away, taking everyone with us. We can use poison on the wells, one special poison that disappears after a month. The prince''s troops will sack an empty city and die of thirst. Then we march back home and retake the city."


    It was total bullshit, of course. But I couldn''t trust the people in this room. How many of them were spies? How many of them would turn and work with the prince for benefits later? Even the nephew they wanted so badly to put in power was already sold out.


    "I approve that plan," Abil-Kisu said. "My men are preparing to depart as we speak. We leave in three days at dawn. Marduk won''t force his army and by the distance we measured, it would take them a week to set camp by our walls."


    The trustworthy people were warned that the evacuation plan was fake beforehand. This would cause the skittish and the betrayers to move, as they would surely try to get this information to prince iTrampleTrees.


    "You are dismissed, miss Rinaldi. Thank you for your inestimable cooperation," The general told me.


    I left. The room behind me flared alive as if millions of brain cells suddenly cried out and died. I was not made for politics. Honestly, I was not made for doing the things I was doing in that world. Sometimes it felt like an out-of-body experience. I was not mindful enough of my actions. Like when I let Zinwa-Seli keep that slaver''s coin pouch.


    My conscience would not let me sit idle. The accusations from both sides of the table hurt me even though I tried to avoid showing that. I did not think I was at a fault, they were the ones that came after me, I hadn''t even seduced them or anything like that. I wish I could just dismiss it as ''men chasing skirts'' but people died. A city went up in flames because of me. Just because I exist and some stupid Prince decided to make me his property.


    I stifle a chuckle when I think what Theresa would say about it. "What? Daaaamn girl. A city went up in flames just because you were too hot? That''s my girl." That innocent remark disregarded the issues that came along with a burning city, like refugees, lost livelihoods, and death.


    I knew that moment that I had to put a stop to it. Even if I had to kill Prince BargainBinGals. You don''t know what you had in you all along until the world goes up in flames. I''m sorry grandpa, I might become a murderer.


    Pushing those thoughts aside, I walked through the palace to the stables where Penny was waiting for me. I had a mission to do and very little time. It was already noon, and the way to my target was perilous and long. I mounted and patted the mare''s neck.


    "We are riding into a dragon''s mouth, Honey Cake," I whispered to her. She snorted.


    Penny wanted to run. So I let her. We ran out of the palace gates and into the mostly abandoned streets. I looked behind and saw no new fires. At least that. I rode east and left through the city gates. Once outside, things started to get complicated. A lot of refugees moved down the road that led to the next village. It was complicated to move and I feared I would only reach the village at night.


    Without much choice, I broke out of the street and had Penny jump over a fence and into someone cabbage fields to the north of the road. Or what was left of it. The field was trampled and cabbage leaves were tossed everywhere. The refugees that departed in the morning must''ve pillaged the field. The waste was astonishing. I could imagine peasants fighting for a head of cabbage. I spurred Penny ahead.


    I moved through the fields and small copses of trees, keeping the road in sight. Once I found a thinning in the crowd, Penny changed directions and crossed the road, moving to the south. From there we jumped from farm to farm until we reached a forested hill that had no claim. When I say forest, I meant something like a rocky savanna but with more trees. The vegetation was dry and yellowed. I could see some sturdy critters more suited to a desert, like geckos sunbathing on rocks. Penny ran without fear, deftly avoiding obstacles.


    Soon we were joined by Dime. Thanks to his aerial surveys, I had a pretty decent map of the region and during the afternoon I rode around the city and towards the marching army.


    Night came and we kept moving, slowly. I had to cross the southern road in a place where no refugees could see us. I used the night vision goggles to scout and after a couple hours, we found a dry patch of road that had nobody around. We crossed and moved for another hour before making camp.


    I removed Penny''s saddle and brushed her. She was tired but happy. Dime perched on a nearby tree and went to sleep quickly. I sat down on a rock and wished I had a mug of coffee. In the pitch-black darkness, there was nothing to see. Not a single dot of light on the land, and only the sea of stars above. If it were not for the lingering smoke from the city fires, the night would be marvelous. I laid down on my bedroll and closed my eyes to sleep.


    I knew my animals would keep me safe.

 Day 19

    I woke up with Dime pecking my cheek. The big orange sun was rising in the east and I had a mission to accomplish. Dime cooed and I scratched his crown, the eagle bending his head and ruffling his feathers. then he flew to rock and cawed to call my attention. Five geckos were laid side-by-side. A couple dozen meters away, Penny was grazing.


    "For me? Aww, you shouldn''t."


    I had all the pantry of my house in the tent but I wouldn''t mind eating fresh meat. I hoped these geckos tasted good. I made utensils out of silicon from the rocks around me. Then I drained the blood, Decomposed the skin, removed the entrails, and cut the meat off the bones. It wasn''t a nice job but it would do. I gave Dime the entrails in a bowl and the eagle gladly wolfed everything down. I made a campfire with a sheet of iron as a grill and placed the meat over the metal.


    From the bowl of blood, I used my power to remove all the water. I processed the leftovers and stored the elements in their respective containers. I tried to remove things like protein, nucleotides, amino-acids, but failed. I just hadn''t enough finesse to Decompose these complex compounds. While I worked, the meat sizzled and I flipped it with my survival knife.


    I took a twig in my hand and focused Decompose with the image of glucose. Soon the twig melted into a syrup with debris mixed in. I poured the syrup into a cup and used Decompose to filter out the hydrated glucose. I offered it to Penny and the mare gleefully licked the bowl clean. I removed the meat from the iron slab and ate my breakfast of gamey grilled gecko and sweetened water.


    I broke camp, buried the remains, retrieved my iron, and saddled Penny. It would be another day on the road if I were following a road. No. I was riding to my doom. A grim warrior traveling alone with her pets in search of redemption. Was I guilty of anything? I surely felt so even though I couldn''t pinpoint my sins. I just felt the burden of being the catalyst of all that chaos. I looked to the north, a few smoke plumes rose from the city. And that smoke didn''t come from chimneys or forges. It was too wide, too chaotic. To the southwest, I tried but I couldn''t see any dust cloud. In my imagination, an army that big should make a big dust cloud.


    I was riding toward forty thousand soldiers. And my plan was to sabotage them in some manner. Maybe steal their supplies. Destroy their water. That much people must drink a lot of water, especially when carrying war gear in this heat. Since we had sunlight, I tied the solar charger to the back of the saddle and hung the battery from one of the saddlebags. I had to charge my devices. Especially the night vision goggles. They would be crucial to my infiltration.


    The morning went by without any greater problem. There were no farms in this region and no human presence either. It had a semi-arid microclimate and no water bodies nearby. It was a stark contrast with the lush green grass of the plateau. I could see the Sky-Lord Aerie, yes, I had just named my small mountain and the mountains. No sign of any army.


    Noon came and went. I found some fruit that looked like guava and ate it. The fruit was bitter but had a good taste and a thick skin. At least the fruit''s pulp was moist. I kept the prettiest ones for planting. It was mid-afternoon when Dime became alarmed. I took my binoculars and saw a group of four riders moving a kilometer or two ahead. They had spears and bows and were obviously part of the army.


    I had Dime land on my bracer and guided Penny to hide behind some trees and kept watching them. They were moving back and forth, scanning the terrain. There was a great chance they would come my way. I didn''t think I could evade them if I ran away. But maybe I could hide underneath the earth. Decompose away.


    I timed my digging speed yesterday. I could dig three hundred meters of a man-sized tunnel in an hour. Penny was wider than me but she was not a big horse. In fact, the horses we had were not too tall. The huge horses we had in our modern time were horses bred for size with modern techniques. Penny wasn''t taller than me. I quickly dug what could be seen as a cave entrance facing away from where the scouts were scanning the terrain and hid inside. I kept digging and pressing the silicon to the walls and roof, leaving a floor of naked stone. I also made sure that the walls weren''t straight. After ten meters I made a 135o turn and kept going down before doing another turn.


    The tunnel was only a few centimeters taller than me. After my adventure in the depths, I really didn''t mind cramped spaces. Who was having trouble keeping its cool was Dime. Eagles really don''t like caves. I hugged him close to me to make the bird feel safe.


    I stopped when the clopping of horseshoes on stone sounded from outside. After turning off the flashlight, I sent a strong ''keep quiet'' feeling to my animals and waited.


    "Hey, check this out. I think I found a cave."


    "Bara-Mamu, remember to check for animal tracks. A big cat could live in that cave. We''ve seen its tracks already."


    Yeah. Who would imagine those army scouts wouldn''t look for tracks? Not me, that''s who. I fought the urge to facepalm. Fortunately, the terrain was rocky. It would give them a -10 on their proficiency check. If we were playing the 2nd edition.


    "Lieutenant, I found horse tracks!"


    Which we weren''t.


    "Where does it lead, Bara-Mamu?"


    "Down that valley. The tracks are fresh."


    "Hey, Lieutenant, check the walls of this cave. They are made of smooth dark metal."


    "Get away from there, Patutu. That''s a dungeon entrance. Go inside and you die. These things are full of traps and monsters."


    Dungeon... Are dungeons a thing in this world? Or do they call dungeon any kind of ruin? Something to ask my wise elders once I return home.


    "Eep."


    "Bara-Mamu, mark the location of this dungeon on the map. The commander might want to send an exploration party. Now, check where that horse went, we need to check on it. It could be a scout for Es-Kina."


    I heard their horses going away. There was little I could do regarding the silicon walls. I just had to do it that way or the tunnel could collapse. I turned on the light again and carefully moved back to the entrance of my dungeon. I peeked outside and saw nothing. Checked around, nothing. Got out, I saw the four riders going to the west, in the direction I was moving before I saw them. They were going slowly, with one of them on foot looking for tracks. I could hear the echo of their voices but not understand what they were saying.


    A silly idea came to mind. Just go to them and demand to see the prince. It was stupid. First, they wouldn''t believe me and would probably try to do to me what soldiers of an invading army do when they find a woman. Second, I would have to surrender. Third, I couldn''t guarantee Dime and Penny''s safety.


    I urged Penny to go south and Dime to fly high in a wide circle. The scouts were going west, I would avoid them. It worked for two hours and I forgot completely about the patrol, obviously, those guys were far, far away. It was an hour before sunset that I learned one thing.


    Armies use more than one scout patrol.


    I was cresting a hill when I met four horsemen, with the same setup as the others I left behind. We stared at each other for a few moments before I waved and smiled at them.


    "Hello, guys. Nice weather for a stroll through the countryside, right?"


    They exchanged glances and then grinned back at me.


    "Yeah, you never know when you will find someone nice," their lieutenant answered. It was easy, he was the only guy with different armor. "What are you doing around these parts, miss?"


    My intention was to keep them talking. I called Dime back. I could try to evade them and outrun this patrol. I could fight but then I would probably kill someone.


    "I''m sorry it''s a secret. If I tell you, I''ll have to kill you."


    Penny turned sideways and bolted. I moved my hand to touch and store the charger and the battery and took a jockey posture on the saddle. I urged her to run as fast as she could. Penny was grinning like an adrenalin junkie.


    Arrows flew before we moved five meters. An arrow hit me on a rib, cracking the bone. Another found purchase on Penny''s thigh. I gripped Penny''s hair and forced he steel and wood out of her by pulling the iron and then carbon toward me. I repeated the same on me and we kept running.


    "Hey! After her!"


    Dime was nearby but I told him to keep his altitude. There was no need to show them I had air support. The sky-lord was still helpful from above. I could sense when one of the scouts was about to shoot an arrow and make Penny zigzag as they were about to shoot to throw their aim off. It wasn''t perfect though. Another arrow hit my shoulder.


    I was dozens of kilograms lighter than a soldier with his gear, Penny shared my healing boon and was at peak physical performance for her breed of horse. Once we were almost a hundred meters ahead of them, I paced Penny to keep the distance the same and started to circle around. One of the scouts broke the chase to climb a hill and blow his war horn. Things were going to get really fun.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    "Hey, I''ll give all my gold to the one that catches me!" I taunted them.


    "Get her!" The lieutenant shouted.


    More war horns rang from the south and the west.


    "I want to go first!" Another scout wished for his early demise.


    I kept goading them and even pulled a Kevin Costner. The fourth rider, the one that blew the horn joined the pack.


    "Split up and circle her!" He shouted. "Reinforcements are on their way!"


    More arrows flew and I moved to block them and protect Penny. Her wound had already closed, only a bloodstain on her fur told the tale of the shot she took. I got hit by two other arrows, in my calf and hand. The one that hit the hand only pierced halfway, chipping the bone and then falling off.


    Penny was displaying uncanny agility. She would move through the rocky terrain as if she was a goat. One of the scouts tried to keep up with her and his horse lodged its leg between two rocks, splintering it and crashing with its rider, pinning the man underneath the animal. The shouts of pain told me that he broke something.


    Another scout stopped to help his friend. I used the opening to move past their encirclement and put myself northeast from them.


    They moved with more caution now. I slowed down to let Penny breathe. Dime warned me of two more groups approaching. We kept our game for another half hour and then more cavalry appeared over some hills.


    "Circle her now. Don''t let her escape!" The lieutenant shouted. "She is unarmed. Get that woman!"


    I looked behind me to the west. Sunset was approaching. It meant darkness. It meant it would be time to strike. The two groups that approached were not scouts. Their horses were bigger, bulkier and the riders had better gear. The real cavalry then. Too bad they would need another cavalry to save them.


    They didn''t give up the chase but stopped wasting arrows. I could see they still had some in their saddle quivers so they might be expecting to use them when I lacked mobility. Sorry. My horse is tireless.


    They had now twelve riders. The one that stayed behind must be taking the wounded back to camp. It isn''t optimal as I wanted no report of me to reach their camp but I can live with that.


    "Hey, are you Prince Marduk''s men?" I shouted at them!


    "Yes, you village wench," One of the heavy riders answered. "If you are good in bed, you might have the honor of servicing him."


    "I heard he''s a eunuch," I replied. "So I won''t serve anyone!"


    Another five minutes. I was moving away from their camp but they didn''t seem so worried about the darkness. Above, Dime saw no more riders coming our way. Good. Only the guy that is retreating with the wounded man. I don''t know what he did to the horse.


    Darkness came and Penny became wary of moving too fast. I had a good advantage so I slowed down and took the flashlight and the night vision goggles. The riders lit torches and kept moving after me. The mountain range to the west helped make it dark faster and I could finally fight back.


    I had to time the night. The worst thing would be for dawn to come and expose me halfway through my infiltration. I took my phone from storage and placed it in my pocket.


    I focused. I wound need to guide Penny with my own sight. Our bond developed greatly but this would be our trial by fire. Yeah, they didn''t try to burn me yet. I turned the flashlight off and stopped. I could hear the riders carefully moving. Nobody wanted to break a leg. I turned on the goggles and slowly moved Penny around. She could heal. Let''s go.


    Not all riders had torches. They were alternating.


    "Where is she?"


    "Did she vanish?"


    "Don''t be a fool."


    "Silence idiots. I can''t hear her over your babbling!"


    The ones at the edges had torches. I lined Penny up and moved. I leaned forward to see the path ahead and send the mental image to her. We went slowly. Strike and dash.


    "Hey!" The soldier shouted when I entered his torch range. I spurred Penny to gallop. She complied. He waved the torch my way. I reached with my left hand. A green glow appeared in my visor as the torch overwhelmed the sensors. I flipped the goggles up and caught the torch, Decompose on full power away from my hand to push the carbon away. The torch crumbled and I leaned my burnt hand to strike the saddle. Carbon off. The leather snapped and I slammed the horse''s romp at the same time I made Dime do his loudest call from above.


    I could sense Penny''s fear and she knew it was Dime. The man''s horse ran off into the darkness and the saddle snapped. Penny also dashed away and the soldier fell on his back unceremoniously. I turned on the flashlight so Penny could see ahead and we moved as fast as we could.


    "Shit! She got Karamas!"


    "Ambush! It''s an ambush!" Form up a circle!"


    So much for taking them one by one. I still had my tricks. Half a dozen arrows flew my way, guided by the flashlight. I turned it off and banked hard to the right. Night vision again. The soldiers gathered their horses in a circle, romp to romp and Karamas was limping toward the circle. His horse was coming back.


    Smart beasts. Loyal too. Penny whinnied in agreement. An arrow flew from a skittish archer.


    "Run back to the camp and call for reinforcements. We might be surrounded. They are using bird calls to communicate. It is an ambush!"


    Two riders with torches broke and ran. I let them. That makes it nine.


    "What is the matter, boys? Afraid of the dark?" I taunted them.


    "Show yourself, witch! We do not fear your dark magic!"


    I cackled, imitating Nanna. "We shall see, we shall see..."


    I moved. Two arrows. Missed.


    I could see their faces. They were scared. Damn Andrews. You had money for this baby but couldn''t get us a drone.


    I moved closer to them. Bows were following the sound of Penny''s hooves.


    "Don''t shoot unless you have a clear shot. We are low on arrows."


    "Thanks for the info!"


    Another arrow. I blocked with my hand and yelped in pain. Still better than the body or leg.


    The limping man reached the group and moved past the horses to stay in the middle of their formation. I hope it stinks.


    "I can''t see her!"


    The torches were killing their night vision. Maybe I could help. After my hand healed, I leaned backward, stretched my hand past Penny''s romp and summoned my phone to take a photo of them with the flash. Five arrows flew, Penny trotted forward and I retreated my arm.


    "I''m out of arrows, sir!"


    "Last arrow!"


    "I don''t want to die!"


    They lit up more torches. Now all but two of them had torches.


    "Show yourselves, cowards. We might die today, but we die with honor!"


    My hand healed enough and I summoned one of my incendiary balls. As we tested with the thug, it isn''t enough to kill. But I know it will make them crap themselves. I moved slowly to get them in reach and threw the latex ball in a softball throw. it arched, the latex dissolved and the phosphorus burned once the oil spread, causing that nice spark shower as the fine aluminum and magnesium shavings ignited.


    "Ahh! Fireball!"


    "Sorcery!"


    "Run for your lives!"


    Their formation broke. Of the nine, three horses reared, four dashed ahead, each one with their torches. The last archer stayed in the formation, his horse well-trained.


    "Come back here, you idiots!"


    I sent Penny after one of them. I knew I was at risk of being shot but I could take one arrow. I came from behind, the man screaming and flailing his torch. I entered the light and the arrow flew. It hit my right shoulder. I pushed the arrow out and leaned hard as if I was wounded. Penny paired with the horse and I grabbed the saddle. Decompose and one less horseman. the man fell down with a crunch, the torch rolled a few meters. He wasn''t moving.


    Damn.


    I moved away from the horse and circled to the next rider, that was trying to control his mount. The horse reared and he dropped his torch. An easy mark. I moved next to him, my right arm still useless and his saddle was also gone. He slipped and fell. His horse moved a step forward and kicked him mid-fall. I moved away to the next panicking rider.


    "Damn, you idiots. Fall back! Fall back!"


    I had to go around. I focused on the olive oil and Decomposed it into methane inside the condom balloon. It inflated so I would need to throw it near them. The thing had some buoyancy but not much.


    Oh. I should throw it downwind, of course. I checked the breeze''s direction. I had to circle around them, and it gave them time to regroup. Seven. I entered their torch range and threw the balloon. It flew and dissolved fast enough to allow the phosphorus pellet to move without hitting the membrane. It ignited and burned the methane, creating an ephemeral cloud of fire that reminded a swamp''s will-o''-wisp. And the flare this time flew straight ahead at them.


    Several horses reared. The ones facing away kicked the man in the middle and bolted. One buckled and tried to dislodge his rider that was trying too hard to rein in his mount.


    A torch hit the man next to the bearer and burned him. He punched the torchbearer and a fight between the two broke out. I lifted the night vision, spun around, and charged the archer. He had wide eyes when he saw me with another incendiary. I threw the pellet in his direction and he instinctively shot the phosphorus. The shower of sparks blinded him, but I had invulnerable eyes. I leaned down as Penny ran past him and grabbed his ankle, Decomposing for carbon. I broke his stirrups and part of the saddle. Then I lifted his leg, throwing him off-balance.


    I wasn''t strong enough to lift him enough to throw him off-horse. I looked behind me and I saw I also wrecked his quiver.


    Then I looked ahead and saw a sword swinging at my neck. The lieutenant. I gritted my teeth and focused on Iron. Please work. Please work. Penny started to turn left to put some distance between us.


    The sword splashed before my neck, the tip bending down and away, solidifying after it got away from me. The lieutenant was trying to figure out what happened when I ordered Penny to kick him. She did. One hoof hit the man''s leg, the other the horse near the saddle. The lieutenant''s horse ran out of control and he dropped his torch to control the horse... I moved ahead to get out of his range and turned around to assess the situation.


    There were some torches on the ground and now with no more ranged weapons, I could go into the second stage. This is not my final form, hahaha.


    I commanded Dime to swoop and take the torches away. Or better yet, throw them at the riders.


    "She melted my sword!" The lieutenant shouted.


    "It''s a bloody fire sorceress, what did you expect?"


    "Form up. Don''t go after the horses. She will melt your saddles anyway."


    The men were joining in a group. Dime picked up a torch and quickly tossed it. I was afraid it would burn his feathers but I saw the flames fluttering down and away from him as he moved. Then I remembered Brandon said sky-lords had wind magic.


    The torch flew and struck the men. They screamed and ran but didn''t catch on fire.


    I had enough playing with them. It was time to really freak them out. I moved away from them as Dime kindly returned their torches. I waited for him to return to me, I didn''t want him to be flying for what I was going to do next. I got down, shaped an acoustic dome two meters across, placed the speakers in the middle and fired the loudest I could without distortions. Rossini''s William Tell Overture flooded the valley. The finale only.


    "They are over here! Charge!" I shouted.


    I could see the unrest settling.


    "A huge army approaches!"


    "It is a night attack! They are using the music to keep their troops marching together in darkness!"


    I wish I had some coconuts. Oh, well. The soldiers started to toot their war horns like madmen while the song went on. I could see lights beyond the hills in the distance. It seems I kicked the proverbial hornet''s nest.


    I stored my devices, jumped on my horse, picked up my eagle and fled the scene. The soldiers didn''t stop calling for aid. I stopped and recorded their horn calls. It might be useful later. I could hear the roar of at least a hundred horsemen coming from the east. I moved south.


    It will be a fun night. All I have to do now is to go around their camp and find their supplies. I rode with Dime perched on my bracer for about two hours. There were some picket groups moving on the outskirts, but the roar of horses galloping and men shouting made it easy to slip by for a single rider in pitch darkness.


    I finally crested a hill and saw their camp. It was huge. I didn''t even need the night vision to see. Large bonfires lit up the entire camp. A Pavillion was in the center and next to it several wagons with large barrels, bales of hay, and sacks of grain. Next to the wagons, some game carcasses stretched on frames. Soldiers were strewn around in circular patterns but no tents. To reach the supply train, I would have to move to the heart of their camp.


    Worse yet, the ruckus I caused meant the camp was in high alert.


    Time to Bugs Bunny it.

 Night 19

    WARNING:


    This chapter has strong and/or disturbing images. Cruelty, etc. Reader beware.


    Putting it here because some people go into reader mode and don''t see the pre-chapter message.


    <hr>


    I paused to think. I didn''t check but I think I killed a man back there. He was wearing a helmet so let''s hope he just fell unconscious. But this was it. If I did what I intended to do and take the supply train, I would probably kill people. The caretakers of the supplies should be around, shouldn''t they? I checked with the binoculars for half an hour. I still had at least seven hours of darkness.


    I dug a small cave for Penny and Dime. I couldn''t take them with me. I did my best to camouflage the entrance with hollowed-out rocks. It was easy, I just had to make a hole in the bottom and carve it from the inside. It took another hour but my animals would be safe until I returned and if I didn''t they could get out by knocking out the rocks.


    I needed to make sure I would hit the supplies. I took the measuring tape and triangulated the distance, I estimated the height.


    Then I made a hole. I went inside and moved some hollow rocks over a lattice of silicon. If someone stumbled over it, they couldn''t break it and fall. I made it thick enough, I think. I dug down until the estimated depth. the hole was smooth, with no handholds. Tight too. A large man would be stuck. I turned around to face the right direction by aligning myself with a mark I made at the top of the shaft. Now, forward. I would take one and a half hours to reach the supply train. That left me with five hours to do my stunt.


    I left aluminum markers behind me to reflect the flashlight and show me the distance and also serve to make sure my tunnel went straight. the worst now would be to miss my target. I used the measuring tape to keep track of the distance, keeping the whole thirty meters of plastic tape out. In the first thirty meters, I had a problem. The supplies and pavilion were at the top of a hill, so I hit the low valley between the hills and hit the surface. A lot of debris fell in my tunnel and I shut down my flashlight immediately. I moved next to the opening and got a glimpse of what was around.


    A soldier on patrol looked my way. I quickly shut the hole with silicon from the walls and shifted the roof up to see if more debris would slide to cover the smooth material. I could sense the footsteps approaching. I took lumps of silicon from the ground and walls to reinforce the roof. Then I felt something hitting the spot where the hole opened.


    I changed my strategy. I created a pillar where the hole was. Moving more silicon from the sides and into the pillar. The thumping stopped and my heart was beating like crazy. I had to move. I skirted the pillar and tunneled for a few more meters. Then I checked the straightness of the tunnel. I had a meter of silicon on that section and I hoped it would be enough. I moved forward, nervous.


    I reached the proper distance. If nothing went wrong, I should be underneath the supply wagons. I started to dig up, making a ladder as I went. But I learned my lesson and cut the light before moving. I would poke an arm up at a time first making a hole with a finger''s width, then an arm, and after I sensed more soil above me, opened up the rest of the tunnel. It took another fifteen minutes but my finger finally poked air. I moved it down immediately. Then I looked up. I could see lights and a tarp overhead. And hear voices.


    I think I was underneath the pavilion. I moved up and solidified a platform of silicon thirty centimeters thick with a five-centimeter layer of dirt above it. Then I widened around until I could move. I arched the roof of this small chamber to give better support.


    I heard a woman moaning in pleasure and then it suddenly stopped. A slap and a haughty tenor voice.


    "Get away from here, bitch. I told you to keep it silent but you had to open your mouth!"


    A woman whimpered and some fabric rustled. Then several sets of heavy footsteps.


    "Your Highness!" An authoritarian bass voice shouted. "The scouts returned. They reported a fight with a woman riding bareback in a horse and throwing fireballs at them."


    "Women?" The tenor, probably Prince rapeYourDamsels scoffed. The sound of liquid being poured. "Has Es-Kina gone so mad he is sending women to fight us?"


    "No, sir. They said it was a single woman. Wearing strange clothes. Shrugging arrows as if it were nothing. Melting saddles and swords. Honestly, I think these scouts smoked too many flowers. I recommend execution to shut them up. We can''t let the moral fall anymore."


    "Why? Do you think they are crazy? Do you think they aren''t speaking the truth? Well, general, I do. Because that is exactly what she would do."


    My spine shivered when he dropped the last statement. I took the phone from my pocket and held it next to the hole, recording the audio.


    "Your Highness, with all due respect, you are insane. Stop this quest. Es-Kina is burning. You will conquer a graveyard. Our scouts report great troves of refugees fleeing in all directions. Even south."


    The prince giggled, "And are they letting the refugees go?"


    "No, sir. They killed the men and are bringing the women back. Along with their possessions. The scouts that returned with the report were quite happy."


    "Make sure to share the wealth along. It will help with those moral issues."


    More liquids pouring. A burst of laughter from the prince.


    "But the majority should''ve fled north, through the sea of grass. I don''t think the city will mount any resistance."


    "I don''t care about the city. I need her. General, general. Wipe that scowl off. You have no idea, do you?"


    "I think you have enough women already, your Highness. With all due respect," The general said mockingly.


    Prince MockUrMomma34 scoffed and had a fit of laughter. His chortling and snorting were disgusting. It was as if he was insane.


    "That woman is blessed by Tarhun. She is the most powerful ever. She has the power to become a second Harbinger, general! Can you imagine that? No, you cant!"


    He broke into another fit of mirth. When he paused, the general spoke. "The Harbinger is a myth. Some old widow''s tale."


    The prince scoffed. "Hah! If the high priest of Nergal heard you now, he would have you beheaded for blasphemy. The Harbinger is real, he''s the champion of Nergal. You have seen the snow, haven''t you?"


    "Yes, I was there when the snow engulfed En-Shalla. I saw it devour and kill the city in one hour. I fled for my life."


    "The snow is the Harbinger magnum opus! His greatest achievement! And that woman, she is at least as powerful as he! The champion of Tarhun prophetized a century ago. She is here and she will be mine!"This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    The light coming in from the hole shut, some dust fell in. Then it lit again. Someone walked over it.


    "Your father will kill you if you don''t show results. You will become the Enshi of a ghost town, all for a woman?"


    "A woman that can defeat this whole army if she wants to! I bet that fireball-tossing woman the scouts encountered is her! She is coming straight to me! I can feel it!"


    Another round of disgusting chortling.


    "How can your Highness be so sure of it?"


    "The high priest of Nergal prophetized it. Nergal himself whispered to him, the secrets of that woman. That she would surface in Es-Kina! Then I hired a merchant and a magistrate from Es-Kina to catch her for me. Do you know what happened?"


    "They failed, or we wouldn''t be here. Marching through the wasteland with forty thousand men. Do you have any idea how much this adventure cost your father?"


    A slap then the sound of glass breaking. "She can burn the world! I will conquer everything and become the supreme emperor with her by my side!"


    "And what about the treasure chest you sent with a fast wagon northeast?"


    "An olive branch. I bought their Enshi. I told him I wouldn''t attack if he gave me the woman."


    "You gave our gold and jewels to the enemy? I hope you were planning on getting it back!" The general roared.


    "Maybe?" The prince replied, full of sarcasm. "But honestly, If I had the woman, I wouldn''t mind making good on my promise and leaving him alone. I would rule the world with her anyway," He spoke with a slurry voice.


    "Your Highness, you are out of your mind. Cease this madness. Let''s loot this city, capture some slaves to pay for the troops'' wages and return home."


    Another slap. "General, you have your orders. You either fulfill them, or I will need to promote another general. Friend of my father or not. But I grow tired of you. Begone! And all of you, bitches. Go away and leave me alone."


    I heard women mumbling and the shuffling of clothes. The general''s heavy footsteps went away too. Soon all I could hear was the prince pouring more beverage for himself.


    I was clenching my jaw to not titter from fright. Who was Nergal? Some enemy of Tarhun? Maybe that dark god that tempted me? And he gave this prince my entire rap-sheet? Damn, this is bad. Bad. Terrible. I moved to shut the hole and then shift silicon from below to reinforce the roof. If I was underneath the pavilion, I needed to go east to reach the supply train.


    Now more than never I had to finish them. But I wasn''t that powerful as he depicted me. I couldn''t destroy half the world. What was he talking about? My powers were nice and I was glad I had them, but I couldn''t defeat an army forty thousand strong.


    I sat at the bottom of the chamber. I needed to think but my mind ran back to the conversation and the terror of that prince. He was worse than I thought. I fought to not cry. I trembled even though it wasn''t cold.


    I knew I would kill that man if I was ever anywhere near him. Alfred Nobel forgive me, I would use everything I had to take him down. The disgust, the hatred, the terror, the way my skin was clammy with cold sweat just from imagining him touching me.


    No.


    It was the ''would you kill baby Hitler'' dilemma. Would you murder to prevent a greater evil? And if I knew that by destroying the supply train I would kill people, why not just go for the head. I would kill the guards stationed by the supplies, civilians sleeping next to the wagons, cooks. Assuming they were next to the supplies, and I couldn''t think of a reason they wouldn''t be.


    The general wanted to turn the army around. I could solve everything by killing the prince. Everything. I would have my life back. I would be a murderer in cold blood.


    Regicide.


    All the other deaths were not on me. Maybe manslaughter, but I didn''t murder them. This was different. This was war. I closed my eyes and the faces of the people waiting for me back home flashed in front of me.


    I was just an undergrad college student that liked pretty rocks and trees and animals. Why did I have to do this? Why me?


    It was so unfair.


    My life would never be the same after this night.


    I should''ve evacuated.


    They killed the refugees.


    I could kill them. They were monsters. Rapists. Pillagers. Barbarians.


    Rationalize however you want, Sandra. They are people.


    Es-Kina burned. He was the mastermind behind every single crap that was thrown my way. The river, the abyss.


    Preemptive self-defense. Strike them before they strike you. Did I have a reasonable cause?


    I wanted to go home. Take tests. Write papers. Live in peace.


    That was it. I''m sorry, grandpa. Your girl is a murderer. Mass murderer.


    I went back to the tunnel to muffle the noise. I took some titanium and made a hollow u-shaped dagger. Sharpened the tip. Filled it with sodium. Barbs to keep it stuck to the flesh. a hand long, thin like my pinky. I wrapped the dagger in a condom, The tip pierced it and I wrapped with another condom''s rubber ring. Then I stretched the first one until I could wrap around and store it. The tip that was cut off was stored separately. It would dissolve once away from my hand and deliver the metallic sodium directly inside the body.


    I reopened the hole, a bit to the side now. Since someone walked over the hole, it was near the middle of the room. I checked, it was darker but there was still light coming in from inside. I widened it enough and put my makeup mirror up.


    I heard the sound of bodies slapping against each other before I saw what was happening. His Highness was at it again. I enlarged the hole enough for me to go through with room to spare. The plan was to go out, murder him, jump down and close it shut before someone could do something. Secrecy be damned.


    I climb out and sneak across the room. Target in sight. I expected ninjas to jump up and grab me. None came. I moved to come from behind, to avoid being seen by the woman. Sorry, sister.


    It was not the time to get cold feet. Kill him. Kill him.


    Wait, how could I be sure this man was the prince?


    Damn.


    I needed to think, but the slapping of bodies kept distracting me. How would I recognize a prince''s body? Well-groomed. Without scars. He wore nice shoes so his feet had no calluses. I took the time to study the man''s body.


    He moved his arm and I saw a slave mark. No.


    It was a trap. I almost murdered the wrong person. I turned around to go back to my hole and then I saw him.


    The tenor voice from before spoke to me.


    ¤³¤ó¤Ë¤Á¹â¤Á¤ã¤ó¡¹(Konnichiwa, Hikari-chan).


    He said that in phonetically perfect Japanese. I froze. He laughed. I trembled.


    "What does that phrase is supposed to mean? The high priest of Nergal taught it to me saying it was a spell to paralyze you. I see it worked. You are here, exactly when he told me you would." He embraced me. "My dear, I''m so glad you came to me! Saved me the trouble of going after you. I''m sorry for the deception with the slave. He told me you would try to murder me, so I had to take precautions.


    "Soon, my dear, it will be you and me in that bed!"


    He sniffed my cheek. Kissed my neck. I embraced him. I fought my disgust and spoke with the best sultry voice I could muster.


    "Oh, you jest, your Highness," I told him. "I am not paralyzed, just in too much awe at seeing your beautiful face. Feeling your Royal hands caress me."


    "YES! YES! YES! YES! This! Mine, finally! The world will be ours, my queen! My empress!"


    I could tell how happy he was underneath his silk tunic. I summoned the condom-wrapped dagger to my hand behind his back.


    Without allowing me to have second thoughts, I stabbed him over the kidney.


    "Guh!" The prince gasped in pain. He didn''t scream.


    I moved, grabbed his arm and used a kaiten-nage throw to move him over me. I released the titanium dagger and the hissing and smoking started.


    I jumped down my hole as the coupling slaves screamed and the last thing I saw was the dagger stuck on his back burst into flames. I heard shouts and people running around. I moved the silicon to shut the hole. A sword came down, sliced my cheek, and I trapped it in the silicon. More. More. Shut this thing. One meter was too little. More. Two meters.


    The supplies. My hands were bloody. I dug. I dug. I had no idea where.


    I killed a man. I killed with a heinous and cruel method. But I had to be sure. There''s no kill like overkill. Damn.


    He touched me.


    It was self-defense.


    It was murder.


    It was a war.


    It sucked.


    There were so many people moving I could feel the thumping. I think this is enough. Dig up. Up. Open a hole. Look in the mirror. I was underneath a wagon. Large barrels. Damp barrels. Water. I crawled under the wagon, touched the barrel. I could feel. It was indeed a drinking water barrel. I used Decompose. Hydrolysis. Oxygen and Hydrogen. A lot of soldiers were running around. Torches everywhere.


    "They killed the Prince!"


    "Who?"


    "A woman!"


    "The fire sorceress!"


    "She''s here! Where?"


    "Search everywhere!"


    "Someone bring a pickaxe! She fled underground!"


    "This thing is too hard! My dagger bent!"


    Hydrolysis. The barrel started to hiss. Faster. More power. My head spun.


    More hissing. Someone noticed.


    "What is happening here? Is this barrel boiling?"


    I moved back to my hole. I left my head and an arm out. I readied a lot of silicon to move fast.


    "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"


    I toss an incendiary at the barrel and jump down, closing the silicon behind me and doing in desperation what one should never do. I dug straight down. The silicon would be removed from underneath my feet and pushed up around my body and closing in above me. A lot of air was trapped in the silicon above but I didn''t care. All I needed to do was put the most material above me before...


    *KA-THOOOM*


    The tunnel collapsed over me. I focused on keeping the material from crushing myself. It still hit me like a sledgehammer.

 Day 20

    I wasn''t in an enviable position. I had no idea even in what position I was in. Or which way was up. I only knew that I could count in a hand''s fingers the number of days I hadn''t either bled or seen others bleeding or dying. Today was not one of them.


    The explosion didn''t claim my consciousness. The fact I was exerting my power to move silicon all around myself made it work as a superfluid and distribute all the energy evenly among the whole manipulated area, greatly softening the impact. Not the most accurate metaphor, let me try again. In the range of Decompose, the chemical-kinesis the silicon absorbed the brunt of the impact because my power would counter any attempt to move the silicon under my influence in a direction I did not want it to go. Or it behaved like a non-newtonian fluid and hardened entirely, moving the silicon and me as a single unit.


    The theoretical part needs polishing, but the fact was, I survived the blast with just the shockwave passing through me and shaking everything inside me. My nose and ears bled and I got some minor internal damage in some other... delicate membranes, but it healed fast enough to be considered minor wounds.


    The biggest damage was to my tunnel. It collapsed entirely. I dug around trying to find it but I could only find broken silicon plates where the walls formerly stood. With no way out except up and a dangerous buildup of oxygen pressure, I dug back up. My ears were ringing and I needed to surface. I didn''t know what to expect but what greeted me was appalling.


    I had no idea how much gas I made inside that barrel, but it was a lot. The amount of energy I spent was similar to destroying several undead and the water did not resist my power. The destruction was easier to measure. The explosion destroyed the entire supply train, the prince''s tent and almost everything in way more than a fifty-meter radius. It also showered debris and splinters further away by several times.


    I had only my head outside. Smoking debris and unidentifiable burnt things were spread everywhere. The sky to the east was already dyed a pale orange-blue and a huge smoke cloud loomed above. I could hear screams and moans of pain all around me.


    I threw up all the bile and blood in my stomach.


    "Oh, God, what have I done," I mumbled between heaving gasps of terror.


    I wanted to run away. I wanted to ignore the proportions of my sin. I closed my eyes and screamed.


    "Over here! There''s a survivor here!"


    Some soldiers were rummaging through the burning debris, searching for survivors and loot.


    "It is a woman," He said.


    "To scream that loud, she must be healthy. How did she survive so close to the center?" Another soldier asked.


    "Hey, Buza, do you think it is the fire witch?" A third one said in jest.


    I was barely registering what they were saying.


    "Get-get away from me!" I shouted. "Or you''ll die too."


    A soldier came close to my head. He looked at me and said, "Get out of that hole, woman."


    "Go away!" I replied.


    He crouched and tried to dig around me. I was encased in silicon. He jumped back and put some distance between us.


    "Damn! It is the same magical metal-rock they found in that dungeon."


    "That''s the witch, I tell you!"


    "Is there a bounty on her head?"


    "Let''s get her!"


    I looked around, dazed, dismayed, and disarrayed. I wanted to go home. I wanted to cry but there were no tears. Just shock.


    The three soldiers came back, weapons in hand.


    "If she melts your weapon, that''s the witch. If you die, Buza, it was good meeting you."


    "Buzz off, loser," Buza answered.


    He approached. Buza tried to poke me with his sword. I Decomposed it, violently pushing the iron away. Half of his sword flowed backward as if it was water splashing on a hard surface from a considerable height. And in that shape, it remained. Buza jumped back and threw the sword away from him. It clattered against the charred ground and debris.


    "Damn, it is the witch. I told you, Buza." The jokester quipped.


    "Get away from her! Run!" The third one fled.


    Buza and the jokester weren''t too far away. Then ran downhill.


    I looked around and saw the hill where I left Penny and Dime. It was easy, I could sense their unrest inside the cave. I removed myself from the hole I was in and stood up in the middle of the devastation.


    I walked towards my pets, amidst the rising plumes of smoke and the broken and charred remains of whatever the debris was before I ruined everything. Some soldiers that were busy looting the dead and the dying stopped to look at me.


    "That''s the fire witch!" One soldier shouted.


    "That''s Es-Kina''s witch!" Another added.


    "Get away from her if you value your life!" A third said.


    They were shaken. Broken. Disbanded. I knew because I, too, was shaken and broken. I glanced down at the body of a soldier I murdered. Young. Younger than me, the boy-man''s corpse looked like.


    "I''m sorry," I told the corpse.


    I walked. The soldiers parted away.


    "Let''s mug her!" Someone suggested.


    "Fool, you''ll die! Can''t you see? The blood on her is not hers. She walked out of that explosion unscathed. You''ll doom us all!"


    "Yeah, don''t meddle with a sorceress of her power. Come, let''s find more of the prince''s gold. That''s one woman!"


    "Right, with the gold we got we can buy a lot of women. I don''t want to die because I messed with the wrong one!"


    I kept walking. I couldn''t even feel disgusted for the soldiers, looting their dying comrades. I had none to spare, all of it directed inwards.


    I descended and climbed the hill. I found the entrance to the hole I carved more than a kilometer away from the explosion, the hollow rocks knocked aside by the shockwave. Dime flew and crashed on me. I hugged the bird. Penny clopped and nuzzled me.


    "Let''s go home," I mumbled.


    We moved outside. Some curious soldiers were watching from a safe distance. They didn''t have weapons.


    I mounted. Dime took off and soared over them, causing the soldiers to flinch. I stared at them.


    "Get anywhere close to Es-Kina," I shouted with anger and pointed at the destruction, "And this will look like heaven to you. Run back home. Your prince is dead. If you go northeast, you''ll find how easy it is to join him."This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Penny took that as her cue to gallop away. Northeast. Homebound.


    I got out of their encirclement, the soldiers moving away. They were broken. Leaderless. Shaken. Superstitious. Afraid. The old me would be afraid of this new me as well. Penny didn''t care. She knew the way home.


    She ran. Dime flew overhead, harassing the few soldiers that mounted a token attempt at chasing me.


    Part of me wanted to be caught and punished by what I''d done.


    Part of me wanted to go back to Es-Kina, to cry on Nanna''s lap.


    Those were small parts. I wanted to go home. Back to Earth where I wasn''t a mass murderer and a terrorist.


    Penny galloped. The countryside flew around me. The sun rose and walked over the sky. I couldn''t shake the blood off of me. Noon came and Penny stopped by a small stream. I dismounted and went into the water. I stored all my clothes and tried to wash the blood off of me. While I could remove the grime sticking to my body, the blood in my hands and soul was indelible.


    I gazed up at the sky. The gods, in their high throne, didn''t answer my silent pleas for deliverance.


    I walked out of the stream. I found a large rock and sat on it, naked. I wanted to cry but there were no tears. Penny went off to graze her lunch. Dime came and put a rabbit next to me. I wasn''t hungry. He nudged the rabbit my way. I picked him up and scratched the crown of his head. He jumped back and ripped open the rabbit''s belly. He took the bowels out and skipped next to me, pulling it my way.


    "I''m not hungry, Bloodstone. You can eat it."


    The eagle tilted its head. Then he did the avian version of shrugging and started to eat the rabbit.


    I stood up and stretched. I was already dry and warm. The dry weather and sunlight took care of that. I dressed up. Yoga pants and the spaghetti dress over a tank top. I tied my hair in a ponytail and put on my sneakers. Can''t go back to civilization naked.


    I took a horse brush, removed Penny''s saddle, and gave the mare a good brushing. I would be lost if it weren''t for those two. The city would be lost if it weren''t for these two. Two tears rolled down. I wouldn''t be a mass murderer too.


    But is a tragedy a good tradeoff to avoid a larger one?


    I should''ve fled. But I couldn''t leave everyone behind.


    Instead, I became an assassin. A murderer. Mass murderer.


    I would go insane if I stayed there. I replaced the saddle and mounted. Penny snorted and broke into a canter. She was once more on the way home. I felt hunger but it was just a small drop on a pond. I knew that if I ate anything I would throw up.


    Penny rode. The sun went on its descent. The rocky savanna gave way to farms. Penny jumped over fences, skirted around fields. Then she found a road and pushed onward.


    I noticed the city gates almost at the same time my long shadow touched its threshold. There was a squad of guards posted there but I just rode past them. To my left, the slums, half-burnt and half looted in the chaos. Those that had less suffered more. Dime flew overhead, showing the way. Penny followed without any input from me.


    I was a ragdoll strapped to the saddle.


    The streets blurred around me. Soon I was in the wealthy district, going down a familiar road. Penny stopped before the open gates of an abandoned villa. Home. Empty. Dime did a flyby and screeched, urging Penny forward. She followed. Minutes later, I was by Abil-Kisu''s gates. I recognized a familiar face guarding the gate amidst three other unknowns.


    "Sandra! Sandra!" Ananu shouted. The guard that Abil-Kisu let me hire was the perfect bridge between the two houses. "Open the gate! Sandra has returned!"


    His joy was a knife. I cupped my hands over my face and the tears finally came. I leaned to a side and two guards rushed to hold me. I got down on my knees, grabbed the dirt and cried.


    I felt hands taking me off the ground. I saw Aristunn smiling at me and I couldn''t face him. I shifted my sight at the dusk sky. Blood red. I heard the children shouting, calling out my name. I was unworthy of touching them. I was a monster. My chest kept moving without rhythm, rising and falling along with my sobbing.


    "Lady Rinaldi," I heard Abil-Kisu velvety and calm voice, "What happened? Are you hurt?"


    "Not her body," Nanna croaked, "As it heals from any wound that doesn''t kill her. It''s her feelings that are hurt. Tell me, girl. What happened."


    Aristunn put me down and I felt a soft cloth wiping my face. "Nanna! Nanna, I killed him!" I mumbled amidst my bawling. "I... I killed them. I had to. I... my hands... blood."


    Now that I was somewhere safe, somewhere familiar, I couldn''t look at their faces. I felt something warm and soft on both sides. I was sandwiched between Arwia and Belle-Sunu that were crying too.


    "That explosion last night, girl," Nanna said. "Was it your doing? Bah! Of course, it was."


    It only made me feel even worse. The blast was strong enough to be noticed from here. Or it was the light.


    "It is okay, Sandra," Arwia whispered in my ear. "You did that to save us, right? You went out and fought for us. You did the right thing."


    I knew she was trying to soothe me. I knew she was right. I knew that by this world''s standards, what I did was laudable. But I didn''t belong to this world. I grew up in the most peaceful age in my world. Sheltered. Inside a strong and evolved society that saw too much war. Too much death.


    "Come, Sandra," Belle said from the other side. "Come inside and eat something. You are pale and cold. Did you eat anything today? Come. I have a soup for you. Eat and tell us your story. We will share your burden with you."


    I held them and the three of us cried again. I couldn''t accept their words. I needed punishment. I needed someone to chastise me and berate me and tell me how much of a mass-murdering monster I was.


    "Come, come! Take her to the tent," Abil-Kisu suggested. "I''ll have the servants take her food and something to drink."


    I walked when they gently pushed me. I moved like a doll and sat down on a soft cushion. The aroma of a well-seasoned soup wafted and I looked down. I saw the bowl of soup and Belle-Sunu''s hands holding a spoon.


    "Eat," She told me. "Open up. You''ll feel better."


    Her care hurt. I felt terrible for loathing her touch but I was unworthy of such attention. I should be locked up. Judged. Maybe thrown back in that hole.


    "Eat. You need nourishment, Sandra. I know you are hurt, but would you please just open your mouth? You''ll feel better after the first spoon."


    I did. Snorting, sniffling, I opened up my mouth. I wish I could say the soup was scalding and felt like molten iron but no. It was delicious and warm. My body craved more.


    "There, there. Good girl. Now eat more. Here. Don''t worry about making a mess. Eat."


    I cleaned up the bowl. My stomach felt warm, it was a good fuzzy feeling. She gave me a cup of water. It felt like the blood I didn''t notice that had stopped started flowing again.


    She wiped my mouth with a napkin, "Feeling better?" I nodded. "Good."


    I looked around. I saw Nanna and Abil-Kisu sitting across the table.


    I met the witch''s eyes and confessed, "Nanna. I killed him. I... I snuck into his tent, I put a knife on his back. I''m a... an assassin. Then I blew up their supplies. It... they died. I... I killed them."


    "Sandra, look at me," Nanna''s voice sounded wise, ageless, and serious, much different from her usual rasp witch act. "That man worshipped Nergal. He was a bad man. He had more people killed than you ever will. You did the right thing."


    I wanted to believe her so much, yet I couldn''t.


    "Nergal was once a god of the sun in ancient times," Abil-Kisu explained, "but he fell into the underworld. Now he is a god of death, darkness, and evil. Sandra, I know your kind heart can''t accept the fact, but listen to lady Nanna''s wisdom. You did right. You saved our lives and many others."


    I took the napkin from Belle''s hands and blew my nose. I took a deep breath and waited as I gathered my wits.


    "I know. But I wish I could''ve handled it differently. I wish I had found a way to avoid that. I think I need some time alone," I said slowly, measuring my words. "Is everyone okay? The children?"


    "Yes, yes. Such lovely children. It warmed my heart to see them playing around these days," Abil-Kisu cooed. "Now come, yes? I have a room ready for you. Milady Rinaldi, thank you. You saved us all, and if nobody else recognizes it, I will be forever grateful. Go. Rest. Sleep a good night''s sleep and we can talk again tomorrow."


    We stood up. Belle was holding my elbow, giving me support. I was about to cry again when Abil-Kisu warmly held my hand between his. "Tomorrow, sit with me and tell me your tale. I will share your burden."


    "We are here, girl," Nanna said, coming from behind the merchant. "And we will be by your side. Go. Abil-Kisu is right. You should sleep."


    I let Belle lead me inside Abil-Kisu''s villa. It was nicer than Hama-Tula''s. The decoration was sensible, warm. It felt like a real home. Hama-Tula''s villa was posh, ostentatious. At least it was until I ripped everything off and sold it at the market. She led me to a guest room on the second floor. There was a large bed with a flaxen sheet. The fabric wasn''t dyed and it had a nice golden sheen.


    Belle helped me change into my pajamas. The same ones I died in. I felt it was fitting. She tucked me in bed and left, taking the lamp with her. I didn''t feel like sleeping. I just laid there, immobile. My body sobbed on its own every now and then. I didn''t want to think of anything.


    Then the door opened. I looked that way and I saw Brandon. He was holding a candle.


    "Can I come in?" He asked.


    "Yes, please."


    I held my breath. What did he want? Why was he here? My mind was tied up in a knot and I couldn''t think straight. He placed the candlestick on the nightstand and sat on the bed.


    "Hi," He said.


    "Hi. To what I owe the visit?" I asked, afraid of the answer.


    "I heard what happened. How are you?"


    I shook my head. "Hurt," I whimpered.


    He reached out and caressed my hair. I felt I was going to break.


    "Do you need anything?" I shook my head. "Okay. I just came to see you when I got word that you came back. Sleep now. We can talk tomorrow. Sorry for disturbing you."


    He was about to stand up and withdraw his hand when I grabbed his wrist.


    "Stay," I told him. "Please don''t leave me alone." He seemed confused. "Come here. Lie down with me. Stay here tonight."


    Brandon nodded. He went around and got under the sheets. He awkwardly hugged me from behind and I took his hand and placed it over my stomach. I leaned against his chest.


    "Sleep now. I''ll stay here the whole night," He whispered behind me.


    I closed my eyes and felt his warmth. His breath on my nape. My worries melted. I fell asleep instantly.

 Morning 21

    I felt movement and woke up. Startled, I tensed up and held an arm that was trying to pin me down. I started to hyperventilate and was about to get some tool or weapon from my storage when I heard his voice.


    "Sandra, calm down. It is me."


    It was Brandon. He slept next to me. I felt his warmth, his weight pressing down on the straw mattress. He cared. I relaxed my grip, leaned back, pulled the arm over me like a blanket and kissed the back of his hand.


    "I''m sorry. I..."


    He flipped his hand and held my cheek. I leaned on that hand like a pillow.


    "Shh," He soothed. "I know. I''ve seen it many times with new soldiers. The first battle is always worse. Relax. I''ll stay here with you."


    My eyes moistened. I felt very fragile and I needed to stay there, in his arms.


    "I killed them, Brandon," I whimpered, starting to sound like a broken record. "It was terrible."


    "I wasn''t awake when the blast went off, but it woke me up. The sentries stationed at the walls saw the thing and they were afraid. When the report on where the explosion happened came, I was afraid. When you disappeared during the meeting without telling anyone where you were going, I knew it was you. I was afraid you were hurt or dead."


    I shook my head. It made me warm inside to know he was worried about me. "I was buried several meters under the earth. It only shook me a bit."


    He pulled me tight and rested his chin on my head. "When you went into the abyss, I thought you were lost forever. I... I hated it."


    "It''s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you. There''s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do." I sang acapella. He didn''t understand a word, obviously. So I explained the lyrics. It was that or Rick Astley.


    "That''s beautiful," He commented.


    "Did you know," I said, teasing him, "That I almost evacuated with everyone when the Enshi died? I only stayed behind because some blockhead would stay behind and die for the city."


    "Are you talking about me?" He asked. I huffed and headbutted his chin. "Ouch! Okay, okay. I''m sorry."


    "You better be!" I pouted.


    "I have to thank you then. You saved me from fighting a siege."


    "And you can''t forget that," I felt elated and then it was like the arms of the dead dragged me back down to the ground. The guilty returned double because here I was having a good time and these young men were denied their future.." I... Brandon, what did I do?"


    Doubt, guilt, fear, disgust. I could hear the explosion, the smell of the prince''s body burning, the face of the unknown soldier. The burnt and charred debris spread I shivered. Brandon held me tighter.


    "It is okay. Be strong. You did what was right. You protected the town. You protected the children. You fought for the children you cherish so much. And those soldiers, they would attack, pillage, rape and enslave everyone."


    I didn''t want to cry anymore. But it was stronger than me. I twisted in the bed and buried my head in his chest. Someone seeing us might think we were up to no good but there was no mood. I just wanted solace. I just wanted to wake up from this lucid nightmare. Brandon was a gentleman. He held me, caressed my hair. I was almost falling asleep again when someone knocked on the door.


    "Captain, honored Abil-Kisu asked to warn you. The council starts in one hand."


    And the clock rang midnight. Time to turn into a pumpkin.


    "I have to go, Sandra. Stay here and rest. I''ll be back as soon as I can.''


    My wish was to hold him back. But I knew I couldn''t keep him from his duties. Neither me from mine.


    "What is this council?" I asked.


    "The gathering of merchants and craftsmen to decide the fate of the city. You were there, and you have a vote as you own a lot of trade permits."


    I would like nothing better than staying in bed, with him if possible. But I couldn''t stay still. If I hadn''t something to distract me, the terror would catch up. I sat up.


    "I''m going," I declared.


    "No. You stay here and rest," He said with an insincere voice.


    "Okay, what is going on? I seldom hear your voice breaking. You are hiding something!"


    Is this what they call wife instinct? The sixth sense that tells when one''s man is being unfaithful? Not that I suspected Brandon of having a miss...


    Really, me? Wife instinct?


    "The council... they decided..."


    Yes, totally hiding something. Him being unable to lie with a straight face was kind of cute.


    "Only three days and they decided something? That must be a new record!" I said with sarcasm oozing from my words.


    "I know. They decided the city must have an Enshi or the Lugal will just use the opportunity to appoint one of his cronies. Today we will debate who will be the Enshi. There''s... some animosity toward you."


    I kept watching him straighten and ready his clothes. Only then I noticed he hadn''t changed. And my pajamas. Too late.


    "I really don''t care. I have some things to tell this council. And staying here without something to do will drive me crazy."


    He sighed, then gave up. "Come then. You have a right to be there."


    "I''m going to change really fast. Go ahead."


    I checked the clothes I used during the trip, they were ruined. I cut the worst parts, the pieces stained with blood and stored them back so they would self-repair. I changed into the frilly dress I used for Abil-Kisu''s baby shower. Now that I had a set of high heels, they would be perfect. I put on foundation to hide the bags, some eyeliner to give me fierce predatorial eyes, and a deep red lipstick to draw attention to my mouth. I also put on my gold choker, earrings, and bracelets.


    I looked in the mirror and thought it was good enough. Based on the outfits I had that weren''t regenerating or were unfit for the occasion, it was either this or the sailor uniform.


    The other world is not ready for miniskirts and 7/8th socks. And I didn''t have shoes to wear with my high school uniform. And I was too old to pose as a JK.


    I went downstairs and joined Abil-Kisu and Brandon. They were eating breakfast. Yeah... Lipstick and greasy food. Not a great match. But Abil-Kisu settles the deal for me.


    "Come, sit and eat. We have a bit of time, yes?"


    I sit and get my tableware from storage. Breakfast is some soup and bread. I eat it while Abil-Kisu pays great attention to the fork and spoon.


    "I''m going to the council today," I announced to him. "I have some matters I need to settle there. Then I won''t bother them again unless someone comes to bother me."


    Strike when the iron is hot. I had leverage and momentum, I intended to use it. I wanted to secure the rights to the mine and the Aerie. And make sure that the magistrate nephew doesn''t rise to power. He was the last loose end on prince Marduk and Nergal''s schemes. And no, I won''t mock a dead man. I didn''t want to have to throw in in the abyss though. But I would do whatever it took short of that to make sure he paid. I didn''t think one more kill would be just another drop in the bucket and I was thankful for that. Maybe I had justified cause for that.


    I finished my breakfast and went to the carriage that would take us to the palace. Abil-Kisu and Brandon sat on one side, leaving the other one for me.


    "We don''t want to wrinkle your marvelous outfit," The merchant lord said.


    During the trip to the palace, I saw some teams working on the burnt city blocks. Removing debris, filling wagons with dust and ash. Rummaging through the wreckage, probably in search of valuables or bodies. I wanted to help. I could help rebuild the city. Mine was the power of recycling. That was the core of Decompose. I could salvage materials from the wreckage. Reuse it. I could use what little I knew of engineering and materials to make better buildings.


    The silent trip ended as we parked in the palace courtyard. The footman helped me get down and I happily used his help. Those vehicles were not designed with high heels in mind. For a moment I felt like a princess. Getting down from a coach in front of a palace wearing a frilly dress. But all the court intrigue and interests and backstabbing and sycophancy. It would get old soon. And I didn''t want temporal power. Ruling my household of thirty people was good enough. Soon I''d be mining. Soon I''d be rebuilding a town.


    Redeeming myself in front of my own eyes. Proving I was not a monster.


    The visions threaten to come again. I smell smoke. Blood. No. Please no. I am about to lose my footing when Brandon gets my elbow.


    "Thank you," I tell him.


    The way he looks at me tells me he knows what I am going through. "You are strong. Don''t let the ghosts torment you. I''m here, you can rely on me."


    And so I do. I move to his left and get his arm. We move toward the conference room. I can hear the men arguing. The guards manning the door open them for us. It felt like we were entering a ball.


    A dance of words and daggers. Interests and threats. At least they stop mumbling to look at us. Look at me. I scan the room and see that even though my seat is on the merchant''s side, I have more allies on the craftsmen''s side. That was a stupid division.


    And then I saw him. The nephew-formerly-magistrate. Fellow monster tamer. And he seemed to be... balding? Thinner? His was skin taut and dry, with black spots. He scratches himself, clearly irritated.


    "What is this woman (cough) doing here in my council?" He asks with an accusing finger. His voice was croaking and rough.


    I was about to speak when master Samus shouted from the craftsmen''s side. "She is one of the merchant lords. You granted her enough trade permits to give her three seats."


    Yeah, take that. Nice touch. I smiled at him, he nodded back. Aran was by his side. I could see that nice lady that was always well-dressed, and also master goldsmith Lu-Ninurta. I gave each of them a smile. The lady was eyeing my dress as if she was a digital scanner.


    "I could ask what are you doing here, former magistrate. I remember you have an outstanding date with the abyss," I snark back.


    He glares at me and hisses. Or wheezes. Gosh, what is his problem?


    "Captain, take your place. Because you sure took your time to pick up unwelcome people."


    Brandon tried to move but I held him back. "Isn''t he your slave? Why are you obeying him?"


    The sick man slams the table. I am your Enshi! Elected by this council! Have respect, woman, or I''ll--"


    "Get another rigged trial to try and fail at defeating me?" I chortle at him. "Get real, former magistrate. I survived your pet monster, the abyss, and just returned last night from defeating the army the gentlemen gathered here were trembling in fear three days ago."


    Abil-Kisu was behind us and he takes a step sideways to allow everyone to see him. "Since when he was elected the Enshi?"


    "You were late pampering your pretty lady," Nephew answered. "So we held a vote. Get early next time."


    That relinquish-your-name thing was really annoying. And that maneuver was a cheap shot.


    "I would like to challenge that. The council is no longer valid," Abil-Kisu replied, "since miss Rinaldi here destroyed the army two nights ago."


    There were a few nods and some mumbles of agreement coming from frowning faces. The majority kept silent though. With a quick headcount, I saw that it was almost tied. I guess that my votes and Abil-Kisu''s were really missed.


    "That is a tall boast. A single woman against (cough) an army forty thousand strong?" Nephew croaked.


    "I don''t claim I managed to destroy the whole army. Most of it though. I took all of their supplies and ammunition. They are in the middle of the rocky savanna without water. And your patron, Prince Marduk..."


    I summoned my combat knife and stabbed the air, sending the weapon back to storage right away. I was already hating what I was about to do but I needed to be strong. Appear strong. Put the dots on the ''i''s'' and cross the ''t''s''. It might trigger me. I held Brandon''s hand and said my piece.


    "I put a dagger deep in the small of his back. But not before he told me on how he paid you, Hama-Tula and Es-Kina with chests of gold. I''ve found already Hama-Tula''s share and boy was it huge. I can only assume that yours and your uncle''s were even bigger, given that you were above the greedy merchant in the food chain. Now, it is unfair you keep his payment since you failed to deliver. And that was kinda betraying the whole city too. Your uncle''s too. The city needs rebuilding and those funds will go a great length to help that. Hire more hands, pay for materials, and so on.


    "Ah, and since Marduk is dead twice over, he is not coming to get the town from your hands. It seems you are kinda stuck here if you really want to play king."


    His face was red with anger. He glared daggers at me but he was powerless. I could see that both sides of the table liked my offer of extra funds. If I got the valuables from Nephew, I would deliver.


    "You (cough) you are insane, woman! I had no deals with Marduk whatso..." He broke into a hiss of coughing, getting as far as spitting blood on the table and staining some documents.


    It felt somewhat familiar.


    I knew I had something at the tip of my tongue regarding his symptoms.


    It...


    Hama-Tula was deep in debt. But he had that stash hidden. Probably that was the bribe from Marduk. Probably everything in that room was the bribe from Marduk. It meant that...


    Nephew had hair loss, skin lesions, loss of weight, coughing, apparently anemia too.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    He also got the bribe from Marduk. And Marduk did not intend to keep them around any longer than he needed. What if he had an insurance plan to make sure these people died even if he did nothing else?


    What if he put a deadly and seemingly beautiful thing in the treasure he handed over to them?


    The torbernite ore.


    Nephew had radiation poisoning. It all fit. He had more time to be exposed to the radiation than Hama-Tula, and four months went by while I was in the underground tunnels.


    It meant both Nephew and Es-Kina had radiation poisoning. Es-Kina was healthier because he probably locked away his sample of torbernite somewhere away from him, like his treasury. Nephew didn''t have that luxury. And vain like he was, he probably admired his shiny green jewel a lot.


    "Nephew, I know what sickness ails you!" I said, my voice betraying my concern.


    He glared at me and threw the blood-stained documents on the ground. "Lies! You (cough) try to win my favor with lies! I know your kind, woman! Always deceiving!"


    I summon my laptop and put it on the table in front of me, between two merchants. I open my offline Wikipedia and browse to the torbernite page. Then I open up the picture gallery. I turn the screen around to show him.


    "Did the treasure Marduk gave you have a gemstone like this one? Green, and shiny? This gemstone, called ''torbernite'' in my language, has an insidious poison that can kill a person from just from being next to it."


    I turn the notebook around so everyone can see it. Lu-Ninurta gasps. The old goldsmith puts his hands over his heart and stands up.


    "You!" He points at Nephew. "You showed me that gemstone even gave me a piece of it! You wanted to kill me!"


    He was scowling and grumbling. Probably mashing his thoughts together. I stored the laptop and pleaded to the goldsmith. "Master Lu-Ninurta, do you have the gemstone with you?"


    "It is here in my pocket! He made me think it was too valuable to keep in a vault!"


    The craftsmen next to Lu-Ninurta jump away from him as if he had the plague. The goldsmith produced a felt pouch and turns it upside down on the table, revealing the green tetragonal crystal cluster. Lu-Ninurta also moves backward until he hits the wall.


    "Brandon, General, protect the Enshi, keep him alive. Nephew, I''ll get back to you soon. Nobody touches that gemstone!"


    I run around the table, aiming to get the torbernite. My estimate was right. Several angry people try to get the Enshi. I grab the ore. It felt wrong, just like the previous one. It was as if it was burning my hand, which was even though it was slow.


    "I''m going to dispose of this safely. Tell me, master Lu-Ninurta, are you having dizziness? Vomiting? Diarrhea?"


    "I was feeling under the weather lately. I vomited yesterday. I thought it was the smoke..."


    "Then it is fine. I think I can make an antidote. And this... this..."


    I thought of the ore in my hand. I could sense the wrongness. Decompose worked on the ore, at least for sensing. Could it speed up the process of radioactive decay? Would it be safe?


    I summoned a disk of lead that I extracted from the galena in the mine. Then I buried the torbernite inside, along with the pouch which I Decomposed until only the radioactive matter remained. Shape the lead into a sphere. Flatten the bottom because the last thing I need is some runaway radioactive contaminant.


    "There. Inside the lead, it is less dangerous. I''ll dispose of it safely."


    I raised the gray orb in my hand and looked around. "Do you believe me now, gentleman? And you, former magistrate. I need the rest of the torbernite. And it contaminates everything around it. Where is it?"


    "Ha! Do you think I would tell you? You set this theater up just to steal my treasure!"


    This was no joking matter. The torbernite Hama-Tula had was potent, and I could see this sample I had here was as powerful. What Nephew had, combined the two samples he got as a bribe, could very well doom this whole building.


    I wasn''t a radiology expert. But I knew no amount of precaution was too much precaution.


    "Nephew... No, you are no longer a magistrate. Do you have a name I can call you?" I asked him.


    "I''m the magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina now."


    Okay. Not even a ''the second'', but whatever rocks your boat."I can help you. Show me where the torbernite is. I can make an antidote. it could help you."


    What I really should tell him was, ''Okay. I won''t lie to you, you are already poisoned beyond salvation. You have little time to live, so do one decent thing and hand over the radioactive material.'' But I had to make him cooperate.


    "Everyone, vacate the room," the general shouted. "The council is adjourned. Lu-Ninurta, miss Rinaldi, you stay. Everyone else, scram."


    The merchants and craftsmen were happy to put distance between themselves and the new Enshi. I felt sorry for him. He had months to live, at most.


    "Girl, can you (cough) really make an antidote?"


    If I were a physician, my license would be revoked at that moment.


    "Yes, I can. But I need the torbernite that poisoned you to use as a catalyst. This," I showed the lead ball, "Is too little. I need all of it if I am to have a chance at healing you. And even if you don''t tell me, it is your loss. I will tear this palace, this city apart and find it. I can sense when it is nearby and I can walk through walls."


    He looked nervously between me, Brandon, the general, Lu-Ninurta and Abil-Kisu. Only the six of us remained in the room. Then he had his ''eureka'' moment.


    "I''ll send a soldier to fetch it for you. You just need the gemstones, right?"


    He wanted to play smart. Two can play that game.


    "Yes. I will prepare a proper receptacle for the gemstones so the guard is not harmed."


    I sat at the edge of the table, with my back to them. I took two cylinders of lead, about six kilograms. I then made a box with thick walls, using aluminum on the inside and outside. I hid my phone in the bottom, with the pedometer app in ''pirate treasure mode''. It would count the steps and direction, using the built-in compass. The aluminum wasn''t thick enough to block the magnetic field. I returned to the other side.


    As I worked, a ''volunteer'' soldier approached. I handed him the metal box.


    "Here, put the gemstones in this box. You need to get all the stones that look like this," I showed him the torbernite, "And if it is green and you are in doubt, take it too."


    I shielded the box from the Enshi''s view on purpose. As the soldier turned to leave, he shouted.


    "Let me (cough) check on that box. This woman has tricks to make what was seen once repeat itself."


    He examined the box for that I suppose were camera lenses. He wouldn''t find them. Satisfied, he gave the box to the guard. "Go. You know where the secret treasury is."


    He moved away, walking the corridor with precise steps, like a good marching soldier. Soon I would have the torbernite and the location of the treasury. Did I feel guilty for stealing the gold Marduk gave them to kidnap me? You can bet I didn''t. And I would do good on my word, to use the gold to rebuild the city. Before the soldier returned, I took the radiation tag, broke the corner and stored the piece.


    We waited in silence until the guard returned. He handed me the box. I lifted the lid. I could swear the ore glowed. About as much as what Hama-Tula had in his secret chamber. Not good. I knew immediately what he told the guard to do. I took the torbernite and wrapped it in lead with the other sample, using another disk.


    The Enshi nephew glared at me. "My antidote. How long will it take?"


    I wrapped the box in the plastic bag the torbernite was in and stored it with the phone inside. Now that it was in my storage, I could summon the phone back. I tapped the app and used "generate treasure map". It would take the double trip and calculate instructions with the number of steps.


    "Brandon, make sure to keep the Enshi and his trusted guard restrained in this room. I''m going to get the rest of the torbernite."


    "What?" The nephew-Enshi complained. "You can''t do that!"


    Brandon held the guard by the wrist, "Gu-Ler and Fenana, get inside!" and called the two that were guarding the room outside. "Go, Sandra."


    I was about to move out but I stopped and met the general''s eyes. "Sir, that petty man kept half of the poisonous gemstone to himself, obviously thinking of..."


    He raised a hand, I stopped talking. "I got that. Go and do what you want, miss. I doubt we could stop you and if captain Brandon trusts you enough to mutiny against the ruler of the city, I have to do the same." The general then glowered at the Enshi-formerly-magistrate. "You stay here. Don''t speak. If the miss fails to bring back more ore, I''ll deal with her myself."


    Yeah. Remember when I said I wouldn''t start a revolution? I guess that commitment also failed. I left the room and followed the treasure map. I noticed how deserted the inside of the palace was. The architecture was something between ancient Roman and something I saw once in pictures of Asia Minor''s ruins.


    After a while, the map told me to walk into a wall. Some sort of secret passage? I touched the stone wall and opened a hole the size of my arm. Pushing the arm deeper, I found air on the other side, about twenty centimeters in. Without wasting time to look for the mechanism, I Decomposed the wall to open a passage. Before I went in, I used the mirror to look around. There was a blade trap. Ropes connected to weights would pull and swivel some bronze blades forward if the trap triggered.


    I opened another hole next to the blades'' mechanism and Decomposed the bronze. Some blades fell down, triggering the other side of the trap. The sound of metal striking stone followed and then nothing. I moved inside and collected the copper and tin from the trap. Onward. The tunnel wasn''t long but it did two sharp turns before opening into a vault. I could see the treasure chests. I walked inside and poison darts flew at me. I was hit by more than half of them.


    I''m the best rogue. I disarm traps like a barbarian though. I pocketed two darts that missed me.


    In hindsight, even Hama-Tula had two traps. I removed the darts and felt the paralysis set. I tried to fight the poison with Decompose but had little result. It got hard to breathe but I didn''t think this poison was meant to kill. It seemed tailored to capture intruders and induced mild cramps where the darts hit. There was little I could do to fight the poison but wait. I could move a bit because the poison only half-paralyzed me, thanks to the divine boon. I moved slowly around the room, focusing my Decompose sense. A few minutes later I''d found where the torbernite was.


    Was.


    Two chests of the same size and slightly fancier than the one Hama-Tula had his ore were side-by-side, empty. The guard moved the torbernite to another location. If I had to guess from the size of the chests, Nephew combined both his ore and the late Enshi''s.


    I checked the map, he didn''t leave the room before he returned to the room and the steps ended inside this room. He probably put my heavy box on the ground while he worked. It meant the two torbernite samples I''m missing could be anywhere. With my limited mobility, there was only one thing I could do. I shaped a bowl of lead and a bowl of silicon.


    I Decomposed the whole room, sending the contaminated materials in the lead bowl and the purified ones in the silicon. I also removed about three fingers of stone from all the walls. I separated the valuable metals from the common and the unknowns. There was something there that looked like platinum but I would check it later. I encased the radioactive contaminants in the lead and then inside the silicon from the walls. It should be enough to hold it until I could gather everything to dispose of.


    I regained control of my body and moved in search of the torbernite. The guard should''ve walked out of the vault with the ore. I tried to sense the "wrongness" from the radiation and walked around. I could pick up traces here and there but I should be getting closer. Nuclear hot and cold is a tense game best left behind in the sixties. It led me to a door with a guard.


    "Halt! What do you want in the Enshi''s private quarters?" The guard barked at me.


    I blinked. Did the idiot hide the uranium in his own room? Did he have a death wish or he didn''t believe me? No. If he didn''t believe me, he wouldn''t keep some of the ore.


    "A guard came with a green gemstone and entered this room. The Enshi changed his mind and asked me to fetch it."


    He shook his head. "You are lying, miss."


    I nodded. "I''m sorry." I moved forward. He leaned the spear down but didn''t point it at me. "I wished I could see a king''s chambers at least once," I told him as I inched forward. "Could you show them to me?" I asked with a sweet girlish voice.


    "Miss, stay back. I don''t want to hurt you but I will." He replied with a voice that betrayed a lot of doubt.


    I needed to get inside. I took a page from Theresa''s book and used my feminine charm on him. "Are you married, sir? I heard that the palace guards are all virile man that sometimes help ladies in need like me..."


    Eww.


    I got closer to him. Inside his spear''s reach and then I touched his hand and held his bracer. I looked into his eyes and moved closer. Closer. Close enough to block his sight from the dart I took from my pocket and stabbed his arm with. Then the second dart on another arm.


    "Ugh." He gritted his teeth as the paralysis settled and I eased him on the ground.


    I went inside and the trail of wrongness was stronger. After rummaging through the furniture, I dug through a cabinet''s bottom and found the two huge and very active weapon-grade chunks of torbernite along with a stash of gems and gold. I encased the radioactive ore with the last of my lead and checked the valuables. Not enough time passed to contaminate them significantly.


    And my petty sense of vengeance made me take it. In fact, I owned everything nephew had. Four months in the depths. I was okay with sparing him the trip down, but I''d be twice damned if I let him have the money Marduk paid him to kidnap me and that was mine by law. Which law? Ask that to Mr. Schwarzenegger. I was angry and thought Nephew was unworthy to keep the bribe because it was a BS bribe and he didn''t deliver the goods. So I bagged all of it.


    Totally in the moral gray area, I know.


    I went back to the room, carrying the lead orb. I entered the conference room and presented the orb to the general.


    "The poisonous ore is inside. Do you want to see it?" I challenged him.


    The general shook his head. "No. I know you are not lying. Does the magnanimous Enshi want to confirm she has two samples of ore in these balls?"


    Nephew didn''t answer. He was too busy breathing. I felt no hatred for what he did. He had his karmic punishment already. I would even extend an olive branch.


    "This will be spoken of in years to come. How the treacherous Prince Marduk attempted to end the line of the great Enshi of Es-Kina with a fake gift of a poisonous ore. How the magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina, last of his name unraveled the conspiracy, ending Marduk''s plans for good."


    Last of his kind. Because I was pretty sure he was permanently sterile now. Nobody answered, maybe too busy digesting what I said.


    "I won''t lie to you. You are dying, Enshi Es-Kina. I can make medicine that will help you live better. I don''t know how long you have, but it is less than a year. If I were you, I''d focus on rebuilding the city and making a name for yourself. It is all about how you want to be remembered by the people of this city. You could be the leader that rebuilt the city after the death of your uncle. The people could raise a statue of you in your prime to honor your memory.


    "I have no grudge against you and I will ask only for the Sky-Lord Aerie mountain to the west. And I pledge to help in the reconstruction with my power and my knowledge. What do you say?"


    The look he gave me was one of disgust. The disgusted one feels when he''s the target of pity.


    "You can have God''s Fingers mountain you like so much. Rename it even," Enshi Es-Kina proclaimed. "And what about my gold?"


    I summoned a plastic bag with the gold lumps. Half of what I gathered in the treasury.


    "I purified it. You can have this and get it minted into new coins. The gemstones I had to dissolve because the poison spreads and makes everything around it poisonous too."


    It was still a sizeable lump of gold. I ripped off part of the bag and stored it, causing the rest to dissolve.


    With his greed sated, the Enshi looked at me, "Am I really going to die?"


    I nodded. "You have at most a year. I would say four to six months. Maybe less. I am not an expert in this kind of poisoning. But back in my world, it was one of the most terrible kinds. Prince Marduk... He was evil. And so is the god he worships. Would you be against banning the worship of Nergal in this city?"


    Yeah, take that, asshole god.


    "No. I have no sympathy for Nergal too. It shall be done. The church of Nergal is banned."


    "Then it is settled. I will prepare the poisonous ore for transportation.


    I put myself to work. First I researched radiation poisoning medication and containment. I should mix graphite with the uranium to block fast neutrons that might form and cause fission. Other than that, it was a heavy coating of lead to stop the gamma radiation.


    I took all the remaining lead I had and encased all the torbernite in a ball. Then I layered iron and aluminum over the lead, making a sphere one meter tall. I punched holes on both sides and placed an arc of titanium bending inwards and pinching on both holes. Now the ball could be rolled around by pulling the arc.


    "Tie this to a horse and have a soldier you trust to take the ball to my house," I told the general. "The metal will protect him from the poison."


    The general shouted some orders and soon the sphere was going away.


    I went to talk to the Enshi. "I need some sea salt. Could you get me some?"


    He waved a hand to call a servant and ordered him to fetch a barrel of sea salt.


    "Is that all?" The Enshi asked.


    "Yes, I can extract the medicine from the salt."


    I didn''t think I could get the most effective radiation medicine for him. He was showing alopecia and other signs of a fatal dose. Potassium iodide was easy to make, I just needed to get it from the sea salt. Prussian blue and sodium-calcium-EDTA would be tricky. The first was made with cyanide and the second was a complex organic compound. Both were beyond my current ability. I could give them the iodide salt to protect their thyroids. It would help a lot already.


    The sea salt came and I started to work. I scooped the salt and separated the sodium chloride from the other materials. Iodine had a 1 in twenty million parts. After going through the whole barrel, I put the pure sodium chloride back in the barrel. From the fifty kilograms of salt, I obtained around 300 mg of potassium iodide that was in a sheet of paper from my notebook. I also obtained other salts that seemed very nice. I could probably fill the first three periods now. I also learned iodine particular resonance, making it easier to spot the element later.


    I split the salt into three parts and handed one to each man. "This will help you recover some strength."


    Lu-Ninurta took him quickly and after making sure the goldsmith wasn''t dying, the Enshi also took his. I shaped a vial of thin silicon and poured the third dose inside, sealing it. I handed it to the Enshi.


    "Take the salt inside this orb tomorrow at the same time. I will try to make more."


    I thought where I could find a rich iodine source. It is usually captured by living beings, especially marine life. Saltpeter also has iodine in the composition of some of its salts. But our best bet was seafood.


    "I will," He said, suspicious.


    "Be magnanimous, Enshi. We won''t oppose your rule and I would ask that my votes in the council be recorded as supporting your rise to the station. I got what I came for, even more than that. I wish peace between us. I... I have other issues to deal with now."


    Enshi Es-Kina (I felt bed mocking him after this point) raised his hand. "I know you raided my treasury. I expect you to make good (cough) in your promise to help and fund the rebuilding of my city," He put emphasis in both ''my''. "I would be a fool to keep opposing Tarhun''s chosen. Go in peace, miss Rinaldi."


    I smiled, curtsied and left with Abil-Kisu and Lu-Ninurta. Brandon followed us.


    "Sandra." He called me.


    I spun around, making my skirt balloon. "yes? What is it?"


    "Can I see you tonight?" He asked, fidgeting.


    So cute!


    "I''d be delighted to drink a bottle of wine with you under the moo... starlight," I replied. It was still hard to cope with the fact there was no moon.


    I heard a snicker from behind me. "It is good to be young," Lu-Ninurta quipped.


    "Tonight then. Once I am done with my duties."


    I nodded. "Yes. It is a date."


    He went back to the room. I hope this Enshi is not stupid enough to try and hog my Brandon. I wanted to go back to training every morning. We walked away down the deserted hallways of the palace.


    "Will the council meet again?" I asked the men with me.


    We were reaching the courtyard where the carriage was waiting for us.


    "No, I don''t think they will. An Enshi rose to power, the purpose of the council is over," Abil-Kisu said.


    "And I think everyone will be very busy trying to survive the chaos that is coming," Lu-Ninurta said, looking to the southwest. "The remnants of the invading army will disband. Some will try to join us, some will become bandits, some will die to the hands of their former brothers-in-arms, and just a few will try to go back home. They will be trouble."


    We walked outside and I took note of the sun''s position. It was past noon. Abil-Kisu''s carriage moved and I sighed. My afternoon was going to be a busy one, as usual. I knew I had to. Keeping myself busy was the best way to keep my mind away from the flashbacks.

 Affternoon 21

    The carriage entered Abil-Kisu estate and we went to the tent to eat lunch. The food was already served and everyone was waiting on the master of the house to eat. The layered table setup was used again, with Arwia, Belle and the children sitting on the second and third layers. We went to the first one.


    "Friends," Abil-Kisu spoke. "We have a new Enshi. The line of Es-Kina lives, and the rebuild of the town will soon follow. Marduk''s army was disbanded and now their remnants roam the land as bandits. Which shall be dealt with soon. It is a time for celebration. Although the worst was avoided, we will have hardships ahead."


    He sat and clapped his hands twice. The servants came and put plates with food in front of us. I ate mostly out of obligation. I was fighting to keep the memories of the ruined camp suppressed. I ate in silence. Abil-Kisu even tried to start a conversation about our soap, but I, unfortunately, evaded it. I wasn''t in the mood.


    "I''m sorry, Abil-Kisu. I have to dispose of the hazardous material. I promise we will talk later."


    I moved to the edge of the carpet and looked at my high heels. It wasn''t a piece that shone because of its design but for its materials. I summoned my carry-on and stored them inside, taking my sneakers instead. For the first time, I felt my storage limited. I mean, I was carrying seven or eight bags worth of stuff that came from Earth with me - or was recreated, the technicalities mattered little - and a lot of things I picked up here and there. In total it should be more than a ton of things. It was a lot and a marvel and there was me, complaining about limitations.


    I was about to leave when I remembered what I was wearing. I went back to the guest room I was wearing and noticed it had been cleaned and tidied. I removed the jewelry and changed to my usual explorer outfit with the hiking boots and the falconry bracer. Lamenting the lack of a full-body mirror, I went to the stables to get Penny.


    I walked out through the front gate and made my way home. Ananu and Huzzi-Ya were helping defend the gate and offered to follow me but I refused. I felt strong enough to face whatever this world threw at me. And part of me wanted to be defeated. But having Penny and Dime with me was enough escort. As we went down the street, the mare nudged me, trying to make me climb on her back.


    "I''m walking today. Walk with me," I told her.


    She wanted to run, of course. I remembered I needed graphite to mix with the uranium and decided to make a stop by one of the ruined blocks to gather some from the ashes. I mounted Penny and let her run wild. The speed junkie mare trotted down the mostly deserted streets and went past our own gate. I saw two city guards guarding the gate and the movement of more men inside. I didn''t have time to interact with them as Penny galloped past.


    It didn''t take long to find a city block destroyed by the flames. Some people were rummaging through the debris, probably looking for some valuables to loot or their lost mementos. By the charred frames that were precariously standing up, it looked like a residential/mixed block. Those kinds have a shop on the lower floor and one or two apartments on top. Dime landed on the ridge of a roof on the other side of the street.


    I wanted to start Decomposing everything but I had no idea to whom I should talk. I didn''t want to push and force things. Maybe I should find somewhere abandoned. I rode past that block and went through several others. It seemed that looting burnt blocks was the most common activity in the city.


    After spending one hour in this futile search, I went back to the first one and joined the search. The people rummaging through the debris changed but one man in his forties or fifties was searching the same area. I got down and approached.


    "Excuse me, sir! Could you spare a moment to talk to me?"


    The man stopped searching and looked at me. He seemed worn out and had enough soot on him to make London chimney cleaners look spotless.


    "What do you want, miss? This here is my house!" He didn''t seem to want to make new friends.


    "Name''s Sandra Rinaldi, sir. Pleased to meet you."


    "I''m Bur-Maat. I can''t say I''m pleased with anything."


    "I understand, Bur-Maat. I''m not interested in looting the place for valuables, I just wanted to offer my help cleaning up the debris."


    I approached. Some burnt wooden furniture was thrown out of the block and it crunched under my boots.


    "What can a weak lass like you do?"


    I sighed. "Depending on the day, defeat an invading army to almost nothing, sir. But I can try if you let me."


    He shook his head in disbelief. "You want to get here and muck through the ashes?" He got irritated when I nodded. "Well, the other looters weren''t polite enough to ask. What do you really want here?"


    "The ashes, Bur-Maat. I want the ashes from the wood."


    "What for?" He was suspicious. There was an undertone of aggression in his voice. "Do you make soap?"


    I nodded. "I do make soap but that''s not my goal today. I need the ashes so I can reuse them. Turn them into something new." I was drawing the attention of the other looters. "What are you looking for here? Some memento?"


    "My wife! She was bedridden when the fire struck. She must be somewhere around here!"


    I lowered my head, "I''m sorry for your loss, sir."


    "Would you help me find my wife?" He asked with a soft voice, his anger at my interruption spent.


    "Why don''t we make a deal. Sell me the ashes of your house. I''ll take my ashes away and it will make it easier to reach the body of your wife."


    He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Keep your coin. With the amount these greedy merchants are charging, you''ll need it to buy food. Come here and get your ash, girl."


    I bowed. "Thank you, Bur-Maat."


    I checked the charred beams. The thing would crumble at any moment. There was still a significant amount of mass up there and anyone caught underneath would be seriously injured. It was obvious I would have to start working from the top or take down the whole structure. But I had to find his wife first. I activated my senses and scanned for sources of calcium. My range was crap, only a few centimeters away from my body. But that was already a big advancement. I had to touch the material and concentrate before.


    It was my first defeat of the day. Wood ash from open-air fires is mostly calcium carbonate, depending on the type of wood. This was one of them. In fact, the feeling I had was very similar to slag but with more carbon and less heavy metals. I needed to leave the calcium alone or I''d risk damaging the bones. I didn''t have the skill to make power do such distinction.


    I prepared a one-liter carton that used to hold juice when it was on Earth. Using the trick of making the material flow over my hand and fall into the container, I started with the potash. Potassium chloride, sulfide, carbonate, very few in the form of hydroxide or oxide. I had to jump between compounds as I went by slowly, collecting them.


    Next would be the carbon. I just gathered it into an ever-growing chunk of graphite. The blackness of the region was going away, sucked into my chunk of graphite that soon became too heavy to carry around. So I made another five.


    The scavengers stopped to check on my work. Dime cawed from the nearest roof. I had to address them.


    "Please do not approach. The structure is frail, and the sky-lord there is skittish regarding my protection."


    After delivering my warning, I turned around to check the burnt wooden frame. Maybe I should just collapse the structure and try to control where it will fall. If it must fall on someone, let it be me. I looked behind me and they seemed to respect the boundaries I''d set.


    The dust on the ground now is mostly calcium carbonate and sand. I can''t move the calcium without risking to damage the corpse. I summon my spade and start shoveling the white dust away. I move slowly to avoid damaging something frail beneath. One hour goes by and the pile of white dust by the curb increased to make four mounds. Then I feel the spade pick up something heavy. I brush the dust aside and find her.


    Bur-Maat knelt next to the corpse. He lifted and embraced her. The rugged man started to cry. I lowered my head in respect. He tried to carry her but the body creaked and threatened to snap.


    "Wait, Bur-Maat. I can help you carry her," I put a hand on his shoulder.


    I knew what to do. I took several disks of aluminum and created a coffin. It wasn''t straight but would allow him to carry her if he had someone else to help. With the two of us, we put the body in the coffin. To my surprise, he lifted it on his own.


    "Thank you. You can have everything else in here, I don''t care. I''m going to bury my wife next to a field of her favorite flowers."


    "Farewell, Bur-Maat. If you want to look for me, ask at the guard garrison."


    He shook his head. "I''ll go away. Move to another city. There are too many memories here."


    The man and his dead wife moved away. Another destitute refugee. I took one silver mina from my handbag and ran to catch up with him. I slid the coin between his hand and the coffin. "Take this for the lot of your house."Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    He tried to smile. "At least put it in my pocket," He joked.


    I went around and found the pocket sewn in his trousers. I slid the coin inside. "Peace."


    He didn''t answer and just went away.


    I went back to my recently purchased lot. A scavenger tried to invade but Dime shrieked, making the person run away. With the spade, I shored against the frame and pushed. It creaked but didn''t fall.


    "I''m taking it down! Move away, please!" I shouted to the scavengers.


    I went around and used Decompose to weaken it on the side I wanted it to fall on. Towards the center of the block. I went around, weakening the beams facing the middle. It creaked and I quickly crossed back to the front and pushed. The house''s frame went down and sideways, pushing against the frame of the next house and causing a domino effect. The weight of the frame of that house knocked down the next and so on. The last burnt frame on this side of the block fell on the next street, blocking it.


    A cloud of dust and ash lifted up. Maybe that wasn''t the best way to solve it. I ran down the side street and reached the collapsed frame that was blocking the street. I Decomposed it into blocks of graphite, water, and salts. Now that I didn''t have to worry about damaging the mortal remains of a person, I pulled all stops on my power. I extracted the elements in their raw form. Carbon and calcium, mostly. I created big chunks of graphite and several ingots of calcium that I placed in the plastic bag with the other metals. On a second sweep, I removed the metals and the potassium salts. I found some molten silver and copper chunks that I promptly gave to the scavengers.


    It took me two hours after Bur-Maat left but the whole block was cleaned up. It looked like a kind of zen garden with the graphite rocks over the naked earth. I had my graphite and a tiny sliver of my peace of mind back. That''s what my power was meant for. I could clean the damaged areas. I called Penny back and rode back home.


    I recognized the soldiers guarding my home. They were the ones I spared several months ago. I waved at them and they stood at attention.


    "Lady Rinaldi! Captain Brandon asked us to inform you the materials you requested are at the back, waiting for you."


    I saluted them. They didn''t recognize the gesture. "I will start working on it right away. Maybe we can go home earlier."


    They just nodded and I entered. I could see that scavengers entered the place. The lawn was trampled, the window shutters, open. I doubt they stole the furniture but that was inconsequential. I could remake everything out of aluminum or silicon. At the back, two other soldiers were guarding the sphere holding the torbernite as well as the block with the radioactive contaminants I extracted from the treasure room.


    "At ease," I told them. "I am going to fetch the third sample so I can dispose of them at once."


    "Yes, milady," One of the soldiers answered.


    I went inside and rushed upstairs. The scavengers made a mess of the mattresses, probably searching for coins. But the furniture seemed to be undamaged, just moved around. The master bedroom was still naked, covered in gray mortar. The wall that hid the secret chamber was still intact. Good. I checked the spot and moved to the roof through the balcony ladder. Scavengers came here too. I can see they decided to stick it to the man by doing to the upper class'' residence what the upper class usually does to their lives.


    And boy did it smell. Even after a day under the sun, it was still bad. I Decomposed it by removing the carbon and then the nitrogen. It became a saltwater pool with a chunk of graphite.


    I moved over the spot where the secret room was and was about to poke a hole in the roof when I stopped to think. I was taking the uranium out of here. What reason did I have to keep the secret room closed? That was so stupid. I could have my own glow-in-the-dark closet. That was stupid too. It didn''t glow. I sighed away my bout of stupidity and moved back to the main room. I carved the mortar over where I sensed the aluminum sheet and retrieved the metal. There was the aluminum-coated block of lead. I removed the metal in layers until I had a sphere of lead I could carry. I stored everything and left the broken mortar on the floor.


    I had everything ready now. I had the soldiers move the material to the side of the lab building and dismissed them. They didn''t need to be around. I opened a hole in the ground below me and the metal ball with the torbernite inside. I only stopped after five meters deep. The terror of burying myself and the explosion threatened to return. The silicon walls of the tunnel gave me shivers. I feared at any time the Prince would appear to claim his vengeance.


    I made a bowl of lead and prepared the graphite by crushing it in a mortar and pestle made of silicon. Next, I opened the containers and pooled the ores. I had to reduce the volume so only the uranium and the graphite would stay in the core. I would surround the core with layers of different metals so I could peel the shielding easily later. It would also help deflect the gamma rays and disperse them due to diffraction.


    So I triggered Decompose to separate the uranium from the other materials. The hydrated ore released its water and the liquid started to shed a faint blue glow.


    Then I felt nausea.


    A burning sensation all around my skin. The water boiled. The sensation of wrongness from the uranium increased. My muscles locked. The amount of power leaving me was similar to when I fought the lich. The phosphorus became red. The copper started to glow red. I saw shocked as the skin of my hand burned. I screamed in pain but it was just a faint whimper. I couldn''t breathe.


    It was hard to focus but all I could think was that it didn''t happen like this the last time. But at that time, I removed the copper and phosphorus. This time I went for the uranium.


    My ears and nose bled. So much for a blood-less day. My hand went numb. The burning sensation was now climbing up my wrist. I tried to move but my body didn''t answer. I felt exhausted. Even so, I couldn''t stop Decompose from working. I felt several different resonances. My hand was just shriveled skin wrapped around the bone. It kept going. I felt my skin burn, blisters forming everywhere. The only reason I wasn''t blind yet was because I couldn''t.


    It felt like an eternity but then it ended. I looked at the bowl, a pool of molten lead glowed inside. I leaned backward inside the tunnel and was in too much pain. I wish I would faint. I was as drained as when I shattered the lich''s heart. I looked up at the afternoon sky and it felt like it was spinning. I saw clouds passing over and I couldn''t move. It was hot but I didn''t sweat.


    I couldn''t move. I tried to use Decompose but it didn''t respond. I tried sensing Penny and Dime and felt nothing. It scared me. Where were they? All I could do was focus on breathing. The sky became a faint orange and the world slowly surrendered itself to darkness.


    The burning sensation faded. I could move my left hand and then my neck. I looked at my right hand, it was mummified. I felt a warm fluid flow over my body as the blisters popped. Then I felt a faint sign of panic. Then two.


    Dime and Penny were running around the city, in panic. I called them through the link. My skin felt like when I spent the whole day playing at the beach without sunblock and then mom passed moisturizing lotion on me. It both prickled and felt good. My strength was coming back slowly. The heat was mostly gone too.


    Dime landed next to the hole and cawed, afraid. I tried to send him calming feelings but I had none. He flapped his wings, shrieked, and made a ruckus.


    "What does that bird want?" I heard a man''s voice from somewhere.


    "Take care. Sky-lords are treacherous. He might be luring you." Another man replied.


    "Nonsense. That''s lady Rinaldi''s tame bird. It won''t attack us," The first man rejoindered.


    "Watch out, the horse is out of control!" A third shouted.


    Penny ran toward me, stopping next to the hole and throwing tufts of dirt over me.


    She whinnied and clopped.


    "There''s a hole in the ground!" The men were close now.


    "Light a torch."


    I tried to call a flashlight from storage but I couldn''t access it. I felt itching in my right forearm.


    Dime jumped back and the face of a soldier holding a torch appeared over the hole.


    "It is Lady Rinaldi! She is wounded at the bottom of this hole! We need to get her out."


    "Do you have a rope?"


    I do. In the magical storage, I can''t access it. I can''t even shape the silicon. Decompose can''t... Oh, it is back. I could feel the silicon behind and below me. I also noticed I couldn''t feel any wrongness coming from the materials in this hole.


    The lead in the bowl was a dead giveaway of what happened. I knew Decompose could accelerate natural processes, like the decay of wood. But we are talking about billions of years of "natural processes" to make that lead. Maybe that''s why Decomposing tons of rock or slag is effortless.


    Because the damned power was meant to neutralize radioactive matter.


    I waved my hand around. Not a single trace. It is as if my body had absorbed all the emissions, however absurd that was. I had no way to prove though. It was all speculation. But I remembered the Death Snow and what Abil-Kisu told me of the Harbinger.


    Marduk also called me the second Harbinger.


    I didn''t want to think about the implications. If most of my assumptions were true, it drew a plan that was very sinister in its making.


    A plan that started with a phone call.


    If I were paranoid, I could think this torbernite was meant to kill me. Nergal could predict the future as he told Marduk I would assassinate him but didn''t tell how or when. He could''ve planted the torbernite not to kill the leaders but to get me. There''s one big point in favor of this theory. Marduk is a local. How would he know about radiation?


    I was thirsty. I tried and shaped a notch in the silicon my head touched. Yes, my strength is slowly returning.


    Marduk said the Harbinger was Nergal''s champion and I was Tarhun''s. The enemy, the dark god that tempted me to betray Tarhun might be Nergal. If that is true, then I am a pawn in this game between the gods. And I will have to be wary against Nergal''s next move.


    "Hold on, miss. My companion is coming back with a rope!" The soldier tries to cheer me.


    "Water..." I groan.


    "I have some here. Can you catch it?"


    I nod. He tosses a goatskin bag that sloshes. I grab it with my left hand and bring the tip to my mouth. I bite and remove the stopper and drink the warm and stale water. I feel the moisture goes down my esophagus. Hit my stomach. I want to drink it all but I know I should pace myself.


    I also took a good look at the blisters. They are now just tender spots of baby pink flesh. My body seems emaciated as if the fat is gone. All of the fat. The itching on my right arm is also moving forward. Worse yet, my bra is loose.


    "Thanks. Tell the men to not worry. I''ll be able to get out on my own soon."


    I take another swig from the waterskin. I need to pace myself or I''ll vomit.


    The first stars appear overhead.


    I move my legs, grab the wall and shape a handhold. I prop myself standing. I try and store my boots and socks. Good. With only three limbs, I climb up. Slowly. Making deep handholds and footholds. The soldier lies on his stomach and reaches to grab me by the wrist. I move up as much as I can and he grabs me with both hands. The leather of his gloves prick my skin but I don''t complain.


    He pulls me up. I leave the wall and he lifts me. I''m amazed. Or is it because I am too light right now?


    I lied on my stomach over the ground. The solder stood up, knelt and gently turned me around to pick me up.


    "You seem to have used too much magic, milady," He tells me. "I''ve seen the senior magistrate Sun-Goro after your trial. He looked exactly like you do now.


    "I''ll recover. I just need a good night''s sleep," I boasted, unsure if that was true or not.


    He was carrying me to the villa. I used some time to think. Tarhun''s boon said, "restore the body to a pristine condition". I needed to bet on that. I drank another swig of water. I felt as if my blood was still until now and the water made it resume flowing.


    "I hope so, miss. If you forgive my curiosity, I heard rumors you were stabbed in the heart with a dagger, is that true?"


    "Yes. It is all true. But I wouldn''t believe it myself if I weren''t the one being stabbed. And tossed in the abyss. And... the army... I don''t want to talk about that."


    He glanced down at me and replied, "Fair enough, milady."


    "At least Marduk''s poison was neutralized. But I needed to take in its effects."


    He chuckled. "You still look better than the Enshi."


    I heard another soldier clear his throat, "I might need to tell Captain Brandon you are flirting with the lady, Gadudu."


    I could swear the guy would drop me right away. His arms lost some strength but he held on to me.


    "I think I can stand. You can put me down, Gadudu. And if Brandon gets angry at you, I''ll bonk him on the head."


    He did. I could stand up but I really shouldn''t. I wobbled and tried to hold on to his shoulder with my right hand. The mummified right hand. Gadudu squealed in a very unmanly way and I fell on my butt.


    I summoned my sleeping bag and rolled over it. "Maybe I''ll just stay here and rest. Could you guys watch over me? I think I''ll sleep now."


    They hit their chests over the heart with their fists. But it wasn''t with the thumb facing outward. It was more like if they were knocking on wood. But they also didn''t have gas-powered harpoon throwers.


    Yes, I was going to recover just fine. Even my superpower of thinking of silly things in the most inadequate of moments was coming back.


    I closed my eyes and quickly fell asleep.

 Week 3 cast

    Enshi''s Envoy - This diplomat is one of the right-hand men of the Enshi Es-Kina. He was sent to recruit Sandra at all costs, going as far as to attempt to feign suicide to frame her for murder. Such loyalty! The poison he used was actually just a paralytic poison meant to make people seem dead, very popular in fair Verona. He failed to even feign to kill himself and was nursed to a semblant of health before being released off-screen during the evacuation. His whereabouts or survival during the turmoil of the Enshi''s passing is unkonwn.


    Buza - A soldier in Prince Marduk''s army, He was scavenging the debris created by the hydrogen explosion sandra used to destroy the army supplies and ended up finding the culprit for the wipeout of the army''s officers. He fled once she demonstrated her powers. Superstitious, suffering from rock-bottom morale, and shaken by the explosion, it was an understandable reaction. Would you stay and face someone that craws out of the Earth unscathed where an explosion just wiped out your boss? I wouldn''t.


    Clark - Not a person. Related to Brandon, only Sandra knows who Clark is. Allegedly faster than a speeding bullet, like the famous red-and-blue copyrighted superhero.


    Nergal - A Mesopotamian god that was related to the Sun but then was tricked into marrying into and living in the underworld. Very bitter and evil now, he opposes Tarhun. Whether Nergal is the Dark One or not remains to be seen. He sponsored Prince Marduk''s crusade to obtain Sandra and make her a second Harbinger. He even taught a phrase in Japanese to the Prince.


    Prince Marduk - Secret sponsor of Hama-Tula, The Magistrate, and Enshi Es-Kina. He hired them to secure Sandra for his plans of world domination. He did not have the custom to bite his pinky. Drafted an army forty thousand strong to invade and sack Es-Kina (the city) while he went to collect his prize. Was visited in his tent by a burrowing heroine. After sexually harassing her, was murdered in cold blood by Sandra with a hollow titanium dagger filled with metallic sodium. Getting your internal organs turned to boiling soap is not a nice way to go.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Bara-Mamu - A scout in Prince Marduk''s army. He survived the explosion because he was wounded during the fight with Sandra earlier and did not return to camp. Lucky bastard.


    Karamas - Another scout in another scouting party for Prince Marduk''s army. Had a concussion after an unfortunate meeting with the rocky ground because Sandra used Decompose on his saddle.


    The General - Brandon''s boss in the guard/army. Their custom of not introducing themselves to those they deem inferior is really annoying. He is a reasonable and seasoned veteran that dislikes politics.


    Ruto-Ka - High Priest of Enki, the god of water, knowledge, and crafts. He is friends with Bero-Mabii because their gods are allied with one another.


    Enki - God of Water, Knowledge, and Crafts. The creator god in Sumerian mithology, he allied himself with the Hittite chief deity, Tarhun, to bring their peoples to another world.


    Apparu - Arwia''s brother, one year her junior (16). He was old enough to become an adult and left home to avoid being sold as a slave by their deadbeat father. Current whereabouts unknown.


    Zuska - Arwia''s sister, fourteen years old. Was sold as a slave and was working in a bucket brigade when Sandra found her.


    Ivanika - Fourth sibling, Twelve. She was suddenly pressed into the role of eldest sister and homemaker after the other three siblings left home.


    Muksu - Fifth sibling, ten years old. He is very curious and had good memory.


    Tuwazi - The youngest of the six, eight years old. His mother died on childbirth, the straw that broke the camel''s back and dragged their father into a downward spiral. He is a brat and a street urchin.


    Enshi Es-Kina - The Magistrate''s uncle. Obese, lazy, and gullible, he was coerced by Prince Marduk''s agents to capture and deliver Sandra under the fake promise to have his city spared from an invasion and sack. Of course Marduk had no intention of following through with his promise. After all, he had fourty thousand soldiers'' worth of wages to pay.

 Morning 22

    It was dark. Somehow I was back in the mine tunnels, and the hordes of zombies were after me. I ran down one of the unmarked tunnels, going away from the shuffling of the dead''s feet. I heard the lich cackling.


    "We got her cornered, your Highness!" The lord of the undead reported.


    "Good. She thinks she can escape me, but she will be mine. Send the troops forward!" Marduk ordered.


    I kept running but I slipped and fell down on the stone floor. I soiled my clothes in panic. I screamed. The hordes of the dead reached me. They surrounded me and grabbed me by the wrists. I struggled but they kept telling me to calm down. I fought back, kicking, biting, screaming. The dead held me. They cradled me. They soothed me.


    They called my name.


    "Sandra! Sandra! Wake up!"


    One of the zombies was Brandon. It was my fault that he died. I froze in terror and kept staring at his decaying face.


    "No, please no..." I mumbled.


    "It''s a dream. A bad dream. Wake up. Everything is fine. Wake up, Sandra."


    I was dragged down the dark dead mine tunnel by the horde until the sunlight hit my face. I blinked and saw above me the blue sky, a few wisps of white clouds and the scorching sun on the other side of a windowsill.


    How could it be? I was hundreds of meters underground...


    I was in Abil-Kisu''s home. And had just made a fool out of myself.


    "Brandon..." I felt too ashamed to look in his eyes. And I did something nobody over a certain single-digit age should do.


    "It''s alright. You had a bad dream," He whispers to me. "It will go away with time, but you must rest."


    I hugged him and cried. I hadn''t felt this vulnerable ever since professor Andrews attacked me. I remembered what happened yesterday and looked at my right hand. It was dry and wrinkled but I could feel and move it a little. I''m wasn''t wearing the clothes from yesterday. I was wearing nothing underneath a fancy linen robe.


    "My clothes?"


    "Miss Arwia has them. Your mattress is over there. They wanted to burn your clothes because it was covered in pus and blood but I told them to keep it. I know how protective you are of your things."


    I attempted a smile. That was so sweet. "Have Arwia cut the smallest piece of them and bring these pieces to me."


    He creased his eyebrows. "Later. Rest and eat first."


    Brandon moved to pick me up and put me in bed. Before he moved me, I Decomposed the water out of the mess I did. At least I was dry now. He gently laid me on the bed, leaned over me, and brushed my hair out of my face. He had a smile so nice I wanted to drag him with me. I had no strength to do so though.


    "I am going to get you something to eat and drink. You are forbidden to get out of bed."


    I smiled and raised my left hand to make the salute I saw the soldiers do. "Yessir!"


    He chuckled and left the room. After the door closed, I got out of bed to undress, clean these robes and the stain on the floor. I also wanted to check out my condition. I''d lost a lot of fat. I would say almost all of it, especially in some places where it will be missed. They might grow back. Or not. My hand seemed to be regrowing. I couldn''t grasp anything or make complex movements but it was alive.


    I pulled my hair and no tufts came out. No alopecia even though I was sure the dose of radiation I was exposed to would kill me many times over. It led credence to the theory that my power was tailored to deal with radioactive contaminants. Was Tarhun expecting me to clean the Harbinger''s mess?


    I would have to see the snow. See the regions the Harbinger War destroyed. I had zero desire to do that. No, no, no. I wanted to stay quiet, mine my ores, take care of my people, and raise my children. Share my knowledge, advance the technology of the world, work in the background to make people''s lives better. Make friends, have fun, and so on. Basically, live my life.


    Anyway, back to my own body. The boon said it would be restored to its pristine state. I had only a faint idea of what that meant but at least the "pristine state" doesn''t include body hairs. I can only imagine the trouble of shaving every day.


    My musings about magical pilosity were interrupted by the sounds of movement outside the room. I picked up the robes and with some difficulty, put them on. I was about to return to bed when the door opened. Belle-Sunu entered with a food tray.


    Brandon was right behind her. "Ahem!" He cleared his throat, clearly amused.


    He smirked as he caught me clearly disrespecting the rules. And since I couldn''t tie the robes properly, in a mostly slovenly way. The only silver lining was that the flesh was burnt and shrunk together with the loss of the fat or there would be some dangling sagging bits on display.


    I threw myself at the bed to lie on my stomach and hide whatever modesty I could salvage. Belle entered the room and left the tray on the desk before she came to help me make myself presentable. She stole glances at Brandon a few times and seemed to be enjoying the situation. I bet it will make some good gossip fuel.


    "What do you think you were doing?" Belle asks me. "You untied your robe for what? It''s..." Belle took the tip of the sash, flipped me over and fixed the robe, tying it with a double knot. Then she leaned on my ear and asked, "Why didn''t you use the chamber pot?"


    Damn.


    "Sorry," I could explain I was too busy having a nightmare but that freckled face wasn''t scolding me. She was all smiles. So I just apologized.


    "Hey, big man," Nanna''s voice came from behind Brandon, "Let me through."


    "Come inside, Brandon," I told him.


    Both entered the room. Nanna circled around and sat by my side. "Stupid girl, what did you do to yourself?" She asked with a neutral voice. I couldn''t tell if she was being sarcastic or angry.


    Brandon moved closer. He seemed very interested. I sighed and confessed.


    "The gemstones Marduk sent to Hama-Tula, the Enshi and his nephew had an insidious poison. One that can kill a person just by staying near it. I gathered all the poisonous gemstones and was about to dispose of them when I used my power the wrong way and it burned me. The poison was neutralized but I became like this."


    Nanna touched and poked me, pulled my eyelids, my hair, and rubbed her finger on my cheeks. "LIke this, she says! You almost died, girl. For real. Stupid Tarhun," She blasphemed.


    I always found odd the apparent intimacy with which Nanna speaks of the major god of this world''s pantheon.


    "Was that poison that bad, Mrs. Nanna?" Belle asked.


    "The worse ''poison'' there is," the witch answered, putting a hint of snark on the ''poison'' word. "Its damage is irreversible. Well, irreversible if you are not her," She completed pointing at me. "But even she will have drawbacks. You, girl. No using powers for three days. Don''t use the tools of your world, don''t go Decomposing things. You already pushed it too far by using it for something as trivial as clearing your excreta."


    I wished I was a turtle and could hide inside the robe. Was it that obvious what happened here?


    "What impressed me was that she became like that in a single afternoon," Brandon commented. "I''ve seen what happened to the Enshi but that happened over several months."


    "It is because my power released all the energy of the poison at once, Brandon," I answered him. "And absorbed the bad energies into my body. Otherwise, it could be really bad."If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Like, destroy the city bad.


    Nanna shook her head. "Well, what''s done is done. You," She poked me in the forehead. "You live for three days as an ordinary person to save your energy, rest, eat your fill, and drink enough water. Can you do that?"


    Three days? I had... She poked me in the forehead again.


    "There''s no emergency happening," The witch ranted, a little angry. "The army is defeated, the Enshi is crowned. The little brats you cherish so much are all around, bothering everyone. Stay home and rest. Otherwise, you might damage yourself forever. Your magical energy is too low. It makes you vulnerable. And with your track record for getting hurt, it might spell your end. Ah. I can see in your eyes. Youth."


    Nanna stood up and straightened her toga. Then she went and poked Brandon in the chest.


    "Captain, that is your mission. You are to stay next to the lady over there and make sure she uses not her powers for the next three days. I don''t care if she has to bathe, use the outhouse, or anything. You don''t leave her side."


    Now, that was a low blow. But even my irritation at the witch''s meddling stopped me from noticing how imposing she was when she gave Brandon orders. It seemed as if she had grown taller. I knew Nanna was a mysterious person and hid most of her talents, but I was itching to know her background. And if she was going to make me stay three days in house arrest, I would make damn sure to try all I could to get under that wrinkled skin.


    "I..." Brandon glanced at me as he spoke to Nanna. I nodded. "I accept your mission, Mrs. Nanna. I will be lady Rinaldi''s bodyguard."


    "Yes. You do that. And you, girl. Once you can hold a spoon with that hand of yours, come and see me. I can see in your face you have something to ask me."


    Thank you, O wise witch. Three days without my clothes, without my storage, without my devices, three days going commando. That would be... I had no idea. Maybe it would be good. I could consider it my vacation.


    Everyone waited for the witch to vacate the room before we returned to life.


    "You heard the wise witch, Sandra," Belle slid a hand under my back and helped me sit on the bed. Then she spoke with the cheekiest voice I''ve ever seen she do. "Time to eat. Captain, would you please feed the lady while I help her sit?"


    "Have your fun, Belle. I''ll get you later," I whispered to her.


    She giggled. Brandon moved a chair next to the bed and took the bowl of soup and the wooden spoon from the tray. He sat on the chair and took a spoonful of soup, smiling at me as he moved the spoon my way.


    I wanted to tell him to stop, revolt against this house arrest and tell everyone I was fine, but that would be unreasonable. They just looking after me. I resigned and opened my mouth.


    Belle tapped my shoulder and cooed. "Good girl. Now eat everything."


    The first spoonful disarmed my defenses. Damn tasty soup. Even though I could still feel the gamy taste of the meat, it was good. I must admit that I''d been neglecting my nutrition. And I needed it to see if my body would return to its healthy state. I looked too much like the undead in the mines.


    The mines! I had to go there and reach the brine pool to get iodine. But maybe I had some in the "trace oxides and salts" bag from the leftovers I got from the water purifying. I could...


    I could leave it for later.


    I ate my soup like a good girl. Maybe a holiday wasn''t that bad. Maybe... No. This would be the perfect opportunity to get to know Brandon. Yes, I couldn''t let him slip. And there was a lot we needed to talk about. Brandon handed the empty bowl and spoon to Belle, who produced a cloth napkin to wipe my mouth. Then she circled around Brandon''s back, winked at me and slipped out, closing the door behind her.


    I drew the line where she started to sing about us under a tree.


    "Thank you," I purred. "the soup was delicious. What should we do now?"


    He raised an eyebrow. I guess I overdid. "You should lie down and rest, and I--"


    "Won''t get away from me for three whole days. There''s room for two in this bed and I want to talk to you."


    He gave me a slight frown as if he was reluctant. I tapped the bed.


    "Besides, Belle-Sunu will tell everyone we are in here alone anyway. What is holding you back?"


    "I don''t want to hurt you," He replies, pretty unsure of himself.


    I shrugged. "Then don''t. You know I am very resilient. And if you do something that hurts me, I''ll tell you. You just have to stop. And don''t give me that macho crap that ''I can''t stop once I start'', because that''s a lie."


    He sighed. I don''t know if it was a sigh of relief or one of exasperation. Then he removed his boots, untied his belt, and dropped his leather trousers. I didn''t notice it at the bathhouse but the hairs of his leg are also blonde. The tunic was doing a poor job of hiding everything else because Clark was in that state of readiness when he is about to pull his shirt open.


    Okay, time to egg me. I named him.


    I slinked away from the edge and he laid down on the bed. It was awkward and we already spooned once. We were facing each other.


    "So, Captain Brandon Al-Amir, what''s your story?"


    "Not so interesting. I am from a lost realm far to the south, beyond the ocean. My parents were craftsmen, my mother a tailor and my father a carpenter. They were friends with master Samus and one day when I was seven years old, I went with him to one of his shopping trips to the mines. We were away when the Death Snow hit our city. Everyone else... Well, the Snow leaves no survivors. At least not for long. They eat the people from the inside and make the land unusable.


    "Master Samus took me with him as we fled to the north continent. We settled in Es-Kina as it is a good trade HUB and there was one of my mother''s friends living here. I told you about her, Madam Cloe, the seamstress. Why didn''t you visit her yet? She can make the most wonderful dresses for you. Although with the state of the city, it would be hard to find fine fabrics. The caravans will avoid coming here at all costs, with that many soldiers raiding the countryside."


    I felt guilty. I should''ve visited her for a long time already. And I had a dozen bolts of dyed silk cloth to use, rotting away in my storage. Well, not rotting since the storage was timeless.


    "What about the raiding soldiers? What can we do about them?"


    "Not much. They are spread out and usually, they end up preying on each other. Without the strength of numbers and the command of their officers, they won''t dare to come closer to the city and we dispatched enough soldiers to the outlying villages that they won''t try to raid there too. So it is a problem that will be a problem for some time but will solve itself. Most of them will tire of living in the wasteland and go elsewhere.


    "And as word comes out that able-bodied foreign men are up for grabbing around here, slave traders will come to try and capture them. Yet another reason to not linger around. In a few months, the only trace of their passage will be the thinning of the game that way, and it was never an area vibrant with life. We just need to cordon them to the west and southeast so they don''t go around. But we know what to do. They won''t get past us. You did a great job scaring..."


    I took a deep breath and hid my face in the pillow. "I didn''t do great, Brandon. Killing is wrong. However justified I was in killing Marduk and destroying their supplies, I did a terrible thing. I can say with certainty that I am not a big fan of utilitarianism. It tastes bitter."


    "Utili-what?" He asked phonetically, clearly confused with the word that had no translation.


    "It is a theory that an action can be justified if the overall benefit is greater than the cost. As in by killing Marduk, his officers and thousands of his soldiers, I saved a town with thousands more and protected my people."


    he reached with a hand and moved my hair behind my ear. Then he caressed my earlobe. "That sounds right. You did well. I will repeat it until you accept the truth."


    "It might take a dozen years or more," I teased.


    He raised both eyebrows, "Just that? I thought you would try and hook me for life."


    I opened my eyes wide and stared at him. Then I lowered my eyebrows. I know a loaded statement when I see one.


    "Are you up to being hooked for life? Isn''t the great captain the target of many a lady''s affections?"


    He showed me both palms. "I''m completely free."


    I poked his palm and to my surprise, he quickly flicked his pulse and grabbed my hand.


    "You know, I heard what they said and saw the young ladies at Abil-Kisu''s party swooning over you. I bet you got dozens of marriage proposals that day alone."


    To my dismay, he nodded. "I did. More than a dozen," He reported with a shrug and not a hint of emotion. "Unfortunately I am a soldier that doesn''t take bribes. I don''t have the gold to buy one of those noble ladies. And I don''t want a feisty woman as a wife. Those delicate dolls that will demand a lot of money to maintain them."


    He didn''t let go of my hand. His eyes were fixed on me as he said the previous sentences.


    "Not much money to spend on ladies. I had a few friends like that."


    Some guys back at the U lived on instant noddles, chicken, and third-grade beef. They usually joined some activist groups to get to know people and try to win the sympathy of a girl in that group. Save the world and get laid, that sort of thing.


    "Yes, I can''t remember the last time I visited a brothel," He said with a dash of snark and a pinch of self-derision.


    I didn''t know if I should groan or laugh. He was being so cheeky!


    "I know your game, mister. And the only winning move is to keep my legs shut."


    Damn.


    Why the heck did I try to imitate him and ad-lib something like that without thinking twice? Please, Tarhun I want the power to reverse time and take back that line. Why? Why? My cheeks were on fire. I fought the urge to melt the mattress, the bed and bury myself to hide from my shame. Way to go, Sandra. You had the class of a mammoth dancing macarena.


    And the awkward silence took over the room. I heard rustling outside and I immediately pictured Belle or Arwia with a glass cup eavesdropping through the walls. No, that would be the end of my second life.


    Brandon had his poker face. My eyes moistened and I looked at him begging for mercy. Then he chuckled, huffed, snorted, and chortled. I wrested my left hand free and hit him anywhere I could, but he wouldn''t stop. My right hand was pinned underneath me and was useless anyway. He grabbed my left hand with his right and wrapped around my waist with his free arm. So unfair that he gets to use both arms!


    He was not satisfied with just restraining my mobility. Brandon pulled me in and planted a peck on my lips. His eyes met mine and he spoke.


    "I guess that I lost at your game then. I know you''ll win at that game of mine you just created. I won''t harm a damsel."


    Harm as in show her what one hundred plus kilograms of nordic-grade 0% fat man-flesh can do. But he was wrong. Even if you don''t count what I did with my boyfriend in my previous life, in this one the ''seal of freshness'' was already long gone, before even I went into the depths. Theresa''s gift was well-received and used. I mean, I''m a person with needs.


    Yeah, go ahead and judge me. Throw the first rock and all that jazz.


    And there my big mouth went, ranting on without pre-approval of the censorship department of my prefrontal cortex. "It is not harming if you do it gently," I purred.


    I heard a squeal from outside the door. But I really didn''t care. Nanna forbade me from using my powers and I had him for the next seventy-two hours. I better make every second count.

 Afternoon 22

    I woke up after a refreshing nap, feeling better but thirsty. I almost summoned the canteen when I remembered Nanna told me to not use my powers. I stirred in bed and woke up my big spoon.


    "Good afternoon, handsome," I cooed. "Did you sleep well?"


    "I didn''t sleep," He answered. "I was... watching to see if you''d have another nightmare."


    I fought back the squeal. So cute! I leaned back and if it were about 20 degrees Celsius cooler, it would be even better. But we couldn''t stay in bed cuddling. That pesky biological need for nourishment drove me out of bed.


    And all I had to wear was the linen robe. It was nice and a natural golden but it was sleepwear.


    "I''m having lunch here. What do you say? We could both eat here."


    He went over me and jumped out. I got a good look at Clark. Faster than a speeding bullet. Perfection is an unattainable ideal. But I think we can work it out.


    "It is rude to the host if we both eat here, Sandra. I''ll go and have lunch with Abil-Kisu and then bring back yours."


    "I''m starving," I purred. "Make sure to get me an extra-size serving."


    Brandon chuckled. "I''ll try."


    "Send both Arwia and Belle-Sunu here before you eat. I need to talk to them."


    He put on his pants and boots and left. I checked my right arm. It was better. Still a long way from what it once was. Three days. It didn''t sound so bad anymore. But I had to correct some improper behaviors of my employees. Like, put down a corporate ethics code of sorts. Really who do they think they are to eavesdrop behind doors? A bunch of teenagers? Wait, don''t answer that. They are a bunch of teenagers.


    I let myself lie languidly on the bed, enjoying the softness of the mattress. I think it is down, not straw. Damn, this thing must be expensive. Abil-Kisu''s wealth is orders of magnitude greater than Hama-Tula''s. Or the former was bad at handling money. To think he had enough wealth hidden to pay off his debt twice over but preferred to bid his time and wait for Marduk''s arrival. Then he would probably wipe out his debtors in the turmoil of the takeover. That was a man that liked to eat his cake and the dough at the same time.


    I think it is safe to bring Rubati and Banunu back. They can get their kids and rebuild their lives. With as many stories of shattered families all around, I can do something to help at least one. And if I can rebuild the...


    I should be resting, not plotting world domination. Or salvation. Or anything concerning the world, actually. That''s too much for me. Even if it isn''t I don''t want any. For example, I could oppose Nephew and try to take over the city. It would be a disaster. I''m not fit to rule and I know it very well. The man is a walking corpse and it is sad to see him whither like that. Let him have his crown for the rest of his short life.


    The same thing with the remnants of the army. I could use the Dime-cam to scout and find the stragglers, but then I would have to either deal with them or deal with the fact that I was somewhat responsible for their deaths or worse, enslavement. I decided to step back and not help.


    Going after Marduk was an act of self-preservation. He was obsessed and wouldn''t relent. But killing the prince and leaving things just like that could spur those soldiers that were with low morale into fanaticism. So I had to break the army as well or I would make things worse.


    And here I was, wallowing in self-pity in a walled garden, on the comfort of a down bed, in the hands of a lovely man, while the soldiers I scarred for life wander the countryside, starving. I''m trash. I don''t deserve all this. I should go away and find a hole to live in. It is more fitting for a monster like me. The state of my body was a punishment, I was sure of that. Yes, the suffering. I should redeem myself. Punish myself more. Maybe then the nightmares will end.


    Maybe I can die and get back home.


    It''s been a hundred years.


    I can''t return to Earth.


    I''m not worthy.


    I''m trash.


    No.


    ...


    I wanted to cry but no tears volunteered to be shed. I felt dry. I couldn''t find the strength to move. And I could hear nothing. I could only look at the wall. It felt as if the battlefield was behind me. If I moved, they would touch me. If I looked, I would see them. If I breathed, I could smell the burnt wood and flesh. They were looking at me.


    The people I murdered.


    They wanted their vengeance, I knew. Even Marduk. I killed him in cold blood. I, an assassin. You never know what is in a person until they snap. That meek girl that liked rocks and books died on Earth. I''m a monster. I''m not worthy of having her name. I can''t...


    "Sandra?" A sweet voice called for her.


    Sandra is gone. Please leave a message after the beep.


    "Sandra, talk to me!" Another high voice. A girl?


    I''m sorry. Sandra doesn''t want to come out and play. She is too busy trying to clean up the blood I put on her hands.


    "What do we do, Arwia?"


    "Nanna said she could be like this. That we should keep talking to her, take care of her, that she would recover."


    "I can''t see her like this. It''s too sad! She was fine this morning, what happened?"


    No. I wasn''t fine. I was just pretending well enough. I don''t deserve to wear Sandra''s body. I don''t deserve your care, your worries, your tears. I''m a monster. Unfit for society.


    Power.


    Power corrupts.


    I felt invincible. I survived things that would kill an ordinary person many times over. I could do anything. I murdered Marduk because he was an insect. How dare him to think himself my equal?


    "Sandra, please. Snap out of it. Look at me. Talk to me. It is I, Belle. I was so happy when you told me my name meant ''beautiful'' in your language. Please, Sandra. We need you. You set us free, you showed us we had worth. Please talk to me!"


    "Me too, Sandra. You rescued me from that terrible man. You went out in the middle of the chaos and saved my siblings. It is too sad to see you like this. Come on, talk to us. We are here for you. Tell us, what troubles you, Sandra. We will help. We will share your burden."


    I can''t. I think they are crying. Such lovely young ladies. So innocent. I see them moving in front of me, but they are blurs.


    "What is going on here, why all this bawling?" The old lady''s raspy voice came from afar.


    "Nanna. It''s Sandra. She is not talking, she is not moving. She just stares," Belle whispers between sobs.


    "Humm. She''s having trouble coping with what happened in the last few days. You see, her mind thinks of what happened and she loses the will to move on. Talk to her. If she speaks or moves, pay attention to her. Show her your honest feelings and she''ll come around eventually."


    "But she was fine this morning!" Arwia complained.


    "It comes and goes. That''s normal. The girl went through a lot. At least she isn''t using her magic. See her hand? It''s coming back nicely. Yes. Sooner or later she will come back to us. Between you two and the captain, make sure she never stays alone. Take turns and have someone with her at all times. Belle-Sunu, you go and try to sleep now, so you can be awake at night. And don''t let her use her magic. Arwia, stay here and talk to her. Keep talking about whatever you want to. Come, Belle-Sunu. I have a concoction to help you sleep."


    I hear Nanna and Belle go away. I shouldn''t talk to them. They are pure, they never killed anyone. I''ll taint them. I feel Arwia move to lie down next to me. She hugs me. I have to push her away but I don''t want to.


    I don''t deserve it. But I want her to hold me. I need to know I am needed. I''m not worthy.


    "Will you let me be your personal maid? You know, when my mother was alive, she always told me stories about princesses and magical warriors and about the wonders of the world. And you, to me you are one of those princesses. You are wise, kind, gentle, cheerful, brave, fearless. You are not intimidated by anything! Please come back to us. Talk to me. Would you? Just one word. We need you, Sandra.


    "Take your time. I''ll be here for you. I pledge myself to you."


    She put an arm under my head and pulled me to her chest. She smelled of cheese and fried grease. And she was so soft. Was I this soft when I had flesh between my skin and bones? I wanted to cry but no tears came. It was just this unbearable pain in my chest. Locking up my throat.


    I couldn''t bear it anymore and my body shut down.


    I woke up still in Arwia''s arms. I could see dry tears on her face. She was breathing softly but when I stirred, she opened her eyes, we made eye contact, and she opened up in a beautiful broad smile.


    "Hello. How are you feeling?"


    I tried to smile back. I don''t think I succeeded. "Like I had to clean up Chernobyl with a toothbrush," I replied.


    She made a terse laugh. "Heh. I don''t know where or what Chernobyl is, but I got the feeling. Are you hungry? Your lunch is served."


    I felt the urge to starve myself. I demanded punishment and the kindness of the people around me was actually hurting me. I didn''t want to feel like that but I couldn''t help it. I don''t understand, I was fine this morning and then this. That was not me.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Arwia pulled me and I stood up like a ragdoll. She moved me to the table and I sat and ate. I can''t remember what it was. She talked to me and I answered with short phrases or grunts. I was hating to feel like that but I was trapped.


    I went back to bed, to take a nap.


    Brandon was the one to wake me up. I opened my eyes to see that nice and well-dressed craftsmen lady I saw at the council.


    "Miss Rinaldi, it is an honor to finally meet you," She said. "Oh, sorry my excitement took the best of me. I''m Cloe, a seamstress. Brandon here told you about me already, didn''t he?"


    I wanted to run and hide. I was in no way to meet her, and I was wearing almost nothing. Brandon held my hand.


    "It is okay. I told her you were hurt cleaning the poisonous ore and you are recovering. She understood. We want you to come with us. Nanna said that as long as you don''t use magic, you don''t need to stay here."


    I nodded. Maybe leaving this room would do me some good. I was feeling trapped. Exposed. It is funny how you complain about underwear digging into one''s skin but when it disappears you feel exposed.


    "I brought some clothes, nothing fancy, that might fit you," Cloe. And you don''t worry, I can adjust them later when you... recover."


    She showed me some dresses. They all looked nice and very stylish compared to what I saw around. They also had a European feel rather than the greek-middle-eastern togas and tunics people usually wore.


    "Did you like them?" Brandon asked, clearly concerned.


    I nodded.


    "Then, off with you, little Al-Amir. The lady needs privacy to dress up. Would you let Arwia in so she can assist me."


    Brandon nodded, "She''ll take good care of you, Sandra."


    He left me alone with Cloe. I felt intimidated. I didn''t want to show her my body. Not this shriveled body. Cloe folded the dress and placed it over the chair backrest. Then she sat on the bed.


    "I''ve seen many with eyes like yours, Sandra. Do you mind if I call you Sandra? Those that suffered great pain. A great loss. Those forced to do terrible things that broke their hearts."


    I shuddered at the last sentence. She noticed.


    "I heard that explosion, you know. It woke me up. I only knew you had left the council but then Al-Amir told me you went missing and would probably attempt to do something to the incoming army. I didn''t believe it until I woke up that night. But I won''t tell you you did the right thing. I won''t tell you it will all be alright, that it is going to pass. Because I did it back then with the refugees, and it didn''t work. Because that is not what you need."


    What she said rang so true it hurt. I didn''t want validation of what I did. I knew it was terrible and I also knew it had to be done. I felt there was a ''but'' in her discourse and I wanted to hear that ''but''. I wished that ''but'' would be some universal truth that would set me free.


    "What you need, is to think clearly. Which I know you aren''t doing right now. A cornered person is a terrible thing. And you are cornered by yourself. We usually do terrible things to those that corner us and leave no other valid choice. I will give you two things, dear.


    "My ears."


    I was surprised. It was not what I expected. She spoke with wisdom and certainty that could rival Nanna, but what good would her ears do to me?


    "I know you have some terrible things hidden inside your mind. Give them to me. Share your pain and sorrow with me. I promise to listen and only listen. Like I did with several other refugees of that wretched Death Snow. I will bear witness to your story. And I won''t judge. Tell me, Sandra. Tell me about that night."


    My mouth opened and closed and I started to bawl like a newborn baby. Cloe''s words, spoken in a neutral tone that was not condescending, soothing, or judgmental in any way and her offer to listen to me were something that pierced that armor I had raised.


    She was not judging me like I assumed Nanna did. Not worried sick and making me afraid of hurting them like Brandon. Or just play justifying everything and glossing over like Arwia and Belle. Her promise of just listening with a neutral stance felt so good.


    And I told her. Of my ride through the wasteland. My encounter with the patrols. The tunnel. The conversation between Marduk and his general. Of how I murdered Marduk. Of the explosion. Of the wounded soldiers, the devastation. I told her of the blue water goblins. The lich. Nergal and Tarhun. I ranted on about Earth, and the people I missed so much. Oji-chan, my parents, Theresa. Joshua and Ivan. For some reason, I didn''t want to talk about professor Andrews. I told her about how much I missed my classes. And she listened with a calm and relaxed face.


    On how I missed going to a movie theater. On how I would never see how they would solve the train wreck that the latest Star Wars was. Eating ice cream. Browsing the internet and having people pester you with memes. The cold of winter.


    Then I told her of the good snow. Water snow. Cold snow. White, soothing. Skiing, snowboarding, ice skating. She smiled.


    And I was done. Cloe nodded and stood up. She didn''t hug me. She just nodded and made a polite smile.


    "Well, that was quite a story, Sandra. I thank you for sharing it with me. Now, do you want to try on the dress?"


    I stood up. The linen robe was wrapped twice around me. She pulled the knot with her experienced hands and soon the robes were on the ground. She pulled a strap of leather with markings and started to measure me.


    "I see. I will make the stitches loose so they can be easily unraveled when you regain your vigor," She finished measuring and helped me put on the dress. She took pins from her pocket and went around, pinching and pinning the fabric without pausing.


    There wasn''t a mirror in this room. I wish I had one. Cloe measured me again and pulled the dress off. She didn''t steal looks at me or avoided her eyes. She acted so naturally around me that I didn''t feel awkward. She pulled needle and thread and sat by the desk to sew the dress.


    Someone knocked on the door and Arwia poked her head inside.


    "Can I come in?" She asked, smiling. "I thought you might want these back..." She entered and showed me my underwear. "It took some time to dry."


    I put on the two pieces and to me, it felt like I was donning full plate armor. It was loose. I knew I''d lost a lot of body fat but seeing the gap in my panties really struck home. I could adjust the bra straps to compensate for the loss of two or three cup sizes but...


    A minute of silence in memory of my butt.


    Cloe didn''t bat an eyelid. She pinched the sides of the panties and some stitches later, they were alright. Arwia seemed conflicted but I held her hand and shook my head. Cloe could shred my clothes and everything would be fine.


    We finished adjusting the dress and Cloe gave me some leather sandals to wear. It was good to feel like a normal person and not a hospital inmate.


    "Well, shall we go?"" Cloe asked, putting her supplies back in her pockets. "The carriage is waiting."


    We walked out and getting out of that room felt good. Not as good as climbing out of that mine into the top of the Aerie but similar. I was itching to get my phone and use the camera as a mirror. I resisted. We went to the driveway and my carriage was already there. Dime was perched on the second floor and Penny was loitering near the vehicle, without a saddle. Ananu waved from the coachman''s seat.


    Brandon was waiting near the carriage door and he smiled as he saw me. "Your carriage awaits," He said with a smirk.


    I got inside and Cloe sat on the bench in front of me. Brandon closed the door and climbed to the upper level. The carriage moved and soon was out going up and down some streets. I wondered where were they taking me. I noticed we were going north and soon went out of the gates and into the road that would take us to the grassy plateau. Once out of the city, Dime flew up, high in the sky to soar over the plateau and the four horses pulling the carriage struggled to climb the path leading to the grasslands.


    It reminded me of my first days when I didn''t even know the local language. The carriage turned and went off-road, climbing a hill. then it stopped.


    "I can see them!" Ananu shouted.


    "Go," Cloe told me. "Go outside and climb to the upper level."


    I did, unsure of what was going on. I got out of the carriage and Penny assaulted me. She nuzzled me and I embraced her head. I scratched her head, played with her hair and ears. Then I climbed up. Brandon was cupping his hand to shade his eyes from the sun.


    "Over there, to the north. Can you see them?"


    I could. A massive caravan, a veritable exodus, a throng of people was coming our way on the road. It was too early for anyone to arrive from the north as the nearest city was on the other side of the forest I spawned in.


    "Who are they?"


    "The ones that fled in the chaos after the late Enshi''s death," He explained to me. "Once we got confirmation that Marduk''s army was disbanded, we sent fast riders to find and bring them back."


    It was amazing. Even my gloomy mood couldn''t prevent me from feeling excited. Even from afar, I could see they were moving with intent.


    "They agreed to come back?"


    Without you, these people would be lost in the woods. Or would have to rebuild their lives somewhere else. Do you know what cities do to accept refugees?"


    "No, but I guess it is something awful," I answered.


    "They charge the refugees everything for entry. If they don''t have enough, they take their women. Or the male sons in working age. Those that don''t enter are soon hunted by slave traders. Those that do, they have to start from zero."


    He held my hand. My right hand. I could only wiggle the fingers.


    "Because of what you did, they have a choice. It was still a terrible thing, to have to fight a war. But you saved them from a terrible fate. And the soldiers that departed with them will be reinstated. It will bolster the city''s defenses."


    I looked west. Checked the hour by the sun''s position. The distance of the people to the city.


    "They won''t make it before sunset," I pointed out.


    Brandon nodded. "Yes, but it is not unusual to travel under torchlight. Nanna has an idea on how to help them."


    I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. I had no idea what Nanna wanted but I was certain it would involve me.


    "What is it?"


    "She has several light orbs she enchanted these last few days. Chloe tied several of them in a bundle. You could have your sky-lord carry that bundle of light orbs above the refugees to light their way."


    And there I was, thinking they had something awesome and mind-blowing for me, something that would amaze me so much I would forget my worries. Instead, I got another dose of utilitarianism and an errand. I mean, it was great that these people were returning but couldn''t they camp out there? I did and suffered nothing.


    "To stay overnight in one place in this grasslands is a death sentence," Brandon continued once he saw I wasn''t giving him an answer. "Terrible ants are living under the grass that comes out at night. They attack any living creature."


    "I..." That was a good question. I don''t remember a single insect bite. No mosquito, no bed bugs. The only creatures that attacked me were Dime, the water goblins and humans. But I got to bond with Dime so he is an animal. "Are the light orbs here?"


    Brandon nodded. "We also brought food and wine with us. We are going to stay here. There are some ruins at the base of this hill, the ants don''t come here."


    I wasn''t too happy with the way they set me up. But at least I got a nice dress and the chance to make a difference. I called Dime through our mental bond and we convinced him to carry the bundle of enchanted eyes around. Madam Cloe and Ananu climbed on the roof of the carriage and we sat, talked, drank some wine and waited for nightfall.


    We gave the bundle of eyes to the eagle and he took off, flying around and lighting the night like a beacon. Each of these eyes shone stronger than a 100W incandescent bulb. They seemed stronger than the ones Nanna made for the Enshi. You might think they did nothing but in the pitch-black night, that bundle of lights looked like a second moon. I could see the green grass underneath where Dime was flying.


    I suspect it was all staged. The refugees would be afraid of some weird light flying at night. I would if I lived in a world full of monsters. But it was touching. This conspiracy was engendered by Nanna, Brandon, Cloe, some guards and a lot of other people. All to try and cheer me up.


    We ate kebabs for dinner. The eastern cousin of the burrito.


    The refugees moved past our location and I got to see how many people there were. At least three thousand. I felt my heart clench when I remembered the fate of those that fled south. I leaned on Brandon''s shoulder and he hugged me.


    "How are you feeling?" He asked.


    "Not good. I... I am thankful for everyone''s care. I don''t want to feel like this. But I don''t know what to do."


    Cloe held my shoulder. "It takes time. Talking helps. If you can''t fight back the feelings, talk. Talk to everyone you can, Sandra. Play with the children I''ve seen in the yard. You''ll heal."


    "Thanks, Cloe. I''m sorry I didn''t visit you before. I promise I will. There''s a lot we can do for one another," I smiled at her. "I have a lot of pictures of clothes from my world."


    The seamstress'' eyes shone but she fought to keep herself composed. "There''s time. Heal, eat, recover. Then I can take your real measurements and make all the clothes you want."


    I guess the skeletal me isn''t a good model in this world. I bet I''d get a contract or two to show my ribcage in some jeans ad. If I were back on Earth.


    The trailing refugees passed, escorted by several squads of soldiers. One of them climbed the hill to greet us.


    "Captain Brandon!" The rider shouted.


    "Lieutenant Targus. Good job," Brandon replied. "Any casualties?"


    "Just some fistfights," He reported. "And some superstitious ones that refused to move under that flying light. We needed to convince them by saying they would stay behind to feed the ants. They complied after that."


    "Good. We are returning now. Ananu?"


    "Right away, captain!" The eunuch answered.


    The carriage turned around and moved back to town, escorted by the soldiers. I stayed on the roof with Brandon but Cloe went back inside.


    "Thank you, Sandra," He told me. "This city owes you a great deal. I''ll promise to make sure they don''t forget."


    I knew what he meant but I didn''t want to become some kind of Yuusha (hero, champion). I was fine with what I got. A lot of gold and the rights to the Aerie and the mine underneath. And the biggest prize of them all, right here with me.


    "Don''t," I told him. "I have everything I need. So long they leave me alone, I don''t want fame. All I need from this city is right here," I tapped his chest."


    "I think it can be arranged," He chuckled. "But I must say, we had to do some name-dropping to convince the people to return."


    It irritated me, but not enough to push me away from him.


    "As punishment, Captain, you are staying with me tonight. If I have an episode during the night, I want you there to help me."


    "Deal."

 Day 23

    I had trouble sleeping. I stood the stillest I could to avoid waking Brandon up but for the seasoned captain, a whisper is a racket. Both of us spent the whole night awake, me fighting to keep the demons at bay and he made sure I felt safe.


    I wished I was the cheese melting over his pizza dough. I''m sorry that sounded weird but that''s what one gets for being inside my mind. I just wanted to sink into that embrace until it was impossible to know where one ended and another started. But one could fit two of me in the width of his chest. Maybe.


    "Can''t sleep?" He asked from behind me.


    "Too much going on. And I''m afraid I''d have another nightmare if I do."


    And so I stood there, lying in bed and hearing his breathing behind me. Watching the pitch-black darkness of the room and praying there was nothing there. No liches, no dark gods, no rapist princes. My body was feeling much better. My dinner yesterday was reinforced and I made sure to eat the last drop of the stew broth.


    I felt like one of those shonen isekai protagonists, that have an insatiable appetite. But I needed every single ounce of nourishment I could get. I knew I could recover without eating but it would be too slow. Just remembering that I was awake for only three to five days out of the hundred and twenty in the depths is enough to make me eat even though I didn''t want to.


    And wanting to do anything was a mental state hard to achieve. But I was getting better. And fast. It''s been less than two days and my body was recovering its shape and curves by the hour. With some effort, I could touch the tip of my right index to the right thumb. Tomorrow I''d have a conversation with Nanna, as she promised.


    I could feel my magical energy reservoir bare. Nanna was right in forbidding me from using Decompose or the storage. All the power my body had been generating was going to my body''s recovery. And I think I broke something when I overdrew to Decompose the uranium. As if I burnt some circuits from excessive current. The recovery is going slower than usual. The silver lining is that when I check the list of boons Tarhun pushed on me, I can see clearly that he made sure almost nothing would disable me permanently.


    And why was I unable to stop the process until the entire sample was neutralized? Something built-in into the power?


    "What''s wrong?" Brandon asked.


    "Just thinking. About my powers and why Tarhun set them the way he did."


    "Try to sleep."


    "I''ll be quiet, I promise."


    My thoughts are like charged particles bouncing inside a restrained space. They go everywhere and you can''t even measure where they are, just where they should be. Sometimes one shadow or another shows up. My body stiffens even if I force myself to do nothing. I keep watching the darkness, afraid of what might come out of it.


    Relief comes in the shape of a small sliver of light filtering from outside. And speaking of relief...


    "I have to use the chamber pot."


    Brandon lifts his arm, "Then go."


    I climbed out of bed and went to the corner where the porcelain utensil was. Using it was... one of the most terrible aspects of life. Up until then, I used Decompose and the wet wipes I brought with me to take care of my hygiene but now I''m barred from both. I felt the smell of the flowers and herbs placed at the bottom of the pot to neutralize the smell. Without a choice, I lifted the robes, pulled down my panties and did my business squatting over the pot. A stack of hairy broad leaves from some kind of vegetable was what I had to clean myself with. The leaf should then be reversed and pressed over the pot to cover whatever was placed inside. The herbs and flowers did a good job of covering the smells.


    And this was a high-class chamber pot. Arwia told me once that in the slums, they leave the chamber pot next to a mouse hole so the rodents can...


    Eww.


    Instead of returning to bed, I went to the window. I was done with the darkness. I hoped it would be a long day. Staying indoors was bad. Getting myself busy would leave little room for my mind to play tricks on me. I opened the window and greeted the sunrise. The bedrooms in Abil-Kisu''s villa faced a beautiful garden that was kept vibrant green even through the drought.


    I sighed as the enormous list of things I wanted to do overwhelmed me. One thing at a time. And I knew the first one. The loose ends of my past adventures were not all tied up. Of all the things I could do to fix the damage my presence caused, there was one I still hadn''t addressed.


    I changed into the dress Madam Cloe fit for me, noticing it was slightly tighter. I heard Brandon stir in bed and moved closer to soothe him.


    "Brandon, try to sleep. I''m going downstairs. Belle-Sunu will be with me."


    "Okay," He yawned and turned over to the other side. "Oh, I''m going to the garrison this morning. Should be back before sunset."


    That made me feel special. As guilty as I felt because I made him stay awake all night, it still made me happy that he would try and rush back to me. I left the bedroom.


    The hallway was lit by a single point of light at its midpoint, a beeswax candle held on a wall fixture. I went down the stairs carefully and found my way to the kitchen. Rather than just putting it outside, the kitchen here is a separate building connected to the main villa by a small corridor covered by a colorful awning. A bead curtain did the honors of guarding the threshold. I went past the curtain and found Belle-Sunu sharing space with Abil-Kisu''s cooks.


    She turned around, a big refreshing smile stamped on her freckled face. "Sandra! How are you feeling today?"


    I smiled back, "I''m feeling better. Do you have something easy on the stomach for me?"


    "Milady," one of the cooks bowed, "We have freshly squeezed tamarind juice and bread that just left the oven. I suggest apricot jam to go with the bread."


    I blushed as I thought how wealthier Abil-Kisu was compared to Hama-Tula. "I''m thankful for the suggestion, ''chef''. I''ll have that," I told the cook and noticed his confusion. "''Chef'' is how we call an expert cook back in my world," I told him with a nod.


    "Ah. I''m grateful for the lady''s compliment. Your breakfast will be served soon, would you please have a seat?"


    There was a small table on a corner next to a window exactly for these occasions. I went and sat. Minutes later Belle came with a ceramic jug and a mug. She poured some thick juice and left the jug as she went back for the bread and jam. I took the mug with my left hand and sipped the juice. It wasn''t sweet. The tangy earthen taste of the tamarind was strong but not unpleasant.


    I thought I could Decompose some sugar from...


    I sighed. I got too used to my powers. Maybe I became too dependent on them. And that shaped my decisions. Why would I fear pain if I could recover from almost any wound? It enabled me to take on bigger risks. I felt invulnerable. Invincible. Maybe I was.


    Belle returned. The slices of brown bread were still steaming on the bowl. She put everything in front of me and stood next to me.


    "Is everything alright, Sandra? You seem distant."


    I waved my hand. "It is nothing. I''m just very introspective today. Could you please spread jam over the bread?"


    It was still hard to use my right hand for anything complex. I ate all the slices of bread and emptied the jug. My stomach felt full but I needed the nutrition. I think my recovery boon can generate flesh from magic power or maybe move it from one place to another. I have no idea how it happens or why a detached part of my items disintegrates when away from me. And don''t even say "first law of..."


    I had no idea how this thing worked. There was a new energy type that could be converted into a physical phenomenon. The laws that it worked under? No idea. Was it conservative? Where did it come from? Nope. Go get a thaumaturgist or a god to teach you that. I had no idea.


    Maybe Nanna knew. I should go talk to her later.


    Without anything better to do, I stayed there, watching the cooks and Belle-Sunu prepare food. The chef came again.


    "Milady, the breakfast will be served in the tent. The master and his guests are already there."


    I went there even though I was full.


    Abil-Kisu tagged me as I entered the tent, "Ah, miss Rinaldi. Please sit by my side."


    I sat next to him and noticed the absence of his wife. I hadn''t seen her much, I guess that she stays with the baby most of the time.


    We talked about several things. A report came in yesterday confirming the fate of those that fled south toward the ocean. They were captured or killed by the invading army. Only a few merchants with ties to Marduk''s nation, Elameria. He also praised me for the ''rescue'' of the refugees from the northern plateau. It seems that the nocturnal flesh-eating ants are really vicious. That explains why there are no settlements in the plateau and why nobody even bothers to reclaim land there.


    It is also a wonder how the grass remains green even in this dry climate.


    During the breakfast, I nibbled here and there because it would seem impolite to sit at the table and not eat. I waited for the children to finish their breakfast and go out to play before broaching a very delicate subject.


    "Abil-Kisu, I am thinking of bringing Banunu and Rubati back. The children should not be kept apart from their mothers. Regarding their debt, if someone comes to collect I''ll do something."


    He didn''t seem pleased with my suggestion. If I had to guess, he abhorred those two women.


    "I think the children are better under your tutelage. You have much to teach them, yes? But I understand where that comes from. Indeed families are better kept together. I can send one of my men to bring them here."


    "I will send Dipa-Tsu as well. He manifested his loyalty and desire to stay in the service of Rimush once the boy comes of age, next month."


    "Then it is settled. It is still early, we will send them to fast horses. It shall be done."


    After giving my thanks to Abil-Kisu, I departed the tent and went for a stroll through the garden. I saw Tullius and Hesha-Doka working with in-house gardeners and exchanging knowledge. I found a nice spot under the shade of a tree and sat down to rest. My belly was too full.


    I eventually drifted to sleep.


    <hr>


    I woke up to a nursery rhyme Arwia was humming. The girl was sitting next to me and a tarp has been spread over us, supported by sticks. It looked like a makeshift lean-to. The sun had moved a lot, it was past noon.


    "Hey, how''s it going?" I asked her.


    "Hello. Did you sleep well? We thought of moving you back to the bedroom but Captain Brandon didn''t let us. He said you would wake up and you really needed some sleep."


    That was really thoughtful. And I got to catch up on my shut-eye time. I sat up and faced her.


    "Yes, I''m fine sleeping out here. I''m hungry, did I miss lunch?"


    "Your food awaits to be devoured in the kitchen. It is good to see you feeling better. We were worried."


    I did a quick self-check. My magic was still floored. But my body felt heavier. I could now touch the thumb and pinky of my right hand and there was some meat between the flesh and bones. It still looked like I''d been starving for months but it was better than the mummified state it was yesterday. If I put both hands together, you wouldn''t say they belonged to the same person.


    I sighed. Arwia put her hand on my shoulder. "Let''s go," She said. "You''ll feel better after you eat."


    We walked back.


    "Arwia, I want to talk to Nanna, do you know where she is?"


    "In the annex building. She took the last room so nobody bothers her. She was busy enchanting the goblin eyes."


    After eating almost three person''s share of roast chicken legs with boiled vegetables, I went looking for Nanna. The witch was using a room in the annex to the villa, somewhere isolated where she could practice her craft without any curious or superstitious people bothering her.


    I knock on the door. "Nanna? It is me, Sandra. Can I come in?"


    "Yes. Come in."


    I pushed the door and entered. The room''s setup was similar to her tent back at the caravanserai, but with fewer knick-knacks. There were a bed, a desk, and two heavy trunks. A cauldron was sitting on the desk and wisps of white smoke came out of it every now and then.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    "What''s brewing in there?"


    She smiled. "Goblin eyes. I''m going to be rich once this latest batch brews. Abil-Kisu is buying them. Come here, girl. Let me see you."


    Nanna does a full physical checkup. She poked, pulled, groped, squeezed and pinched. Then she spent a good amount of time just staring at me. I felt as if she was piercing my soul.


    Then she scoffed and cackled. She waves a fist at the sky.


    "Tarhun! Maybe he''s not that much of a fool as I thought. He gave you a mental boon, didn''t he?"


    I had to go back to the tablet to look at the description.


    "Here, it says..."


    <blockquote>


    Scholar: Your capacity for remembering things and learning is increased fivefold.


    </blockquote>


    "I take it back. Tarhun is not as much of a fool as I thought. That''s the boon I asked about, yes. But its description is incomplete. From what I can see, it also increases your mental resilience. Or didn''t you notice that you are sometimes coping too well with things that would leave you emotionally scarred? This one and your healing boon make sure you will always return to a sane mental state."


    That''s one thing that''s been bothering me for some time. Nanna speaks of Tarhun with an unusual degree of familiarity. There are other issues higher in priority though.


    "Does it mean I''ll fully recover?" I asked, excited.


    She glared at me and then sighed. "As usual you listened to nothing I said. I said that this ''scholar'' boon you have increases your mental resilience and recovery."


    "Oh. Sorry about that. Do you mean I''m recovering from my trauma five times faster? As I ''learn'' how to cope with it?"


    She opened a faint smile. "Maybe there''s still salvation for you."


    I think she agreed with me. It makes sense.


    Nanna didn''t wait for me to reply to her quip before continuing her diagnosis. "You should refrain from using your powers for longer. You suffered burnout. That''s a serious issue. If you strain your magical energy, you might be permanently weakened."


    I raised my left hand with the sign of the scout''s pledge. "No more Decomposing radioactive matter."


    Nanna nodded. "Yes, that was stupid. You fell right into Nergal''s trap."


    Stop the press. Cue in the sound of a vinyl record being scratched. I never mentioned Nergal to Nanna. The only two people I did were Es-Kina the Nephew and Abil-Kisu.


    "Yeah, that fallen god. He''s a scheming one, isn''t he?" I said in the most casual way I could.


    Nanna cackled. "That''s right. And he is bad at scheming, let me tell you. That''s how Ereshkigal got him wedlock."


    I smirked. Nanna paused for a while then she grumbled with slitted eyes.


    "There''s ''smart'' and then there''s ''too smart for their own good'', girl."


    I joined my hands in front of me. "Please forgive me. I didn''t mean to pry, Nanna."


    Nanna''s frown softened and she changed her stance to look very grandmotherly.


    She then spoke softly, "It is fine, girl. You are too fickle to grasp everything. Now, you have something you want to ask me, don''t you?"


    What is the question to which you hold the numeric answer, Martin Freeman?


    Between the far-fetched conjecture and the most obvious and concrete question, I went for the latter.


    "Can I learn how to use magic? Cast spells?"


    Nanna sighed. Maybe I blew it. She then looked up, down, and back at me.


    "I need you to tell me two things? Can you sense your inner magical power?"


    I nodded. "Yes. I can sense it, and it is empty now."


    She waved a hand in front of her in a circular pattern. "Good. Then you can know when you are running out of magic and stop doing stupid things. Now, what do you see?"


    Yeah, I think it is one of those koans where the nonsensical question brings a deeper understanding of the universe. Nanna the Zen master. I look at her, at her hands, at the room behind her, around, up, down.


    "I see you and me in your room," I finally answer, absolutely certain it is the wrong answer.


    She staresd straight at my eyes. "I''m sorry. You can''t use magic and cast spells. It is impossible. Before you retort, whine or despair, let me explain. And listen."


    I noded and she continued.


    "There are two requirements to use magic. The first one is to have magic power. Only one in one hundred people will have any kind of magic power, and of those, most will have only a faint wisp of magic. Think of the magic capacity of a person as water. Minor Sorcerers like master blacksmith Albert Samus have an amount of magic comparable to water in a thimble. They can use one or two simple spells one to three times a day. Normal Sorcerers have a tankard''s worth. They can cast moderate difficulty spells several times a day, or one complex spell once or twice. Grand Sorcerers like the senior magistrate Sun-Goro, have a barrel''s. They can use complex spells a dozen times or great magic once a week.


    "You, girl," She pokes my chest. "You are a pond. A deep one. The rate of recovery for everyone in the same proportion to their magic amount."


    I feel excited. Maybe I''m the strongest mage? Like those Isekai tropes?


    "And what''s the second one?" I ask, barely containing my giddiness.


    "Be patient, girl," she chides me. "I am not finished. Listen. This is important. You are suffering from burnout. Burnout pokes holes in the bottom of thimbles, tankards, and barrels. Burnout fills ponds with silt and muddles the waters. Do you understand?"


    "I think I do. Not only my magic capacity is diminished but I also start to leak magic and it is not as pure anymore."


    She chuckled. "Smart one. But maybe that recovery boon Tarhun gave you will dredge the silt out of your pond. I believe it will. Let''s hope...." She trailed off and mumbled something intelligible. I could swear I heard her say ''I can''t do anything to help."


    "That''s why I need to give it time to recover, right?"


    "Yes. Now, onto the second requirement to cast spells. It is the ability to see magic. To my magic perception, you shine so brightly that I can barely keep looking at you. Even now, you are spending all the magic you can generate and gather on your healing. But your eyes, enchanted by the boons Tarhun gave you, are blind to magic. Or you never had the ability anyway. When I waved my hand, I used a cantrip to create a rainbow of magic power. One that can be easily seen by even the lowest adept."


    My shoulders dropped. Of course, there was some kind of trick, something that only mages could perceive.


    "Is there anything that can be done?"


    Nanna shook her head. "I don''t know if that fool Tarhun did it on purpose or not, but you are not going to learn magic in this life, I''m sorry, Sandra."


    I knew she was being serious because she used my name. And the way she derided the major God of this world was appalling.


    "Divine boons," The witch continued, "Are bound to the soul. The deity permanently spends a portion of their divine power and grant them permanently. The only way to remove a divine boon is when the body dies and the soul is released, and even then it is usually not done. Tarhun couldn''t remove your boons, and you made it impossible for him to act against you. At least you were smart enough to coax that alliance out of him.


    "Still, you shouldn''t be dismayed. If you hadn''t those invulnerable eyes, you wouldn''t be able to tame the sky-lord."


    The way she jumped from one topic to the next without giving me time to think was irritating. For example, I knew I had to ask her something about her familiarity with the gods but I forgot the exact words I wanted to use. I had to tread carefully around Nanna. I didn''t want to offend her or pry too much. She was important to me and I had no idea how to treat her.


    And if I tried to post to the Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange that question, it would be closed. ''How can I ask an ancient neo-Mesopotamian witch about her relationship with the gods without offending her?''


    Maybe on worldbuilding, but the answers would range from totally useless to rather obvious. And would also be closed as too subjective. Still a frigging awesome network.


    But I digress. There''s no internet, much less a community of experts to solve my well-worded, objective problems. For free.


    "Do you mean Bloodstone? What does it have to do with my eyes?"


    "That bird is called sky-lord for a reason," Nanna answered, irritated. Her mood swings were epic. "And yours, in particular, is fixated on eyes. He believed he was the lord because he could peck the eyes of anyone and nobody could peck his. Well, he tried to peck yours and lost. Therefore the bird thought that..."


    She trailed off on purpose, expecting me to finish her sentence. I thought of Dime and how he behaved and the answer was easy.


    "He thought that I could peck his eyes. And then he submitted. Is that it?"


    She cackled. "Yes. Stupid bird. That''s why he gifts you his food all the time. So you don''t eat him."


    I felt a pang of guilt for eating his mate. Dime was intelligent enough to know that we cooked and ate his mate. I wanted to ask her how she knew that but I knew she was running out of patience to spend with me. And the smoke coming from the cooking goblin eyes changed colors.


    "Is there anything I should do?"


    "Yes. Don''t touch his eyes. Otherwise? He''s a smart bird. He knows what you like to eat. He''s not afraid of you if that''s what you are thinking."


    But how does she... "How do you know that?"


    Nanna laughed, not cackled, and beamed a wide, mischievous grin. "Secret! Well, I need to tend to my enchantment. Go and rest, girl. Eat your fill and regain your strength. And don''t use magic."


    She kicked me out of her room. At least she seemed livelier than before. I was unsure if I liked Grumpy Nanna better than Mischievous Nanna or not. But that was quite instructive and forlorn. Nanna was a difficult person to deal with, but also very important. Without her, I would be either dead or in Marduk''s greasy hands. Eww.


    I went back to the main villa and was found by Arwia outside the annex.


    "Sandra, there you are! How was your consultation with Nanna?"


    I rolled my eyes. "Tense. She was very helpful though. What should we do now?"


    "It is time for the children''s lecture. I was hoping you would join us today. Teach us something."


    I nodded. But what subject I should teach them? I thought about science maybe even some music. But there was one subject the people of this world were in dire need. I made up my mind when we reached the place where Belle, Kali-Maru, and Sere-Naha gathered the children. It was a grass patch that was used to walk the horses and let them graze when it wasn''t possible to take them outside. There was a faint smell of manure but compared to how the whole city outside smelled, it was bearable. The children sat small cushions in a four by four pattern. Well, Zuska was an adult.


    "Good afternoon, kids. My name is Sandra Rinaldi and I''m going to be your guest teacher for today."


    Rimush rolled his eyes. "We know who you are."


    "Yes, but stating your clear purpose is always helpful. Okay. Our subject today is a thing called ''ethics''," I said the term in English because there was no translation. I sensed their confusion. "I''ll explain. First, let''s talk about animals. Have you noticed that animals are quite selfish? They usually only worry about themselves, if they have a brood or a family they look after their group but they don''t care about the other animals at all."


    "That''s stupid," Pidda complained. "Some animals are food and all of them are dumb. Why would they care about each other?"


    I nodded. "That''s a good point. But we also have these same instincts. Can you imagine if we cared only for ourselves at the loss of the others?"


    Rimush scoffed. "What''s the difference? That''s what happens anyway. The weak loses, the strong wins."


    Belili shoved her brother, "Let she talk. Do you have to be that bitter?"


    "Yes, the strong wins. That''s good for the strong, but is it good for the weak? Rimush?"


    He shrugged, "It''s the weak''s fault for being weak. If they didn''t want to lose, they should train to become stronger!"


    Maybe the other world was not ready for this kind of value system. Or I was doing something wrong. I looked around for some idea, some source of inspiration and saw Abil-Kisu taking a stroll through the gardens, talking to another merchant lord I saw at the council. I waved at him and they came my way. I continue my lecture with a slightly louder voice.


    "I''ll use an example. See honorable Abil-Kisu there? Let''s say he goes to a foreign city to trade."


    Abil-Kisu opens a broad smile and waves at me to continue.


    "There he meets a local trader, that will buy his wares. Now, honorable Abil-Kisu has two choices. Either he presses hard using his marvelous negotiation techniques and squeezes every copper shekel the other merchant has, making a lot of money but leaving the other merchant unhappy with the trade, or he works out something that makes both of them happy and with profit. Now, making a lot of money on a trade sounds really good, right?"


    They nod. Abil-Kisu and the other merchant stand a few meters to my side, listening carefully.


    "But if Abil-Kisu goes for the first choice, he makes a lot of money on a single trade. And now, that local merchant resents him. He is not helpful. He will ''forget'' (I do air quotes) to warn Abil-Kisu of bandit sightings on the road he''ll take to his next stop. He will not introduce Abil-Kisu to his contacts. He won''t help with the local officials.


    "By making the most profit on one transaction, an entire world has been closed shut or made harder for him. Now, imagine the other choice. Abil-Kisu, wise as he is, sees that this merchant is trustworthy and can be a lifelong partner, a contact on far shores. He works a trade that is good for both parties, still lets him with a good profit but one that leaves the other trader also happy with. Now, that trader warns Abil-Kisu of the bandits. He introduces Abil-Kisu to other partners, broadening his trade routes and opening new markets. Better products! Opportunities! Contacts! And he also warns Abil-Kisu of the rotten city officials.


    "In this second scenario, Abil-Kisu makes less money now, but he will make more money in the future. By working something good for everyone, everyone grew richer."


    I gave them some time to let the information sink in. Abil-Kisu raised one hand and I nodded. He moved forward.


    "Milady Rinaldi, you read me like a straight scroll. I''m flattered and I must say, the first choice is the worst. Listen, children," the merchant lord clapped to draw attention. "What the lady said is the least a resentful merchant would do. Because that merchant, instead of warning me of the bandits, will send word to the bandits that I am carrying a lot of gold, making them target me. He will spread lies and falsehoods in his petty vengeance. He will poison the ears of others about me.


    "He''ll ruin my reputation by slandering me. The extra money I took from him? He''ll make me lose tenfold as much. And that''s the truth. I''m called honorable by both my friends and my enemies. Why is that? Did I force them? Did I force you, lady Rinaldi?"


    I shake my head. "I call you honorable because you are honorable."


    "That''s the truth," the other merchant entered the conversation. "Abil-Kisu is honorable because he trades fairly. His prices are just and his word, truthful."


    "And that is ethical behavior, children. When we act not only to benefit ourselves but to make sure nobody loses. Making sure we behave with honor, truth, and justice. We respect people the way we want them to respect us. We listen. We understand each other. We work to support one another. In my world, there are big corporations. Companies with more employees than this city has people even before the death of the late Enshi. These companies, are wealthy beyond belief, and they help each other make money. They build partnerships. Joint ventures."


    I was losing them by using foreign terms. So I decided to use language they could understand.


    "They send their wagons together to split the costs of the guards. They help each other carry their wares. They share knowledge, techniques, to make everyone''s products better. And they have to trust each other. Companies that nobody trusts have everyone else turn their backs at them. And without the partners, they can''t do things on their own, even though they are huge.


    "And the people of my world, they watch the companies. Let''s say there''s a company that throws trash and litters the streets where their wagons go through. People dislike that and stop buying their products. These companies break. Sometimes they apologize. And the people demanded the government to make laws against that behavior. Bad companies are fined. Chased off. In my world, you either play nice or don''t play at all. We saw that it was better that way."


    It was a gross misrepresentation, as companies still did underhand moves, but nobody was there to argue against my points. I could see by their faces that I am giving the two merchant lords a lecture as well, as their minds were surely firing up with a ton of ideas as they had a better grasp of the concepts I was talking about than the children.


    Abil-Kisu smiled at me, "Wonderful. Wonderful. I want to listen more, but where are my manners? Milady Rinaldi, meet Ronan-Uz, a friend of mine. We would be delighted to be a part of your lecture. Could we take a seat next to your pupils?"


    Some of the children went wide-eyed as the two merchant lords sat on borrowed cushions. Abil-Kisu picked up Gut and Ronan-Uz took Tuwazi on his lap. Then I went on with my lecture. I spoke of ethics, the concepts of trustworthiness, fairness, responsibility, honor, win-win relationships, partnerships, compassion, and finally, charity. I told them of my NGO experience, the care for the parks, and how that was good for me because it created some opportunities to further my research.


    The evening was creeping in, the long shadows cast over the lawn foretold the end of the day. We dismissed the class and sent the children to wash before gathering for dinner.


    I took a bath together with Arwia and Belle-Sunu.


    "It is amazing how fast you recover, Sandra," Belle said as she helped me scrub my skin, my right hand still rather clumsy.


    "What you did for the children today, I''m sure they will remember that lesson," Arwia commented.


    I could only smile. I knew these girls were doing their best to cheer me up. My mind wandered back to my conversation with Nanna. If she was that powerful and wise, why was he living in a tent at the caravanserai? Was she keeping a low profile? That old woman held a lot of mysteries. She was rather talkative today. I was bummed with the revelation that I wouldn''t be able to cast spells but compared to the mages I''ve seen so far, it wasn''t too big a loss for me.


    But the girls were right. On this day alone, I recovered one cup as I had to adjust the bra straps. But going without my electronics and my wardrobe was bad. I couldn''t wait to be discharged by Dr. Nanna. I had to resort to washing my underwear and let it dry while I wore them. At least I''d have my clothes back tomorrow.


    At dinner, I heard some terrible news. Brandon wasn''t coming back tonight. That drained my motivation. I kidnapped Ariwa to make me company and went to bed earlier.

 Day 24

    I woke up with the early rays of the sun, feeling bad. Not because of some nightmare with funky-dressed zombies doing dance routines but with envy. It was a dark feeling that I kept to myself, but I was envious. Humans are petty creatures that desire what they don''t have, or what was denied or taken away from them. In my case, I was watching the soft curves of the female human sleeping next to me and comtemplating sexual harassment.


    It was a terrible and dark moment, I confess.


    I didn''t act on my dark impulses, so that''s a plus? I guess not on charges of creepy staring. Unaware of my brooding negativity, Arwia''s chest rose and fell as she snored softly.


    ''You should be glad you are (probably) going to fully recover from what happened'', I told myself. Also that your clothes didn''t burn, leaving you naked in that hole. Actually that was a good question. Why didn''t my clothes burn? Did the temperature inside stay below the cotton self-ignition point? Below the melting point of polyester? What''s the melting temperature of polyester again? Which one is higher? I felt naked and dumb without my databases. Such is the tragedy of the XXI century human being. They forsook raw knowledge for the power of indexing. I knew how to fetch the knowledge I want from a vast array of subjects, but not the knowledge itself.


    Like most of the games in my devices, my brain required a network connection. And that was without getting started on social network withdrawal. At least in that introverts transmigrated to another world have an advantage. I rated close to neutral on that trait.


    If you can believe standardized personality tests you do for a friend because they needed "volunteers" as their assignment. It''s just like those magazine tests that tell what kind of boy you''ll marry. They were all wrong.


    I was totally absorbed in my random thoughts when Arwia turned around in her sleep and hugged me. All that front-facing softness I was envying? I had now a first-row seat. Karma is a bitch, I just resigned and hugged her back.


    I slept like a baby. Who would''ve guessed.


    My psychologist friend, that''s who. She said I rated high on ''openness to experience'' just a few degrees short of being a hedonist junkie. Is this what she meant? That I was open to these kinds of experience? I don''t think so. Theresa would''ve... nevermind.


    I woke up still tangled up with Arwia. Belle-Sunu was shaking us.


    "Wake up! Breakfast is here, come and eat."


    Arwia woke up and freezed as she notices she''s been hugging me. I''m hugging her too but from our position it is obvious who started. She jumped to the other side of the bed and climbed out.


    "Mornin'' Belle!"


    I ate my breakfast of ham and eggs and went on a stroll through the gardens to get some healthy morning sun. I was pretty bored and itching to at least summon my headphones and the iPod for some relaxing music. But I was scared of the permanent burnout. Arwia came from behind me.


    "Sandra, I didn''t meant to..." Her voice was wavering.


    "Nah. I never took you for the grabby type but I don''t mind. At least I wasn''t alone."


    "I..." A train of children interrupted us. They came and ran around us.


    "Play with us, big sister!" Tuwazi pulled on Arwia''s arm.


    "Sandra, do you know of a cool game?" Belili asked.


    "Actually, I do. We need to get a small coin bag filled with small peebbles. Go fetch it and I''ll prepare our game."


    I went to a spot next to the stables, a patch of naked earth. There I found Aristunn taking care of the horses.


    "Hello, milady," He bowed.


    We were in Abil-Kisu''s place so I didn''t mind.


    "Aristunn, I want to make a game for the children, can I use that patch of dirt over there?"


    "Yes, I don''t see a problem," He brushed the neck of the stallion he was looking after. "These horses are all trained to handle noise, they won''t mind the children playing."


    "Thank you!" I nodded and went to the spot.


    The game I was going to introduce them to was easy. Hopscotch. I drew the eight squares and explained the game to them. I was too weak to skip around so I used Arwia as the guinea pig. It didn''t take much for them to grasp the rules and start playing. We drew another pattern because one for sixteen children was too much. And yes, even Rimush and Zuska were queued to play.


    I grabbed Arwia''s hand and went away before they decided to challenge me. There was only so much one could stroll through the gardens and while quite large, it wasn''t huge or even had a labyrinth. I was feeling much better than yesterday. I still felt a void where my magic power gathered. It was not a physical spot, it was a general feeling like being thirsty and feeling one''s body sluggish. Compared to the time I took to recover from deadly wounds, I was recovering at a snail''s pace. Maybe that''s what Hugh Jackman felt when he impersonated the Canadian berserker for the last time. I went for my now usual morning nap under my now favorite tree.


    "Wake me up for lunch," I told Arwia and let my mind slip into dreamland.


    Arwia woke me up when it was time to eat. We had lamb for lunch and it was delicious.


    I felt some guilt for staying in Abil-Kisu''s care this long. I thought about returning home and searched Abil-Kisu. I found him in the tent with his advisors. They seemed to be working on some paperwork.Or claywork to precise. Bookkeeping. Scrollkeeping. Urgh. They were shuffling around several wooden boards with a layer of soft clay to write their modified cuneiform. The clay could either be smoothed over allowing a rewrite or dried and cured to make a permanent record.


    They seemed busy and worried so I just stood at the back of the tent until someone noticed me. It didn''t take long.


    "Ah! Lady Rinaldi!" Abil-Kisu shouted in his usual soft and friendly voice, "Please approach, you don''t need to be shy. We are having a small problem here, but what can I do for you?"


    Everyone stopped and stared at me. It was awkward. "It is nothing important, it can wait. What happened, is that something I can help with?"


    "Someone robbed two of our business last night. We are trying to see what was stolen and calculate our losses."


    That was bad. It only reinforced my drive to move back home. And leaving the place alone wouldn''t be good, as someone might be tempted to move in and take over. But I couldn''t not offer my services.


    "Can I help you with anything?" The men surrounding Abil-Kisu all paused to stare at me. The merchant lord smiled and chortled. "Oh, ho ho! Lady Rinaldi is a person of many talents, indeed. Jasper, please give her the inventory statements you already checked. See if she reaches the same conclusions as you do."


    Jasper, the aide that was on his right side tensed up then opened up a grin. I felt it was both a test and a challenge and I mentally rolled up my sleeves. Time to put those credits of "Economics for Life/Social Sciences I and II" to good use.


    They opened up a spot next to Jasper for me, and he put some scrolls aside for me. I browsed them. Inventory, reports of purchase and sales, etc. It seemed organized but it wasn''t organized enough. They were steps away from a proper double-entry system. I could see they had separate accounts but they weren''t synchronized or even related to one another.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "Can I have three clay tablets, please?"


    I drew the T for the separate accounts and dove into the numbers to organize the ledger. It wasn''t too hard because as I told, they were on the brink of discovering the system. Jasper kept watching me like a hawk. Once I finished the calculations, I handed him the tablets.


    Jasper gets the numbers and runs through his own scrolls. Then he nods. "Master, they match. The miss reached the same conclusions as I did."


    I wasn''t hoping to upstage him and actually felt relieved that our accounting matched. I don''t think anyone incompetent can enter Abil-Kisu''s service and even if they did, stay long enough to reach any position.


    "See?" Abil-Kisu clapped Jasper''s back and exulted. "The lady may have obtained her permits through judicial means, but she has everything a good trader must have. My eyes didn''t fool me. And even though she reached the same conclusion as you did, Jasper, she used a fourth of the time."


    "Abil-Kisu is too kind. I just studied a very broad range of subjects in my world. Economics was one of them. I''m in no way a good trader, I operated my slave business for one day and it went bankrupt."


    "banq-roopt?" He asked. Phonetically, I mean.


    No banks to bank-rupt, I guess.


    "When a business goes bad and loses too much money and then goes out of business."


    "Oh," He smiles. "You broke."


    Yeah, I guess there was that too. Jasper leaned closer. Sensing he wanted to speak, I turned to face him. Then I backed off away from the table to avoid turning my back to Abil-Kisu.


    "Milady. Why did you leave all these gaps in the tablet? Isn''t it wasteful of space?"


    "It''s because I needed to see the transactions at a glance, so I left every one aligned. It''s easier to make sure that every line add up. If I were doing the books, then I would code the transactions to know they are part of the same group and use all the space. Also, the T accounts are made this way so it is easier to separate the debits from the credits."


    I showed him the sides for debits and credits.


    "Why are you recording the purchase of goods as a debit?" Jasper asked, skeptical.


    "Oh. That''s because economicists like to play with their words. Let me remember what my teacher told me when I asked him this same question... It is all about the flow of value. In all transactions, the value goes from one account to another. This line here," I pointed to the cash account, "Represents when the business spends money. And the goods that entered the warehouse represent the value that entered, so it is on the other side. So this side is value leaving the account, and this side is value entering the account. Since every transaction affects two accounts, you can use the balance of the accounts to make sure you didn''t make a mistake in the recording of the transactions.


    "And splitting them in several accounts allows you to know how much in each category you have at a glance. See here, the business lost this many gold shekels because of the thieves."


    I showed them the "thief damage" expense account debits.


    I knew I''d won Jasper over when he leaned over and burned the clay with his eyes. "Could you explain that to me again?"


    I went through the whole basic theory of double-entry with him all over again. Then we did together the ledger for the second business that was raided. I was terrified by how much money Abil-Kisu lost. It was almost half of what he paid for the merchant''s assets back then. In fact, I suspected some of these business were, for a brief time, mine.


    Absorbed in the accounting and sharing of knowledge, the afternoon slipped by.


    "Well, look at the time!" Abil-Kisu stretched. "Let''s stop for today. Lady Rinaldi, I am most grateful for your help. You saved us an entire day of work. Now we can send our men to hunt these thieves."


    Men as in thugs. He read my concern and smiled.


    "Milady, that''s part of the cost of doing business. You see, if it was food they stole, I would look the other way. But they stole luxury goods. No good to eat or keep one''s warm at night, are they? No. This was a petty theft that made use of the chaos to profit. So I''ll send my men to find the thieves. One day earlier, easier to find them, yes? And then, I''ll bring them to the new magistrate."


    In what condition, I wondered. It was none of my business though.


    "I''m grateful to help. You sheltered us, it was the least I could do."


    He shook his head. "The profit I''ll have selling Madam Nanna''s enchanted light orbs that were charged by your magic the day before yesterday is more than enough to pay for the expenses your household incurred tenfold," He chortled. "I shipped them with the riders going to the capital already. The lesson you taught Jasper today is worth..." He turned to the accountant, "how much do you think it will save us in a year, Jasper?"


    "How should I know, fool?" He roared back at his boss in a good-spirited way. "If we can do the accounting work of a day in a couple hours and make sure it is correct, we won''t suffer as many losses. Maybe two dozen gold mina."


    I wonder what would happen if Abil-Kisu had access to spreadsheet software. He might take over the world.


    "And there you have it, milady. It seems I am the one in your debt again!" He laughed. "But now, clean that up. You are dismissed for the day. Stay here with me, milady. Dinner will be served soon."


    I sat there with him and watched as the scribes and clerks took the scrolls and clay tablets. Jasper then held the clerk by the arm.


    "These three, send them to the kiln. These are very important and I want them fired and glazed with the upmost care. If they break, someone is going to--"


    It was getting dangerous so I interrupted him.


    "Master Jasper, I can make another if it breaks. Please don''t hurt anyone. I am sure he understood your meaning."


    The clerk nodded. Jasper relented. "Very well. Honorable Abil-Kisu, I wish you a good dinner."


    They went away and I was left alone with Abil-Kisu and four guards.


    "While dinner is not served, please tell me a story from your world, yes? One of a merchant or a trader, if possible?"


    I thought for a while and then found the perfect story. "Of course. For the honorable Abil-Kisu, I have the perfect story. Can we call everyone earlier so I tell it before we eat?"


    "Of course. Patutu," He clapped his hands and one of the guards answered, "Please inform everyone that we will have entertainment before dinner and they are to come here as fast as possible."


    We waited for a quarter of hour. Abil-Kisu told me news of the city. How the people that lost their houses to the fires are settling in the abandoned buildings. How the city is mounting an offensive to drive away, kill, or capture the remnants of Marduk''s army. Of fast riders sent everywhere to spread the news of Marduk''s defeat. How he convinced the Enshi to take the credit for himself and leave me out of it.


    The children and the adults entered the tent and the small talk time was over.


    I stood up and moved to the middle of the tent. Then I paused, took a deep breath and recalled the Bard''s story, as enacted by De Niro and Irons. Without the religious and ethinical themes. There was some flaming of the play on the light of modern ethical tensions, but I think that suppressing these themes blocks the audience from debating them and understanding why they are bad.


    We don''t fight prejudice with denial but enlightment.


    My audience in another world, however, could do without.


    "Welcome, everyone, gentlemen, ladies, boys, and girls of all ages. Tonight I''ll tell you a tale of greed and mercy, of love and hate.


    "It all began in the beautiful city of Venice, where boats sailed through the canals amidst the houses. There we find a noble merchant, Antonio, that always looked up to his friends. His kin and a nobleman, Bassanio, was in love with the fair lady Portia of Belmont. But he needed thirty gold mina to pay for the festivities and a gift to the lady, a bejewelled ring most treasured.


    "Lady portia was rich, virtuous and fair woman, orphaned by her father''s early demise..."


    And the story goes on, of the greedy moneylender''s revenge, of the struggles of the fair and honest merchant, tragedy-struck, for the sake of his dearest friend, of the lady that disguises as a man to deliver her speech. I had to remove two verses because I had an agreement with Tarhun.


    <blockquote>


    The quality of mercy is not strain''d,


    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven


    Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;


    It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:


    ''Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes


    The throned monarch better than his crown;


    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,


    The attribute to awe and majesty,


    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;


    But mercy is above this sceptred sway;


    It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,


    Therefore, moneylender,


    Though justice be thy plea, consider this,


    That, in the course of justice, none of us


    Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;


    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render


    The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much


    To mitigate the justice of thy plea;


    Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice


    Must needs give sentence ''gainst the merchant there.


    </blockquote>


    And in the end the moneylender''s desire to take the pound of flesh from Antonio''s heart, and the intervention by disguised Portia that the contract states no blood. Then the scene where Portia confronts Bassanio about her ring.


    The story ends I earn a stnanding ovation. Unlike double-entry accounting, it was something well-known in this world as there were roaming minstrels.


    I had identified Antonio with Abil-Kisu as it would cost me nothing to flatter the host. What I wasn''t expecting would be to whom Bassanio, Shylock and Portia were likened to. It gave me a bitter aftertaste, for Shilock''s children, in this version, hadn''t eloped but taken under Portia''s wing. It would be good if this world''s Bassanio was a real Bassanio but the jury was still out on that.


    I would suck at crossdressing. Shoulders not broad enough.


    I took my seat next to Nanna and two removed from the host as it was proper and dinner was served. Some big bird, not as big as Dime''s mate. Deliciously seasoned and cooked. I ate like a Shonen protagonist.


    Brandon was truant. I learned later that a soldier came to let me know that he wouldn''t be available during the next few days. Peacekeeping or something like that.


    Without another choice, I summoned both Belle-Sunu and Arwia to keep me company at night.

 Day 25

    My day started with the most curious realizations. Nanna and Abil-Kisu were getting filthy rich at my expense. The latter was already filthy rich, but the witch has been brewing light eyes ever since I gave her the heads. I kept thinking that having pajama parties were really nice. But the girl''s sleeping habits were bad. Arwia was a grabber. And Belle-Sunu a spinner. I opened my eyes to see a female calf in dire need shaving next to my face and an arm wrapped around, binding said calf to me.


    At least I wasn''t soiling myself with nightmares anymore. I''d pick hairy legs over the vengeful ghost of Prince Marduk at any time.


    I stirred and tried to pry Arwia''s arms open. She tightened her grip turned me into the little spoon and nuzzled my nape. I sighed and resigned. That''s the kind of strength you gain by doing labor every day in an inn. Fear the mighty barmaid.


    Belle-Sunu woke up with the first rays of the sun and kicked Arwia''s arm, waking the girl up.


    "Ah!" Arwia yelped. "Belle-Sunu!"


    "Finally. Can you two let me go?" I complained in good spirits.


    "Why did you turn me around?" Belle asked, a paragon of innocence.


    "Who turned you around, woman? You kept spinning the whole night!" I replied. "Now get up, you have work to do!"


    Belle sat up and we all climbed out of bed.


    I checked my body while I changed my clothes and did my business before the chamber pot was taken away for cleanup. Magic threatened not only the laws of thermodynamics but also Lavoisier''s. I had no idea where all the extra mass I was devouring went. I checked my right hand. I could wiggle my fingers and bend them more than halfway. I could touch the middle of my pinkie with my thumb. I could feel more muscle mass under my skin and my ribs were no longer visible. But it seemed that my stupid power still refused to rebuild the fat.


    Maybe I should ask Nanna but the witch disliked being interrupted. One last check, I focused my senses inward. Still empty. Worse, now that Nanna used her water metaphor, I felt my magic pool dry and mucky. It seemed today''s schedule would be recovery.


    A recovery that, for me, was taking an absurd amount of time. I grew back a leg from the bare bone in less than an hour inside the mine tunnels. Was this a combination of how expensive my recovery was with how much the burnout affected me? This feeling of an unquenchable thirst that came with zero magic in the tank was borderline unbearable.


    Without much to do and no desire to seek new experiences, my morning was a repetition of the previous days. Walk, play, nap. I was becoming a cat.


    I would''ve blurred this day if it weren''t for the news that arrived in the afternoon. A crier arrived and knocked on the nearby estates, gathering one guard from each to deliver his message. In my case, it was Huzzi-Ya the bearer of the terrible news. He found us in the garden.


    The guard paused and cleared his throat before repeating the crier''s words. "By order of the magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina, the Goddess Ishtar is now enshrined in the city of Es-Kina. A mighty ziggurat shall be erected in her honor. To that effect, he demands that all houses send half of their able men and eunuch to work in the great work. The Enshi also summons all women of marriable age, free people or slaves for the wedding market. Among the ones present at the market, the Enshi will select one to anoint as a high priestess and perform Ellu Hassadu to sanctify the ziggurat."


    I looked around, the people in the gardens seemed happy. Arwia, some servants, Zuska and the children.


    "A great ziggurat! The blessings of the gods will end the drought!" Zuska exulted.


    "It''s been ages since the city held a marriage market," Arwia remarked.


    "These construction projects are dangerous. My uncle helped build the courthouse," a servant warned, "and he lost a foot to an accident."


    I tried to keep an open mind but the whole thing smelled. Forceful drafting of workers and that wedding market seemed fishy. Because this was a place where women were sold. So instead of a bridal fair, we would have a bride fair. But I might have jumped to conclusions. I needed a local''s point of view, and I had one right by my side.


    "Arwia," I asked, "what happens during a wedding market? I''ve never heard of one and it''s been only five months from my rebirth. So, what is it?"


    "It is more common in small towns and villages. There, once a year, during the harvest festival, all girls in marriageable age are gathered and exposed," she explained. I didn''t like the exposed part but didn''t interrupt. "Then the men bid on the girls, and there''s a competition to see who gets the highest bidder."


    Yes, it was as bad as I thought. "But is it normal to call for slaves to participate?" I asked her.


    She shook her head, "No, never heard of it. I don''t think it''s even legal."


    As William Goldman once wrote, ''Follow the money''. "To whom goes the money from the brides'' sale?"


    She cheerfully answered, "That''s the best part, most of the money goes to the brides'' dowry. The father gets another chunk and a small part is given as taxes and donations to the temple of Ishtar."


    An outline of the Enshi''s motivation formed in my mind. He wanted to build that ziggurat so his fame would rise. He would keep the poor men occupied with the construction, the rich ones busy with new toys - wives, I mean - and pocket a lot of shekels.


    And since a lot of people would get married, soon he''d have a baby boom. The ziggurat would be his legacy. The problem was, would he live that long?


    A ziggurat should take at least a year to build. Even on Earth, it would take months. How does he expect to see it finished? Or was he thinking I lied when I told him he''d die soon?


    Maybe he has some magic to help him. It''s not impossible.


    The only way to make sure was to ask the in-house magical expert. I took Arwia and Huzzi-Ya with me and went to the annex building looking for Nanna. The old witch was sunbathing outside the annex, sitting on a bench.


    She waved at us. "Hello there, girl. What is the rush?" She asked.


    Nanna seemed to be in good spirits. I had Huzzi-Ya repeat the proclamation to her. Nanna listened carefully but I could see a frown forming in her already wrinkled face.


    "So, what do you think of that, Nanna? Is this a desperate last move to leave a legacy behind? The Enshi doesn''t have much to live," I told her.


    She raised an eyebrow and gave me a stink-eye. "Or does he? I don''t doubt that were he in your world, the Enshi wouldn''t live long. But is he? Don''t we know of one that can survive that rock''s poison already?"


    Yes, that might be possible but how did he find a healer in so little time?


    "Is there sorcery that can cure wounds that serious?"


    She clicks her tongue. "No. Healing magic is extremely draining and can only be used within hours of the wounding. The greatest mortal healer might have been able to slow down his death, at most. But that didn''t stop you, did it?"


    I pondered about what Nanna said. Nephew wouldn''t survive long enough to see the ziggurat built, even if he...


    Oh, no.


    He didn''t do that.


    If he was looking for labor, there are the remnants of Marduk''s army to be recruited. But that would mean...


    An influx of men without the corresponding counterpart. Then what does he do?


    The marriage market. He drags every single woman he can to marry off to those soldiers. Or their officers.


    But even if you throw tens of thousands of men in the construction, you would still need to spend months to build it. Months he shouldn''t have.


    Unless he found a way to heal from the radiation damage? But Nanna said mortal magic can''t...


    Yeah. Mortal magic can''t.


    That''s why Nanna asked if that stopped me. Because my healing is from a divine source. And putting two and two and two together...


    "Is Ishtar herself backing him?"


    I immediately regretted asking that in front of the two young and highly-impressionable natives.


    Arwia sighed and seemed to be entranced with the prospect of divine blessings from the goddess of...


    "Probably, yes," Nanna replied. "Ishtar gains power with that ziggurat. Also, all the newlywed brides have to pay her tribute," She spoke the last part scanning my soul for something.


    I had to know what that could possibly mean. Nanna''s innuendo probably meant it would be something I''d not like. These people moved forward in some fields but still felt stuck in the bronze age.


    "Tribute?"


    It was Arwia that answered, blushing and bashful. "The brides need to go to the temple of Ishtar and collect donations adding up to one-tenth of her dowry and price put together."Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Oh, some kind of raffle, fundraiser, or campaign. That meant the wave of weddings that were to come would fill the coffers of Ishtar''s temple. That, added to the ziggurat would mean the goddess would grow stronger. It didn''t affect me so much as long as I could go around the draft.


    Nanna made a smug smirk, pointed at Arwia, and then at me. "Arwia, I think Sandra didn''t understand what you meant. Could you please clarify how exactly the brides collect their donations?"


    I didn''t like a bit where this was going.


    "The brides enter the temple as temporary priestesses. There they perform the sacred rite in honor of Ishtar to collect donations. The supplicant men that enter the temple in search of blessings donate the money and perform the rite with the priestess. Once a bride collected enough money, she can leave with the goddess'' blessings of fertility. Most brides usually get pregnant from their husbands shortly after."


    I took a step back and tried to digest. "Does this sacred rite involves intercourse?"


    Arwia blushed even more and nodded. "It is said to be the most divine experience."


    Yeah, the bliss and rapture that comes from whoring oneself out. And I suddenly disliked Ishtar very much. Everyone was looking at me and I felt uncomfortable.


    "What is wrong?" I asked.


    Nanna cackled, full of unbridled mirth. Or schadenfreude. Hard to tell. Arwia fidgetted and Huzzi-Ya remembered he was supposed to be a guard and pretended to be in front of the Buckingham Palace.


    "What is the matter, guys?"


    "The Captain..." Arwia mumbled.


    Nanna slapped her knees and kept laughing. My brain was frozen, probably keeping my conscious mind from adding two and two and figuring out it amounted to minus one. I was getting very irritated at the situation.


    "What about Brandon?" I asked the seventeen-years-old woman.


    "Won''t you marry him?" She asked, already flinching from my reaction.


    Nanna wheezed and then reined in her laughter to speak. "And the priests at the temple of Ishtar frown upon lowering one''s assessed value for both price and dowry. They are known to catch cheaters that declare a lesser value and raise the amount the bride needs to collect," The witch explained.


    "And if you are on your period, the priests make you wait for ten days to purify yourself before you can perform the rites," Arwia added.


    No.


    Nope.


    No way.


    Never ever.


    I felt sick. To my modern XXI century sensibilities, what they were described as a sacred rite was known by another name. It was an exploitative system that disguised forced impregnation with a blessing of fertility. It also meant that the firstborn of most women was not the husband''s son. Without DNA or even a basic understanding of blood types, it was almost impossible to prove. Worse yet, the temple fattens its treasury by the same measure.


    The part of me that did not want to throw up my lunch overwhelmingly even recognized the stroke of genius of the Enshi''s plan. He would assimilate the remnants of the army, collect a ton of money, get in the good graces of one of the most influential deities, repopulate the city, and even quell dissent by putting men to push rocks in the construction of that ziggurat. Which I didn''t doubt would be the tallest building in the city.


    As nanna hinted, he might even use those good graces to get a divine ''get out of cancer-free'' card. I can''t blame him for that, he should try to survive and cancer is terrible. I don''t wish it on anyone. So long he doesn''t do it at the expense of others. And it didn''t look like that.


    "Let me see if I get this straight. A bride has to gather ten percent of the total value of her price and dowry as donations. The priests can set any goal if they feel the declared value is too low. Then they have to ''perform'' the sacred ''rite'' with ''supplicants'' that can pay any amount of money until they reach that value. And with a throng of soldiers that are basically destitute, it means that..."


    Nanna nodded. She didn''t seem happy. "You got the gist of it. The Enshi is going to turn the whole city into a brothel for Marduk''s soldiers. That''s why he issued the most unusual request for slave women as well. Between building the Ziggurat and visiting the temple of Ishtar with their wages, I don''t think there will be time for anything else."


    I took Arwia by the shoulder. "So, do you want to go to that bride market? Do you even have to accept the bid?"


    Nanna snorted. "You bet that no women that show up at that market will be allowed to leave without an own... husband."


    And I would put all the distance possible between us and that event. I was feeling crept out by just thinking of that. No, I wouldn''t let them touch my people. Or me. I felt the same hatred I did toward Hama-Tula and Marduk. I, a person, was not merchandise. Or a tasty treat to be thrown to the wolves in a mad bid for power. I wasn''t yet hostile toward Es-Kina the Nephew but I hoped he wouldn''t try to push that crap my way. But I was boiling inside at the situation.


    I said ''yet''. I knew how far I would go to safeguard my integrity. Unfortunately.


    "Okay. Here''s my ruling. So long the Enshi keeps his flaky hands away from my household, we are just going to ignore this proclamation. He wants to make his ziggurat, he wants to..." I was going to make a reference to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah but I was unsure if they were allowed. "Have his people breed like drunk rabbits, I have nothing to do with that. But nobody from my household is going to participate."


    Nanna nodded in approval. "That''s good, Sandra. But it will cause conflict. The Enshi won''t be happy with your refusal."


    I clenched my fists - well, only the left one anyway - and shouted, bursting with irritation. "I''m not contributing a single copper shekel or a drop of sweat to that. And that''s final. If he wants to fight, let''s fight."


    Arwia held my arm. "Calm down, Sandra. It will take at least a few days for this notice to reach the villages. We have time. Why don''t you talk to honorable Abil-Kisu about it? I bet he doesn''t want to release his own people too."


    She was right. I might be making a mountain out of a molehill.


    "You are right, Arwia. Huzzi-Ya, you are dismissed. Arwia, go ahead and wait for me, I need to talk to Nanna in private."


    She nodded, "It is almost time for today''s lecture. I hoped you''d join us or even share some wisdom with the children. I''m going ahead to gather the children. We''ll use the tent today."


    I waved her goodbye, "I''ll be there. It won''t take too long."


    Putting aside the fact that the city of Es-Kina might become known as Debba-Ut-Cherry in the future and that the Enshi might attempt to force me and the girls to become fuel in that wicked death-cheating scheme of his, I sit with Nanna for a private chat regarding my condition.


    "The priests have a spell," Nanna spoke right as I sat, "To detect an impregnated woman. Once they see one, she is sent to her husband so he may think the child is his."


    I was wondering about it. Because of course, the husband would want to start his newlywed life with the blessed woman. That would also relieve the pressure on the couple to breed as fast as possible, as it was statistically impossible that all of the temporary priestess'' partners in the "sacred rites" (sarcasm absolutely intended) are sterile.


    "That clears one of my doubts, yes. But it wasn''t the reason I wanted to talk to you in private, Nanna. It is my recovery. While I feel stronger, my body hadn''t recovered and I can feel my magic power is still at its lowest. I''m afraid there''s something wrong."


    She looks into me and I feel invaded. In a profound meaning of the term and definitely not in the ''priestess of Ishtar'' way though. It is as if she is looking at the core of my being. Nanna closes her eyes and wobbles.


    "Good news, your recovery is underway. You are stronger than the last time we talked, girl. But it is not as strong as I expected. Something is draining your magic power, leaving little for the recovery. I can see why Tarhun set the priorities of the boons that way but I''d have prioritized survival."


    And once again she talks like an expert. It is as if she knows how to do what Tarhun did. And it means she was a very powerful witch.


    "And what is draining my magic power? Am I leaking magic?"


    Like a water barrel that was hit by a shotgun.


    "No. You are leaking magic and also your usual magic emanation seeping into the space around you, but that''s within expected levels. You are spending magic on something. Are you using your powers? What boons do you have again?"


    I summon the tablet as the divine tool comes and goes effortlessly and check my boons with her. I wasn''t using the storage or Decompose during these last days at all. But Nanna browses the list and pokes exactly the storage.


    "What are you keeping in storage? The objects have upkeep to keep their mass suppressed. That must be it. By the look in your face, your storage is stuffed with junk, isn''t it?"


    If you call three tons of exotic metals, all the food in our pantry, and... Orz.


    "Yes, Nanna. A lot of things."


    She groaned, then grinned, then snorted. "Well, we should relieve that stress. Come. There''s an empty room next to mine that can be secured and I''ll watch over it. I want you to remove everything that''s not essential. And please don''t do anything until I say so. I will supply you with some of my magic. The least we want is to strain your magic even more."


    We went inside the annex and into one of the rooms next to Nanna''s. The windows were barred and with a carpet hung over them.


    Nanna looked at me, "Now, I need to touch your skin near your heart. Please undress."


    I remove the linen dress Madam Cloe made for me and the bra. I felt bad and exposed, unwilling to show my gaunt figure. Nanna put one hand over my left breast and another on my back.


    "You will feel a desire to pull. Don''t give in. You are starved for magic, but if you try to draw, you''ll hurt me," She told me. Then she sighed and mumbled something about how impossible it is to keep a sudden windfall.


    She chanted a song that was incomprehensible, ancient, eerie, and beautiful at the same time. I felt a warmth flowing from her palms into my chest, and it felt like a sip of cold water after a day trekking through the desert under the sun.


    I moaned.


    It was almost impossible to not pull it. Nanna''s magic was calm, bright, and soothing, and it felt like the light of a full moon over a dark meadow. I whimpered and tried to draw more. I needed it. Oh, how I missed this feeling. I was dry without magic. I had that wellspring and took it for granted.


    Nanna kicked my shin. "Focus! Don''t pull! Keep your mind and your metaphors still. Think not of what I am doing! Or I''ll kick your shin until you feel so much pain you forget about my magic!"


    I could feel my healing boon using that power to fix my body.


    She kicked me again. "Summon the junk now! Before the magic goes to waste!"


    I did. I summoned the hundred-liter plastic trash bags filled with metal ingots. The silicon. The trash bags from Earth with the items Kali-Maru and Sere-Naha cleaned for me. The bundles of silk, pelts, and furs.


    "Should I summon the tent with the food?" I asked between my teeth, using my utmost willpower to ignore the soothing feeling from her magic.


    "No. We might have a food shortage soon with all the soldiers the idiotic Enshi is going to bring here. Keep it, it might save us."


    "I don''t think I have anything else that''s non-essential now!"


    Nanna interrupted the flow. I fell down in a W with my legs splayed on my sides. I craved the ecstasy of Nanna''s magic. I think I healed myself more in those few minutes than yesterday. All the twenty-ish hours.


    Speaking of hours, I really needed to find someone that could explain to me the calendar of this place.


    "Good," Nanna panted.


    I could swear she looked ten years older. Curved. Tired. I felt extremely guilty for having almost wetted my panties on the feeling of her magic. I looked around. Between the ten bags of metals and silicon, there must be over three metric tons of materials. That was a lot.


    "You should rest for the rest of the afternoon," she told me. "Dress up and come with me, you can use my bed. I want you to stay around. I need you to charge the last batch of enchanted eyes."


    I did as she said and thought about the enchanted eyes. It was a funny enchantment. The eyes absorbed ambient magic that naturally seeped out of sorcerers and people with magical powers. Even in my weakened state, I still leaked a lot of magic as it came out both from my magical wounds caused by the burnout and as a byproduct of my boons and powers consuming magic. And since I was spending all the magic I generated on healing, I was oozing a lot of it.


    It was good to know that this magic could be reused for something else. But it begged one question.


    "Nanna, is the magic I leave around harmful? Is there such a thing as magic pollution?"


    She looked at me as if I told her the sky was green. "What preposterous question is that? This world is starved for magic. You are a boon to this place just by existing, and I guess that''s why Tarhun chose you."


    "It really wasn''t an accident then."


    She scoffed. "Gods aren''t perfect beings, girl. But gods are an order of magnitude above mere mortals. Tarhun wouldn''t miss a lightning bolt. You knew that, didn''t you?"


    I couldn''t help but nod. It still hurt to know from a second party. Tarhun killed me to bring me here.


    "Was that the reason he was so keen on having me discharge him of any debts?"


    Nanna answered without turning around, rummaging through her things, searching for something.


    "Probably the reason he was so generous with you too. But I can''t talk about that, so don''t ask anymore," She turned with a ceramic vial. "Now drink this and lie down on the bed to sleep. It is bitter, but make sure to swallow everything. This potion also will not let you have any dreams. Just a long, refreshing sleep."


    I smiled. "Sounds like exactly what I need."


    I took the vial and drank it all. It was bitter and had a terrible aftertaste. But I felt drowsy immediately after. I barely had time to lie down before I blacked out.

 Morning 26

    Nanna''s sleep potion was more powerful than I expected. I skipped the whole afternoon, the night and early morning. I woke up still in her bed, and with three main sensations. Hunger, thirst, and a small amount of magical energy in the tank. I ignored the former two and focused on the latter. The feeling of emptiness when one spends their magic is very similar to physical exhaustion I felt it when I Decomposed the zombies, and when I fainted after defeating the lich but at that time I couldn''t tell them apart.


    I recalled what happened yesterday. That was... awful. This city was going to be turned upside down and rend asunder. I only hoped whatever was patched with the remnants was still able to grant us a livelihood. I needed a plan to protect the girls. Right now the default plan was to kick the butt of anyone that came to get them.


    I would even go away. If any of them really wanted to go and find a husband at that bride market, I''d be split between let them have their agency or just shutting the stupid idea down. Maybe it was one of those cases where you needed to intervene because you knew the path they chose was one of self-destruction. I needed to talk to them first. Maybe I was jumping the gun.


    I had time to assess the threat, plan, and act. As Arwia said, it would take time to gather all the women. Maybe I should''ve taken the control of the city to myself. What a bother.


    Nope. I did the right thing by stepping out of the spotlight and into the sidelines.


    Good. A new day, new opportunities. And new flesh, it seems. I could feel that my body was limber. My mood improved. I even had a sliver of magic left to use. I adjusted the bra straps. Still, not back to full power, it seems. But the amount of magic available seemed stable if not growing slowly. I think the recovery boon was spending less than what was generated.


    No idea if that was true or not, just throwing wild guesses.


    Nourishment. My body demanded nourishment. I got out of Nanna''s bed and looked around. She wasn''t home and her cauldron wasn''t in use. Did she run out of eyes? At six a day... Maybe?


    Note to self. Don''t store tons of stuff in the storage even if you can. It meant I had to find a use for that stuff. I was thinking of the city crowded with the remnants of Marduk''s army. I should invest in protection. But steel armor had one huge problem. I couldn''t use Decompose to destroy the enemy''s weapons and armor.


    I should have my armor made with titanium. This way I could Decompose iron as much as I wanted. Titanium was softer than steel but not by much. It was also lighter and malleable. And I could repair it using my own power.


    I could have armor with comparable resistance and protection, more durability, less weight, repairable, and that wouldn''t interfere with my power in combat.


    And would earn me a trope.


    Enough thinking. Time to depart and find some food.


    I left the annex with a spring on my feet. I had to get something in my belly then find the witch. I had to thank her. I knew that taking some of the burdens out of my storage helped but I had a hunch that it was her magic power that fixed some holes in my reservoir, my pond so to speak, of magic.


    Moving out might be a smart move. This city is going south from now on. The market, the ziggurat, everything seems very troublesome. I don''t want to give up the mine but honestly, I can find mineral veins elsewhere. And I can get enough of what I might need for myself in a few days of digging if I can get my powers back. I might be paranoid, it might be a race against the clock. I don''t know.


    Next to the kitchen door, I pause for a moment. I need to plan and it will be bad if I took decisions on my own. It means to gather everyone and ask their opinions. I don''t want to intrude in their religious beliefs, that would be a major asshole move.


    If they want to get down to it and do the sacred rites with as many people they want, more power to them.


    That was me, freaking out yesterday because they might target me. Yosh, let''s do it. I enter the kitchen and find people busy with lunch preparations. It is amazing how Abil-Kisu''s household always has these sumptuous meals every day. Something feels odd about that, but I''m a guest.


    I remember what Nanna told me when I emptied the storage of superfluous things. To keep the pantry in the timeless storage. Did I tell her it was timeless? Maybe I did. It would be too weird for her to just know that. Is it okay to consume that much food? I don''t think any of it goes to waste because there''s a lot of people to eat the leftovers, but we are in the middle of a drought. There''s a river and there''s water in the river so it seems contradictory, but the river has not that much volume and it is in a bad place for irrigation. Besides, the gravel that makes up most of the soil drinks water like a sponge.


    I wondered if the city would be okay with all the workers slash former soldiers coming to work on the ziggurat. It would massively increase the urban population and put a bigger strain in the already struggling agricultural industry. I need to talk to Abil-Kisu about that. But I should work from the micro to the macro.


    So, for me, it is death before dishonor. I won''t participate in the bridal market, or even set foot in the temple of Ishtar. If push comes to shove, I''ll walk away. Next, poll the opinions of the people of my household.


    I enter the kitchen, unable to resist the smell of food. I found the cooks and Belle-Sunu, frantically going through the lunch rush. My favorite freckle-holder notices me.


    "Sandra! You are awake! Are you hungry? I have your breakfast set apart, let me get it! Sit right there and wait."


    She brings a basket of barley bread, a bowl with a kind of milk curd, and ham. She also put a jar of apricot juice.


    Before she could go away, I spoke my piece, "Belle, can you step away from the kitchen for a while? I need to gather everyone to talk about something really important."


    I didn''t wait for her reply before digging in. I felt a brief pang of guilt eating such lavish breakfast, but I needed the nourishment. And it was delicious.


    I heard Belle-Sunu gasp. She seemed very surprised. "Sandra! Your hands!" She shouted.


    I dropped the piece of bread I was about to put in my mouth after her shout and raised my hands in front of my eyes. I had no idea what she was talking about, both my hands were perfectly normal...


    Perfectly normal.


    I looked at Belle-Sunu, then at my hand. Then I closed it into a fist, opened, closed, opened it again, and did the happy fingers.


    "My hands!" I squealed!


    I was so absorbed I didn''t notice. Hard to believe, I know. But my brain had a will of its own. I grabbed Belle''s hand and was about to get up when she pulled me down.


    "Finish eating. I''m going to gather everyone. Hey Barani, can we use the tent?"


    The older cook, which I assume was called Barani, answered, "Yes, but try to not mess up the cushions. The master is bringing guests today."


    Guests? Well, it''s none of my business until it becomes. I should focus on food and drink.


    I finish my breakfast and take a walk around before going to the tent. I keep looking at my hand. I''m still lean but no longer looking like I had an eating disorder. I resisted the urge to grope myself in public. A later full-body examination was required. If only I could get the captain to perform it...


    It was not the time for that. I reached the tent and entered. Everyone was already there. I could see Arwia and Belle herding the children, Aristunn and the other ten guards, as Departs was still traveling to the capital to bring the kids'' mothers back... That wouldn''t be a problem, as they already bore enough children and might be past the age of marriage. The quintet of elders was also there. Nanna, the gardeners, and the two ladies.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I wave at everyone. "Well, you might have heard, but the new Enshi, may he long rule, declared yesterday that he will try and erect a great Ziggurat. To that, he is opening the city gates to the remnants of Marduk''s army, and forcing the women in marriable age to be given away at an auction. I will be honest with you, I don''t like that a bit. There are several problems with that. But I am not a native of this world. I am a stranger to your culture.


    "I wish to protect you. But I also wish you all to live fulfilling lives. To follow your own dreams. Take Rimush as an example, he wants to rebuild his father''s house. I''ll support him and I hope we remain as friends. I know some of the girls want to find a husband. If you think the bridal market is the thing for you, I won''t stop you from going there."


    Nanna scoffed. "Yes, we won''t stop you from staying at the temple of Ishtar until that blasted ziggurat is finished."


    She actually used an expletive that involves doing something with cow dung in one''s orifices. I''ll settle for blasted.


    "Neither I nor Belle-Sunu are going. We will stay with you, Sandra," Arwia declared. "And I won''t let them take Zuska, Ivanika, or Belili."


    I was pleased by their response and about to reply but paused. "Belili is ten years old. She is not old enough to marry."


    "I''m eleven now. And I am a woman already!" Belili protested.


    I had no idea if eleven was precocious or not in this place. The dreaded growth hormones absent from their bovines. They didn''t even eat that much bovine meat.


    "And you are not going to the bridal market," Rimush growled at his sister. "Lady Sandra is right. The whole thing smells worse than rat pee in the grain sack."


    I was glad to have Rimush on my side. I was afraid the scion of Tarantula would hold a grudge, but it seems I won their loyalty.


    "But the message was clear, there is not much choice except to submit," Aristunn remarked.


    I took a deep breath. "If the Enshi wants to pick a fight with me, so be it. I will fight back. I won''t let him touch a finger on any of you. If push comes to shove, we will leave this place. Go elsewhere. Start a new life. I don''t think this city will survive the ziggurat. To me, it feels like a mad bid for a power that shouldn''t be his."


    "I also don''t believe it will end well," Nanna echoed my worries. "But we need to see what are Ishtar''s wishes and blessings she will grant the city. She is Tarhun''s sister and maybe she will coax the old fart to finally send us some rain. There''s a chance. Running away now might not be the best move."


    I nodded. Nanna was a vital source of information.


    "Waiting to see what will happen is good, although we will stay ready to get out at a moment''s notice. Does everyone agree?"


    "Yes," Aristunn cheered. "I can assure you, Sandra. The men and I will protect our people."


    I smiled. "Good. Lunch will be served soon, we need to make sure the tent is in pristine condition. So pick up after yourselves and go on with your day. And please, if you want to talk, I have two ears to listen."


    They laughed, unsure of what I meant with that. "Of course you have two ears, silly!" Muksu pointed out.


    We vacated the tent, making sure it was presentable and the crowd dispersed. I followed Nanna. I wanted to ask her opinion on what was going to happen.


    "Nanna, I didn''t know Ishtar was Tarhun''s sister. Do you think it means she is covered by my treaty with him?"


    "No, it is not. Look, girl, being siblings means very little when the gods are concerned. They will fight, make and break alliances. And they surely won''t miss even their own mother!"


    She roared with resentment and I was confused. Why would she resent the gods that much? Was she a priestess in her youth? Of Tarhun''s mother? Who was Tarhun''s mother?


    "Nanna, I..."


    She was fuming. I was sure I''d hit an open wound and wanted to apologize, but she was emanating such a powerful aura of intimidation that I couldn''t speak. After a few moments, she returned to normal. The old witch looked very tired and even older. I moved to support her and gently took her elbow.


    "Nanna. I''m sorry I asked. I didn''t want to pry into your past."


    She glanced up at me and gave me a faint smile. Nanna tapped my hand and straightened herself. "It is fine, Sandra. I appreciate your friendship. Do what you must, I won''t hold you back. I am just tired. Come, let''s go to my room. Could you keep an old lady company for a while? Share a cup of tea?"


    I nodded. "Of course. Please, let me lead you, my lady."


    I held her by the arm and took two steps forward when a soft and friendly voice stopped us on our tracks. I looked just to make sure, it was Abil-Kisu. The merchant lord was with several other council members, merchants, and craftsmen I knew. Masters Samus and Lu-Ninurta.


    "Ah! Ladies! Exactly who we wanted to find. Please, join us. Time is of the essence!"


    I exchanged a glance with Nanna and she nodded. We turned around and returned to the tent. I did a quick headcount and we were ten people. I recognized one of the merchants. Sin-Gasit, the owner of the bathhouse.


    "Please, sit wherever you want," Abil-Kisu rushed us in. He clapped twice and one servant came from a fold in the tent. I would never get used to that. "Please, refreshments for my guests. Nothing too strong, we need our wits about us."


    The servant nodded and vanished back through the folds. Everyone shuffled around. I sat between Samus and Nanna. Once everyone was comfortable on the cushions, the host clapped.


    "Friends. We are here to discuss the future of our beloved city. The Enshi is going to ruin us all. This insanity of building a ziggurat in the middle of the worst crisis in the last decades will kill everyone. Officers of the army are as we speak courting our would-be invaders to bring them here to marry our daughters! The outlying villages can barely produce enough food for the local population and you know we''ve been importing food from the south to keep with the demand. We just can''t feed a foreign army!"


    A shiver ran up my spine. Was Brandon one of these officers sent to recruit the army remnants? Was that the reason he didn''t come back? Abil-Kisu continued.


    "Does anyone have any idea why he came up with such crazy ideas? Is this an effect of his malady, corroding his mind just as it is corroding his body?"


    I was about to speak when Nanna held my hand and put a finger over her mouth.


    "Yes," One merchant shouted. "He is clearly insane! We should assassinate him!"


    That would be even worse. Now that the troops were out recruiting, some soldiers would come one way or another. Killing the Enshi would leave these converts without a reason and hanging on broken promises. I knew the promise of available women was a great motivator for these men. Just take for example the terrorist group in West Africa. They recruited men with just the promise of women. Then to make good on that promise, they attacked the school and kidnapped the girls.


    Killing Es-Kina the Nephew now would mean also killing these soldiers. The ensuing fight would be a bloodbath. With Brandon right in the middle of the fray. There wasn''t a good solution. Letting him build the ziggurat was bad, causing civil unrest and chaos was even worse.


    "I am against assassination. Killing the Enshi at this point will only increase the chaos. People will lose heart and maybe burn the rest of the city. It was hard to make them stay or return already. Regarding the food condition, I might be able to help. Although I will charge a price for that."


    The three merchants I didn''t know grumbled and scowled as I spoke. These were ones that were involved in the impromptu decision to pardon Nephew and reinstate his standing, so he could ascend to the throne. I ignored them, they were harmless. It was time to make my pitch. I would offer my expertise and Earth''s knowledge for free, but right then the council had something I needed.


    "Let''s hear Lady Rinaldi''s proposal!" Abil-Kisu clapped hard and silenced the dissent. "Milady, please forgive my companions. They both have daughters in marriable age and are too concerned about their well-being."


    I nodded and gave my best friendly smile to the merchants that glared at me.


    "Of the people here, I believe I am the one that understands their daughters'' concern the best, honorable Abil-Kisu," I jested. Lu-Ninurta chuckled and I could see Samus barely holding his mirth. "I have extensive knowledge of farming techniques from my world. I believe I can greatly improve the yield of the crops. It won''t happen overnight or even in a single week. But I know I can bolster the next harvest. I can also enrich the soil and teach the farmers so the benefit will be permanent."


    "And what is your condition?" The merchant that cried murder before asked.


    "I want the Enshi to grant amnesty for the houses and business of everyone involved. None of our goods shall be confiscated, none of our men drafted, and none of our women brought to the bride market against their will. And also keep us out of any extra taxation."


    I couldn''t be selfish. The key to a good negotiation was to reach a win-win situation where nobody was left behind. By dragging all of them into the fold and making these ample demands, I hoped to bring them into my side. Of course, asking it only for my own people would be an easier sell, but I had to cover for and repay Abil-Kisu vast generosity.


    "There will be at least three thousand men coming in. Do you think you can make food for all of them?" The merchant that glowered harder on me asked.


    "I am sure I can keep the city from starving to death, that much I can promise you. I''ll need cooperation for that though. There''s only so much I can do."


    "I believe we should bring the Lady''s offer to the Enshi. And we should advise him to accept that," Abil-Kisu interjected. "You all know that the lady is Tarhun''s champion! I say I never profited so much in my life before I met her. Those that oppose her suffer ruin, that much I can tell you. I know what side I''m on. Whatever it takes to make the lady''s vision come true, I''ll put my coin on the table. If she says she can keep the city from starving, she can."


    "Gentlemen, I to have several girls under my care that I do not wish to let go to this bridal market. And I won''t let them. I don''t mean to disrespect your customs but I believe that people should not be forced to do something they don''t want to."


    The three bellicose merchants exchanged looks. Their silent communication went by for a minute, I watched Abil-Kisu clearly interested in what they were doing as if he could read their silent language. They nodded at the end of their deliberation.


    "We shall present your proposal to the Enshi. We will advise him into accepting," they declared.


    Abil-Kisu smiled and clapped his hands twice. "Then we shall eat! A feast to celebrate the birth of a light to guide us through this dark night," He exulted and then added in a sad tone. "Since we lost our beloved moon."


    Nanna shuddered at the mention of the moon. Was that the goddess she was a priestess of? Was she even a priestess? I was itching to ask, but I knew I wouldn''t. If she wanted to talk about her past, she would. But as only one present that gazed at the beautiful silver rock floating around the Earth, I knew how much that celestial body was missed and needed.


    I grasped the witch''s hand and gave her a sympathetic smile. It was the least I could do.

 Afternoon 26

    Eating lunch in that heavy atmosphere was not good. I didn''t even go for seconds. Everyone was tense as if they were eating their last meal before their condemnation. I knew I would have to work hard to help the farmers improve their craft and the productivity of the farms. The merchants and Lu-Ninurta all left.


    Samus was about to leave too but I held him back. "Master Samus, I would like to commission one specific item from your smithy, if possible."


    He looked at me thoughtfully. "We are quite full of orders right now, the Enshi is refitting the army. I can sneak something if it is an easy task."


    "I want a set of chainmail armor made for me. Out of a special metal I have."


    "It might be troublesome. Is this metal hard to work?"


    "Not more than steel. And I won''t need rivets to close the chain links. I can close them myself later."


    He raised an eyebrow but I could sense Nanna nodding on the other side. Samus sighed. "If it is just drawing the wire, cutting the rings and making the chainmail mesh, I can have three apprentices to do it for you. It would take then two days to craft the armor, then another day for the heat treatment."


    "You don''t need to heat the armor. I can also do it myself later. The metal is a little stubborn though. It requires a strong and steady hand to shape it."


    He smiled. "I need to see that metal. Is it something we can work into other things as well?"


    "Defensive gear? Yes. It doesn''t hold an edge as well as steel, but people in my world did make knives and swords out of it. Unfortunately, we can''t smelt it with what we have now, but it can be forged."


    The technology required to smelt titanium from ores doesn''t exist. But they could forge it.


    "Well, shall we see that metal?"


    I took Nanna''s arm and the three of us crossed the path from the tent to the villa''s annex building. I opened the room where my stuff was stored, and Samus'' eyes almost popped out when he saw my stash of metals.


    Nanna sighed. "I''ll be next door if you need me. I''m tired."


    He went through the frying-pan ingots and weighted them, checked the texture, scratched the metal, I could swear at one point he was about to lick an ingot.


    "That... I can recognize iron, copper, and is that tin? But what are all these metals?"


    "Things that were mixed in the slag and in other places. I spent four months in the underground tunnels, of course, I''d do some mining," I boasted to him.


    "And this... what might this be?" He lifted a metal piece that might be the love child of a bucket and a whole dry passionfruit.


    I felt like a kid showing his scribbles to a museum curator. Samus had a smirk as he turned the piece around to look inside.


    "That''s a helmet. I made it in the min... underground tunnels to protect my head."


    "I can see how it looks like a helmet. But you did it with your power? I''m impressed. Could you put it on?"


    He handed the helmet to me. It has a lot of scratches and bumps from all it had to suffer and I think I rebuilt it once or twice. I put the helmet on my head.


    "I used a cowl to keep the metal from touching my scalp directly though."


    "I can see that''s a piece of armor that did its job."


    "Yeah. I couldn''t just turn it back to a metal ingot. I guess I''ll keep it as a memento of my four-month trip through hell."


    I took off the helmet and put it back on the pile of stuff. He picked it up and checked the dents and scratches.


    "You do that. Some smiths keep their first pieces to remember where they started from. But if this is how the material you want your armor made of looks like I''m sure it will work."


    "Thanks."


    He put the helmet aside and went back to rummaging through the pile of ingots. He showed me one ingot. "What is this? White gold? It is as heavy as gold should be. And it is harder too."


    I was itching to check the resonance of the metal. I didn''t need to though. The "W" engraved on the ingot was enough for me. I sighed.


    "Can you really tell how heavy a metal block should be?" I asked him.


    Nanna snorted from her room, "He''s cheating. The damn sorcerer is using magic!"


    Samus smirked, caught. "I thought it was obvious. Didn''t you see the flash of magic?"


    I shook my head. "No. I can''t see magic. Nanna said I can''t cast spells."


    It didn''t hurt as much now. I knew I was pretty much unkillable and that was actually pretty nice! I flexed my right hand. The feeling of being able to move it again was just right. Awesome, I mean. Samus, however, didn''t seem as comfortable with my statement.


    "That''s..."


    "It is fine though. My magic is used to fuel the boons Tarhun gave me. And as you can see," I tapped a pile of ingots. "it is quite the bounty."


    "I must admit. What is this glyph though?"


    He drew his finger over the "W" for tungsten.


    "It is the symbol for that metal. Back in my world, we knew all the metals that existed and even made up some of our own. This one is called ''tungsten''."


    He creased an eyebrow. "A senior magistrate''s alarm?" - He said ''Tukku-sartennu'' more or less. I think my phonetical English is like a heavily accented and less guttural Akkadian.


    "No. In my language it is called ''tungsten''," I repeated the phonemes to him slowly.


    "Is this the metal you want the armor made of? Seems really impressive but heavy. Are you sure you will be able to walk wearing it?"


    I smiled, chuckled, and shook my head. "No. I want you to make the armor with this one," I showed him the titanium ingots.


    He tested the metal. "This one seems really good. I can see it is flexible and resilient. But you said it is a stubborn one. How?"


    "This baby, in my language, is called ''titanium''," I mouthed every sound to avoid misunderstandings. "And he dislikes being bent. So it will attempt to return to its shape. It will adapt to the new shape if you anneal it though. This metal is too flexible. You need to put some strength to overcome its flexibility."


    There was no word for elasticity. I wondered how many words come out of my mouth as plain English and people just assumed I talk strangely. Damn.


    "Can it heat in a forge?"


    "Yes, you can forge it just as you would do to steel. How many ingots do you need to make the armor?"


    "I''d like to have all of them. Maybe we can do something else. I know I want to try to make a certain type of sword with it."


    Okay? I guess. It is not that I have a lot of use for these metals. I mean, I should make some voltaic cells with the magnesium and copper to power my devices, but who has time?


    "It is fine if you take what you need. Honestly, most of these metals I can get more of them once I recover my powers."


    He looked around and pats his toga. "I think I need a leather bag or something."


    "I have one here," Nanna shouted from the other room.


    For an old lady, she had excellent hearing. It is amazing what she might be snooping on. Samus shrugged and went to get the sack. He stuffed it with the titanium, the only tungsten ingot I had and some other metals. I didn''t let him take any of the dangerous ones, like magnesium or sodium. Speaking of which,


    "How did your experiments with the calcium went?"


    "I didn''t try anything fancy. I made mortar with it and repaired a crack in the storage room''s wall. Well, I think this is it. I''ll have the apprentices make your armor, it will be a good exercise to get the chain links right, especially if this metal is as stubborn as you claim. I''ll send the finished piece here in three days, or early. If there''s any problem, I''ll tell you."


    "Okay, thank you very much. And what about--"


    "Don''t worry about payment. The metals I got here are more than worth the work of the apprentices. I''ll make sure you get a suit of mail fitting for the champion of Tarhun."


    He seemed excited to work with the new metals. There was so much to do but things kept piling up. I kept jumping from hoop to hoop until I jumped in a hole.


    "When things calm down, there''s a lot I want to do. Let me escort you to the front gates, at least."


    He nods. "Usually it is the gentleman that escorts the lady, but I will enjoy your company for a bit more. Shall we?"


    I offered him my left elbow and he took it like a gentle-lady. We laughed and I took the master blacksmith to the front gate, where the guards just watched us, probably thinking it was another of my eccentric shenanigans. Oh, well.


    I stood there in front of the closed gate for a few minutes, thinking about what I should do. Mostly fighting the urge to use what little magic I had in the tank to play with Decompose or just summon a device to use. Or listen to some music. Yes, maybe some music. I turned around and went to the backyard, where Arwia promptly found me and made me ditch my plans.


    "Sandra. Are you busy? Could you lecture the children? I promised them you''d teach them another game if they listened to your lecture."


    I sensed it was a rhetorical question. Arwia knew I had nothing else to do except spend time and recover.


    "I wish I could see Abil-Kisu''s baby," I mumbled while we walked to the patch of grass under a tree where the children patiently waited for us.


    "You know you can''t," Arwia told me in her condescending motherly scolding tone. She was around the kids so much she was entirely in big sis'' mode. "The first four months are crucial to a baby''s health, he has to stay sheltered with the mother else he can get some disease."


    I smirked at her, "Alright, mom."


    Arwia missed a step, froze, and did a double-take, "What?"


    "You''re acting like a mother scolding a child. And you know, if everyone washed their hands, cleaned their butts, and bathed every day, babies could get out and take in some sun."


    Arwia rolled her eyes and caught up with me, "Babies do take sunlight. Why do you think the bedroom faces east? They take sun through the window. And where would we get enough water to bathe every day? Can you make water out of thin air?"


    I fought back the urge to be snappy and give her a comeback. I could get water out of thin air, it was called condensation. We were about to reach the tree when she held my arm, making me stop.


    "Sandra, there''s one thing I want to tell you," She said with a fidgety voice.


    I turned around to meet her eyes. "Okay. You can say anything to me, Arwia. I''m not going to get angry at you or anything."


    "You strongly oppose the rites of the temple of Ishtar... Do you hate the goddess? She is a very kind and caring goddess..." She told me while tiptoeing every word.


    She made me think. Was I being a bigot? Hating someone''s religion? If the people wanted to do their bronze age fertility rites and were okay with that, who was I to judge them? I felt bad and conflicted. Worse, the gods were real. Heck, I was living proof of that. What if Ishtar really granted great fertility to the women that underwent the ritual? I mean, I hadn''t no census data, but the small sample of mothers I''d seen had been very fertile.


    Arwia''s mom popped six over more than a decade. Rubati, five and her pregnancies were side-by-side. Banunu, three. Hama-Tula had eight children in eight years. And he was gunning for Belle.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I''d become a religious hater. That was terrible. And it didn''t even start with Ishtar. I already hated Nergal and his church. I went so far as to ask Nephew to ban them. My modern Earth values were shattering one by one. But death cults that committed crimes were outlawed.


    Yes, I was being a jerk. But there was one point in this whole mess I didn''t agree with and would never.


    "People shouldn''t be forced to do something they don''t like. I have nothing against Ishtar if people are willing to go and do the rites because they like it, or it is their way of worship, or just as a trade for the blessing of fertility, I''m not against it. I''m sorry if it sounded like I was against the religion or Ishtar herself. I just hate when people are forced to do something they don''t want to. When their freedom to choose is taken from them. I overreacted."


    Arwia seemed relieved. "Oh. I''m sorry. I thought you hated Ishtar."


    Yes, I kinda did.


    "No, not at all," I replied, oozing hypocrisy. "Arwia, can I ask you one thing? When you went to the inn, did you go to the temple of Ishtar?"


    She made a sad face. I couldn''t tell if it was because I remembered her of her indentured service because she wanted to but didn''t.


    "No. Going there would mean I married him. He was just trying to impregnate me. If I got his child, then I''d become his second wife and after childbirth, I would go to the temple. But it is hard to conceive a child without the goddess'' blessings."


    "So are you saying you wanted to go to the temple and do the rites?"


    Arwia smiled. "Yes, I want to be blessed with many children just like my mother!"


    Was my prejudice making me deny these girls a golden opportunity to get a husband? The market could even make them get extra money for their dowries.


    "If you want to--"


    She was quick to interrupt me, "No! My duty is to you and my siblings. I can wait, no problem. At least until Tuwazi reaches the majority."


    Tuwazi is seven, so... "You''ll be twenty-four years old by then. Isn''t it a bit too old to marry?"


    Not by Earth standards, but in this world, life expectancy should be lower, and it was a place where a girl was old enough to marry if she had periods. Like Belili. Damn, she turned eleven and we didn''t throw a birthday party.


    "It is a bit late, but not by much. Men usually marry at twenty-five so it''s still fine. Besides, can you imagine how expensive my price would be?" She asked, a bit dreamy. "I would''ve served as a maid for the champion of Tarhun for seven years!"


    I guess a high price equates a ''good'' husband. At least a rich one. And that''s a double incentive since I declared they would take their bride prices with them as dowries.


    "Oh, great," I whimpered with a feigned hurt voice. "So you''re using me just to increase your price and will leave me alone once a rich man is found. Yes, if that''s what you want, Arwia, I won''t hold you back!"


    I felt bad for teasing her and making a hurt girlfriend skit. Arwia almost teared up.


    "No! That''s not what I meant! I won''t abandon you, Sandra! I lo--"


    I grabbed her waist and put a finger on her lips. "Say no more. I accept your feelings. Silly Arwia, you think I''d let you go easily? The man to take you away from me must be quite impressive or I''ll make him run away crying."


    I let go of her before I either broke the girl''s mind or awakened some new kind of wishes. It took some time for Arwia to come back to her senses.


    She blushed and whispered, "Thank you."


    Yeah. TIme to bring us back to reality. I pointed at the crew of brats waiting for us.


    "The kids will become wild if we don''t hurry. Let''s go, it''s lecture time."


    We walked the rest of the way in silence. I was feeling bad for being such a bigot. People did similar things back on Earth without knowing the gods were real. Here? It was scarce but they had proof of the gods'' existence. I thought also about what should I talk about. Maybe I should let the kids decide. Or not. I know the most important thing for them now.


    "Everyone, line up. Sit on the grass," Arwia shouted like a drill instructor. "Today we''ll have Sandra teach us something new and exciting! So pay close attention to what she has to say."


    New and exciting my... maybe the bar is too low. Let''s not undersell us. The children sat on two rows of eight with the little ones in front, forming a semicircle under the big tree''s shadow. Arwia leaned against the tree trunk and crossed her arms. I winked at her and sat on my spot.


    "Okay. Negotiations are underway to exempt us from drafting to build the ziggurat. But we had to commit to helping feed the town. I don''t know if you are aware but the food situation is bad. Ivanika, could you tell us about the prices of food lately?"


    Arwia''s middle sister was responsible for buying and cooking food for her father and brothers after Zuska was sold and her older brother left home to avoid being sold too. She shrunk a bit because I singled her out, but I needed her point of view.


    "Prices were steadily rising even before the great and mighty Tarhun smote the infidel Enshi. Some vegetables and grains were unavailable for days and when they come back the price would rise or the quantities were smaller. Father kept complaining, thinking I was stealing money..."


    "That''s enough, thank you, Ivanika," I said to cut her because she was getting too emotional. I knew they tried to hide their family situation under the rug like everyone else. "Okay. That shows us that food is going to be a major problem in the coming months. And I promised to help with that if the Enshi grants our houses amnesty from the compulsory drafts. But my powers can''t make plants grow. Now, can anyone tell me what plants need to grow?"


    "Sunlight and water," Muranu replied. He was the silent mastermind type. It was good that he warmed up to me as several of his siblings looked up to him for guidance.


    "And soil!" Zuska added. "No plant grows on rocks or thin air!"


    "You both are correct. There are two other things plants need to grow. And that is air and minerals in the soil. Plants don''t grow in sand, most of them don''t. Because the sand doesn''t have the minerals the plant needs. Now, we are facing a severe drought, aren''t we?"


    They nodded. "It''s been more than a year since the last rain," Rimush added.


    "Yes. However, the grass in the great plateau is still green and the plants are still growing. That tells me that there''s water in the soil. It is dry, I won''t deny that. But I''ve seen how a real drought looks like, and the earth becomes barren, cracked. Dead. The river is still flowing. That water must come from somewhere. The water level in our wells is indeed very low, but there''s water around here even though it hadn''t rained. So, out of the five essential components, we can tell the plants aren''t lacking sunlight, air or soil and that they have some water. What is missing then?"


    "Minerals?" Belili proposed timidly. "But aren''t minerals rocks and ores? How can a plant eat ores?"


    "Yes, rocks and ores are made of minerals, but the plants don''t eat them. These nu.." I paused. There was no ''nutrient'' word in their language. "They break down the rocks and ores into dust so fine we can''t see it with our naked eyes and then absorb them through their roots. And that is the problem with the crops we have. The plants can''t get enough of the minerals they need."


    The discussion went on for the best part of the afternoon. I had to explain to them about micronutrients, soil enrichment, and most important, fertilizer. It was then that things broke down.


    "You are insane!" RImush shouted. "Why should we mix shit with the dirt to feed the plants we are going to eat? Are you trying to make us eat poop?"


    I pinched the bridge of my nose. Should I tell him the world was round too? Antagonizing him wouldn''t earn me nothing but more headaches down the road.


    "No. There are creatures in the soil that break it down. Once the plant food is ready to be consumed, it is no longer poop. Okay. Look. This is very important. And also is how my power works. You''ve seen me transform things, right? Well, I didn''t transform anything. I just moved around the building blocks they are made of.


    "Let''s say you get this blade of grass. And then split it in two. Keep splitting. There will be a moment where the pieces will be too small for you to split. But can we imagine we have a tool that can split it even further? What happens once you split it enough. Will it be still grass?"


    "Obviously!" Rimush replied right away, unwilling to lose the argument.


    "Well, the ancients in my world also thought that. But in truth, the plant is made of several different pieces that are not plant. It is like a brick. You can build a wall or a house or a castle with bricks. These pieces are very few, actually. Eighty. Everything that exists, even you and me, are made of a few of these eighty blocks of matter. Their combinations, however, are infinite. The living beings are made of mostly ten of them. But we need small quantities of several others.


    "These ''atoms'' are very important," I said, using the Greek word. They didn''t have a word for ''atom'' as that idea never crossed their minds. "Some of them are rare and valuable, like gold or silver. Some of them are very common, like carbon, silicon or oxygen. Some of them we can see, some are floating around us. All of them are important. The plants are lacking some of these ''atoms'' so they can''t grow healthy. It is just like us. If we don''t eat food..."


    Oh. That''s golden.


    "Rimush!" I called him out. "You eat vegetables, right?" He nodded. "Are you a plant? Are you green anywhere on your body? Of course not. Does anything green comes out of your body?"


    "I''m not a plant! That''s silly!" He protested. "I''m a person, not a vegetable!"


    "Exactly! But we eat plants. Our bodies break down the plants just as I told before. Until the smallest pieces, we can use are found. Then we use these pieces to build our bodies. What we don''t use or need anymore comes out. I don''t need to explain that part to you."


    They laughed. Kids are kids anywhere. A good poop joke is worth gold for them.


    "However," I picked up before their raucous laughter ruined the lecture, "What we need is different than what cows and goats and sheep need. I don''t want to use human poop as fertilizer. That would be terrible and would spread disease. No! I want to use animal manure, especially from herbivores. Even the horses'' manure can be used."


    I checked the position of the sun and decided to wrap it up.


    "That''s why tomorrow we are going to start an experiment. We are going to plant some seeds in normal soil and others in soil enriched by our horses'' manure. In a few days, we might be able to see how well the plants are growing. I don''t want you to believe what I say straight out. I''m going to show you if what I said was true or not. And then your kids will help me spread the knowledge around. We need to train the farmers, gather the manure, compost it, fertilize the land."


    I looked south. Damn people and their crazy bids at power. The army that came to conquer us is coming and they will get in without a siege. I hoped we could assimilate them and turn them into our citizens. The prospect of painting the streets red with spilled blood was still not off the table. But I knew I''d do anything to protect us.


    Even contribute to the effort to spill that blood. The outsiders'' blood.


    I wished it wouldn''t come to that. That the faith in Ishtar and the prospect of helping build the ziggurat would be enough to keep the tempers down. I didn''t have much faith in that.


    Arwia sensed my confusion and clapped her hands, startling me out of my brooding. "Okay, it is getting late. I want you to go and play for a while before dinner. Remember to wash your hands when you get back."


    The children didn''t go.


    "You promised to teach us a new game!" Pidda revealed their hesitation.


    I laughed. "Okay. Let''s learn a new game. It is called earth and sky."


    In fact, the game was called ''dead or alive'' when I learned it, but there was no need to use those terms. I was introducing it and decided to change.


    "Arwia here will be your crier. Everyone will line up side by side, with room to move. She will call out either ''earth!'' or ''sky!''. If she says ''earth!'', everyone has to crouch. If she says ''sky!'', everyone must stand up and reach with their hands up. She doesn''t have to alternate. She can call the ''sky'' twice. Or three times. I''ll do the first round, and then Arwia or someone else can become the crier."


    The trick to the game was to not give them time to think. We played a couple of rounds and I excused myself. The next game in the queue would be musical chairs.


    Leaving the children behind, I sought Kali-Maru. During the day, I could feel my healing boon working overtime to catch up and restore my body. The bra and panties were really tight and I needed them adjusted, the same with my clothes. Some of the loose stitches madam Cloe put on the dress was already unraveling. She was at the servant''s quarters.


    "Sandra! What brings you here?" She was surprised by my visit.


    "I need help with my clothes. Can you repair them?" I asked.


    "Of course. Come, let''s go to a room where you can have some privacy."


    We went to one of the shared bedrooms that were empty at this time. I undressed and gave her the clothes. She took the pieces but kept looking at me. Conscious of her gaze, I covered myself.


    "What?" I asked, totally on the defensive. "Is there something wrong with me?"


    "No, I''m sorry if I stared for too long. It is good to see you are recovering. There were talks... people said you came here to die. I couldn''t believe."


    I shook my head. Of course, people would gossip, and someone in the state I arrived would be a goner.


    "You know I can heal from almost any wound. I just went too far this time and it is taking longer. But I am fine as you can see."


    She nodded. "Yes, I didn''t believe in them. I''ll fix your clothes right now," She said and put herself to examine the clothes.


    Cloe intentionally made stitches that would be easy to remove and in a few minutes, I was putting on my clothes. My body was almost back to the way it was. I hoped that tomorrow I would be able to use my powers, at least for a while. I returned to the annex. I wanted to talk to Nanna.


    These were precious moments before nightfall. Before a moonless night drenched the world in foreboding darkness. Darkness I was powerless to fight against. I knocked on the door and the witch answered from inside. The smell of herbs was overpowering as usual.


    "Enter, Sandra."


    Not ''girl'' or ''you'' or anything else. Nanna seldomly used my name. I was afraid something was up. I entered and smiled at her. She seemed to be just resting, sitting on the bed.


    "Hey, Nanna. How''s my favorite witch?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood.


    "I am pretty sure I am the only witch you know. But that is fine. What brings you here?"


    "Several things. First, do you still have some enchanted eyes? Abil-Kisu told me you sold the eyes to him."


    She studied me for a while and then moved to get the same box of eyes she wanted me to give to the Enshi. "Yes, I saved a half-dozen eyes for you. Do you mind me keeping the money?"


    I shook my head. "No. I have too much wealth, and to me those eyes are useless. Keep the money to yourself," I said as I took the box and lifted the lid up a crack. The light from the eyes painted a band of light across the whole room. I shut the box. "They seem stronger."


    "That''s because you spent the night charging them. I can''t even measure how long this batch would last. Maybe a decade or so. Ah, and I gave the teeth to Albert. He said he''d make some weapons and tools out of them for you."


    I really didn''t mind that she kept the money. Another reason was that I knew where to obtain more water goblins. There were dozens of them in the underwater brine tunnels.


    "That''s fine. Nanna, do you think I can use some of my powers tomorrow? I would really like to at least use my computer or listen to some music."


    She looked at me in that creepy way as if she was staring at my soul.


    "You said before that you can feel your magic power, didn''t you?" I nodded. "Then come see me tomorrow morning. I''ll check on your progress and see how you recovered. But let me warn you, you shouldn''t use magic if your power is below half, and during the next days, you should use only the smallest amounts. It seems your boon is restoring the damage of the burnout now," She finished with a yawn.


    "I''ll let you rest. What you did to me yesterday really tired you out, didn''t it, Nanna?"


    "Yes!" She groaned. "And I hope you remember it later. I spent a lot of energy I have no way of recovering on you. I''ll call in that favor."


    "Anything, Nanna. I only hope you don''t ask me to do something evil."


    She cackled. "What is evil? Some might say that denying the girls the opportunity to participate in something as epic as the construction of the ziggurat is evil. Evil is subjective. But I won''t ask you to murder anyone. Or steal anything. It will be easy on your part."


    That was very suspicious. I knew Nanna already had a plan in mind.


    "But you won''t tell me what you have in mind, will you?"


    "No. I can''t. If I tell you now, it won''t work. But you shouldn''t worry. It won''t hurt you or your soft principles."


    "Okay, Nanna. I promise to grant you the favor when you need it."


    She smiled. "Good. Now, off you go, girl. I need to rest."


    She pushed me out and closed the door behind me. I clenched the box of glowing eyes against my chest, indulging in the feeling of something being squished against the box. You might complain that they hurt, they weigh you down, they bounce, but girl how are they missed when they''re gone.


    It was dinnertime so I went to the tent as usual. One of his scribes was coming from inside and stopped to talk to me.


    "Milady. Master Abil-Kisu said he''s sorry but he won''t be able to join you for dinner. Would you mind to eat in the kitchen?"


    "No. Is there any problem?"


    "Business as usual. The master is working hard to make sure all his business flourish even with this crisis."


    I nodded. "Please tell him I appreciate his hospitality and don''t mind. Also, tell him I''m willing to help him if he needs."


    He pointed at the kitchen, "Your sentiments will surely be transmitted. Thank you for understanding, milady."


    That he would be out during the night was troubling. People usually didn''t do that, and merchant lords even more. Pushing my worries about Abil-Kisu''s safety, I went to the kitchen where Belle had a bowl of stew and some flatbread ready for me. I ate my dinner then visited the bathing room to wash away the sweat. Then I went to my room and forced myself to sleep. I was eager for tomorrow.

 Morning 27

    I woke up and the first thing I did was to check the tank. It was barely below half. There was something wrong as by my estimates, my magic reserves should be at least three-quarters full. I looked around and found the box of enchanted eyes. I didn''t even store it properly before putting myself to sleep. I checked on the eyes and yes, they were glowing stronger than electric light bulbs.


    Probably a side-effect of staying next to me while I leaked magic for the whole night. That''s what Nanna meant when she told me I charged them yesterday. I spent a lot of time in her room. I touched the fabric of the bedsheets and concentrated. Soon I found the resonance for glucose hidden in the fibers.


    I felt dizzy and a sudden jolt of headache assaulted me. I halted Decompose immediately. Still too soon. I focused my attention inwards and checked. No sensible change in the amount of magic available. In fact, as I kept watching, it seemed it was fluctuating up and down slightly, like the calm waves on the shore of a lake. Maybe the excess magic that wasn''t used for patching the holes was leaking.


    What I could do was summon my headphones and iPod so I could listen to some music. I felt the sharp headache as the items came to me and it went away after a minute.


    It seemed the recovery of my magic would still take a day or two. My body on the other hand... I needed to do a complete and thorough test.


    I was just laying on the bed, listening to random music with my eyes closed when someone knocked on the door. Noise-cancelling technology was awesome. I''d finished my checkup five or six songs ago. All systems nominal and working as intended.


    "Who is it?" I asked out loud.


    "It''s me, Arwia. Is everything alright in there, Sandra? You didn''t come to breakfast."


    I jumped out of bed and changed into my explorer outfit. It was either that or Cloe''s dress. I dared not summon other clothes. I shouldn''t even have summoned the iPod but I needed something to distract me. It''s like when you do surgery and the doctor tells you to wait four weeks before doing anything but then it itches and you wait only two and a half. After I was done, I opened the door and was met by my maid''s concerned gaze.


    "Hey. How''s everything going on with you?"


    "Better. I used my powers today," I showed her the iPod in my pocket and the headphones around my neck. "Hurt a bit, but I think one day or two at most and I''ll be ready to go down another abyss," I joked.


    Arwia frowned. "Please don''t. You were lucky or blessed to get out once, but don''t test the gods'' goodwill."


    I smiled, "I don''t pretend to. Food?"


    Arwia tried to imitate the curtsy I did before, "This way, milady."


    I went to the kitchen and ate my breakfast. Fresh fruits, bread, and a thin and sour yogurt. It was served as a drink in a mug. I had tasted it before but I paid no mind to that, thinking it was just drinkable yogurt. But they shouldn''t know how to make drinkable yogurt.


    "What is this?" I pointed at the mug fermented milk.


    Barani, Abil-Kisu''s cook answered, "It is something the master recently acquired from the mountain people to the northwest. It is something they put in the milk to make it curdle, but it doesn''t seem to work well in the lowlands."


    I took another sip of the yogurt. I felt a slightly alcoholic aftertaste. To doublecheck, I took another sip and held the drink in my mouth, focusing on Decompose. The resonance for ethylic alcohol was there, and soon the headache from using my power when I shouldn''t briefly assault me.


    I thought about what it could be, and then I remembered one thing. "Hey, does this curdle comes with some spongy grains? White and gooey?"


    Barani nodded. "Yes. The lady is quite wise to know them. They aren''t good to eat though."


    I knew what that was. And from what I saw from the geography of the place, the gods built up this world and spread the peoples much like the way they were back on Earth. I would''ve done the same if I was trying to preserve an endangered species. In that case, they.


    "Master Barani, could you get me some of these grains? And a large goatskin if possible? I think I know how to cultivate them."


    If these grains were kefir, it would be a huge boon to the food situation. Kefir could increase the nutritional value of milk several times over and help people with bowel problems, as the colonies were strong and aggressive enough to clear the intestinal tract of parasites and other microorganisms.


    I finished my breakfast and Barani brought me a ceramic bowl with some kefir grains swimming in milk. I scooped them with a wooden spoon and truly enough, the viscous and gooey slime the fungi and bacteria colonies used to grow their grains were there.


    "I sent the boys to fetch a large goatskin used to carry water on caravan trips," Barani told me as he watched me play with the kefir grains. I even took one and popped it in my mouth.


    "Good. Master Barani, make sure to only use goatskins that held either milk or water only. Fill them with goat milk, put the grains inside and keep them hung over a place that doesn''t get too warm. It takes several days for the grains to ferment the milk. You see, these grains have... they are the houses for tiny creatures that ferment the milk. They need time to grow and make more grains. But this is a boon to our houses. You see, drinking this can even make your farts less smelly."


    I was already planning to include the kefir in the food planning. That meant we had to protect the dairy cows. I thought I could supplement the glucose I could extract from any plant fiber and mix it with the milk to enrich it and see if the kefir would also consume that basic sugar along with the lactose. I needed to check my books on the laptop but I was pretty sure they broke down the lactose into glucose anyway. All organisms did.


    I wasn''t planning on making a kefir strand that lived on sugar alone even though there was one on Earth. That was the result of decades or even centuries of adaptation. I just hadn''t that much time.


    Barani barked some orders to his helpers and I helped them. Soon we had two large goatskins filled with milk and some kefir grains. I told him to also keep some grains in a jar with milk safely stored away, in case the cultures went wrong. He would need to check and change the milk every few days, but the kefir would be added to their diets.


    "Milady, are you sure these... creatures from the grains are not evil?" He asked, superstition and fear oozing from his voice.


    "Absolutely. You see, master Barani," He straightened his back, proud to be called ''master'' by me, "Living beings usually can''t exist alone. They need a chain of life around them. Even we, humans, need plants and animals around us in balance. The same goes for these tiny creatures. There are some good and some bad. The ones in these grains, they are very good. The ones that cause disease, very bad. If we eat that curdled milk, or ''yogurt'' as we call it in my language every day, these creatures will help us fight the bad ones."


    He nodded. "If the Lady says so."


    Happy with this discovery, I went out to get some sunlight. Arwia followed me.


    "What are you doing today?" She asked.


    "I was thinking of going under my favorite tree, laying down and taking a nap," I answered, already itching to pull the headphones up and hit play on the iPod. Then something hit me. I''ve been using the same two sets of clothes for the past few days, washing my underwear during my bath and letting it dry either on my body or by air-drying them in my room. This situation had to change, and fast.


    It was no time to nap. It was time to gear up!


    I turned around and asked my maid, "Change of plans, Arwia. I''m going out. Do you know if Abil-Kisu is home?"


    "I think so. I didn''t see him leave and his guards and scribes are here. They are using the tent."


    We went to the tent. A guard at the entrance was blocking our way. "Lady Rinaldi," He nodded in acknowledgment but didn''t move.


    "Good morning, mister," I nodded back. "I would like to ask if I could have a minute of honorable Abil-Kisu''s time."


    "The master is not here at the moment. He''s in the main house, with his family," He replied with a mechanical voice.


    "Thank you then. Would you tell him that I might have a business opportunity for him? I''ll be around the gardens."


    He just nodded. I stood in front of him for a few moments but it seemed I wouldn''t be able to coax any words from him so I left and went to my favorite tree with my favorite maid.


    "Is that normal, Arwia? The guard can''t hold a conversation."


    Arwia looked up at the sky, unsure of what to say, "I think it is. He is not a messenger, herald, crier, minstrel, or a bard. He''s a guard. So he guards."


    Since when the ability to hold a conversation was based on a person''s profession? Oh, well. This was a world where people don''t introduce themselves to me because I''m female, so there''s that.


    "Do you intend to marry sometime, Sandra?" Arwia broached the subject, rather unsure as if she was walking on thin ice.


    "Yeah, I guess? What girl doesn''t want to marry deep inside? The problem is not wanting to get married, is finding the right conditions to get married. The right person. You see, Arwia, I don''t want a man to be my provider, my guardian, my protector. Even without my powers, making money in this world is way beyond easy for me if I could keep myself from getting tangled in greedy people''s schemes. So the man I want for myself needs to be my companion. Someone that can stand by my side and support me, not someone to be my lord and master.


    "There''s a saying in my world, ''it takes two to tango''. ''Tango'' is the name of a really complicated dance from my world. So, it takes two to dance. But since the dance is complicated, both partners need to be fully engaged and aware of each other. That''s what I want. Partnership, not ownership."


    Arwia took some time to digest my words. We reached the tree and I sat leaning on the trunk, while she sat next to me.


    "But a marriage is meant to build a family. A family has the man as its head," She retorted with the common sense of this world. "And a woman''s duty is to bear children."


    "Is it? I won''t deny that without us birthing children civilization will collapse, but there''s so much more, Arwia! Tell me, just because you can does it mean that you should? To take one aspect of one''s entire being and reduce oneself to just that? There''s so much more to life than just bearing children! I want one or two kids one day, but not now. In fact, I don''t even know if I can, since the poison that hurt me might''ve also killed all my eggs."


    I felt like I was breaking Arwia mind. As if I was draining her SAN score with every statement.


    "Oh. But if you can''t have children anymore, you can''t be married. The code says that a woman that bears no children can be returned by the husband. But the blessings of Ishtar--"


    "Not happening," I cut her. "Arwia, I don''t worship Ishtar, and I don''t think I would even if my life depended on that. I don''t worship Tarhun either if you are curious. These gods'' antics cost me my life back on my homeworld, and the only reason I am here was that Tarhun would suffer dire consequences if he didn''t make amends with me. That''s why all those people got struck with lightning. And worse, the gods seem to think I am some sort of game piece to use against one another.


    "Prince Marduk came after me when Nergal told him of me. He corrupted Hama-Tula, The Enshi and the former magistrate. All these deaths, all this trouble, was because Nergal sent Marduk after me. Now, did I do anything to them? No. They were greedy people that wanted my power for their own ends. They weren''t even interested in me. Just my power and maybe my body."Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    I sighed after I delivered my piece. It felt really good to put that into words. Like hell, I am guilty of someone''s greed-motivated crimes because I exist. That''s just absurd. I was really glad that I could now rest in peace and just live my life.


    "I think I understand," Arwia said after thinking for a few minutes. "But if you really lost the ability to bear children, maybe Ishtar''s blessing can help you."


    I glanced at her sideways. Did she listen to anything I said? Not hear, listen. I had no idea. I couldn''t know what Arwia was thinking. I thought about asking but then she spoke first.


    "Would you marry Brandon?"


    That was the million gold shekel question. Did I want to marry him? Yes. Under their rules? No way. Would Brandon be willing to negotiate a middle ground? I didn''t know. Nanna''s warning about him being a bad match for me and an inflexible traditionalist haunted my thoughts. He showed that he cared for me in the way he nursed me, even taking personal time-off to stay with me. I was very thankful and I made sure to show him that.


    Even though he backed off saying I had to save my strength.


    "Enough about me. Are you really waiting seven years to marry?"


    Arwia blushed. I had to remind me that her first sexual experience was terrible. Sold as a debt slave to the innkeeper, she was forced to sleep with him and would become his second wife if she got pregnant. Which she didn''t. Same thing as Belle-Sunu and Hama-Tula, but in her case, it was basically statutory rape.


    Arwia took my hand and caressed its back. "I want to stay by your side. Help you. You saved my siblings'' lives, Sandra. You saved me. That''s five lives I owe you."


    I got a really L-vibe coming from her. The way she was holding my hand and caressing my skin was even arousing me, and I was pretty sure I liked men. Arwia seemed dreamy and her face was flushing red. See, that''s why it''s so easy to make harems in isekai stories. The women in those medieval worlds are just too naive.


    "I am grateful for your dedication, Arwia," I told her as I delicately retrieved my hand before things escalated. "I think I want to rest for a while and listen to some music. Feel free to go elsewhere if you want. If you stay around, let me know if Abil-Kisu shows up."


    Her reply showed she was unsure of something as she spoke slowly as if testing the waters. "I''ll stay here. I can see the children playing the games you taught them from here. If that''s okay with you?"


    I decided to tease her a bit. I leaned on her side and turned to face her, leaving just a small distance between our faces.


    "Yeah, I love your company, Arwia. In fact, I''m flattered that you want to stay with me. Please stay here if you want to. I''m more than okay to have you with me."


    Arwia shuddered and I could see the steam rising from her head. I planted a mischievous kiss on her cheek and pulled the headphones up. She reached for her cheek and touched the spot where I kissed her. Then she sighed and leaned on the tree. I think she''d have swooned if she was standing up.


    I felt bad for toying with a maiden''s heart like that. But it was her fault for being so cute. I hit shuffle and Rocket Man by Elton John played.


    <blockquote>


    I miss the Earth so much I miss my wife


    ...


    Rocket man


    Burnin'' out his fuse


    Up here, alone


    </blockquote>


    Then the next song came. You should see me in a crown, by Billie Eilish.


    <blockquote>


    You should see me in a crown


    I''m gonna run this nothing town


    Watch me make ''em bow


    One by one by, one


    </blockquote>


    Yeah. Maybe I should show them me in a crown. Music is so universal because its inner message can fit an infinite number of contexts. I sunk into my playlist and indulged in this little piece of home. The third song, however, made me think that maybe RNG was playing tricks with me.


    Only my Railgun.


    What was my freaking iPod telling me?


    Maybe I wasn''t meant to be lazying around at all. A couple more songs played and Arwia shook me. I opened my eyes to see Abil-Kisu coming my way. I paused the music and lowered the headphones to my neck.


    I quickly jumped on my feet and pulled Arwia up. The perks of wearing pants. I waved at the merchant lord.


    "Milady Rinaldi. I was informed you were looking for me, is there something wrong?" He asked, a bit of concern in his voice but I knew it was a calculated amount. The man was a master of social skills.


    "Oh. I''m sorry if it alarmed you, honorable Abil-Kisu. I was just going to ask if you were interested in buying a few items from me. Some collectibles from my world."


    He couldn''t hide his surprise. The merchant lord immediately assessed the possible profits. It went without mentioning that items from Earth were unique and irreplaceable. His eyes went to my neck where the graphite Bluetooth headphones rested.


    "Ca-can I see those items? Where are they?" I was sure his nose was twitching with the scent of gold.


    Metals have no smell.


    "Do you have time now? They are in the annex near Nanna''s room. But I can wait."


    "I can go and take a look at them now. I need to appraise them and see what can be done with them. After you, milady."


    We went to the annex and I opened the door to the room where I left the stuff that was cluttering my storage. I made way for Abil-Kisu. He entered the room and scanned everything.


    "Are these the items? I can see some very fine goods here,"


    "Not all of them. These containers and flasks here," I showed him the bags of discarded trash that came with me. "Some of them are very fancy and I think would make good decorative items or gifts."


    I showed him some bottles of vodka and other alcoholic drinks that were very fancy. Geometric patterns, intricate shapes. I wanted to keep some of the glass bottles to myself though, but I cared not about shape. The plain ones were just fine. I separated the bottles into two piles and pointed out.


    "Of the glass bottles, these ones are for sale."


    He took them, checked them up close. "This workmanship is superb! And the glass is so uniform and flawless! I can''t see a single bubble!"


    That much was true. Even the lens I used to transform my iPad into a projector had some minor flaws in the glass.


    "I can''t even fathom how much this would sell for," He said and that was a huge thing. "This is a gift worthy of a King. This wouldn''t offend the Lugal if I were to gift it to him."


    Damn. I was taken aback by what he meant. Instead of just seeing the items as something worth some coin, the master merchant was going one step ahead and thinking of using them as keys to open the doors to even more opportunities. He would profit much more than just the price of one fancy bottle.


    Well, two could play this game.


    "You could use my name if you are going to use them as gifts. After all, this is an item touched by Tarhun''s mighty power. All of these are. Even if they break, if a single shard reaches me, I can restore them entirely."


    I could see the illusion of the gears of the merchant turn and the imaginary sound of gold coins clinking over one another in a tall vault as he mumbled and handled the bottle with care.


    "I see... I see... This is no ordinary bottle. It''s a relic!"


    I giggled.


    "I''ll buy all of these items, Sandra! I can''t give you a price on them, but I can assure they are all very valuable. Oh, to obtain such treasures!"


    He went outside and shouted something about getting some crates filled with hay to store the fragile items.


    "There''s more than the bottles though. I have here these cans. They are meant to hold beverages. Some people in my world like to collect them."


    I showed him the aluminum cans. It was strange, I made sure to crush all the cans before I picked them back in the park but some of them straightened themselves back and some of them didn''t. So I had some pristine but opened beer and soda cans and some crushed ones. I had no use for either.


    He carefully placed the bottle on the ground and picked up some beer cans. "This painting. It is so smooth, I can''t feel or see the strokes of the brush. It was if they were painted by magic. And the metal is so light! These glyphs here, what do they mean?"


    "Some words in one of the languages of my world. It is mostly information on the beverage that comes inside these cans when you buy them. And the company that makes them. Not a sacred text," I stressed the last part. It would be bad if he mistook or misrepresented the writings.


    I had mixed feelings about selling the cans with the writings. Someone could use them to decipher the language or at least part of it. It represented a very minor security threat to my devices as someone from this world would have no idea of the language they used.


    I could always switch them to another language. Portuguese, Italian, Japanese. The latter had the problem of kanji being similar to their own grapheme system, at least conceptually.


    "I''ll take every single one of these cans, of course," He said after a period of silent evaluation. And what about those other ones there?" He asked, pointing at the long-life cartons. And then at the food wrappings.


    There were three trash bags I hadn''t cleaned up yet. The organic trash, the food wrappings and napkins, and the condoms.


    "These are just trash. Unique trash from another world, but trash. Those are not for sale." They might even be contaminated even though I didn''t believe that any sort of microorganism could live in my storage.


    Maybe I could test that theory with the kefir grains.


    "The boxes are called long-life cartons," I told him and immediately regretted it as his eyes flared. "No, not long-life as in granting a long life to a person, but in the way, the food... beverages that came inside these boxes would be packed in a way that would prevent them from spoiling. We can''t repeat the process though, so they are just like jugs, I guess."


    "I''ll take everything. Are the silk spools also from another world?"


    "Those? No. Those were taken from Balthazar''s destroyed caravan. The one the rage-apes destroyed."


    "Poor Balthazar. Are you going to use the spools of silk for anything? It is still valuable."


    "I was thinking of visiting madam Cloe to get her to make me clothes out of them. I have a very limited wardrobe."


    He clapped his hands.


    "Yes, that would be excellent. You do that. My wife likes madam Cloe''s work very much. Take the pelts, leathers, and furs to her as well, will you? She can integrate them into the clothes."


    "I''ll do that. In fact, the reason I asked you to buy these items from me was exactly to make some quick coin to hire her services."


    He chuckled. "Of course. I can give you an advance payment on the goods, and then the rest of their value later when I have them all appraised, is that okay? I can promise I won''t rob you."


    I smiled and shrugged. "I know you''ll give me a fair price, but please don''t go overboard. I don''t care if you make a little more profit on them."


    "Preposterous!" He jokingly protested. "I would never take advantage of my most esteemed guest ever!"


    I laughed with him.


    "It feels like I am the one taking advantage of you. I was thinking of moving back to my villa soon."


    "Nonsense," he scoffed. "It is better for both our houses if we stay together and pool our guards. You are my treasured guests. It is lovely to see children bringing life to this otherwise deserted gardens," He said with theatrical hand waves, "And you and mistress Nanna are giving me tons of profit. And I mean it!"


    Abil-Kisu then frowned. "Milady Rinaldi, I will be offended if you tell me again you consider yourself a burden. It is an honor to host you."


    I bowed. "Please, honorable Abil-Kisu. You must understand my feelings. I feel like I could do more, pull my weight, earn my keep."


    "Then do that! I''m not telling you to stay idle and do nothing," He told me with a calm and paused tone. "But it would be perfectly fine if you do that. I know you will be very busy soon once the Enshi approves your plan to increase our crop yields. And that you are still recovering from your ordeal to purify the poison that almost killed the Enshi.


    "Follow your heart, milady. Laze around if you need, do something if you must. I''ll be honored if you allow me to support you either way. And regarding earning your keep, these items here will give me enough gold to buy a city for myself if I wanted to. Not at once, of course. But with time, the right connections, and more importantly, the right words dropped on the right ears? Definitely.


    "It is also okay if you have more ambition, more greed! Even though your kind heart desires none of that!"


    It was a touching speech.


    "You are a true friend, Abil-Kisu. And I''ll be offended if you call me by my last name. You can call me Sandra."


    "I''m honored, Sandra. Now, shall we separate the items you''ll be parting with?"


    We did. I handed him all the fancy glass bottles, all the intact aluminum cans, and most of the cartons. Ironically, I kept all the PET bottles. They were very versatile and plastic was a thing I wouldn''t see again in my lifetime. The servants brought the crates with straw and carefully packed the fragile items inside. We were about to leave the room when I picked up one of the wine kegs from Balthazar''s caravan.


    "Abil-Kisu, I think we could drink this wine tonight during dinner. To celebrate our friendship. Would it be proper to offer it to you as a gift?"


    He chortled and clapped his hands. His gaze was kind and warm. "Of course. But only if you tell me what is this most curious necklace you are wearing."


    He pointed at my headphones.


    "Not a necklace. This is a tool to listen to music or other sounds sent by another tool. Here," I took the headphones and handed them to him. "Put them over your hears, like this. And now..."


    I lowered the volume of the iPod to a whisper and selected Vivaldi''s Spring.


    "Oh!" He gasped. "I can hear the most sublime melody ever! It is like the heavens and a thousand birds are singing in my head!" He smiled and handed me the earphones back after the song ended. "That was... my hands are shaking. Such emotion! Oh, Sandra, could you sing for us tonight? If we are opening this keg of wine, I might invite a few guests. What do you say?"


    It would be good to let loose and sing my worries away. I nodded.


    "It would be an honor to sing for you and your guests. It is the least I could do."


    Abil-Kisu nodded, returned my headphones, and smiled. "Then it is settled. I have to send the invitations now. If you excuse me, mi... Sandra. I''ll have a small advance payment for you in a few moments."


    I waved and he left, the servants carrying the crates as if they were full of babies. I turned around and checked the state of the room-turned-warehouse. Well, at least some of the trash was dealt with. I didn''t have the heart to tell him these items were considered as such in my world.


    Well, it might be as the saying goes. One world''s junk is another''s holy relic.


    I shuffled some of the items around and left the textiles and leathers in an easy-to-reach place. Then I shut the door. As I was about to leave, I heard Nanna''s voice mumbling something from her room. I didn''t mean to eavesdrop but it seemed she was having a conversation. With whom? The whole time I''d been here I haven''t seen any guests in her room and she wasn''t speaking.


    Well, none of my business. I left the annex and went back to my favorite spot under the great tree. The kids saw me and came to talk.


    "Sandra!" Kiya called me. "Could you teach us another game?"


    I looked at them. Covered in dirt. My first impulse was to send them all to take a bath but we should spare water.


    "I won''t be here to give you a lecture, so I''ll teach you a game now. But you must promise to behave and follow Arwia''s lecture this afternoon. Okay, the game goes like this..."


    I taught them the game of telephone. One person whispered a secret message on another''s ear, and then it was passed along the circle until the last person would speak it out loud, usually heavily modified. It wasn''t a game where someone won and I thought it was good. Not all games should have a winner.


    I played two rounds with them, and I quickly some of them caught on the trick to this game. You could twist the message wildly. You could swap the message entirely. The first time it happened, they wanted to find a culprit but I didn''t let them. The game was about having fun.


    Arwia came to call us for lunch before the third round started. I had all of them wash their hands before sitting down to eat.


    After lunch, one of Abil-Kisu''s scribes came with a bag of gold and silver and a scroll with a receipt. I just checked the quantity and attached the bag to one of the belt loops of my pants. I went to the stables and got Penny out. It was time to get my spools of silk and order me some custom couture.

 Afternoon 27

    Another side effect of my burnout was the diminished effectiveness of my link with my tame animals. In some moments, it was even entirely cut off. Or at least the sensory part. Dime was hunting far away and I could only get a faint mental ping of his whereabouts. At least Penny was behaving like a horse. She was almost jumping out of her pen at the prospect of going out for a ride.


    "Whoa, girl! Good girl, Honey Cake! I know I should''ve come to visit but there was so much going on I forgot! Sorry! Will you forget me, Honey Cake? Yes? Now stand still so I can put the saddle blankets over your back!"


    She was skittish. Penny couldn''t stay still long enough for me to put the blankets that would cushion the boiled leather saddle and I could swear that if I had some Ritalin in my first aid kit I''d give her some.


    "You know what? Fine, let''s ride. But if you drop me, I''ll keep you penned for one week! Did you hear me, Honey Cake?" The mare nodded. I pulled a bunch of her hair and jumped over her. "Open up, Aristunn. I don''t think she''ll keep still any longer."


    The eunuch chief guard opened the pen and the horse bolted out. I felt as if a rodeo was about to start. Penny buckled, reared and dashed for the gate.


    "Open the gate!" I shouted.


    Lipit-Ea and Atta-Li were at the gate and recognized what was happening immediately. They pushed the heavy wooden doors and Penny went past, scraping one of my knees on the iron frame of the gate. It ripped my pants and stung, but I ignored it. I had another problem: I was riding bareback and I had to keep myself from falling off my horse.


    She galloped down the street, making the guards of the other noble and wealthy estates raise an eyebrow. I went past my own gate and could swear there were some scavengers inside. Penny reached the end of the road and entered the city streets proper, trotting, jumping and dodging traffic by a hair''s breadth.


    I heard shouts of ''mad horse'' and improved my repertoire of curses in modern Akkadian by a score. Penny went west, running out through the gates and into the snaking road that went around the farms.


    I had no choice but to keep riding, bouncing and hitting some sensitive parts over the mare''s spine. I knew I would get some serious saddle sores from all this horsing around. At least she was keeping to the road as she went up and down and around the farms. I could swear that my first reform in the food production industry would be to make these roads straight.


    Hello, another world. Meet the grid road system. Because you can''t be modern until you get stuck in traffic.


    My ride wasn''t that bad if I could crack bad jokes while I was shaking on my ride. We approached the Aerie and I thought about all the nice ores and water goblins below and it felt like an eternity since I climbed out of that hole on top of the mountain. It was only a week. Penny ran past the Aerie and into the woods.


    It was then that I felt a mental ping. Dime was in distress. Was this the reason the mare was so anxious to get here? To help her avian bond-partner? That was so sweet of her!


    She went through the forest and I had to crouch to avoid the branches. I was only partially successful. And then I saw what was the cause of Dime''s distress.


    The eagle was fighting a bobcat. Or a lynx. It had a dense shiny silvery fur, long tufted ears, and a strong set of back legs. I think it was a lynx but don''t quote me on that. Regardless of what feline species that critter was, I had no idea why this fight was still ongoing. None of the combatants seemed wounded. Dime would dive, using wind magic to enhance his speed and try to do a fly-by attack. While the silver cat would use its powerful hind legs to jump and twist mid-air to dodge the eagle''s claws. Then it quickly rearranged itself and jumped after the sky-lord. The cat jumped some twenty meters up, I swear.


    Why were they fighting? Who started the fight? Should I assist Dime? Shout some instructions to him? I didn''t bring my white and red balls though.


    I watched the exchange happen for another four times before I noticed that the reason none of them was wounded was that both of them were too good at evading and too dumb to try anything but the same attack over and over. Swoop, strike, dodge, pounce, miss. Unfortunately for the bird, it had to keep flying up and down, while the cat could just lay still on the treetop waiting to pounce. It was obvious who was going to run out of stamina first, and I couldn''t have that outcome.


    So I decided to interfere to the detriment of the local wildlife. It was totally justified as Dime was a tame animal, even though not domesticated, and mine. I had a right to self-defense and that cat was going to have to go find another meal. I got down and went to the pine tree where the cat was on.


    "Go away, bad kitty!" I threw a rock at him.


    The rock pathetically reached only halfway up the pine tree. My girly arms were surely not powerful enough to reach the cat some ten-ish meters above. My only choice was to climb the tree. And so I did. I started climbing and after a few meters, I heard the cat hissing at me. I kept climbing.


    Dime used the distraction to draw first blood. He ripped open a gash along the cat''s back as his talon dug deep into the feline''s fur and flesh underneath. The cat growled in fury but kept an eye on the bird and another on me.


    I reached more than halfway up, the number of branches that could hold my weight diminishing. The cat was growling, looking at me with the scruff all ruffled up. I shook the branch it was on and the cat was forced to relocate. I could see its red blood staining the tree branches as he moved along. I hoped it would just go away but it didn''t.


    Feeling overconfident, Dime dove again to peck one of the cat''s eyes. He knew it was a match point as he folded his wings almost entirely and dove like a ballistic missile. I jumped to another branch and then tried to change trees to keep the cat in my range.


    And then the cat decided that it had enough of being harassed from both below and above, The cat leaped to what seemed in its mind the path of least resistance. Past me. The sight of a cat the size of a large dog pouncing from above at you with its fangs and claws bare was enough for me to lose my grip and footing. I crashed down the tree limbs splendidly, de-limbing the tree and crashing down on the rocky ground. Somehow it didn''t hurt as much as it should and I definitely felt some cushioning effect and a rush of upward wind.


    Then my musings on the strange phenomenon were interrupted as I was showered by resin, leaves, sticks, and sap.


    Reeling from the pain, I looked around and saw the cat drop next to me, paying attention up to see where Dime would come from. I jumped and grabbed its hind leg, causing the feline to jump and hiss at me. I reached with another hand and wrapped on the other side around its belly.


    "It''s fine, nobody will hurt you. Let me see your wound," I cooed.


    That was the moment of truth. Either that cat was an animal and would be affected by my animal friendship boon or it was a monster and would attack me. If it were a monster, I''d have to kill it. I mentally sent an order to keep my pets at bay.


    The lynx raised a paw, claws exposed. I was ready to release its leg and summon the combat knife to stab its belly.


    "C''mon, don''t be a monster!" I mumbled.


    The cat withdrew its claws and lowered its paw. Then it gave me the kitty eyes. I stared at it and it meekly mewled. This was suspicious. Very suspicious. Dime landed on a tree branch next to us and cawed. Penny approached. The lynx tilted its head and met Dime''s eyes, but I couldn''t sense fear or hostility from the feline. And only annoyance from Dime. It was as if...


    "Bloodstone, what happened? Why are you here out in the middle of nowhere fighting this cat?"


    I got a mix of emotions and some mental images through our bond. It also came with faint pangs of headache. Yesterday, Dime was out here hunting near his old nest when this cat snatched and robbed his prey. Angered, Dime went after the thief and the fight went on. He got this far without even thinking, so absorbed in the fight he was. They stopped for the night but resumed in the morning. The cat showed up to taunt and goad him even further away.


    I put it aside for a while to check my own condition. My bruises and scratches were taking longer to heal. My magic power remained at half-full. It solidified the theory that I was leaking magic because of the burnout and that my healing only used the surplus magic if the wounds were past a critical point. It was like the amount of magic for healing could be determined by a formula.


    <blockquote>


    MH = RR - L - U


    MH - Magic Healing rate for non-critical wounds


    RR - Recovery Rate for magical energy.


    L - Leak


    U - Upkeep.


    </blockquote>


    In the state I was, still suffering from burnout, RR was greatly diminished while L was very big.


    Which might mean I screwed up today. I should''ve waited for the whole day. I could also feel that my available magic decrease by small but measurable amounts for every branch I hit and another larger quantity when I hit the ground. And there was a considerable drain now that Dime was within link distance again.


    I had a hunch that this cat was trying to separate Dime from me? For what reason? Was I being too paranoid to think that this cute and fluffy pussy was conspiring against me? Speaking of which, his fur is so soft and delicate and fluffy! I must pet it!


    "Meow!"


    It winced. I checked it and the wound on its back reopened.


    "Who do you work for? Tell me and I''ll treat your wound. Lie to me, and Bloodstone there will eat you."


    Dime liked the idea of eating the cat if only to spite it. The cat tilted its head and purred. It stretched its neck and rubbed its fluffy head on my arm.


    "Flattery will get you... nowhere. No. Don''t try to look cute!"


    I could see its fur was not entirely silvery. It had some white spots that splashed like paint drops or the craters on the moon. The cat whimpered, begged, mewled.


    I wanted to use my first aid kit. There were some butterfly stitches to close its skin. I wasn''t sure if it was a good idea to get an item that big in my condition. While I mused, the cat pawed and tried to play with my headphones, still looped around my neck.


    "No. Don''t touch this, it isn''t a toy."


    The cat withdrew its paw and kept staring at me. I felt some intelligence behind those slitted eyes. Dime was extremely irritated that I was petting the cat and he was exhausted. I checked the wound across its back and it was a shallow gash. The cat would be scarred but its life wasn''t endangered.


    I put the critter on the ground. "Off you go. Don''t pester Bloodstone again. This is your last chance."


    The cat ran to hide behind some trees as Dime opened his wings and screeched. I blocked his dive with my body and caught the bird as it slammed into my chest.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    "Okay, you won. Now stop struggling, Bloodstone!"


    Dime calmed down and folded its wings. I cradled him and checked for any sign of the cat. I saw him far away from some five trees across, peeking from behind a trunk. I mentally called Penny, and after some gymnastics, got back on the mare with the bird in my hands.


    "Let''s go back, slowly this time. You did well, Honey Cake! You brought me to rescue Bloodstone! Lead on, girl."


    Penny walked back to the road and paced herself on the way back. When I say paced herself I mean a fast canter, as the mare somehow became tireless after we bonded. Or maybe it was because her body became a pristine version of herself, just like my healing boon said. And there was another thing. I was tireless as well. I didn''t make the connection before because I bonded with Penny since day 2, but I could remember all the exercise I did at the training grounds of the garrison ages ago, and my trekking through the mine tunnels.


    I knew my bonded pets gained some of my boons. If I assumed it was reciprocal, it meant I gained a tirelessness trait from Penny once we bonded. And what about Dime? I remembered the fall from the tree. How I felt a cushioning effect before I hit the ground. Brandon told me sky-lords could use wind magic and I saw Dime deflect arrows and do aerial stunts a bird of his size shouldn''t be able to do, including flying indoors where he couldn''t use his whole wingspan.


    Did it mean I had Dime''s innate wind magic? Further investigation and a consultation with my favorite magical expert were required. It wasn''t time for that though.


    I had to focus on getting to madam Cloe''s atelier. I returned to the city and the image of a woman, bruised and disheveled, wearing pants, riding a horse bareback and cradling a big eagle on her lap drew a lot of necks and some shouts. I ignored them, relieved that Penny had at least slowed down.


    Soon we approached Cloe''s shop and I checked the surrounding area. It was a nice street, three removed from the central market and one that had a lot of shops. I could see some security guards wandering around the street and I wondered if they were watching business in particular or the whole street. I spotted my carriage outside. Shamash and Kani-Kasu were manning the vehicle as footman and driver, respectively. They turned when they heard Penny''s hooves approaching from behind.


    "Hey, guys. What are you doing here?" I asked them.


    "Sandra!" Shamash smiled, "There you are. Aristunn and Zuska are inside, we already unloaded your fabrics."


    I nodded. "Okay. Can you keep an eye on these two? Bloodstone needs to rest, I''m locking him inside the carriage. I need a pole to let him perch on, or he''ll claw the upholstery."


    With some effort, we tied a broomstick to the carriage benches and I left Dime inside the vehicle. The poor eagle was so tired it didn''t complain. Penny stood there, next to her horse friends, probably bragging about her timely rescue. Yeah, right. Jokes aside, I entered the atelier.


    Several mannequins sported what went for the latest fashion trends in the city of Es-Kina. Embroidered tunics, geometric-pattern sashes and scarves, bleached togas, and long dresses. At the back of the shop, I saw first the spools of silk fabric and then Aristunn, Zuska, and Cloe.


    "Ah, Sandra, welcome!" Cloe turned to greet me. "What happened? You are wounded and your clothes! Your hair!"


    She came to me and pulled on my clothes, my hair, and checked my wounds.


    "Don''t worry. I''ll be as good as new tomorrow. Even my clothes will be repaired soon. I had to go save my stupid eagle from becoming cat food. You see, there was this silver-colored cat that was taunting Bloodstone..."


    I told them an abridged version of the story.


    "Well, this can''t stay like this. Come, my dear, let''s get you changed. Mister Aristunn, do you mind?"


    The eunuch got a bit embarrassed from being singled out. He recovered and nodded. "No. I''ll wait outside. Excuse me, milady."


    I made eye contact with Zuska. What I wanted to know was why she came, but I was afraid of broaching the subject and offending her. "Did you like the dresses?"


    "Yes, very. Sandra, I''m sorry I pressured Aristunn into bringing me and I might have lied to him about you want me here, but I couldn''t come! I want to become an apprentice to madam Cloe. If you let me."


    I grinned. "You don''t need to lie to get what you want. Why can''t you just ask? As for becoming Cloe''s apprentice, you should ask her, not me."


    Zuska protested, "But you are my ma--"


    She stopped talking when I frowned at her. "Didn''t your sister explain already? I''m nobody''s master. I''m your guardian. Employer, once we find a useful job you can perform. Zuska, you are already fourteen. I want you to finish your education first."


    I turned around to ask the person herself. "Now, Cloe, what do you think? Do you even want to get an apprentice?"


    The seamstress smiled at me. "It depends. I saw all those lovely bolts of silk you brought and now I''m wondering how many clothes are you ordering. If your order is too big, I''ll need someone to help me."


    I chuckled. Naughty merchant. I tapped my chin. "I don''t know if I can pay for that many clothes. You see, I''m a bit short on coins."


    That was a blatant lie. Cloe knew it was a lie but she played along. It was all part of the merchant game. Those back and forths, the theatrical negotiation. With Abil-Kisu I could avoid it because he knew and recognized my alien status. And he knew that better deals were on their way so if he stiffs me on some shoddy fancy glass bottle, he''ll miss later on. We were both aware of that.


    "Well, if you let me have some of the silk and the scraps to use on my own pieces, I can offset some of the costs."


    "But that would give you an incentive to be wasteful with the fabric," I replied. "And I have no idea how much fabric a dress uses. Maybe it is a lot."


    Cloe pretended to be offended. "I wouldn''t dare steal from you. What if I take this girl of yours and the first thing I teach her is how to measure the fabric needed for a project?"


    "Did you decide to take Zuska as an apprentice?"


    It went back and forth for a couple more rounds and we finally settled on having Cloe use all the silk to make outfits for me with Zuska as her apprentice. The girl would have to move in and live with Cloe. I hoped Arwia wouldn''t mind.


    "I''ll show you what kind of clothes I want," I told Cloe and prepared to endure the headache from calling my phone.


    I used to play a dress-up game that was popular with the girls back in Japan. You would buy outfits through a gacha system and then combine them to do fashion duels. There were a lot of fancy medieval and fantasy clothes I''d love to wear. And there was no better opportunity to do that than right then. I fired the app and the splash screen from the developers was soon followed with the following message:


    <blockquote>


    Request failed


    Network failure, please connect to the internet and try again.


    [Retry]


    </blockquote>


    Cloe was staring at the splash screen.


    "What a fancy painting! I''ve never seen anything like that! And these girls are so elegant! If only there wasn''t this white square covering part of their outfits!"


    It was the picture of a princess'' bedroom, with drapes, a fancy vanity, some books and toys and jewelry strewn across the floor. Two other girls were helping the main character of the game, sitting in front of the vanity, get ready for another dress-up contest.


    I''d spent quite some cash on that game. Don''t judge me. Gachas are addictive. I''d also worked hard to get most of the in-game content. But now, without the allegedly ubiquitous internet, all that effort was worth nothing.


    Maybe I could rip off the images from the cache and the APK of the game.


    After my very unladylike bout of anger, I remembered I had some screenshots from some particular combinations I liked very much. I showed them to Cloe and the eyes of the seamstress sparkled so much I had to summon my sunglasses. No, not really. I exaggerated a bit.


    She took some pieces of high-quality vellum and a feather pen and started to copy the screenshots'' outfits. Zuska was watching closely, trying her best to learn what she could. I showed Cloe how to browse the photos and walked away to give them space. I went for a stroll through the shop to check what she had for sale. I found several dresses that looked really nice. She had some in dyed cotton. They looked really nice and had a European feel, differently from the clothes I usually see that have that Egyptian or Middle-Eastern influence.


    They don''t have a rigorous winter, I think their winter is just a slightly less hot season as they don''t even know what real snow is. It shows in their choices of clothing. The fabrics are light but sturdy. They are not meant to keep the heat, they are meant to ventilate and cool the body. They use mostly linen, seldom wool. Cotton is a premium material and silk is a luxury fabric. That Cloe was willing to work for scraps of silk shows how valuable it was.


    I tagged a dozen gowns and dresses I liked. The cotton was rough but still softer than the linen. Like many of their plants, they did not domesticate them. The genetic improvements that came with the centuries of selective breeding of the plants were missing.


    "Sandra!" I heard Cloe calling me. I went to see what it was and she was tapping the phone. "Your magic tablet went dark. I can''t get it to work."


    I could see the half-finished drawing of a very complex outfit. She got to the steampunk collection and girl did these game artists go nuts on the details. Zuska was fanning the other parchments to accelerate the drying of the ink. Every surface of the atelier where a sheet of vellum could be placed on had one.


    "That''s fine. It shuts down the screen after a while," I told her and unlocked the phone again. I let her finish the steampunk design and put the phone on my breast pocket. "Cloe, I want to purchase some dresses from the front. Could you tell me how much they are?"


    I bought the dresses and she packed them for me in a wooden crate. I went outside to call Aristunn to load it on the carriage for me. Then I paid Cloe after she finished tallying my tab. Expensive but worth it.


    "Oh, thank you so much, Sandra! I will start working on your new clothes immediately!"


    We shook hands and I went outside. Zuska came behind me, silent as a mourner. I found Shamash. "Shamash, you are staying here to guard madam Cloe and Zuska. I''ll send another guard to keep you company through the night and then two others to relieve you in the morning."


    Shamash was the closest thing to an elf that this world had to offer. I remember his introduction, he was part of the forest people near the capital when agricultural expansion forced him and his brethren into slavery. He bowed.


    "As you wish, milady," He said curtly and then went to stand guard next to the door.


    I turned around and faced Zuska. I put my hand on the girl''s shoulder. "You stay here and help your new mentor. I won''t say master because you have none. I''ll send your things with the guards in the morning and talk to Arwia. Follow your dreams with your chin up, Zuska. And become a splendid seamstress."


    She sniffled. "Thank you, Sandra."


    I giggled and hugged her. "Don''t thank me yet. I expect to make you craft a lot of clothes for me later on." Then I gently pushed her to go to Cloe''s side. "Cloe, please tell me later how much Zuska''s tuition will cost me. And please teach her well."


    The seamstress waved. "I will, Sandra!"


    I went around the carriage and patted Penny''s neck. "Kani-Kasu, Shamash, please take me home. Honey Cake, you come along with us. No, no. I can''t ride you. That''s your fault for not letting me put the saddle on. I need to rest my... Just go home."


    I boarded the carriage and Dime just opened an eye to see who was coming before twisting his neck, nesting his beak under his wing and returning to sleep. The trip back was uneventful. After I got down from the carriage carrying Dime, I checked the sun''s position. One hour to nightfall.


    I went to my room and put the bird on its perch stand. "I''ll have Belle bring some scrap meat for you later. Stay there, you hear me!"


    After leaving Dime where he would be able to rest, I went to the stables. Penny deserved a brushing and a sugar cube. I hadn''t sugar cubes so she would have to make do with a good brush. I could feel that she was happy. Going out and running wild was good for her but not as good for me. "Next time you won''t get out without a saddle," I declared.


    I was about to finish when one of Abil-Kisu''s servants found me.


    "Lady Rinaldi, honorable Abil-Kisu asked to inform you that dinner will be served a little past sunset. He asked if you are ready."


    Oh, I''d promised to sing for his guests. I went back to my room and found that Aristunn had put the crate with the dresses there. I opened them and checked to see what I would wear. I settled for a dark brown long gown that had a crisscrossing string in the front to work like a corset. Its neckline was high and the sleeves were puffy on the shoulders and it looked lovely. I remembered Cloe explaining to me why this one was so expensive.


    "This dress was dipped four times, that''s why it has such a rich color," She told me.


    Today I learned that their clothes had to be dipped in the dye bath more than once to make the color set. Four dips meant spending four times as many dyes. I slipped out of my dirty and scraped explorer clothes and into the gown. I could put the gold jewelry, it would stand out against the brown gown but I didn''t dare try to summon them. I didn''t put on makeup for the same reason. So I just put on the titanium heels and was ready to go. I left the headphones and the phone in the room and had to carry the iPod in my hand. I would use it in karaoke mode to provide musical accompaniment.


    I entered the tent and saw Abil-Kisu and his guests. Lu-Ninurta, Bero-Mabii, priest of Tarhun and some merchants and crafters. The host clapped when he saw me.


    "Oh, there she is. My guest of honor. Lady Rinaldi, how lovely you are today. Your shoes especially, they are divine!"


    And all the eyes went to my feet. I didn''t hide them. Coming to this world made me bolder.


    "I thank you, honorable Abil-Kisu. Gentlemen, our esteemed host asked me to sing for you tonight. I''ll sing a couple songs from my world before dinner if that''s okay with you."


    I bowed and the merchants clapped her hands in approval. I went to the middle of the tent, breaking protocol and stepping on the carpet with my shoes. After Abil-Kisu compliments, it was his fault. I checked the iPod and selected the first song. I ended up with Adele''s ''I set fire to the rain''.


    <blockquote>


    Well, it felt something died


    ''Cause I knew that that was


    The last time, the last time


    </blockquote>


    For some really weird and freaking reason singing the song made me keep Brandon''s image in my head. It made me feel really sad, as if it was a premonition. I shook my head to dismiss those silly thoughts. Everything was fine, right?


    Wishing to end it with something that wouldn''t make me spend the night awake worrying, I picked one of the songs I learned during my music lessons. Golden Slumber, the folk version, not the Beatles one.


    <blockquote>


    Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,


    Smiles await you when you rise.


    Sleep,


    pretty baby,


    Do not cry,


    And I will sing a lullaby.


    Cares you know not,


    Therefore sleep,


    While over you a watch I''ll keep.


    Sleep,


    pretty darling,


    Do not cry,


    And I will sing a lullaby.


    </blockquote>


    I finished, turned the iPod off and bowed. The audience clapped and Abil-Kisu called for me.


    "Marvelous, milady Rinaldi. Truly music from another world! Sit next to me. Let''s eat."


    I took off my shoes and walked around to sit next to Abil-Kisu. Dinner was served and I noticed how hungry I was, after the afternoon adventure I had.

 Morning 28

    After waking late and doing my morning hygiene routine, I checked my condition. I disregarded Nanna''s warning and now the damage was showing. I was slightly better than yesterday. Instead of having the recovery fix my burnout, it only mended the damage I incurred yesterday. Even though I had to save Dime from that wild lynx. I looked at the bird resting on its wooden perch stand.


    "You stay indoors today," I told the sky-lord. "Rest and take it easy. There''s enough food and water for you. Try not to poop in the wrong place."


    It meant no Decompose and no storage today. Absolutely not.


    The sky was clear blue. I could see that the level of fine dust suspended on the air was high, Maybe the ashes from the explosion and other fine aerosols brought in by the winds. No moisture though. It made the lower parts of the sky near the horizon get a faint pale ochre tint. I focused my sight on the farthest thing I could see, the Enshi''s palace sitting on the tallest point of the city. I could see the seams of the rock bricks. And the odd combination of the eagle''s sight with my minute vision boon allowed me to see the cracks even from this distance with great detail. I could feel that straining my sight this way used up a tiny amount of magic energy and that I had to do a conscious effort to use it otherwise my vision would revert to normal human standards.


    I had a meeting with the Enshi and the City Council this morning and I should be preparing myself instead of looking at the cityscape.


    I looked at the clothes I bought from Cloe yesterday and picked a cotton one-piece dress with a pleated skirt dyed yellow from the weld plant. It was a happy dress that had a square neckline and would show some nice cleavage if I used it with the pushup bra. Instead, I was going to hide my skin with a white shirt underneath because in this society only harlots and poor man''s slaves showed their cleavage in public. They showed a lot more than just the cleavage though.


    The cotton was rough, far from the expected quality of modern cotton clothes but this was not there neither then. I still remember how Cloe reacted to the clothes I showed her. Too bad that app was dead weight. I''m so going to rip off the image database from the device when I get a chance. I took a red sash and wrapped it around my waist like an obi. I tied my hair in a ponytail with a ligth red ribbon that matched my sash, making a pretty bow over my head. I let one strand on each side to frame my face. Finally, I put on my sneakers.


    I went to the kitchen in search of food, feeling sunny in my new clothes. Maybe I should introduce big-brimmed floppy hats. Or should I go all the way with the derby hat? There''s more than enough straw to work with. And handbags. I could make a killing selling handbags to rich ladies. I needed to fix my shoe situation next. I only had four pairs of shoes. The hiking boots, sneakers, a pair of flip-flops and the titanium high heels with golden trimmings. I thought about how I could make jewelry and the shoes look good but the helmet came out hideous. Was it the mental image and the familiarity with the objects? Maybe.


    Belle-Sunu was working hard with the other cooks, as usual. She greeted me before even turning around.


    "Good morning, Sandra. How are you... What a lovely dress! Are you hungry? I''ll have your breakfast served right away."


    She brought me a plate with figs, apricots, and some nuts along with flatbread covered with a bean paste and a mug of kefir. After putting everything on the table, Belle leaned and whispered. "You forgot to punch the bag," She pointed at the goatskin hung next to the kitchen entrance.


    "Oh," I gasped and turned my neck around to look at the bag. It was really hard to miss but good ol'' Sandra did. "I didn''t expect it to be up this soon!"


    I stood up and held the goatskin. It was full of milk. I shook it, feeling the liquid slosh inside. Then I returned to my chair and had my breakfast. I was itching to tell Belle of the uniforms I commissioned but I wanted it to be a surprise. I ate my breakfast in silence but when I stood up, Belle was there to pick up the dishes.


    "Nanna wants to see you. It seems she has a gift for you."


    A gift from the witch. So long it is not apples or candy in general, I guess it is fine to accept.


    I left the kitchen and went to the annex. I checked the room where my stuff was. Everything seemed to be in place, but now with the trash, silk spools, fabrics, pelts, and most of the ingots gone, it felt rather empty. The fear of losing the irreplaceable stuff was turning me into a hoarder. Not good. I closed the door and turned around to knock on Nanna''s.


    "Enter, girl," The witch''s raspy voice sounded from inside.


    I pushed the door open and entered. The scent of the boiled liver was overwhelming. Whatever she was boiling in her cauldron, I wanted distance from.


    "Good morning, Nanna," I greeted her pinching my nose and regretted opening my mouth. I was tasting boiled liver now. "What''s brewing?"


    She chuckled and checked the cauldron. "Vitality potions. They take a few weeks to set and there will be a lot of demand for them, once the temple of Ishtar opens its doors after the bridal market. I have to brew them in advance. Do you want to taste them?"


    I shook my head. I tried to avoid it but I was sure I was making a disgusted face. "No, thank you. In fact, I have grounds to believe I don''t need them. That was one of the things I wanted to ask you."


    She didn''t answer right away. She stirred the caldron, scraping the bottom with her wooden ladle and checked the consistency. Then she scooped the foam from the top and dumped it on a bucket.


    "We might as well go outside for a talk. I don''t want you throwing up inside my room," She groaned. "What are you waiting for. Shoo, shoo. Go outside and smell some flowers."


    I nodded and left. With the corner of my eye, I saw Nanna adjust the air intake of the stove before leaving. Outside and in the open, the clean but dry air saved my breakfast from a rather tragic and wasteful end. The witch joined me soon after, with a burlap pouch in her hand.


    "Feeling Better?" I nodded. "Good. What do you want to talk about?"


    Better go straight to the point. "I noticed yesterday I can use some traits from my bonded pets. I have Honey Cake''s stamina, Bloodstone''s far sight and I also cushioned a fall with wind magic."


    She grinned. "Took you long enough to realize that. Yes, each bonded animal will grant you its major traits. Too bad the first one you got was an ordinary horse. You also share your own traits with them. But beware! Each animal you bond with puts additional strain on your magic. Most beast tamers can''t bond with more than two because of their limited magic pools."


    "That was what I thought. I didn''t try to bond with the cat I found yesterday. It was a strange story, let me tell you..." I told her the whole story regarding the silver lynx and Dime''s rescue. Nanna listened with a neutral and unreadable face. "... Don''t you think that the cat''s behavior was too strange? It was as if he was luring Bloodstone away from me!"


    She nodded. "Indeed. But it was ''just'' a dumb cat. Probably just toying with the bird. You know how cats are," She replied. It sounded dismissive and insincere. "Don''t frown like that, girl. In the end, it was good that the bird went out of range for a while. The amount of energy you need to keep the bond with the sky-lord is ten times as much as the horse''s."The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Wait, if having Dime away from me lowered my upkeep, it would help my recovery. Did it mean that it was intentional? "Do you mean that whoever sent the cat was trying to help me?"


    "Who would do such a thing?" Nanna groaned, visibly annoyed. "You are being paranoid, Sandra. Not everything is about you."


    Maybe she was right. "Okay. I''ll drop it."


    "Good, good girl," She tapped my arm. "Now, I have this for you. I spent an entire day crafting, take it."


    She handed the bag to me. I opened it and took a necklace, with a dreamcatcher thing in the middle, made of flaxen string. The pattern was extremely well-woven and I couldn''t even fathom how it was woven.


    I kept staring at the pattern. "What does it do? It''s beautiful!"


    She replied matter-of-factly. "Oh. It is a cursed item..."


    "Fuck!" I threw it away.


    "... to seal your magic. Put it on, please!" Nanna displayed agility beyond what her aged body should have and caught it mid-flight.


    "Stupid girl. It is meant to help you. Put it on! This will seal your magic and plug the leaks!"


    She explained as if sealing magic and plugging the leak was a tautology, an obvious conclusion like ''cut living beings and they bleed''.


    She pressed the amulet against me and I had to fight to not back off. "Why?" I mumbled, afraid.


    "This amulet will seal your magic and the leaks. But as you resist curses, it will break and stop working in less than a day. Then you will be completely healed. Or do you want to spend another week feeling useless?"


    Oh, wow. Thanks for the candid caring candor, Nanna. You might think I should be used to the witch''s tough-love style but no. I was still soft and delicate as a bar of butter in this weather. Especially the last statement, that I was useless, hurt like hell.


    I took the cursed dreamcatcher or whatever-catcher it was called and put the string over my neck. I felt a shiver over my entire body and suddenly I couldn''t feel my magic anymore.


    She gave me an appraising look. "Great. Not a single ounce of magic escaping your being. Keep your animals locked in as they are for the day, you don''t want to risk them escaping. The amulet should break before the next dawn. I can already see your divine protection fighting it off."


    A stray thought caused me to worry. What about my defenses? My passive protections? I voiced my concern to her.


    "They work inside your body so they are still effective. The amulet only blocks you from projecting magic outside. It might help to stay away from trees with wild felines for a while," She told me with a smirk and a chuckle.


    I felt... mundane. Normal. Exposed. Afraid. If something happened while I had this amulet on, I wouldn''t be able to defend myself. And I had an appointment with the Nephew-Enshi. Wonderful.


    "When you say break, Nanna, do you mean physically break or another kind of break?"


    She looked at me as if I''d asked if the ceiling was above the floor. "The string will unravel and snap. You''ll feel your magic back. I hope you''ll be fully healed by then."


    As paranoid and afraid I was, I had to admit that spending a day to make this for me was very thoughtful of her. I hugged the witch and she grunted in surprise. I hid the amulet under my shirt. No need to let people know I was wearing it.


    "Thank you, Nanna. I have to go now. The carriage will depart to the Enshi''s palace."


    I was half expecting her to send me away with a "take care" or something but she just went back to her concoctions. I went to my room to leave my devices there and then to the front yard where Abil-Kisu was waiting for me on his carriage and helped me, board.


    "Lovely dress, Sandra," he told me. "Madam Cloe''s work is really superb."


    I felt as if I could be a straw doll and the dress would still be lovely. Or a wooden plank. I tried to not show it but the merchant read me like an open book. He didn''t try to fix his blunder though. Or didn''t recognize it as a blunder.


    "Don''t worry. The Enshi has no interest in antagonizing you any further," Abil-Kisu said during our ride.


    I sighed and looked out through the window. While I didn''t have to tell anyone that I was powerless for a day, I wondered if any magician could see it. All of them so far were able to see the amount of magical power I had.


    Maybe I wouldn''t run into any as they were as rare as a hen''s thumbs. I wouldn''t bet against teeth.


    The ride was silent until we arrived at the palace. We were received by some scribes. They talked something with Abil-Kisu and then we were led inside. Instead of going to the council room, we took the main corridor and halted before a set of double doors. Four guards were posted in front, all of them holding short spears with steel tips. Their torsos were naked and they were wearing a miniskirt made of interconnected vertical leather bands and leather sandals. They were strong but showed clear signs of being eunuchs, like the lack of a beard or chest hair. The lead scribe approached the guards.


    "Honorable merchant Abil-Kisu and lady Rinaldi," He announced with a well-projected voice.


    The guards pushed the door open. Maybe having the door open outward would be a liability as they could be blocked inside. The scribes took us in and I got a good look at the inner palace.


    I don''t know what I was expecting. Maybe something that improved health, added to the population and spawned engineers. But there was nothing of the kind. Oh, wait. Did I count as an engineer? Because there were some plants, vines and what looked like bindweed over the pillars. It was a lush garden with plants, bushes, and some flowers and I could hear water trickling. As we moved deeper through the garden, I saw some men dressed in a gray-brown toga and turbans working the gardens. The water came from a groove in the roof and fell down on a suspended basin made of marble, where it would spread in several directions to irrigate the channels and to feed a device.


    The water clock.


    It was a true wonder. Made of brass and carved stone, it had a spigot almost near the roof from where a trickle of water poured into a large conical bowl. At the bottom, another trickle of water poured into a wheel with several cavities. Once a cavity filled, the wheel would go one-sixtieth of a turn and dump the water on a lower basin. A set of gears then moved several decorated cylinders with figures of animals, celestial objects, and people that marked the year, day, hour, and minute. I desperately wanted to study it and snap some photos but there were two problems.


    I left my devices home.


    I approached and looked at the device without touching. The main wheel spun once every minute-ish or so, I couldn''t measure it. The brass gears were well-made and decorated with inlaid patterns. I counted the teeth and did some calculations. The main wheel counted minutes and there were sixty of them. It had numbers written on it and only one of them was upright at any time. There was a golden loop in front of the wheel where this number could be read. It read thirty-five minutes. One of the positions, the sixty had a tooth that would force the hour cylinder to move ahead one position. It was marking for three hours. Strange but maybe it marked the hours from sunrise as the hour zero I could see had an engraving of a golden sun rising behind some mountains.


    This cylinder also had a gear that would feed two other cylinders. One that had twenty-eight markings, probably for a lunar month and another that had seven. I finally knew the day of the month and week. It was the sixth day. No days of the week had a proper name except for the last one. In modern Akkadian, it read ''Sa-Bat''. Yes, good old'' Sabbath apparently had its roots in the Mesopotamian bronze age language. Translated it meant "Halfway rest", or "Rest at the middle of the month" if you wanted to force the translation a bit.


    As for the week, it was the third week of the month. These two cylinders had gears that fed the second-to-last cylinder, the months. It was currently on a marking where one could see a rising and falling pattern that showed the sun scorching the land below while a bull walked on the surface. I assumed it meant summer. It was the third month of summer, meaning that next month would mark the beginning of the autumn.


    It meant we were in March if we were in the southern hemisphere or September if on the northern. And yes, there were twelve months. Next, onto the years. This one was curious. There was a glass tube with spherical marbles inside. The tube had markings and I could see that every time the month cylinder did a full rotation a new marble would fall inside. It read... one.


    And I finally had the date. We were on Friday the twentieth of March / September, Month of the Bull, of year 1 of the Nephew era.


    Yes, the asshole restarted the calendar.


    My time to contemplate the marvelous water clock and bite my thumb at the follies of the Nephew-King ended as I was called by Abil-Kisu.


    "Sandra, it is time to eat. Our slot was pushed to the afternoon."


    I had no idea how much time I spent examining and admiring the water clock but the sun had moved a good deal from when I entered the gardens. I went with Abil-Kisu to a side room where a lavish meal was set for us.


    "Let me eat first, just to make sure there''s no poison," I told the merchant.


    He chortled. "Confess, you are just hungry."


    "Maybe?"


    We ate and talked about small details. He caught the thieves and recovered some of his stolen merchandise. After lunch we had a cup of tea and rested for a while. Then the crier came and called my name.


    "Yes?" I turned around.


    "The Enshi called for you, milady," The crier answered. "Please, this way."


    We went to a side wing that ended in double doors with more half-naked burly guards. At least they weren''t oiled. The door opened and I saw the throne room proper.


    Into the lion''s den.

 Afternoon 28 - Friday, Bull 20th

    We entered the throne room.


    It was a rectangular room with stone benches along the side and rear walls and four columns that held the roof. The floor was marble covered in expensive Persian-like rugs. Some people were sitting on the benches and leaning on the wall. The space between the four columns had no roof and the sun shone down on the far wall where Nephew sat on a stone chair. The walls and columns were painted a dull red with bands of geometric patterns going around and several relief carvings of important moments of the city.


    I felt a chill running up my spine. Magic being used on me? I didn''t think so.


    Nephew''s crier decided to speak. While he did the announcements, I checked on Nephew. He seemed healthier. The signs of radiation poisoning were still there, but they seemed more like lifelong scars from a distant event than a current malady. His alopecia was even being replaced by new hairs that were growing from his deformed scalp, creating a thin fur over his head. He was wearing an embroidered tunic with a fur cloak with huge gold clasps that screamed wealth. His sandals and belt were also decorated with gold and jewels. His form was still lean and gaunt but he wasn''t showing weakness in his stance. He sat with his back erect and was looking down on us.


    The crier seemed to end his long prologue. He tapped the butt of his staff on the ground to call everyone''s attention.


    " ... The magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina speaks!"


    I had no idea if we should kneel or do some reverence. I really didn''t want to but there was no need to antagonize him. Especially in my weakened and powerless state. I watched around and Abil-Kisu dropped on one knee while the others that were seated lowered their heads. I picked up the hem of my skirt and did a curtsy.


    "Welcome, welcome. I recognize merchant Abil-Kisu and lady Rinaldi, maiden of Tarhun!" Nephew said in a solemn tone. I guessed it was some kind of rite. "I called you today to discuss your proposal. You offered me to feed the whole town in exchange for sparing your houses from the mandatory draft. Now, while that was a very generous offer, to build the mightiest ziggurat for Ishtar, all the power possible is required. I cannot just let one such as you go, lady Rinaldi."


    A dish best served cold, was that it? Did Nephew want his vengeance this bad? I started to frown, but then I saw the corners of his mouth rise, showing the joy he was feeling for bothering me. That was his game. Abil-Kisu stood up and moved to sit on an empty spot on the wall bench. I stayed there. It was no time to be meek and docile. Maybe he really belonged in the pit. I steeled myself and straightened my back.


    "All the power possible. Unless you want to try your luck and pit both sibling gods against one another, I am not ''possible''. I respect your rites but what I offered is the limit of what I''m willing to do. You would be wise to not press the issue any fur--"


    "INSOLENCE!"


    The shout that interrupted me did not come from Nephew, he seemed to be enjoying our exchange. It came from his crier, a guy that I''ve seen once in the council room. Now that he was fuming at me, I thought his job might not be just a crier but the prime minister or some other government position that made people feel self-important enough to interrupt the king''s conversation. And boy, he hadn''t even started.


    "Put yourself in your place, woman! You have the honor to stand before the Enshi and his offer is the most generous one. You''ll have the honor to embody the goddess herself as you perform Ellu Hassadu with him."


    I''d heard this term somewhere else before... yes, when this whole debacle started. The proclamation mentioned that he would...


    I felt nauseous as I connected the dots. That ''Ellu Hassadu'' thing was totally the King fucking the priestess on an altar at the top of the ziggurat, wasn''t it? Boy, oh, boy. Was it time for the revolution yet?


    "Now, now," Nephew started to talk, "there''s no need to be so harsh with the lady, Mu-Hattusa. I am sure she will see the wisdom of siding with us and helping the goddess once she learns what the priestess gains with Elu Hassadu. Would you mind a little history lesson, milady?"


    I raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. Honestly, coming here with my powers locked was the best thing, because I was sure I''d have demolished this palace and committed some heinous atrocities with these stupid men. I really don''t hate men, but sometimes they are just big assholes. ''Sometimes'' might be an oversight.


    But after I gave it some thought and saw the two acting up in front of me, were they playing ''good cop, bad cop'' right in front of me?


    "Yes, please. Teach me, magnanimous Enshi," I replied, oozing sarcasm.


    He stood up and spoke with broad, theatrical gestures. "Elu Hassadu is when a King rises to his rightful place with the deities! In ancient times, the goddess herself would descend upon the world to sacrament the union and ascend with the King. But the times changed and the gods no longer walk the land. Now, a priestess embodies the avatar of the goddess and offers her body as a vessel for the divine!


    "But as she channels the holy energies through her body, she grows in power and becomes like a daughter to the goddess herself. They become great and wise magicians! It is said that no ordinary mortal can survive such a rite. You, lady Rinaldi, would become the most powerful sorceress in the whole world. Hear me, Ishtar herself promised that to you."


    I don''t think I''d lay down with that guy even if the promise was to return to Earth.


    And from what Marduk told me, I was already powerful enough. Yeah, hard pass.


    "I don''t--" I was going to speak but Nephew took a step forward and interrupted me.


    "And behold, for she granted me magic power and magic eyes, making me a sorcerer already! And I can see the rumors of your fall are not just rumors, milady! Let it all be known that the Enshi owes the Lady a debt for cleansing the poison that threatened to kill me!"


    "Hear, hear!" The peanut gallery shouted. They didn''t say that exactly but it was the best translation I could find.


    That was a development. If Nephew could see magic, he would see that my magic was sealed. I didn''t have an opportunity to talk back as he resumed his drivel.


    "And I can see you lost your powers entirely! That was a shame! We have a debt with the Lady and the mighty Ishtar will mend you. She will grant you great power and your magic back. The rite is rumored to be pure bliss!"


    I was disgusted, struggling to not falter and run from him. I wouldn''t go far as the doors were closed and guarded by those mountains of muscle that were his royal guard. And as he said, I was powerless.


    "However, you are right. The Lady is wise, let none say otherwise. Forcing you to do the rite would anger Tarhun, and we don''t want the sibling deities to fight one another. I''ll let you decide. If you are going to be with me on the altar as I ascend to godhood or not, it is your choice. I have other less-optimal choices for the role of the priestess. Fear not, milady. You are safe here and I want to be your ally."


    Totally good cop, bad cop. I wouldn''t buy his sweet words even if they were a dime a dozen. And it reminded me I couldn''t even summon a Bird-ex-Machina to save me.


    The silence after his offer was about to become long enough to become awkward when one of the men sitting along the walls jumped up, screamed, and started to bleed from every orifice in his head. Eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. He gurgled, choked on his own blood and fell limp on the ground.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "My son!" Loudmouth crier slash prime minister Mu-Hattusa shouted and ran to pick up the young man from the floor.


    He shook the body and the young man choked and spat a blob of black blood, then vomited over his father. He glanced at me with hatred.


    "You, witch! You ensorcelled my son and murdered him! Blessed maiden of Tarhun or not, I shall have your head for that!"


    If someone could kill at a distance without twitching a single muscle, I wouldn''t dare challenge them. But a grieving father was not a rational person.


    "I did nothing," I told Nephew while looking at his eyes. "You were watching me and as I said, I am powerless. Whatever happened to that young man, I had nothing to do with that."


    Nephew nodded. I saw a blur behind him and a shout of "Watch out, your majesty" from another man. Nephew was tackled by an army officer that wore a uniform like Brandon''s. It left the way open for the griefing and now bloodied minister to rush me with an ornate bronze dagger.


    I could only spare a thought to be grateful I didn''t come with my high heels before I had to react at his attack. I moved my feet to assume a stable base and spread my arms slightly. he stabbed and I moved sideways, gripping his wrist and moving my left elbow under his hairy and naked armpit, executing a tanto-doori defense. I pushed him along the direction he was already moving in while pivoting his body around his armpit and sweeping his right leg under him and putting pressure on his ulnar nerve as I twisted his wrist.


    His hand came open and the dagger fell on the ground. I pulled his arm down and his body naturally spun. I didn''t let go of his arm as he cartwheeled. I pulled and twisted, even more, moving the limb around and away from the body. I dislodged the shoulder and snapped the forearm bones and then released him, letting the man drop down on his back with a huge noise.


    Lastly, I kicked the dagger away from him and the Enshi. The weapon spun and skidded to the far corner of the room.


    "Enshi Es-Kina, are you okay?" I shouted for all to hear. "That man wanted to stab you in the back!"


    Illusion is the ultimate weapon. I wanted to get the minister off my feet, divest the attention away from me and maybe earn some brownie points with the King. Now he had the choice to either agree with me and throw the minister under the bus or disagree with me and gain nothing from the whole exchange. Because I was sure his goal was to win me over.


    As an ally, he had a chance. He wasn''t going to put his grubby flaking fingers anywhere on me though.


    Nephew was still on the ground, hugging and being protected by the guard officer.


    "I thank you, milady Rinaldi. Are you hurt?"


    I checked. In the heat of combat, it was easy for the brain to forget to register the pain signals from wounds. I was unhurt. "No. He wasn''t able to hurt me."


    Nephew chuckled, a practiced fake move. "It seems the lady is not as defenseless as she seems." He pointed at the groaning man on the ground. "Guards! Seize this traitor and his son!"


    The chest-naked guards quickly and brutally grabbed Mu-Hattusa and his son. There was a burst of gossip as the ones sitting on the benches talked among themselves. Nephew stood back on his feet, apparently hale as well.


    "What happened with Mu-Hattusa''s son? What made him bleed that way?" I asked Nephew.


    "I might not be the target for the assassination attempt, milady," he answered while he straightened his clothes. "That was the result of a foolish sorcery apprentice suffering from burnout. I believe he attempted to use a spell on you and paid the same price as Sun-Goro."


    "You were the one that poisoned my son''s ears! Promising him riches," Mu-Hattusa barked at Nephew.


    I show up without any signs of my magical power. If Mu-Hattusa attempted to cast a spell on me, he''d be struck with burnout immediately, exactly what happened. What spell did he try to use on me? Maybe some mental magic? To make me more susceptible to Nephew''s advances?


    How important was to him to have me on that altar?


    Nephew didn''t let Mu-Hattusa bark much longer. He drew a shortsword from the belt of the officer that helped him and jumped on the soon-to-be-former minister. I ran to the other side, away from them. Nope, nope, nope. I''d enough of that. I covered my ears as I tried to filter out the sounds.


    I didn''t look as Nephew murdered his minister and his son, probably to cut off the loose ends. I had no doubt he did exactly as Mu-Hattusa said. After hearing rumors of my weakness after cleansing the uranium, Nephew convinced the Mu-Hattusa''s son, most probably a novice sorcerer to use a spell on me. Since I was greatly weakened due to my burnout, it would be easy to affect me, or so they thought. And if things backfired, he''d just deny any involvement.


    A person able to discard his trusted retainers in his mad bid for power. Or in his case, survival. The only explanation for his recovery was divine intervention. As Nanna said, he made a covenant with Ishtar. Nephew would basically sacrifice the city to survive.


    I searched for Abil-Kisu along the bench. He was on the other side. I glanced at the guards taking away the bodies wrapped on the bloody rug, dripping the red fluid on the marble floor.


    "I''m sorry for this unsightly display, milady. The traitors were dealt with!" Nephew addressed me and then shouted at the gallery.


    Machiavel would disagree with what he did right there. It is true that if a ruler had to choose between being loved or feared, feared was better. But Nephew disregarded the warning about not being hated. And I was regretting not sending him down for a tour through the abyss.


    "Milady Rinaldi, are you sick?" Enshi Nephew Es-Kina the Ruthless asked me.


    "I am nauseated by the blood, my liege," I decided to play along. There was no need for me to openly antagonize him now. "We should proceed to the negotiations if that is fine with you."


    He smiled at my meek behavior. As long as he didn''t bother me or mine, I would not hold a sliver of pride.


    "Yes, I was told you would procure means of solving our food situation!" He replied, cheerful.


    Nephew moved back to his throne, leaving me alone in the middle of the room with all eyes on me. So far I seemed to be safe so I wasn''t afraid of being attacked. I looked at him. It was the face of a maniac. I couldn''t even look at him in the eyes. I too have murdered in cold blood but I was at war. The fate of this whole city and my own fate would be way different if Marduk had besieged us.


    ''Rationalize however you want, Sandra. You murdered thousands.'' My inner voice told me. I was a monster dealing with monsters.


    "No. Not solve the food situation. I can at most keep the city from starving. And the techniques I''ll teach will help make sure the harvests will always be bountiful. That will be a permanent improvement to the city conditions. More food will allow fewer people working in the fields to meet our needs, and more people for other jobs, like craftsmen, soldiers, or scribes."


    I looked around. I had the interest of everyone.


    "And with well-fed people, they will be happier, work harder, and our soldiers will be stronger."


    One of the men on the benches stood up and pointed at me. "That''s a tall order for a woman. Blessed by Tarhun or not, what can you do? Even more in your weakened state. You lost your magic powers."


    "Knowledge. I hold the knowledge of five thousand years of my people. In my world, my people harnessed the very elements. We flew over the sky as one goes to the outlying villages. We even sent some of our own to sail among the stars, to walk on the moon."


    ''Moon'' was sort of a taboo word. And it was also spelled ''nanna'' in modern Akkadian. I knew that already but it surprised me.


    "The harbinger!" Another man shouted. "She is the second Harbinger!"


    "SILENCE!" Nephew shouted. He glared around and roared. "Anyone that disrespects the lady will no longer sit in this room. Or any room, ever. Milady, please continue."


    Yeah, listen to your psychopath king, ye people.


    "I don''t know much about this Harbinger character, but the late prince Marduk did say I had the power to become stronger than him."


    "Before you put a dagger in his back, I reckon," Nephew added.


    I sighed. That was not a thing I wanted to remember.


    "I am different from the Harbinger though. I do not desire destruction. Otherwise, I would have just walked away and let Marduk pillage sack and burn your city. Yet all of you are here, free of a siege and without an invading army knocking on your doors."


    Yes. You all owe your hairy asses to me. And I won''t let you forget.


    "Milady," Nephew called, "I wish to assign a team of four scribes to follow you and record the techniques you''ll use to improve our agriculture. Is that okay with you?"


    More like spies.


    "Yes. Make it eight. They shall be under my orders and obey my commands. The records shall be made public. Those are the only demands I have."


    "So shall it be. Anything else?"


    "These scribes, they shall bear your authority as the Enshi. Some farmers won''t agree with my changes and techniques. Some of them might even resist. They should be able to call on the guard to enforce our rule. I won''t seize assets but I will need to determine what crops will be planted and where. There are also other concerns.


    "I will need to establish rules and procedures the people of the city will have to follow. We have several blocks that are without buildings. I want permission to take some lots in those blocks to build public facilities. With the newcomers, disease will follow. We need to strengthen our people. These facilities will be managed by the city government. The treasury should also pay for the purchase of the lots if the owners are still alive."


    Not only I needed to improve food yield but also sanitation and hygiene.


    Nephew stood up. "Let all know, this is my royal proclamation. Lady Rinaldi, champion of Tarhun is hereby nominated minister of development and agriculture. Her word is law. Tomorrow eight scribes and thirty guards will be assigned to you, milady. The expenses for these men will be paid by the treasury. Any expenses you see required will be also paid by the treasury. They shall obey your every command and enforce your rulings. Your household and those of your friends will be exempted from the mandatory draft. But I expect results. And let any that attempt to sabotage your efforts know that the penalty for that will be death."


    The crier stood up. "So proclaimed the magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina! Large is his wisdom and long will be his rule!"


    Hey, look. I got a government position! Yay me.

 Week 4 - Cast

    Ellu Hassadu - Literally "Divine Matrimony". Or "Holy Snu-Snu" if you like yellow people. The rite that ascends an Enshi or Lugal into Godhood. By mating with the high clergy of one of the gods (the god''s gender doesn''t matter, the clergy is the opposite sex as the Enshi or Lugal). Usually, a maiden with the highest magical power is selected. Upon consummation, both the ruler and the priest(ess) receive a blessing from the deity. This rite was falling into disuse due to the gods falling out of favor after their failure to prevent the Harbinger Cataclysm that destroyed the moon and created the phenomenon known as the Death Snow.


    Mu-Hattusa - One of the influential aristocrats of the city during the rule of Es-Kina the Uncle, he was elevated to the position of the prime minister during the ascension of Nephew the Poisoned. He was the one that maneuvered to win the vote of the council before Sandra and Abil-Kisu could come and turn the tables with their votes. After having his son killed by a backlash by one of Nephew''s schemes, he tried to kill Sandra or Nephew and died for that.


    Mu-Hattusa''s son - A promising sorcerer, groomed to greatness by his father, he was enticed to participate in one of Nephew''s plots to try and dominate Sandra during her alleged weakness from cleansing the uranium. He might''ve succeeded in dominating her if she was really weakened but due to a timely and totally not suspicious cursed amulet given to Sandra by Nanna, her leaking mana problem was fixed through brute force and he suffered a heavy backlash from attempting to dominate a fully energized Sandra. That triggered his father to attempt murder and both were executed by Nephew to literally bury the loose ends.


    Zuska - Fourteen years old sister to Arwia. She decided to become an apprentice to Madam Cloe the Seamstress. That was a very prestigious position, as madam Cloe is one of the only two women in the city council. Sandra is the other one.


    Madam Cloe the Seamstress - Member of the city council and woman. For a society whose roots are in the Earth''s Bronze Age where human lives were a penny a dozen, that is a lot. She hosted Brandon Al-Amir when he arrived as a refugee with Albert Samus and is very well regarded by the Guard Captain. Recently she was presented to the world of Japanese mobile app dress-up games and their lush fashion. It gave her ideas beyond her time (and space) and she is fervently making clothes for Sandra out of the bolts of silk obtained in Balthazar''s wrecked caravan.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Barani the Cook - If you had to pick one person in the world to call a ''chef'' that would be him. And he is still quite not there yet. Until Sandra stops hoarding that Le Cordon Bleu cookbook on her laptop, that is. Responsible for making food for Abil-Kisu''s estate and guests (including Sandra the Freeloader), he is very curious about making some culinary-cultural exchange with the otherworlder heroine. He''d murder someone if he knew what Sandra has hidden in her digital storage.


    Purity Vodka Bottle - Honorable mention to a most exquisite spirits bottle from another world. One deemed by the merchant tycoon Abil-Kisu as a gift worthy of a King. It goes to illustrate that one world''s trash is another world''s National Treasure. If it only was that easy.


    Nanna the Witch - No longer in the caravanserai, the witch stuck to Sandra to mooch a piece of the good life. Made heinous amounts of gold selling enchanted eyes through Abil-Kisu. She has vast knowledge about the gods and Sandra suspects she might be a priestess at one point or another in her life (might even have done Ellu Hassadu in the past - naughty witch!). She is also known to present enchanted items with impeccable dramatic timing. If that isn''t suspicious to you, you are skimming the novel.


    Belili - Eleven years old, had her birthday while Sandra was doing some 80''s dance with monsters and the undead in the belly of the earth. Lowercase E because it is not the Earth. She considers herself a woman now because she gained the magical power to make babies. And yes, it is magical, even on Earth, capital E. Shush.


    Jasper- Abil-Kisu head scribe and accountant. He was on the verge of a new discovery that would revolutionize his world''s accounting and then Sandra taught him double-entry bookkeeping. Which was almost exactly what he was about to discover. Spoilsport transmigrator! Anyway, he is a result-focused person and cared not for the laurels of his effort to be snatched from him one "Eureka" moment away.


    Bur-Maat - A poor townsmen whose wife died in one of the city fires. After selling his plot of land to Sandra, he departed to find new life away from the sad memories.

 Not a chapter. Comment Q&A

    On Morning 21, when Sandra raids the palace treasury in search of irradiated matter and to seize the unlawful bribes (in her head) Marduk gave the late Enshi Es-Kina and Nephew, it wasn''t clear that she got all the torbernite. I made some changes. Many thanks to @blue09 for his PM.


    I like PM. Send me more.


    Changes: <input class="spoilerButton" type="button" value="Show">


    <blockquote>


    [...] I moved slowly around the room, focusing my Decompose sense. A few minutes later I''d found where the torbernite was.


    Was.


    Two chests of the same size and slightly fancier than the one Hama-Tula had his ore were side-by-side, empty. The guard moved the torbernite to another location. If I had to guess from the size of the chests, Nephew combined both his ore and the late Enshi''s.


    I checked the map, he didn''t leave the room before he returned to the room and the steps ended inside this room. He probably put my heavy box on the ground while he worked. It meant the two torbernite samples I''m missing could be anywhere. [...]


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    I went inside and the trail of wrongness was stronger. After rummaging through the furniture, I dug through a cabinet''s bottom and found the two huge and very active weapon-grade chunks of torbernite along with a stash of gems and gold. I encased the radioactive ore with the last of my lead and checked the valuables. Not enough time passed to contaminate them significantly.


    And my petty sense of vengeance made me take it. In fact, I owned everything nephew had. Four months in the depths. I was okay with sparing him the trip down, but I''d be twice damned if I let him have the money Marduk paid him to kidnap me and that was mine by law. Which law? Ask that to Mr. Schwarzenegger. I was angry and thought Nephew was unworthy to keep the bribe because it was a BS bribe and he didn''t deliver the goods. So I bagged all of it..


    Totally in the moral gray area, I know.


    I went back to the room, carrying the lead orb. I entered the conference room and presented the orb to the general.


    "The poisonous ore is inside. Do you want to see it?" I challenged him.


    </blockquote>


    <hr>


    And now the Q&A from the comments. I''m moving backward from the comment list for the fiction. I actually already have three days drafted but I need two things done. First address the comments and second, write a cast sheet for weeks 3 and 4. I went over them and now have to backtrack.


    <blockquote>


    Blue09 on Morning 26


    Oh... i kinda wish someone would hit her in the face. So its ok to bring those 3k soldiers and get them to enjoi the ishta-bordell above sending them away even if that means bloodsheed. She herselfe isnt willing to partake, but its totaly o.k if others are brought there, even if its against their will. gz for high moral values.


    </blockquote>


    Her first impulse was to bring it all down. Then she talked to Nanna and Arwia and decided to let the "Ista-bordell" happen. It is their religion and since Nephew depends on Ishtar''s blessing to survive the radiation poisoning, he''s cornered. If she were to strongly oppose (she is an agreeable person, so she wouldn''t) it would bring her into conflict with Nephew and the rest of the city. What would come next when the conflict escalated? Regicide? You''ve read what happened when Es-Kina the Uncle was killed by Tarhun. Massive exodus and hundreds or thousands of deaths in the road from banditry.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    She decided to work with the goverment and try to enact changes from the inside. That''s why she took the ministerial position.


    <blockquote>


    Blue09 on Day 25


    I wasn''t yet hostile toward Es-Kina the Nephew but I hoped he wouldn''t try to push that crap my way. But I was boiling inside at the situation.


    Thats what you call a hypocrit, right? Lets ignor the plite of others so we who have the power to intervine can say we stood to our "moral values" to not bring harm to others. Lets follow Pontios Pilate and wash our hands of guilt. What does it matter that others suffer as long as our conscience is as clean as our hands, right?


    </blockquote>


    She''s not Batman. Elon Musk is not Batman. And she is not just washing her hands. She is working on her own way to prevent the worst. Starvation and total chaos. She has sixteen children to look after. Can she afford to take action without knowing the consequences and hope for the best?


    <blockquote>


    Blue09 on Day 23


    What would i ask nana if i wher therer? Hmmm. Hey Nana, you can entchant stuff. Cant you entchant my glasses so i can see magic and learn to do it? xD You seriously have to love plot holes.


    </blockquote>


    We don''t know what enchanting can do and what Nanna would be willing to make. If magic detecting devices were possible, wealthy individuals would have them. They don''t.


    <blockquote>


    Calavente on Morning 28


    thanks.


    I expect the cursed necklace will bite her in the ass... unless it''s your author''s generosity working to help us go over this crippled period quicker than what could have been.


    thanks for the water clock description, it was realy interesting.


    </blockquote>


    Not the author''s. I learned that an author''s job is to make the characters suffer, not give handouts. If you think a bit about the necklace and who gave it to her, you might find out what it really meant later.


    <blockquote>


    Dragrath on Afternoon 28 - Friday, Bull 20th


    This king is worrysome and really wants to make her a high preistess of Ishtar going so far as to try and mind magic her then selling his allies under the bus when it didn''t work out... Well at least she got the position for agricultural reforms. What is Ishtar after exactly? Interestingly it seems priestesses of Ishtar were the only women with fairly equal rights in the sense they weren''t somone elses property and were able to own property. No way in hell Sandra would except based on principals regardless which should be fairly obvious thus far to anyone even a goddess.


    </blockquote>


    Enshi Es-Kina the Nephew is an antagonist, but he''s the rightful ruler of the city. As much as the will to spark a revolution exists, what happens next? She knows the history of most revolutions and how things weren''t all roses afterward. The city already underwent a major political turmoil with the death of Es-Kina the Uncle, and she is afraid it wouldn''t survive another.


    As for making her the priestess, she''s the female with the biggest magic power available (maybe we''re disregarding another potential choice, but Sandra is younger). You have to remember this is a society based on Mesopotamian-Anatolian Bronze Age cultures. The fact he didn''t FORCE her to submit was already (in his view) a big concession.


    Ishtar is after what gods want. Faith. That''s Tarhun''s rationale to kill his faithful when they attack her. He kills ONE person and earns the fear, respect, and faith of hundreds. I''m not justifying, just explaining, and these gods might as well be shitty as hell (maybe that''s why they had to flee Earth).


    The priestess aren''t the only females with rights. For example, Madam Cloe the seamstress owns her own business and she held a seat at the city council. And Sandra noticed explicitly that no priests were present in the council meetings at the palace.


    The biggest dilemma there is, do her XXI century sensibilities have the right to trump over the religious beliefs of the people? They''ve been doing it that way for centuries. She even conjectured that the first son of most men might not be their biological children. I''m not condoning with the customs, just putting them up for discussion.


    <blockquote>


    Andrew Meyers on Afternoon 28 - Friday, Bull 20th


    I give him a week, maybe a month, tops. As such a hated ruler that betrays his allies and deceives everyone, basically nobody will want to keep him alive.


    Long live Queen Sandra!


    </blockquote>


    That''s our hope for all villains, that they suffer horribly. I don''t know if I can top severe radiation poisoning though. As for Queen Sandra, if you look at my three other works, I''ve had enough with royalty. Sandra does not wish to rule over a city-state (they don''t have countries or nations like we know). She could''ve tried to take over during the council before Nephew was pardoned and crowned but she didn''t.

 Day 29 - Saturday, Bull 21th

    There wasn''t much to be said about last night. After returning to Abil-Kisu''s place, I went to my room to scream my worries away and fell asleep without eating dinner. Dime guarded my things well. I woke up regretting all the wrinkles I made on my brand new yellow dress. Ironing was a thing but the irons were clumsy and coal-powered.


    And I was greeted with a big brown, white, and green bird pecking at my eyeballs. Fortunately, Nanna was right. My powers still worked.


    "Morning, Bloodstone," I hugged the eagle. He complained. "Calm down. You know I won''t eat you, right?"


    Our link was down because my magic was still sealed by Nanna''s cursed amulet. I pulled it up and checked. The strings on the dreamcatcher-like weave were frayed but not ruptured. Soon. I hope it worked.


    Dime chirped meekly. I scratched his head. "It is okay. I love you, Bloodstone," I cooed. He lowered his head and ruffled his crown''s feathers like a cockatiel. And no, he wasn''t bald.


    I saw that he shed some feathers yesterday. I picked those and straightened my dress and sash. Dime flew back to his perch. He tilted his head as if to ask something and I just poked its beak. He screeched to complain. Then someone knocked on the door.


    "Sandra, are you awake?" I heard Arwia''s voice. "There''s a lot of people at the gate to see you."


    Oh, damn. The scribes and soldiers. I was about to put on my sneakers but I noticed I hadn''t taken them off. Double damn. I threw the door open and smiles at my maid.


    "Morning, Arwia!"


    She nodded. "You should eat breakfast first. I can''t believe you went to bed without eating! Was the meeting that bad?"


    "Yes, yes, and yes. Could you take these feathers to Nanna? I''m going to eat then meet those people at the gate. Don''t worry about me. And ask someone to get Honey Cake saddled."


    "Okay, boss!" She snickered. "Hey, nice necklace. Too bad it is frayed."


    "Oh," I slipped the amulet back under my dress, "You saw nothing. Let''s go."


    I went to the kitchen where a bowl of fresh fruit along with bread and grilled sausages waited for me. I wolfed down my food and washed it down with sour kefir. We need to make sugar.


    "I assumed you were hungry," Belle-Sunu said, "But can you eat slower? Food isn''t going anywhere."


    "Tell that to the soldiers outside the gate," I replied.


    Seeing that freckled face flustered was my daily dose of schadenfreude. Teasing Belle was the food to keep my inner bitch locked in.


    "So-soldiers?"


    "Yeah, they came from me on orders from the Enshi. I guess I have no choice but to go meet them..."


    "No! You have to run away! They can''t get you!" I started to laugh and Belle got angry. "You! What did you do at the audience yesterday?"


    "Apparently I''m a minister of the state now. Charged with agricultural and infrastructure improvements. I forgot to ask for a stipend but I can spend the city''s treasury as I see fit."


    Belle''s eyes went wide with disbelief. "The Enshi nominated you a minister? I thought you hated each other!"


    Yes, teasing her was pure gold. "People can hate each other and still work for a common goal. But now it is official, none of us will be forced to go to the bride market or work on the ziggurat."


    She stopped to think and I finished eating. "So, gotta work. Don''t know if I''ll be back."


    I went out and saw Penny coming my way. Without my magic, I couldn''t sense her through our link but I knew my animals were already friendly enough they would work with me even without magical compulsion. I patted the mare''s neck and thought on how I''d control her without the bond and reins. Well, I could just walk with her by my side and see if the amulet would break during the day. I walked with Penny by my side.


    I thought for a moment that I should go back, take a bath and change my clothes but I decided against it. I had work to do. A lot of. I wouldn''t die if I spent some time without a bath. I spent four months without it. Pushing those silly thoughts aside, I reached the gate and went outside. The troop of soldiers and the scribes were there, annoyed for waiting. I could see the scribes had a sizeable pile of parchment and scrolls tied up with leather straps. They also carried a bottle of ink and some pens. The soldiers were in full garb, armed and armored. Three guards were carrying a stand very similar to the stand Earth musicians used to hold their sheet music.


    I was doomed if they attacked me. But if they did so it would also doom Nephew and the city.


    "There she is. Lady Rinaldi, the Enshi sent us," A middle-aged scribe spoke. "I''m Gu-Maranu, senior scribe. Command us as you will."


    "Thank you for your kind words, Gu-Maranu. We are going to work hard for the sake of this city. Remember that. We are doing this for the city and for the people. Some decisions we are going to enforce are not popular and even you might think it is strange or wrong. However, I can assure you they are necessary. Remember everyone. We are doing this for the people. Not for me, not for the Enshi, not for Ishtar."


    They seemed confused but they nodded. Well, I read somewhere that starting with your intentions clearly stated was a good thing.


    "We are moving to my estate a few gates down from here. We will convey inside and talk. Let''s go."


    We walked silently. I was leading and the soldiers and scribes coming up behind me. I thought about calling some of my guards but then I would put them in danger. I had Penny and I knew I could trust the mare to get me out of a pickle fast. We reached my estate and we entered. I could see immediately that some people entered and did their business on the walkway. Ignoring the already sun-baked vandalism, I took them to the backyard. There I learned that the little furniture I left behind was turned into firewood.


    Oh, well.


    I gathered everyone.


    "The first thing we are going to need are several maps of the city. Do we have recent maps?" I asked Gu-Maranu.


    "We have some maps, but they are rather old," He answered.


    No good. I would need to use Dime to do some aerial surveys. I continued asking what date did we have.


    "Do you have the harvest data for the last year?" Negative. "The tax collection statements?" Burned in a fire. "The records of ownership for the farms around the city?"


    Gu-Maranu finally nodded. "Yes, those we have. They are in the courthouse."


    They were all looking at me and I could see they were unsure of what my goals were.


    "I''ll explain my goals. But first, which one of you scribes is the best to record a conversation fast?"


    One of them raised a hand, "I''m a junior scribe, my name is Lum-Baba, milady. I have a good memory. I can record a conversation."


    "Good. Lum-Baba, you are responsible for recording everything we discuss. Including what already transpired ever since we entered here." I could see the other scribes making faces, scowling or snickering at the junior scribe. "Guys, you should stop that. This is a team effort. We either succeed together or fail together. And--"


    I cut off my own speech because I took an electrical shock. It was like every single touch receptor in my body fired up at once. I felt myself burning a slow simmer like a heatstroke. I suddenly became aware of everything around me. The air, my clothes, underwear, socks shoes, the amulet sliding down my cleavage underneath the dress, even the grass and soil beneath my feet. The burning sensation became a tingling and then everything returned to normal except for that hyper-awareness of the matter around me.


    "Milady! Is something wrong?"


    I noticed Gu-Maranu was holding me by the waist.


    "I''m fine. Get me some small rock, please."


    One of the guards handed me a pebble. I clutched it in my hand and I knew what I could do.


    I Decomposed the rock into silicon and a bead of aluminum. Then I bellowed a hearty and very unlady-like maniacal laughter. With my palm up, I shaped the silicon into a disk and moved the aluminum bead through the silicon in a circle.


    I focused and I could feel Dime and Penny. And all the items in my storage. Focusing inward, I could feel my magical energy pool, crystal clear and filled to the brim. It was overflowing actually. It seems the energy I generated was contained by the amulet and it had nowhere to go. I could feel the excess magic flowing out of my being and permeating the environment. Too bad I still couldn''t see it or sense the magic after it left my body or I''d be able to cast spells.


    No luck in that department. Maybe it was so by design.


    "Things have gotten a lot more interesting now, gentlemen," I told the scribes with a huge grin. "Lum-Baba, you stay here with half the scribes and soldiers. Gu-Maranu and the others come with me. I need to pick up some things."


    I didn''t wait for them. They had their orders and they knew Nephew wouldn''t allow disobedience. And now with my powers unlocked, I would raise hell. Penny came next to me and I jumped, putting a foot on the stirrup and completely forgetting I was wearing a dress.


    The skirt climbed up, showing my legs up to mid-thigh. I should let them sunbathe and tan.


    Inebriated by my power rush, I couldn''t care less. I commanded Penny to ride forth, and I knew just the song to go with what I was feeling. And I sang it as we moved.


    Only my Railgun (English Translation): <input class="spoilerButton" type="button" value="Show">


    Note: Sandra sung it in Japanese. For the readers, here is the English translation of the beginning of the song.


    <blockquote>Fire away! Release your dreams etched in your heart, leave even the future behind


    <div>


    <div>


    Surely somebody will protect them from the pain that is racing through


    </blockquote>


    The meaning of a message is what the listener or reader makes out of it. Mikoto is a girl that takes no BS home - honorable exception for Touma because protagonist BS - and she shies away from no challenge. Even if what it takes to solve it is violence. 5 million volts of violence. She''s independent, confident, outspoken, sassy, cheerful, and a tsundere because genre.


    The men were having a hard time keeping up with the speed junkie mare. I reached the gate and I could swear Penny would try to jump over the two-meter-plus barrier if they didn''t get it open in time.


    "Sandra, what is wrong?" Tiwatura at the gate asked me.


    "All is fine!" I shouted back. "I just need to get my bird!"


    It was time for aerial recon bio-drone Dime. I got down carefully to avoid ruining my dress and flashed anyone that cared to look my way. I reminded myself that Mikoto always wore shorts under her miniskirt. Such a role model!


    I lifted my skirt and ran into the villa. I could sense Dime itching to get out, now that our link was fully supplying him with invigorating magic energy. I heard Arwia behind me, but I couldn''t understand what she was saying. I barged into my room and called the luggage case on the bed right before I was assaulted by the feathered critter.


    "Yes, I know!" Our joy was shared through our bond. "I''m healed. Bloodstone, do you want to get out of this room and soar over this city for me?" I knew he wanted to. I could also feel him urging me to go and hunt that damn cat. I giggled. "No cat hunting!"


    I slipped out of the dress and picked up the pieces of the cursed amulet. I had to go thank Nanna for the help. Her timing was impeccable. I didn''t know what would happen yesterday if they could sense my magic. Too impeccable, to be honest.


    And I finally changed my underwear. Things were so bad I cut off a piece of the side and tossed the rest away to disintegrate. I really needed to take a bath but that would have to wait until tonight. I just Decomposed all the dirt and sweat away from my body. Then I put a new set of underwear, shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, a spaghetti dress, and hiking boots. Naked legs, deal with it. It is hot as hell and I''m not putting on yoga pants. Let''s not forget the falconry bracer and Dime''s ribbon. I also put the GoPro strap so he could go and take some aerial footage.


    Satisfied with the outfit, I sent all of my stuff to the storage. I picked up Dime and opened the door. Arwia and Belle were there, waiting for me to come out.


    "What happened?"


    "Why the hurry?"


    "Are you hurt?"


    They barged in and started to circle me. Dime crowed, annoyed by the harrying, and I held his head against my shoulder.


    "I''m okay, girls. My powers came back. I just had to come and get Dime to take some aerial pictures of the city. To plan the renovations. Just that."


    They weren''t convinced so I showed them. I summoned my handbag and took two tiny gemstones and a tiny chunk of gold. Then I made settings of gold around the gems and a loop at the top. It used very little gold and in the end, I had two small pendants. I gave one to each of them.


    "Is that enough proof that my powers are back in full swing? You can keep the pendants. I''ll make a chain for them later."


    While they were distracted admiring their new jewelry, I slipped past them and fled to the annex. I knew it was a cheap blow but I couldn''t stay still. Too much pent-up excitement. I wanted to tackle the world and make it cry, uncle. Dime flew out and perched on the roof of the annex as I went inside.


    I barely reached the door to the room I was using as storage and Nanna jumped out of her room. She did a double-take and shaded her eyes when she looked at me. The stench of boiled liver drifted from her room behind her.


    "What''s this thing... Elder god''s tentacles, what did you do, girl!"


    What did she just evoke?


    "What is wrong, Nanna? I did nothing, your amulet broke a few minutes ago. I''m taking my things back to storage. I''m feeling like I''m oozing power."


    "That''s because you are," She answered, averting her gaze. "I can''t even look straight at you. I thought the amulet would fix your leaking but it apparently made it worse."Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I sensed my magic again. It was still overflowing. "That''s because it is not a leak. I think the amulet held the magic and it overflowed. Was it supposed to work that way?"


    "No, not at all," Nanna turned sideways and was looking at the wall. "A magician does not generate more magic than they can hold. Unless..."


    Nanna chanted something in a language that I could not understand even with Tarhun''s bugged universal translation boon. Then she stared at me. I could feel her gaze as a looming presence on my soul.


    As an addendum, it is funny how all this metaphysical stuff a person is made of is there all the time but you never really sense it. It is kinda like your internal organs. You don''t sense them but they are there. Once someone tugs and pulls it around, like after surgery, one can become aware of them, as if some interoceptive sensation awakened. Or like some people know how to trigger the muscles that move their ears or twitch their lips independently. Once you know where it is, you never forget. That''s what happened to me. My disembodied experience in Tarhun''s divine realm and the recent burnout made me aware of my soul and magic energy, respectively.


    And the witch was staring at both right now.


    "Crafty little bastard," Nanna mumbled. "That''s what he did. He hid a limiter... that''s why she was shedding so much and why Ishtar... did they want to do this so badly? Stupid idiots, involving the girl in..."


    Your guess is as good as mine as to what she meant.


    "Is something wrong, Nanna?"


    She blinked and the pressure of her gaze on my metaphysical being disappeared. "No, nothing wrong. The damage is done anyway, I can''t revert or change what was done. It seemed I was mistaken, you are perfectly healthy. Your burnout is cured, but please don''t go messing with that kind of material in that quantity anymore."


    I had to go but I had to ask. "Did you just call Tarhun a ''crafty little bastard''?"


    She grunted and waved a hand at me, "Mind your own business, girl. The way I call that dumb oaf is my problem. If he has a problem with that, he can come here to complain!" Nanna was basically yelling up at the end and she seemed very angry.


    And with that, she returned to her room and slammed the door shut.


    I spent a few moments staring at her door with my mouth slightly open. I just shrugged and entered the room to take everything back to storage. With the checklist in my smartphone, I marked what I used up or gave away during the last week and checked my inventory. Every item accounted for.


    I sighed in relief. I was so afraid of losing my stuff, my irreplaceable mementos of home...


    Outside, I saw Nanna peeking through the door. "Good afternoon, Nanna. Did you know today is Sabbath?"


    "Yes, what about it?" She replied with an annoyed tone.


    "Is there something to be done on the Sabbath? Some kind of rite or custom I should know of?"


    "Yes and no. Used to be a day of worship but nobody cares anymore. And neither should you, especially you least you worship wrong."


    I really should have gone on my way, because Nanna was about to jump on my neck. She wasn''t being aggressive but her animosity was over the top. It reinforced my idea that Nanna was the priestess of some deity, probably a fallen one. Even though she was knowledgeable in the subject, she was bitter about religion and the situation was only aggravating. As if the events transpiring in the city reopened old wounds. And I didn''t want to offend or hurt her.


    "Okay, thank you for everything, Nanna. Especially the amulet, it was very handy and helpful."


    I wanted to ask her why she didn''t give me that amulet earlier. It would''ve saved me a couple days at least. Maybe it wouldn''t work if I wasn''t at a certain stage of my recovery. I lacked the courage to ask that.


    "I would say don''t mention it but you owe me, girl. Remember I''ll collect when the time is right."


    I nodded and smiled at her. It had no effect on her grumpiness. "I will. I promise."


    "Now go. People will get impatient if you waste too much time. You have a world to save, away with you!"


    Did I? No. I didn''t sign up to save the world. Nanna shut the door again and I went back outside. I carried with me a pang of pain in my heart for her. I had no doubt Nanna had suffered a lot during her long life and I wanted to make it right by her. I wanted to help her. If only she opened up to me. If only she talked to me. It was useless to brood. She would open up when she wanted. I had to be patient.


    I gathered my animals and rode out. The guards and scribes were waiting outside and we gathered with the second group after a few minutes.


    Lum-Baba''s transcript was done by the time I returned. I checked it and skimmed the text. Everything seemed just fine.


    "Now, every single act of this group should be recorded. And I want four copies of the records. One for the Enshi, one for me, two for the archives," I told the scribes. "And it won''t be Lum-Baba''s sole responsibility. I want all the scribes to help. Everyone will also be responsible for the contents of this report. Now, gentlemen, we are going to the roof of the villa. Follow me."


    I climbed to the roof and saw that even up here the vandals visited. I quickly Decomposed the little undesirable gifts they gently left behind and repaired the broken silicon table, parasol, and chair I was using as the home base for my bio-drone surveys. I made two more sets of tables and chairs overlooking my station where the scribes could sit and record what I was doing. And finally a perch for Dime. I needed him to stay still for a while during the setup. I placed the battery and solar charger on the ground in front of the table and turned to address the scribes as they finished climbing the ladder.


    "Who among you is the best with making maps?" There was no word for ''cartography''.


    One of the scribes raised his hand. "I think that''s me, milady. I''m Bur-Bartolo. I like maps."


    "Good. Glad to see you volunteer your skills, Bur-Bartolo. Please take a seat and prepare to draw a map of the city. Lum-Baba, take the other one. Anyone that thinks they can assist either one, sit by their side. I want you to work in pairs. I''m going to prepare the devices. Bloodstone!"


    That was one of the most impressive things I could do. Raise my arm, shout his name and have the huge eagle soar down and land on my bracer. At least visually.


    After all the devices connected, I set the GoPro on the bird''s harness and sent him back to the heights. After two hours of aerial surveys, we had enough footage to compose a map of the city and the outskirts. I skimmed the video footage and took the images to compose using GIMP. I sent the image to the iPad and iPod, each team of four scribes on one device. I showed them how to pan and zoom the images and left them to do their thing.


    It would take a while. I roamed around and decided to give the guards something to do. I went back to ground level and shaped some aluminum scythes. The blades were sharpened with the Dremel. I gave the scythes to the soldiers so they could trim the grass. Another group was charged with picking up the debris and trash while a third was tasked with going out and procuring food and drinks for the whole group.


    With that out of the way, I went to the lab building and looked down into the hole where I destroyed the uranium. It was still there and the smooth dark walls were foreboding enough to discourage anyone from going down. I could see it didn''t stop them from using the hole as a makeshift toilet. I had to go down there. After thinking for a while, I got an idea. It was something I thought of before but never got to try.


    Rocks that were mostly silica and weighed around two kilograms would be enough to give me oxygen to breathe for a whole day. I knew I could put a rock in my mouth and slowly Decompose it to give me oxygen and save me from having to breathe air. I picked some gravel from the ground and washed it. I would need someone to do the safety for me. I called one soldier.


    "Your command, milady?"


    Nephew must be very interested in getting in my good graces and then in my panties. The soldiers and scribes were indeed following my every order without a single complaint.


    "What is your name, soldier?"


    "Tamiwa, milady."


    "Tamiwa, I am going to do a test. Here I will put a wrap around my head and wait for a while. I am going to set several symbols on this device. When it becomes all circles, you are to remove the wrap from my head if I am unconscious."


    I showed him the chronometer of my smartphone and set it on a countdown of five minutes. Then I put a piece of gravel in my mouth and wrapped my head with a plastic bag. The first hurdle was to fight back the suffocation panic. I wanted to Decompose the whole rock at once. Earth ingrained on people''s minds the correlation between a bag over one''s head and death too strongly, and they were not wrong. The rock became silicon fast and I had to remove the bag after just a couple minutes.


    Another thing I didn''t think of was that I would make quite a lot of gas during this exercise, and inside the plastic bag, the gas had nowhere to go. Give it enough time and the bag would inflate like a balloon. I should ditch the bag as it was a stupid idea and just hold my breath without inhaling.


    The second run lasted for three minutes. Without the bag, the psychological effect also vanished. Then the third and fourth tries helped me develop a technique that might not be pretty but was one that worked. I would puff my cheeks with air from my lungs and breathe it back in, circulating that air up and down like a bullfrog. Repeat and wait for the feeling of suffocation caused by the lowered oxygenation to set, exhale and slowly Decompose the rock to build up the gas volume back.


    On the tenth try, I went for ten minutes without breathing in external air.


    That was enough training for what I had in mind. I took the largest rock and the bag, feeling confident in diving back into the hole. I put on my climbing harness and tied the rope to the carabiner, handing it to Tamiwa. He could lift me without a problem. And down I went. I made dents in the wall to climb down and soon reached the bottom. Decompose took care of the refuse and debris at the bottom and I retrieved the bowl with lead.


    With the hole cleaned, I could remove the bag around my head. My special breathing technique would surely come in handy later.


    I checked with Decompose, there was not a single trace of radiation in the hole. I also checked the chunk of lead and all I could sense was an unknown light element inside the lead. It didn''t take much to figure out which element. One made of four baryons, a subproduct of radioactive decay. Pleased to meet you, milord noble gas helium. I took a condom and with some effort wrapped it around the chunk of lead. Then I removed all air from the inside and with the opening down, slowly Decomposed the lead out, focusing on my power to let only the heavy metal through. The tip of the condom inflated in bursts and I had to use over forty condoms to hold all the helium. The pockets of helium inside the lead were pressurized.


    Uranium releases eight alpha particles through its decay chain. I estimated around half a kilogram of uranium, which would be around two moles of uranium. Sixteen moles of gas was a lot. I was unable to hold it all in and some helium escaped.


    To think I would one day be thankful that the people at the Devil Ridge reserve rave had that much sex.


    No, I was not jealous. Not at all. When was Brandon coming back from his recruitment mission? I was no longer wounded...


    Time to get out of this hole. "Tamiwa, pull me up!"


    He lifted me by pulling on the rope. It felt nice.


    "The supply gathering team returned, milady. The scribes paused their work to eat, we are waiting on you to start," Tamiwa reported.


    "Well, I''m starving!" I checked the sun. It was past noon. "I have to seal this hole and then we can eat."


    Lunch was meat skewers, ale, and a mixed rye and wheat bread. When one is surfing on taxpayer money, it was easy to overindulge. And speaking of the beast...


    "We are going to use this villa as our base. You will use the rest of the afternoon to procure furniture and bring what you need to repair the place. Unless something exceptional happens, our work hours will be from one hand after sunrise to one hand before sunset. All of you, soldiers and scribes will live here during our project. I want repairs done to the doors and window shutters. You should also arrange a guard schedule to protect the place."


    They agreed and we sent some guards to hire the craftsmen to repair the doors and windows and purchase furniture. After lunch, we worked on the maps for a few more hours.


    "We can finish the maps from memory now," Gu-Maranu reported.


    "Good. I''m going to retrieve my devices," I told them. "Remember, We need four copies of each map. Make six, because we will have to work with these maps and they are bound to get damaged. Use the rest of the day to get settled. No disputes over who gets what room."


    I left them behind and went to the pile of debris the cleanup crew created. I filled the now empty flagon of ale and a couple two-liter PET bottles with glucose crystals from the plant matter and Decomposed the rest of the debris into water, salts and a chunk of graphite.


    "Milady, is that the coal that doesn''t burn?" One of the soldiers asked. "Some townsfolk found chunks of coal like this lying around one of the destroyed city blocks and complained it wouldn''t burn."


    Burning graphite was almost impossible without a proper setup, very good oxygenation, and high temperatures. Burning the graphite Decompose created, with its almost perfect crystalline structure, was even harder. Most wood fires wouldn''t reach the ignition temperature of graphite.


    "Yes. It is called ''graphite''. It is a very compact and pure type of coal. It is not for burning though," I replied to the soldier that asked. I was done for the day so I had everyone present gather. "I''m going to retire for the day, we will plan our initiatives tomorrow. I need copies of the map. If possible, find out where the ziggurat will be built. And fetch the information about the farms I asked."


    I looked at the results of one day of work. We had the updated map info for the city and the surrounding areas. I think I also earned a bit of respect from these people. Less chance of them undermining me. The pure glucose starch I could extract from plant matter was one powerful source of energy for the people. I had to find a way to ferment it to make alcohol. And make baking soda. I waved the men goodbye and left with my pets.


    Back at Abil-Kisu''s place, I sent Penny to the stables, the harness less Dime to do whatever he wanted to, and went to the kitchen. I arrived at the end of the dinner rush. Belle noticed me and smiled.


    "Welcome back. How was it with the scribes?"


    "It was fine. We scouted the city and drew some maps. I need to whip that group into a team, the scribes are too individualist and are used to undercut each other. The soldiers were super polite and helpful."


    Yes, they were too polite and helpful. I wonder why.


    "Only you to be at ease among all that men, Sandra," Belle remarked. "Any other woman would be scared to death of being assaulted."


    "Ha!" Barani the Cook said. "As if any of these men would dare lay a finger on the lady. After all, she''s betrothed to the Captain Brandon Al-Amir!"


    Excuse me? I was what now? I stared him down. There was a whole new wellspring of indignation that I didn''t know I had, threatening to overflow and put me into immediate Overdrive Bitch Mode?. I tilted my head and smiled. I was hoping it was a creepy smile so he could get a clue.


    "I didn''t hear what you said, master Barani. Could you repeat that?"


    And it seems he did. Get a clue, that is. "I''m sorry, milady. It was a rumor the servants were saying, that you were promised to the captain," He spoke measuring my reaction. "I''m really sorry, I overstepped my bounds."


    I sighed and stood up. "My private life is not a topic for gossip. If there''s something I want to make known to everyone, I''ll announce it myself. You go and tell these ''servants'' you heard the gossip from that I won''t... Know what, nevermind."


    I turned away from Abil-Kisu''s cook and found Belle.


    "I have too much on my head to worry about what the grapevine says about me. Belle-Sunu, get me some chicken eggs, milk, wheat flour, and salt. Let''s make some comfort food."


    She didn''t understand what I said. "You want to rest on food?"


    "No. Comfort food is a food you eat to make you feel good. Just fetch the things I asked, I''ll show you. Where''s Arwia?"


    "She is out shopping. She took Lipit-Ea and Huzzi-Ya with her," Belle answered.


    She brought the ingredients I asked and I put myself to work. I put Belle to sift the flour, ground starch, and a pinch of salt. I broke the eggs in a bowl and separated the shells. I Decomposed the calcium carbonate from the eggshells and mixed it with the salt in a cup of water. Then I forced hydrogen gas and crystallized calcium chloride out of the solution. What was left in the cup was a baking soda solution.


    After distilling the water using the trickle-over-fingers trick to get the pure baking soda, I noticed I had just used Decompose on two compounds at once.


    The flea doesn''t jump out of the circus because she believes she can''t.


    Whatever. I added the baking soda to the powders and had Belle mix everything well. I sent her to warm up the oil and used an ingot of aluminum to create a whisker, skimmer, and donut cutter. Now with the proper tools, I could mix and beat the powder mix with the milk and eggs. Once the mix was with the proper texture, I cut the donuts and we fried them. They didn''t grow as much as I''d like but I probably messed up some step of the recipe. We made around fifty small donuts.


    "And this, miss Belle-Sunu, is comfort food," I told her like a shopping channel host. "Cool it down and take a bite."


    She ate the donut. "Karattu Ermeeanu!" Her squeal-moan was so sudden I didn''t translate what she mumbled immediately. Their A''s were all open like in ''salt''. She said "Merciful Heavens!" or more precisely "By the Mercy of Anu''s Canopy." where Anu is one of Tarhun''s names. Or one of the deities he absorbed. Divine syncretism was a complicated subject.


    "Is it good? I told you. This is comfort food."


    Fried carbs. Or as Theresa used to call, "slow death (of the hips)".


    "Oww, Sandra! This bread is so good! So fluffy, so delicious, sweet, and crunchy!" She mumbled between bites.


    Belle was on the third donut when she noticed she might''ve eaten too much. As in, she was the only person in the kitchen eating donuts.


    "Do you want some?" She asked with her mouth full and watery eyes.


    "Come, let''s go around and give everyone a ''donut''," I told her.


    She picked up the tray and kept stealing guilty glances at the delicacies.


    "You know we can make more donuts later, don''t you? Right now we can only make them with my power, but later everyone will be able to make them. And they have a problem..."


    I shut my mouth right before I would tell her the donuts would make her fat. There was zero chance of that happening. These people worked from sunrise to sundown and ate meager portions even in a rich house like Abil-Kisu''s.


    We went to the backyard and gave each of the children and guards a donut. The sun was about to set when we reached the annex and I knocked on Nanna''s door with the last two donuts.


    "Who is it? Can''t an old woman take a nap in peace?" She complained from the other side.


    Nanna opened the door. I was already holding my breath but only the normal smell of herbs came from her room this time.


    "Nanna, we have something for you here. It is a delicacy from my world," I told her and offered her the two last donuts.


    The witch glanced at the donuts, "Fried food gives me farts. Don''t wanna," She croaked her refusal.


    "Mistress Nanna!" Behind me, Belle spoke. "Please try one. They are delicious, it is food from the heavens."


    The witch rolled her eyes and picked up a donut. She nibbled and returned the donut to the tray. "Too sweet! Don''t wanna."


    Belle gave the witch a hurt look. The witch had insulted the high priestess of the round starchy savior.


    "Is this a joke?" Nanna asked. "You two seem too mischievous. Is this a joke?"


    "No!" I protested. "It is food, good food."


    "If I take them, will you leave me alone?"


    She was totally going to throw them away.


    "Only if you promise to eat them," I replied.


    "Fine. Give me that," She took the two donuts in one hand. "Now go leak magic elsewhere. You''ll spoil my potions."


    She was extra-grumpy. I noticed I might be the cause. Those stamina potions made with the liver should be really valuable and delicate.


    "Am I still leaking magic?"


    She snorted. "You were designed to leak magic! Haven''t you figured out yet?"


    No, I hadn''t. "No. Would you please explain it to me like I am an idiot?"


    Nanna sighed, took her time eating the donuts and spoke after licking her fingers.


    "Delicious. Thank you for the treat and please make more. Now, about you. Tarhun limited your magic pool to half your maximum. Honestly, I had no idea a mortal as you could even exist. But you keep generating magic power because you are not ever full, you see? And you can''t be full because you can''t hold more magic. So it leaks. And the ambient around you becomes saturated with magic.


    "This world doesn''t have much magic. I bet he told you that. Did you understand now?"


    I couldn''t say I did.


    "Is it a bad thing?" I asked.


    "Bad for whom?" She asked.


    "To me, of course. To the people around me. To you," I clarified.


    "Maybe, no, and definitely not," She answered and then explained the ''maybe''. "You won''t ever wield your full magic potential. But that''s irrelevant because I can''t tell what would be your full magic potential. And you can''t wield magic directly to cast spells anyway. Just don''t do whatever you did to suffer burnout again and you''ll be fine."


    If she meant I shouldn''t try to neutralize a half kilogram chunk of naturally enriched weapon-grade uranium again, I can totally agree.


    "I got it. Thanks, Nanna!"


    She nodded. "Now, would you mind going away? If my potion fizzles I''m making you pay," she rhymed like any self-respecting witch should then shooed us.


    I held Belle''s arm. "Let''s go back to the kitchen," I told my cook. "We need to make more donuts. Arwia deserves some when she gets back and I bet Abil-Kisu would like to eat a few."

 Day 30. Sunday, Bull 22th

    This world needed more sugar. Not actual sugar per se, but more sweetness. Both literal and metaphorical sweetness. I''m not going to institute the nice patrol yet, but I know where we could start. As His Majesty said, one should start with the person in the mirror. And then follow up with their subordinates.


    That''s why I was at the kitchen with the first light of the morning with Belle and Arwia, frying donuts. Turns out barley flour also works and drastically lowers the cost of the donuts. Only because the starch and the baking soda are free to me. We don''t have any butter right now but someone is going to buy it today and tomorrow we will have cookies. No luck with chocolate though.


    Before this turns into a cooking story, let''s push the food colonization to a corner for now. It is happening and it is unstoppable but I''m taking the focus away from it for now.


    One big truth about the information age I''ve learned so far is that the information age started when humanity acquired the ability and techniques to process a large amount of information, not when humanity discovered information was valuable. I mean, if you think a bit, information was always valuable. You can go five thousand years back in the history of civilization, those with information won wars, they prospered. And transmigrators like me, especially one that brought computers and digital databases, we have an unfair advantage.


    Not only I carry in my head the intellectual baggage that came from millennia of scientific research and the cultural exchange between thousands of ethnical groups, but I also can capture, store, and process data in my devices. Including long-distance communication and reach once you include Dime in the equation. I wouldn''t have found Marduk''s camp so easily if I hadn''t scouted them from above with a camera.


    Yesterday''s mapmaking session saved our team a month or maybe two of surveys with just a couple hours'' flight by the sky-lord. And if I want to turn the food situation around, I need to continue to advance with that much speed. Because I only have the faintest idea of what is the food situation.


    That''s one of our tasks for today. I checked my outfit before going out. Jeans, a light beige shirt and hiking boots. I needed more pants.


    We filled a basket with fried donuts for the scribes and guards and I made more sodium bicarbonate out of chicken and lamb bones and sodium chloride.


    "I need to go, Belle," I told the cook. "And I hope you don''t spend the whole day frying donuts. They are just a snack and you''ll get sick if you eat only donuts."


    The freckled cook gave me the pleading puppy eyes. That was one of the moments that reminded me that Belle-Sunu was only fourteen years old. She was forced to grow up earlier.


    "Don''t give me that face. Okay, new rule. Your language doesn''t have a word for it, so you''re going to borrow one of mine. Donuts are classified as ''dolce''. Sweet food one eats in small quantities after a meal." They didn''t have a word for ''dessert'' or ''candy'' so I went with one that wrapped both concepts and was easy on the tongue. "Small quantities. After a meal. Did you understand, miss ''dolce'' tooth?"


    "Dul-Che?" Arwia parroted.


    "''Dolce''," I corrected. "Don''t stress the ''ch'' sound so much. And open your mouth a bit more on the first vowel." They also didn''t have any word with the ''do'' sound.


    "Doutche," Belle-Sunu tried.


    I laughed. She almost hit another word that would describe half the population.


    "C''mon. Hold the sound with me. Do... ''O''... L... tche."


    "''Dolce''," Arwia did it first. I clapped my hands, excited.


    Arwia was able to say it after a few more tries.


    "Good. Two things before I have to go, girls. First, only two donuts after a meal. Or I won''t teach you how to make other kinds of food that might be even better than donuts. Second, today is a rest day. Everyone should take time off to do what they want, unwind, and rest. No hard labor, no lectures. I''ll also pay your wages, so if you want to take the carriage and hit the market, that''s okay. I''ll go tell the guards that half of them are off-duty today and the other half is off-duty tomorrow."


    I counted my coins and separated enough money to pay the wages for all the guards and other workers. I need to change my gold coins into lower denominations. #RichPeopleIssues. And after giving them their money and some instructions, I finally gathered my pets and rode to my estate to start a new day of work. I had a day job and totally forgot to ask about my own wages. Way to go, Sandra.


    It was a strange sight to see soldiers manning the gate to my estate but after the first uncanny feeling, I remembered the task force was using the place as their base. I also heard the sound of a manual wood saw.


    "Morning, gentlemen," I greeted them.


    "Milady. Good morning. Please come in," The guards answered.


    I went inside and saw the saw. Some carpenters were working on cutting window shutters and doors to fit the house. One of the soldiers came to take Penny-Gu and noticed she had no reins.


    "Don''t worry," I told him. "This is Honey Cake''s house. She will just wander around and graze."


    "Yes, milady!"


    The soldier''s behavior was very stiff. Dime soared over us and dove to get a rat or some other critter in the neighbor''s plot.


    "Gather everyone, I told the soldier. I have something for everyone," I told him tapping the basket with the donuts.


    Everyone stuffed their faces with donuts, even the carpenters and their slaves. The great freedom revolution would have to wait until the great org... sacred rite to dedicate the city to Ishtar ended. The carpenters went back to work on the doors and windows and I gathered the scribes and half the soldiers for a lecture.


    "The first thing we need to do is to be able to do accounting. We have to keep track of all our expenses. Food, materials, supplies, even the doors, and windows. We need to know how much this project is spending. Who is really good with numbers?"


    One of the scribes raised his hand. "Kuma-Nu, milady. I know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide! He said, proudly."


    "Kuma-Nu, thanks for volunteering. You''ll be our accountant. I''ll teach you how to later. The records I asked. Do we have them?"


    "They are being copied. The records of farm ownership should be available tomorrow," another scribe answered.


    "Today we are going to draft the designs for the things we are going to build. We are also going to plan the construction of toilets all around the city. The Enshi will pass a decree outlawing public defecation and urination. Everyone will have to use the toilets. And clean their hands. This alone will greatly improve health for the citizens. We are also going to design special containers where we will turn the feces and other waste into plant fertilizer."


    Gu-Maranu, the eldest scribe rose, "You want us to do what to the plants?"


    I blushed at my blunder. The word ''fertilize'' also meant ''jizz'', ''ejaculate'', ''impregnate''. They understood my statement as using the compost to... Use your imagination.


    "No, no. Sorry about that. I''m a foreigner so my language is not that good. What I meant was to ''increase productivity'', prepare the fields for the crops, feed the plants. Nobody will have to do nothing of that with the plants and the waste."


    I giggled nervously and their tension dissolved. A poor vocabulary was a dread thing.


    I took my laptop and showed them the schematics for the facilities I had in mind. A urine-diverting toilet from a paper on third-world sanitation and economics, composters for feces and decaying matter, septic tanks, and the importance of waterproofing everything. The lecture took a good chunk of the morning.


    For this first round of composting, I would use my power to accelerate the process as natural composting took at least two or three months. Since this place was hot as hell, more like two months if the composting material was kept moist. The nitrogen-rich urine, once separated could be used as fertilizer almost immediately.


    I also taught them about groundwater contamination and the importance of keeping the wells safe. Thankfully our aerial survey was detailed enough to identify the wells, at least the ones that were not indoors. Some places might have hidden wells, but these would be the minority. I sent copies of the designs to the i-devices and let the scribes copy them to their vellum. While they worked on assimilating the knowledge, I took Kuma-Nu and taught him double-entry accounting.


    The morning was over. Lunchtime came and went by.


    I went to work on my computer, reading some books about the subject. I had to make sure the material used for composting was sterile. One author suggested baking the material in an oven for some time but another one showed that the addition of 10% quicklime would give an alkaline PH of twelve and that was enough to kill any organisms. The quicklime would also heat the material and kill whatever was left. And they tried wood ash but the PH didn''t hit the required target for proper sterilization.


    I added the schematics for the composting drums to what the scribes had to copy. Without metal drums, we would use wooden barrels treated with pine resin on the inside. A centralized composting plant was required. The night soil from the city would go to the plant where the material would be boiled then mixed with dirt, plant matter, and finally the quicklime and would go sit on the drums for two or three months before being shipped to the farms to use as fertilizer.


    I had to do a survey of the farm soil. Collect samples and test them. I would also need a lot of plant matter to turn into fertilizer fast with my power so we could enrich the autumn harvest that was already growing. I had a very good idea where I would gather that much plant matter.


    The plan was sound. We would face resistance from the farmers and the townsfolk but they would quickly see, or to be honest, smell the benefits of a shit-free city.


    My first impulse was to hit the city and order the things we needed and get started with the construction but that would be foolish. The people assigned to me were queasy, unhappy, and incredulous. A proof-of-concept was needed. I stored my devices and went outside to gather some soldiers. They were playing a game of chance with some bones.


    "Guys, I need five volunteers to help me with a construction project," I told them.


    I crafted aluminum shovels for them and showed them were to dig a hole with a ramp leading into it. These five volunteers would soon be replaced by another five so nobody would be without work. Heavens forbid the soldiers from earning their keep without sweating. While they were digging, I put myself to work. The soil they were excavating was Decomposed and shaped into squatting toilets with two holes. One smaller at the front to collect liquids and another at the back for the solids.


    One thing I noticed with the silicon I shaped was that it was stronger than ordinary glass, unlike the Earth-made silicon is as brittle as glass and prone to fracture into thousands of pieces when placed under stress. The silicon shaped by Decompose, however, is still brittle but not as much. It is more like the tempered reinforced glass used on device screens. Decompose creates a very smooth material. The microfractures inherent to manufactured materials are inexistent. Internal stress, gone. The crystalline structure was uniform. The graphite I make, for example, shears along one direction only. The entire chunk of graphite has the same structure without flaws, that''s why it is so hard to burn.


    And even though it is still brittle, I could always compensate it with extra thickness. The explosion of the supplies in Marduk''s base camp, for example, pulverized my tunnels.


    It required further investigation.


    I made two rectangular buckets with aluminum and helped shape the hole underneath the toilet and placed them in the designed spots with a handful of slacked lime on the bottom. The soldiers moved the base in place and I used the rest of the dug dirt along with some silicon from my storage to raise an outhouse around the toilet.


    I checked my metal reserves, I''d have to go mining soon. Samus took most of my metals. I should visit the smithy.


    I was so absorbed by using my power to build the aluminum door for the outhouse that I failed to see the crowd that gathered behind me.


    "Amazing!" gasped. "That''s the power of the holy maiden."


    I cringed inside. Enough with that holy maiden thing. Not holy, not even a maiden anymore. The warranty was void. No refunds. I had enough of this game of gods. I wouldn''t be a pawn. At least willingly. These gods, they were tricky as heck.


    "Glad that you gathered here. Okay, let me explain. To use this marvelous facility, all one has to do is to get inside, latch the door, very important this step mind you, drop your trousers or lift your tunic, toga, or skirt, and do your business. Liquids go in the front, solids in the back. Try to hit the holes without splashing, will you? Especially on your clothes. And bring something to wipe yourself with! Toss it in the back hole."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    They laughed at my very clumsy shopping channel demonstration.


    "Any volunteers to inaugurate it?" I asked. Before any of them decided to do it, I took the door handle. "Oh, nevermind. I''m first."


    I went inside and used the outhouse, full service. I even indulged in a brand new wet wipe. The atomically-smooth polished surface of the shaped silicon was almost hydrophobic. With a tiny piece broken before using, it would regenerate without the wet part. Another thing I had to introduce. Paper.


    I went outside. The crowd was still there.


    "Okay. Now, before I let you use the outhouse, let me show you how we deal with the collected waste." Circling around the outhouse into the dug hole, I showed them the two buckets. "Of course the production models will have bigger buckets, large enough to hold an entire day''s worth of crap. These buckets will be collected and transported to a facility to convert it into fertilizer,"


    I could see their smirks. Oh, no. Damned modern Akkadian.


    "PLANT FOOD, DAMMIT!" I pouted.


    Yeah. Go ahead. Say it. ''That''s what she said''.


    I couldn''t stay angry at their chortles though. Should I wait for the buzz to die out? I crossed my arms under my boobs and blatantly propped them. Problem solved, the men stopped laughing.


    "As I was saying, let''s make some fertilizer. The first batches will be created using my power, but the normal process takes three months. From here, the bucket with the solids will be taken to a central station where it will be boiled to avoid spreading disease. Mine has none, so we will skip that part. Then we will add soil, ground vegetable matter, and lime, mix it well and compost it."


    I added a grinder to the list of things I had to order from the craftsmen.


    And as I said, I added the materials to the bucket. "From here it will be put in a tumbler to mix and compost. It is important to notice that we don''t want people putting their hands in here. I''m going to mix it with this tool here," I used a long potato masher I''d crafted along with the other stuff out of aluminum.


    And once it was thoroughly mixed, I used Decompose to accelerate the composting process. In a few seconds, it was ready.


    "See? This is the outcome after three months of natural composting. This soil here is rich in ''food for the plants''," I said rolling my eyes, "And we can either mix it with the soil as we till it to plant a new crop, or add it to the ground at the feet of the plants. Once it is fully composted, it doesn''t smell bad or anything. It is just moist soil."


    I took a handful and had each of the scribes and guards take a handful too. After they were convinced, we went to the place where Tullius planted vegetables. We harvested everything when we evacuated the estate and the earth was naked. I mixed the fertilizer with the soil with my steel spade.


    "And now crops planted on this plot will grow stronger and produce more food. At the processing facility, we are also going to add manure from horses, cows, and goats to the mixture."


    I had no seeds to plant on the patch of fertilized soil. Maybe I''ll bring Tullius with me tomorrow.


    "And if anyone writes down the ''fertilizer'' joke in the records, I''m going to have all of you replaced," I threatened.


    The mood dropped as if we''d hit an iceberg. I didn''t realize until after I said it out loud that maybe having them replaced would mean a death sentence. With maniacal Nephew inebriated with the touch of divinity, it would be plausible to think so.


    "We wouldn''t dare, milady. We will have all copies of the reports ready for your inspection if you so wish," ____ said.


    "Good. I am going to visit a few places in town to commission some items. You guys stay here and finish the records. I also want at least four scribes using the double-entry accounting system. Kuma-Nu, teach them what you learned, and I will give another lesson tomorrow."


    I got on Penny and went out in the direction of the smithy. By the sun''s position, it was around two o''clock and I had a lot of time. I had no incidents on my way to the smithy. I could see from a distance that the forges and bellows were going full throttle. The plume of smoke rising from their central chimney was thick and dark.


    The cacophony of hammers striking metal and the flares of sparks and hot metal along with the smell of sweat, ashes, and metal assaulted my senses. There was a lot of helping hands, some of the soldiers, probably assigned to make things go faster. The production of weapons and armor was massive and I could see several sets being tested for defects at the back. I went to the stables and left Penny-Gu there then went around asking for either Samus or Aran.


    The latter found me. "Lady Rinaldi. It is a pleasure to have your visit. Please, come this way," the master blacksmith told me. "Samus is at the back, playing with the metals you lent him."


    We went around and there was another forge in a separate building. From the position, I could infer it once faced a street on the other side of the smithy complex. It might be where the two partners started. Inside, I found Samus, focusing his fire magic on the furnace where a familiar disk of metal glowed in a crucible.


    "Samus! Sandra is here!" Aran announced to me.


    He ceased channeling his magic and took a towel from an apprentice, wiping his face, neck, and hands before tossing it back at the boy.


    "Sandra! What metal is that, the ''tung-stein''! I can''t even get my forge hot enough to soften it!"


    I chuckled. "You won''t. Tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals," I told him. "You need enough heat to boil iron if you are going to melt it."


    "Boil..." Samus mumbled.


    "... Iron," Aran concluded and asked me, "Is that even possible?"


    I shook my head, "I don''t think we can do it in this world, but back in mine people did things crazier than that."


    "I broke one of the disks by hammering it too hard. I didn''t know that metal would be brittle," Samus confessed. He took a good look at me and smiled. "I can see you regained your powers. Your magic is shining so bright it almost hurts my eyes."


    "Yes, I''m back stronger than ever," I nodded. "And don''t worry. As long as you have the fragments, I can restore everything. In fact, why don''t you stop wasting coal with that one and take it out to cool? There''s much to talk and I only have this afternoon free."


    "Yes, I wanted to ask you about that. Is it true that the Enshi nominated you a minister?" Aran asked.


    "Agriculture and development, yes. I promise not to let my station rise to my head and cloud my judgment though."


    "Good. I believe you are here to see your suit of armor, right?" Samus asked. He pointed at the exit, "This way, please."


    We went outside and moved along the back wall to a place where several apprentices where sitting on workbenches hammering rivets into chain links woven in a four by one pattern. He pointed at a very lean training dummy wearing a chain mail of dull gray metal. Titanium.


    "We can''t test the armor because the links aren''t closed. You said you would use your power. We did rivet a small section, and it held weapon blows well. The metal dented though. It seems to be softer than steel. More malleable too."


    "Is that mine?" I asked.


    "We have two suits, actually. One is for testing, the other for wearing. Once you close the links, we are doing the tests."


    He seemed eager to do these tests. I went to the training dummy and pulled the suit of armor free. It wasn''t as light as I thought but I could carry it. I imagined that the same suit of armor made of steel would weight two-thirds more than this. I went to an empty workbench and placed the armor on the table. I checked the links. They were firm but open. I had no idea how much strength would take to open the metal but it was probably less than what a weapon blow carried.


    I closed my eyes and felt the titanium. It had some impurities, traces of iron, tin, and copper. Maybe picked up from the crucible it was put in. I purged these impurities and focused on the rings. I needed to have the clear mental image of a seamless ring, a perfect torus I then touched each ring one by one, moving my hands over the chainmail. Even with my eyes closed, I could sense the shape of the ring I was touching and I forced the physical object to conform to the mental image.


    One by one the links were closing and assuming the perfect shape. I had no idea how long it took, but I could sense the imperfect, open loops of wire. I kept going, turning the suit of mail around and sensing the links that didn''t close. I opened my eyes when they were all perfectly aligned.


    The dull gray suit of armor was now silvery and polished.


    "I''m done," I told the second crowd that formed to watch me using my powers today. "We can put this back on the dummy to test."


    "It is almost a shame to strike a suit of armor so beautiful," Samus remarked.


    "It is fine, I can repair it easily. Let''s do it."


    We dressed the suit on the dummy and Samus tightened it with a leather belt. He went to a weapons rack and returned with a war hammer and a sword. The hammer had a large pick on the back and could swing both ways. He handed the sword to Aran and held the hammer with the pick facing forward.


    I could see the muscles on the master smith''s arms bulge as he shouted a warcry and viciously nailed the suit over the chest. He left the weapon stuck to the dummy. If a real human was under that armor, she''d be dying.


    "Woo! Bouncy!" Samus shook his arm.


    "I guess it was a flop," I commented, dejected.


    "I don''t know about that, let me check," Aran went to the dummy and inspected the blow up-close without touching. "Eh, are you getting old, Samus? The spike didn''t go in all the way!" He shouted.


    "Last time I checked we were the same age, you moron," Samus replied. "The rings bounced when I hit, it was like they were repelling my blow. I could feel them snap but they mostly stretched. Yeah, this armor is very good."


    "But if that blow hit a person, she would die!" I protested.


    "Nobody will stay still in combat. A blow like that would deflect, push the person back, or just be dodged," Samus explained.


    Aran yanked the warhammer out and I approached to check. A few links were broken but none seem to be missing. In fact, the hole seemed small. Just two or three links broke. I touched them and focused, moving the metal back in place and mending the damage.


    "My turn," Aran said and I took a few steps back.


    He held the sword in a high guard and started with some slashes, progressing into stabs. He executes a powerful stab and the sword gets stuck in the mail. He tugged it free with some difficulty and said, "If this were a real fight, I''d be dead the moment my weapon got stuck. It only entered a few centimeters. Enough to draw blood but not enough to incapacitate. I also didn''t break any ring. Just some dents."


    He stabbed several more times, going even as far as to hold the blade halfway and use both arms to propel the weapon. He couldn''t break a link.


    "Armor approved, milady!" Aran said, satisfied and winded. "Do you want to wear it? We had madam Cloe adjust an arming doublet meant for young men for you."


    It was a jacket. A thick jacket, it remembered me of the one Michael J. Fox wore. Or the other Michael. I put it on and noticed it had several layers of cloth sewn together. I could only wonder how sweaty this thing must become in the heat. Better sweaty than dead. On top of the jacket, I donned the mail hauberk. Its sleeves reached my elbows and the skirt, mid-thigh. There were extra rows of rings starting from the waist to give it a skirty feeling. Finally, I wrapped a thick leather belt around my waist to take the weight of the skirt from my shoulders.


    "How does it feel?" Samus asked me.


    "It''s heavy. But I can move." I tried some movements and everything was fine. My arms and body had more inertia and most of the weight was on the shoulders and, of course, the boobs. The armor pinned down my breasts as if a sports bra. In fact, I should put one when wearing armor. The whole suit of armor weighed around three kilograms.


    And of course, I took my phone for a selfie. The mood was so good I was feeling like I''d have a meeting with Richard Gere and Sean Connery next.


    "Satisfied?" Aran asked.


    I nodded. "I think I can get used to the weight."


    He laughed. "It is light as a plume. This metal of yours is really amazing."


    "We will do measurements for the final fittings and decorations then," Samus concluded and then started to fidget as he measured his words. "Glad we nailed the right size. But... we will need to measure the fitting of the mail on your body, miss. And for that..."


    I tilted my head, "You''ll need to touch me. Gotcha. You can just pinch the mail from the back, can''t you? I don''t mind if you do it professionally. So please, do the measurement."


    He exchanged a conflicting glance with Aran, and the other master smith just nodded. I pulled my hair out of the way and showed my back to Samus. Turns out that properly fitted mail is like a second skin. Let''s become Stephan Kapicic! Samus came with pliers and some wire to cut the links and bind the mail in place until they could be repaired.


    "It is a shame to cut these links. They look like jewelry," He commented.


    "I can make more later. And you have no idea what they can do," If I could get electricity to galvanize the titanium... "Could you make it loose on the upper torso and tighter on the stomach?"


    He paused then chuckled. "As you wish, milady," He replied, with emphasis on the ''lady'' part.


    Tug, clip, tug, clip, readjust. Samus tapped my shoulder.


    "Let''s remove the mail carefully. We don''t want the wire snapping," He said. "We will dismantle the other set and make a coif. At least this metal I can forge."


    With assistance, I removed the mail and the arming doublet. That''s why squires were a thing. It would be impossible or extremely bothersome to don or doff armor alone. Gygax lied to me. Aran handed me a cloth cap.


    "Put this on so we can measure the coif. It won''t take long."


    After the measurements for the chain coif were taken, I was free to go.


    "Well, thank you all. I''m going to visit the glassblower next."


    Aran nudged Samus with his elbow. Once he saw his partner wouldn''t speak up, he did.


    "Sandra, we received a big shipment of ore today and we wanted to know if you''d be available to help us..."


    Ores! My inner dwarf flared.


    "Smelt it? Sort it? What ore did you get?"


    He grinned and elbowed Samus again. "Our warehouse is full. We bought every cheap one, some of them were considered useless. The wagons kept coming and dumping it there, I wonder what we might find in it..."


    I felt my heart pound. Unknown ores these Bronze Age refugees couldn''t find a use for? "Let me..." It was too good to be true and it meant it was not the whole story. "You did that for me, didn''t you? Because you knew I would identify these ores and tell you what they were."


    His grin didn''t falter and he nodded. "Exactly. Are you interested?"


    "You guys only work with Iron and copper alloys, right?" I asked and Samus nodded before Aran could reply. "Good. You get to keep iron, copper, tin, and zinc from the ores. All the rest is mine. I''ll try to preserve any gemstone hidden in the ores but I can''t guarantee it. And I''ll also do a full sweep of your facilities. Any scrap metal, swarf, or metal shavings will be mine."


    Aran reached out with his hand, "You have a deal, milady."


    I shook his hand and only then noticed I had volunteered to clean the smithy for free.


    "I have to send my minio... the officials from my ministry on their missions before I come. I''ll be here for lunch, is that okay?"


    "Absolutely" Samus agreed with open arms. "I will make sure there''s a feast waiting for the lady."


    "Please don''t. I can eat almost anything. I''ll bring some new sweet food we are making as a gift. Now, I need to go before the sun goes away. Bye!"


    I walked out and Penny was already waiting for me. I checked the sun and I had more than an hour. I went to the market. There I bought wholesale vinegar, butter, more sour tangerines, pomegranates, potatoes, radishes, and beets. The latter three were extremely cheap because they are used exclusively as livestock feed. The people of this world didn''t eat roots. At least not in this region. Another thing I heard during my shopping was that most of the livestock just vanished. Not some supernatural phenomenon but rather the people either taking it with them as they fled or just butchering their animals to


    The goods I bought would be delivered to Abil-Kisu''s estate. Some merchants received that piece of information with wide eyes. I liked being anonymous but fame and reputation opened doors even though they raised prices. I wasn''t concerned with either but I was beginning to see the worth of the former.


    I mounted and was about to leave the great market when I turned around and looked at everything from above on my horse. Despite some closed booths and fewer people on the streets, it was business as usual. The panic I was expecting with the recruitment of Marduk''s army as a workforce and the sudden pressure on the city''s resources was non-existent. I decided to ditch the visit to the glassblower and do another round of shopping.


    This time I opened up dropping Abil-Kisu''s name subtly, asking if the merchant could deliver the goods there. None disagreed. Then I talked about supply, farming, and the expectations for the next season. The mood was good regarding supply. It seems that most of those that fled were the urban population, those that worked with services, temporary jobs, minor craftsmen, and some people with fewer ties to the city.


    It made no sense. Why would the big merchants, craftsmen, and other wealthy people not flee if Marduk''s army was overwhelmingly stronger? I asked the elderly merchant that generously sold me five carts of potatoes.


    "I might be a rich merchant here, but if I flee, I''m just a refugee. I''d leave my warehouses, my goods, most of my slaves behind for the invaders. Gold and jewels I can carry, yes. But will my valuables be safe out there? Would my slaves murder me in the middle of the road and rob me? And would the Enshi lose? Look this way, I didn''t flee and lost nothing."


    His explanation made sense, but hindsight was 20/20. Just out of curiosity, I asked him. "Do you know how Marduk''s army was defeated?"


    "Yes! He angered Tarhun and he sent his champion to blow his insolent army. I saw the explosion that day. Only a god could do such a thing."


    Yes, more power to Tarhun. I hope his investment is paying off. Asshole. I couldn''t feel sympathy for the god that murdered me and apparently tweaked my abilities to better suit his purposes.


    Not that there''s something I could do about it but sulk. I paid for the wagons of potatoes and went back home. It was a tiresome day.

 Night 30, Sunday, Bull 22th

    I got home and after eating dinner and bathing, I couldn''t fall asleep. The horse''s stamina I gained from Penny coupled with my regeneration and the refreshing hot bath made me feel wide awake. Too many things swirling in my head. Too much unanswered questions. I had to make something useful to kill time. Take the worries out of my mind. I had to get busy.


    My first impulse was to browse the PC. I put on the wireless headphones and turned on the music. Shuffle gave me "In the arms of an Angel" by Sarah McLachlan.


    <blockquote>


    To feel not good enough


    And it''s hard at the end of the day


    So tired of the straight line


    And everywhere you turn


    There''s vultures and thieves at your back


    The storm keeps on twisting


    Keep on building the lies


    That you make up for all that you lack


    [...]


    You are pulled from the wreckage


    Of your silent reverie


    You''re in the arms of the angel


    May you find some comfort here


    </blockquote>


    I was sure my iPod''s battery charged with my tears and misery.


    With no will to play on the computer, I sent it back to storage and sat on the chair, arms limp on either side, head hanging back, eyes closed, listening to Sarah hammer her grief on the piano. Feeling the tears roll down my cheeks and damp my hair.


    If only I had an angel.


    Alas, there was none. Even though I was surrounded by people that cared about me, I was alone in my grief. I''d always be the outsider. And this bloody room is too gloomy and dark.


    Light it up.


    I had the enchanted water goblin eyes. Nanna said that so long they stayed near me, they would last for a very long time. Years. More even if I kept them in storage where time didn''t pass. I looked up, there was a wooden beam supporting the roof. If I could hang an eye from there...


    I took two aluminum disks from storage, each weighed eight hundred grams. I had only three more but these should be more than enough. I first created a gear system to rotate a silicon platform. I tied the Dremel to a gear with a hair scrunchie as the conveyor belt and the gears to reduce the angular speed and the stress on the rotary tool''s motor and I had my own automatic potter''s table. I did like Demi, but without Patrick. I paused the iPod and selected "Unchained Melody". Then I made the bowl out of metal like a potter would do to clay. I carefully shaped the inner and outer surface to a mirror polish.


    While inside the influence of my power, I could shape the matter however I could imagine. That was the hard part. High heel shoes? Easy peasy. A helmet? Nope. The parts and pieces could also be welded perfectly since I caused the metal to enter a fluid state. I tried it with a small piece of aluminum. Focusing to keep it like a puddle of water, I poked my finger. It went through the metal as if it were a liquid. It could also be used to measure the range of my power. I made a stick of aluminum and used my power to move it like a snake. Only the five centimeters of the stick away from my skin obeyed.


    I focused but I couldn''t increase that range. I took the metal and shaped a small ovoid. I tried to make a sphere but that''s what I got. Then I made the metal below the ovoid rise, moving more metal from underneath to create a pillar. The ovoid was well outside the reach of my power and it rose for another twenty centimeters before the stick bent and broke on its own weight, the part out of my influence clattering on the wooden floor.


    Dangling yielded even poorer results. The ovoid fell to the ground right after leaving my influence, the metal under my control was unable to hold it in place hanging down.


    I placed the first stick inside the bowl and split the ovoid in four, like tentacles. I shaped them to make a rough spherical socket where the goblin eye would rest inside the bowl. The light hitting the aluminum would reflect on the polished surface and come out through the mouth of the bowl. Or not.


    Maybe I could poke holes in the bowl to let the light escape sideways, like one of those children''s nightlights. Stars, comets, the moon. Turn the room''s roof into the night sky. Feeling excited and childish, I did so, using the Dremel to cut and pierce the bowl. The stars were hexagonal but everyone knew the number of rays a star has in a picture depends on the support frame of the lens.


    All that was left was to put the goblin eye in place and attach the bowl to the roof beam. After molding the aluminum prongs inside around the delicate glowing globe, I made a strip of aluminum, silicon scaffolding and climbed up. I bent the strip around the beam and sealed the ends together to form a band, and used my power to weld the bowl to the band.


    Perfect.


    I cleaned up the shavings, scaffolding but I kept the gears and the flywheel in a plastic bag. These would be very useful in the future. And that''s how I now had "free" light to use my room at night without problems. It fed off my excess power and I had plenty. This invention was well worth the time invested. Maybe I should make a lampshade too.


    Strike when the hammer is hot! Or was it the anvil?


    For the conical cover, I made a snap-on holder for my survival knife that would allow me to slice very thin sheets of bamboo fiber. The knife was the sharpest tool I had. I sheared slices thin enough that most light could seep through. I cut a lot of these bamboo strips and put them side-by-side on the floor. When I had enough, I created a slab of silicon and using a string and a pin in the center, dug a pair of circular grooves of different diameters with Decompose and my finger. I filled these grooves with aluminum and removed the excess, getting two hoops.


    I could press the bamboo to the pseudo-liquefied aluminum and force the plant fibers to remain stuck inside the metal using Decompose. There was nothing between the fibers and the metal so it was stuck at an atomic level due to the imperfections on the vegetable matter. I would rip off the fibers before I could remove it from inside. After I attached all the bamboo fibers to the lower hoop, I trimmed their sides so it would have minimal overlap after they were bunched up to reach the upper hoop and did the same to the top. After attaching the cover to the body with eight sticks of aluminum and giving the whole piece a good polish with my power, the lampshade was ready to use. I just had to put an eye in between the two holders, one above and one below left for it.


    I made two more to a total of three.


    Happy with what I''d done and marveled at the hundreds of tiny pins of light across the roof, I knew I would have to find a way to make the bowl spin and that I could do what I had to do with the computer. Making the light fixture greatly improved my mood.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    I updated my journal, wrote in some notes, and updated what I knew of my powers. Divine boons.


    Decompose had two main functions. One, to accelerate the natural process of decay of matter or decompose it. From wood to peat, from dung to fertilizer, from uranium to lead in a flash. The expenditure of energy is mostly negligible for me unless it is radioactive material. I had no way to quantify how much energy something used or how much I had. Only forcing radioactive decay used enough energy to be a problem, and something locked me from stopping the power halfway.


    I put a note on that part. "Safety measure or just BS?" I had to find out a way to remove that lock.


    The second one was what I call "Chemical-kinesis" because the term "chemokinesis" was already claimed. I could move substances I touched or near my body, separating them from the surroundings, making them move independently and without reacting with the environment. I had to know the particular "resonance" of the substance. But once I knew that resonance, I could manipulate it or extract compounds if their complexity was lower than the source. For example, I could extract gasoline from wood or fat because there was a chain of eight carbons atoms inside the complex structures and the octane molecule was of lower complexity.


    Resonance was the best term I came up with but it wasn''t quite that. I could say it was like musical notes but not with sound. Pure elements like oxygen or iron had their own resonance. Compounds like water were chords. I could sense "water" and also know it was composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Complex compounds were akin to elaborate chords and something like a piece of a living being was like an orchestra.


    There was one limitation though. I could isolate covalent compounds, molecules, or ionic compounds, salts, perfectly. There was the smallest unit of these I could picture and lock on their resonance. I had no such luck with metallic or crystalline structures. Bronze, for example, was just tin and copper to me. I couldn''t lock on one "unit" of bronze, as I could lock on a molecule of water. I could manipulate either metal but it would ruin the alloy.


    The same thing went for complex crystalline structures or polymers. even if they were covalent. I could manipulate silica, but all I could make was a fine sand. No luck creating quartz crystals for example. And the manipulation of a pure element always resulted in the lowest energy isomer. If I manipulated carbon, I would get graphite. No diamonds for me.


    That was all for Decompose. I moved on to the powers of storage and limited repair.


    The items that came from Earth with me could be placed in storage, and they would also be repaired to a pristine state while they were either there or in my possession. The process was slow, taking several hours. An article of clothing would regrow from a single thread over the course of a day, for example. That''s why I always kept a piece of my clothes in storage. If some accident happened or they were stolen, I would not lose the item. And time did not pass while the item was in storage. I couldn''t store living beings but the definition was a macroscopic one. I could store plant seeds and probably microorganisms just fine, but not larger lifeforms or animate ones. Tiny bugs were already out.


    The containers could be stored with their contents if one specific rule was followed. If the contents would not spill from the container they would go with the container, otherwise, they would be left behind. So I could store a half-open bag with an object inside if the object was too big to pass through the opening. The plastic bags I stored my metal ingots had several punctures, scratches, and gashes, but since none of these openings was too big for the ingot to spill through, they would store just fine.


    That wasn''t free though. Storing foreign matter put a strain on my magic and increased the upkeep of my storage. It was negligible if I was healthy but something I should keep in mind if I ever strain myself again.


    I finished writing and because I wasn''t still feeling sleepy, I put on my headphones, hit shuffle on the iPod and started to browse my databases and work on my projects. The first thing I did was to turn on the Apache webserver on the computer, set up the wireless network and access my self-loading page for the deific survey photos on the iPad. If I found something of interest, I could stop whatever I was doing to check.


    I wrote all the journal entries I couldn''t while I was recovering and avoiding using the storage. Then I browsed the geology books to freshen up on the ores and what I could expect from the shipment Aran bought. Next, I checked the metallic alloys pages from Wikipedia and found some very interesting combinations I would surely try tomorrow at the smithy. I stretched and kept looking at the aerial photos that refreshed every fifteen seconds.


    This world was mostly uninhabited. Unexplored regions, forests, deserts, frozen landscapes.


    Frozen landscapes...


    I hit stop on the auto-refresh page controls and navigated back on the Safari history. There it was. A white snow-covered landscape. Full of dead trees and rolling hills. I took note of the image ID code on the browser bar and opened the same view on the computer.


    I''m sorry, touchscreen fans, but no matter how many greasy fingers you can stick on your screen, it can''t beat mouse-and-keyboard control. And those mobile browsers are all watered down. Hint: all fingers are greasy. It''s like their natural protection.


    I took screenshots and moved around, looking at the adjoining pictures. It was a big plain covered in snow. I kept going around in a circular pattern when I saw it. A city devastated by some sort of blast. The tall stone walls were broken and scattered, buildings, debris, partially hidden by the snow but not entirely covered. One pyramidal structure was standing but two of its faces were demolished. Some buildings behind it were half-broken but it was obvious pointing at the direction the shockwave came from.


    Hesitating to see what it was, I moved the viewpoint in that direction until I saw it. A huge lake with elevated ridges on its sides, frozen. It wasn''t too hard to see that this perfectly circular lake was a crater. I opened the Wikipedia photos on another tab and found the pictures of nuclear blast craters.


    They matched enough to confirm my fears.


    There be nukes.


    Connecting the dots, there was the Death Snow, whether Nergal''s champion and the Harbinger were the same person or two distinct characters, the uranium ore Marduk sent to his agents, and now this. The torbernite and my attempt at neutralizing it. What gave me the idea I could do that? Just because I could decay wood faster? And why I couldn''t stop until it was all neutralized? Worse yet, the radiation came entirely to my body instead of spreading all around.


    It was an insult on top of injury. Tarhun limited my maximum magical power to half my potential so I would overflow and leak magic all the time. He enchanted my eyes to make them impervious to magic so I couldn''t use my power to cast spells. Why wouldn''t he also tweak Decompose to work on the radioactive material differently from the other materials? There was a sense of wrongness I feel from irradiating material.


    The cherry on the cake was the fact that my power worked on resonances for specific elements or substances. That was why I could not manipulate alloys, as the metallic bonds do not show as a single resonance but the particular metallic elements'' distinct resonance. The uranium decay went through a half-dozen elements between lead and uranium. Logic would say that I would decay all the uranium into the next element and stop, but Decompose aggressively went forward and turned everything to Pb 206.


    That was total bullshit. He was probably pressing me for that affidavit. The Dark One clearly advised against, but at that moment I thought he was antagonizing Tarhun. Not that he would be any better. Assholes, all of them.


    What''s the conclusion? Tarhun brought me here to be the janitor of this planet. To clean up the mess that the Harbinger left behind. I had no idea what to thin.


    I was just seething with rage. I wanted to shout, to blaspheme against that stupid god. But yes, I couldn''t even speak up against him as it would hurt the connection between him and his faithful.


    I knew that the Dark One wouldn''t show up to tempt me anymore. Tarhun would be an idiot to let his enemy reach me and I had a hunch that it had to do with that "Divine Protection" boon he put on me.


    What did he expect? That I''d one day travel to that place and clean it up? Yeah, in a century or two, asshole.


    Is it bad to call the head god of this world an asshole? Well, can''t blame me for lying. Asshole.


    What am I? A toy? Some sort of pi?ata waiting to be cracked by the strongest and most virile conqueror?


    So it is known how angry I was, this line here was written and deleted over ten times because it had too much cursing.


    Maybe I should just stop typing. And I can''t shout because people are sleeping in the house. Including a baby.


    So, good night, journal. I crafted one awesome thing and found two terrible ones. That''s the rollercoaster of my life.


    Even this month''s name is full of bull.


    And now I''m sleepy.

 Morning 31, Monday, Bull 23th

    I crawled out of bed and it was already sunny outside.


    The windows were closed though. No. It was dark outside and I left the lights on. There was no utility bill though. I''m the one powering it so, who cares? I opened the window and it was still dark outside. I was mentally tired from lack of sleep but my body was okay. I tried but couldn''t go back to sleep even after I shut down the light by removing the eye. I needed to devise an on-off switch. Without a choice, I started my day earlier.


    I didn''t hate Mondays, but it wasn''t too late to start.


    "Sandra?" I heard Belle''s voice from outside. I went to the window and saw her straining to carry a big bag of flour. "Hey, good morning. I saw a light through your window, were you reading?" I guess she read my emotional state through my face, "Is something wrong? Hold on, I''m coming in."


    A few minutes later, both Belle and Arwia were at my door. I let them in.


    Arwia rushed to hold my hand and looked deep into my eyes. "What is wrong, Sandra?"


    I gave in to my inner shitty manipulator and sniffled with a puppy face to get a hug. I got two. The girls held me and got touchy-feely with emphasis on the touchy part.


    "Sandra''s sleeping clothes are the best. So soft!" Arwia said.


    "And they shine on their own! The fabric is so light it seems something woven in heavens!" Belle added.


    I had to agree, my satin babydoll was nice to wear. But these hands had to go.


    "Okay, time out! Off with you two. I have things to do. Belle, I bought a lot of things yesterday, they should arrive this morning. Store all things in the annex room I am using as storage. I''ll be with the scribes in the morning, then in the smithy for the rest of the day."


    Belle nodded. "Leave it to me. By the way, will you make donuts today?"


    "No. Not today. You can''t eat that food all the time. You''ll get fat!" I fought the urge to slap her butt.


    She blinked. "Getting fat!" She said with a dreamy voice.


    I had no idea what they thought of fat people. Maybe it was a sign of wealth or health? Enshi the Uncle was the only obese person I''d seen, so maybe that''s it. I had no idea and I didn''t want to ask. I turned around and saw Arwia with one of the lampshades in her hand.


    "These sculptures are gorgeous! Is it a vase? No, It seems solid. A weapon? No, it is too delicate to be a weapon. Do they do anything?"


    Why would a sculpture have to do something? Or is it because I did it and I only do functional things? So confusing! Better explain it straight.


    "It is a light fixture. You take one of the goblin eyes Nanna enchanted and then lift this part here, and put the eye on this little cup here. Then you lower the top to hold it in place. Here, you do it."


    I gave her one of the eyes from the box and we lit up the lampshade.


    "That''s why your room was lit up during the night. It is such a strong light," Belle remarked.


    I wondered how early she got up. Damn, that girl worked hard! I fought back the urge to brag about the one hanging from the roof.


    "I''m going to wear the gray dress today. Help me put it on," I told them.


    The gray dress was stylish but austere. It had a lot of straps and was meant to enhance a lady''s figure. The straps would also allow me to adjust the dress to fit the chainmail underneath. It came with a corset that needed to be adjusted on the sides and tied up behind. I didn''t even need a bra with this dress as it had some cups to hold the breasts up. Long sleeves that flared up at the wrists. It had a V neckline but it was closed with a softer cloth, raising the actual neckline to the neck. I felt ready to impart knowledge to some brats, like Maggie Smith.


    The skirt was straight but it had enough room to balloon up if I spun. There was no choice for shoes though. Since I went with a dress, I wouldn''t ride Penny and I went with the sneakers. The skirt''s length was adjustable by pulling the fabric up then tying the belt over it.


    I retrieved and stored the eye but I left the lampshades and the ceiling fixture behind.


    I ate breakfast, kefir sweetened with glucose, courtesy of Decompose, flatbread with some tangy bean paste mixed with olive oil and crushed mint, a piece of meat jerky, and fresh apricot. I was walking on sunshine, excited to see the exotic ores Aran bought. I was almost salivating at some possible candidates. I strapped my falconry bracer over the dress sleeve, called my non-sardine-eater bird, and walked to my estate alongside Penny.


    I didn''t ride because skirts but it was good to have her with me. Even though the posh people of the neighborhood gave me glances on the road like ''why aren''t you riding your horse?'' but I knew the guards around here already knew me.


    "And if ye don''t know me, ye shall be MADE to know me! My name shall be engraved upon your very soul!" I shouted in English like a mad wizard.


    Soon I was at the gates to the ministry of agriculture and development temporary base. The carpenters were already working. I could hear the banging and sawing going on. I nodded at the guards and went inside.


    Instead of going to the villa, I went around the main building and talked to the carpenters. I found the one that was leading the group and talked to him.


    "Hello. I was wondering if you could help me with a project."


    "Yes, milady. Whatever you need."


    "I need some boxes with a good waterproof varnish or resin. Let me show you how they should be."


    I summoned the plastic bag with the lump of silicon I carry in storage and took a chunk. Then I shaped a cubic box that should be around twenty centimeters across. The box was split in the middle, forming two rectangular compartments.


    "This is what I need. I need at least fifteen of them, waterproof on the inside."


    I handed over the model to him. "What thickness do you need?"


    "Any thickness that can hold water inside. I don''t care about the wood so long it can hold water without leaking."


    "If it is just cutting the board and nailing the wood together, we can get it done before lunch, milady. But the resin takes a long time to dry."Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    That''s where I''d use my power to speed up the resin''s curing process.


    "That''s acceptable, sir. Would you deliver the boxes with the reason applied to masters Samus and Aran''s smithy this afternoon? This takes priority, add it to the house renovation tab."


    "There''s no need, milady. I can do this as a special service for the lady."


    Now, I had a choice to make. Did I want to go that way? There was no OGE [1] in this world, but where did my crumbling XXI-Century-Earth morals go? I''d already violated my two previous commitments, I weaponized chemistry and murdered a person. Even though it could be considered open warfare as he was the officer of an invading army. Was this a slippery slope I wanted to slide down? Would a ghostly Friedrich Nietzsche float over me to tell me I shouldn''t look down? Nah. He would tell me I was a fool for being compassionate. Or was it pity?


    I summoned my handbag and took a silver mina. I handed it to the carpenter. "Would this be enough payment for the boxes?"


    "Absolutely, milady. Your boxes will be delivered a hand after midday."


    "Make sure they do," I said and only after the words came out of my mouth I noticed it could be interpreted as a threat.


    Yes, Lord Acton, you were right.


    I went to the main building where the scribes should be. I was received by a huge pile of scrolls. It seemed these guys were not loafing on the job.


    "The minister arrived," One of the guards shouted.


    I had no idea if I should be glad or angry that he was singling me out like that. On one hand, it was respectful, on the other it would give whoever was doing something naughty time to hide their evidence.


    After a few minutes, everyone gathered in the sitting room. I noticed that the cushions were new. And I was worried about some stupid wooden boxes. Know what? The house renovations and whatever else I commission are hereby my salary as the minister. I was going to save the whole city from famine, dammit.


    Slide, slide, slide down the slippery slope... I heard some stick figure blonde bard singing.


    "Gentlemen. Are these the copies of the land deeds?"


    "Yes, they are milady. What should we do with it?"


    "You will give each one of them a serial identification number. Let''s call it SIN for short. The number will have eight digits. We will start with a two, then the next two for the year of the Enshi''s reign, or 201 in our case, the next digit will be the district the property''s located and the last four a sequential. This will help us locate a deed faster later on."


    I checked if they understood the system. We went to the map and divided the city and the outskirts in ten districts. Four inside the walls and six outside.


    "This will be your tasks for today. A team will draw blown-up copies of the map for each district. Another team will go through the deeds and give them a SIN. As you mark them, go on the map and add the SIN to the district. You''ll make ten piles of scrolls with the deeds. I suggest writing the SIN on the outside of the scroll on two sides so we can find them easily.


    "You can call on the guards to help. The best would be if you scribes had to move the least possible as you go on your jobs. The division of labor is important to productivity! You know your strengths and all of us either succeed or fail together. Including me! So do your best or I''ll be disappointed. Get the soldiers, make a line, the scrolls pass, the notary team assigns the number and district them without moving, communicate to them to the mapping team so they can assign them to the map.


    "Don''t worry about making mistakes on the map marking. We will make mistakes, that''s a given. That''s why we will go out on the field and confirm the claims. Then we will update our map."


    Bur-Batolo raised his hand. "We could use clay to make the map so it is easier to erase later. If we make a big enough tray, we can make a big tablet."


    "Awesome! Let''s do this. That''s your assignment for today. I''ll be at the smithy if you need me, but please don''t. On the other hand, if there''s something critical, then do. Toodles!"


    Unfitting for my responsible self, I dumped the work on the scribes and left to see that sweet loot Aran got for me. Damn. He didn''t get it for me! Or did he? He was surely profiting from my powers. Yes! Let''s go to the smithy and volunteer to clean up everything.


    I felt I had to go there. Like, right then.


    You see, Tarhun. It is not that I mind being your janitor and cleaning up your badly irradiated planet for free. I mind being FORCED or TRICKED to do that against my will.


    I looked up and asked, in English. "Would it kill you or somehow wound your godly macho pride to ask nicely? Asshole."


    Dime also looked up with his fierce raptorial stare, as if there were some threats from above. I forgot that our feelings were shared through our bond.


    "Easy, boy. Now, go and sit on Honey Cake''s saddle. You are too heavy for me to carry you on my arm all the time."


    We left our neighborhood and entered downtown Es-Kina. If a horse without rider drew attention, a horse with a sky-lord on top drew even more eyeballs. I kept my chin up but I was fearing some sort of attack. Maybe I should''ve brought a guard but I wasn''t thinking I''d be in danger. Things would surely change once the soldiers recruited from Marduk''s remnants arrived, but I thought that was still a few days ahead.


    I only had eyes for the smithy and after I reached there, I could relax a bit. The sound of hammers falling down would feel quite calming. I knew that there I was valued and protected. I had no idea why I was being so skittish. It felt as if something was out to get me. I felt like one of those dreams where you are naked in the school play and you can sense every eye on your skin. I was being watched from beyond.


    It was pressure at the back of my head, like... exactly like when I jumped the pit. I called Dime down, stopped Penny. I focused and tried to be mindful of myself. Feel my magic pool. Topped. My surroundings. The streets of downtown Es-Kina. My purpose. Go to the smithy. Just like some shonen anime where they bleed as much as me, I tried to flare my inner cosmos.


    The pressure vanished. It was like taking analgesics when you have a headache. Now, who was using magic on me? I had not a clue. It wasn''t as if I had a radar for sorcerers. I couldn''t even pick them apart in a crowd. There was nothing I could do except to be mindful of these seventh-sense premonitions. I checked with my animals, especially Dime. They didn''t sense anything out of the ordinary, so we went on our way.


    Nothing else happened as we made our way to the smithy. I guess whichever magician was doing its thing on me, he got some backlash from the spell being forcefully interrupted. And just as I thought, the column of smoke rising from the central chimney, the sounds of hammers pounding on metal, the light of the sparks and the glow of the hot metal, and even the scent of the coal burning and, I must admit, the men working their muscles, was calming, relaxing, and enticing at the same time.


    Soon I found my way to where Samus was working on my chainmail. He had several small rectangular U-shaped pieces he was painstakingly linking together and hammering to clip them around the edges of the suit of armor. He''d put a new piece biting over one chain ring and over a groove on the last one, pin a rivet through the top of the ends of the U and hammer the rivet shut. The finished work looked like one of those fictional chain-swords that were made of links joined together. Or a conveyor belt in a factory. I could see that they gave the edge a nice finish. It would be even nicer once the wooden boxes arrived.


    "Master Samus. Greetings!" I called him out of his working trance.


    He stopped with the hammer up and looked at me. "Sandra! Welcome. You are early, I didn''t expect you this soon. Your armor is not done yet, I''m sorry. I''ll get it done soon, would you like to go with Aran to the warehouse check on the ores?"


    I smiled and nodded. "I''m the one who''s sorry for interrupting your work, master. I''ll do as you suggested, many thanks. It is gorgeous," I finished pointing at his work. "I look forward to wearing it."


    "I''m flattered, milady," He bowed his head. "I''ll make sure it is up to your tastes."


    "It is already. Bye!"


    I didn''t find Aran. He found me.


    "Sandra! You are early! But that''s great! More time for us to process the ores! Come, come!"


    He was excited and eager to go to that warehouse. They weren''t getting a bad deal. I could process and purify the ores to a degree unthinkable. Like ten sigma of purity. Or almost perfectly pure. For free, without clumsy crucibles, bellows, without wasting time and materials. I''d keep the exotic materials and any gemstones found inside the ores.


    "Aran, if you don''t mind, let''s go through our deal again. You''ll keep the iron, copper, tin, gold, and silver in the ores, I''ll keep the rest. Is that it?"


    "I don''t think there''s much gold in these ores, but you can keep the gold. The Enshi is paying very well for the weapons and armor we are crafting."


    And indeed, the smithy looked like a kicked anthill. Even some soldiers were there helping the smiths and probably keeping an eye on everyone. Aran opened the doors to the warehouse and I could see inside. The warehouse was about six by twenty meters and four meters from the floor to the arched roof beams. It was a barn, so to speak, but without the hay and farm tools and livestock, you''d expect to be in a barn. Instead, it was full of piles of rocks of all the colors of the rainbow, wagons full of ore and...

 Noon 31, Monday, Bull 23th

    It was marvelous.


    I could see right in front of me a flatbed wooden wagon full of pegmatite, with crystals showing up underneath the rock surface. I giggled and ran inside, like a kid in a candy shop. The warehouse was dark compared to the scorching sunlight outside. The only light that reached inside was what filtered through small openings at the top of the wall, underneath the awnings of the roof that extended to the sides of the building.


    I had to do something about that first. I looked up and I thought I could walk on those beams without a problem.


    "We need light if we are to work here, master Aran," I told him as I summoned my climbing gear. "Could you toss this rope over the roof beam? I''m going up there to remedy this situation."


    "Are you going to poke holes on my roof?" He asked, both wary and amused.


    Samus was down-to-earth, practical, and simple while Aran was chanceful, innovative, and creative. They were good partners since one covered for the other''s weaknesses. Samus would ground Aran, and Aran would push Samus out of the dreaded pit of stagnation.


    The smith tossed the rope up and around the beam, securing both ends. I was about to put on my harness when I noticed that climbing gear and a lady''s fashionable dress didn''t mix well.


    "I need to change into practical clothes, would you mind giving me some minutes?" I asked him.


    Aran blushed. "No, not at all," And fled through the door. So cute.


    I changed into my explorer outfit. Cargo pants, hiking boots, and a white blouse. I put a sports bra underneath because while raising the morale of the smiths would be a good thing, getting them distracted would be catastrophic.


    The confidence that came with the knowledge that I was strong and resilient changed my reactions. I wasn''t as afraid of male attention as I once was. With all that wave of rumors of campus rape and the protests, even if you distance yourself from the situation, you are still in the "potential victim" demographics. Even though I knew my martial arts to a degree, back on Earth I''d be wary. Any injury probably would leave permanent scars. Here? Heck, I got my heart pierced, tossed into an abyss, burned with gamma radiation.


    And I didn''t get any permanent marks or turn green. Maybe because I''m not an angry person.


    My body was in the "pristine state" my recovery boon promised. I would dare say I was even stronger than before because I now knew my limits and even how to measure my magic power. All that brought previously unknown confidence.


    I think I know what it is.


    It was the Pygmalion effect.


    I mean, I was invested by a god with these powers. My impression regarding his presumed expectations boosted my own self-esteem and confidence which in turn yielded some results that wouldn''t be possible if I didn''t face the challenges with that confidence, thereby reinforcing the previous impression. Rosenthal did an experiment coaching rats of the same breed and the expectations and positive reinforcement showed the power of this effect.


    Feeling powerful and confident can lead a person to behave powerful and confident in a cycle. The same is true of the negative spectrum.


    Is that how men feel? They are bigger and stronger so they can be boastful and daring? Their muscles are plentiful and the skin tougher so they can take more risks and fear fewer wounds? Maybe that coupled with the "hold my beer" effects of testosterone is the key to understanding male behavior. And then they feel self-validated and behave even more boastful and daring?


    Well, that''s what Theresa thought, but she associated that with blood-inflating organs. Maybe she had a point.


    Silly thoughts aside, I finished changing and putting on the climbing harness. From that, it was easy to attach the ends of the rope to the ascender clamps. I heard rustling by the door.


    "You can come in now, master Aran!"


    He entered and looked at my setup. Feeling playful, I pushed myself up a bit so I could take my feet off the ground and swing.


    "I''m going up there to install some temporary lights."


    I came down to cut off my swinging momentum and then climbed the rope using one ascender on each end. It seemed that my body was also physically stronger. Or this "pristine state" could very well mean something more like at the top condition. Up over the beams I made crude versions of the aluminum eye holder and hung them from the beams. I used three eyes and got back to the ground.


    "What are those?" Aran asked, pointing at the glowing orbs.


    "Enchanter water goblin eyes. Nanna did them for me."


    "Where did..." He paused then snapped his fingers, "The depths. You found water goblins in the depths. Of course, the teeth."


    "Yes, I fought them and brought back some corpses. I recall Nanna telling me she gave the teeth to Samus."


    "We did some nasty-looking knives and one ax. These teeth can tear through steel if there''s enough force behind them."


    Interesting. Also irrelevant. I stored my climbing gear and went for the cart with the pegmatite rocks. I could see the big foggy quartz crystals embedded in the feldspar and mica. It looked like rough granite and I knew I had to handle it with care or I''d risk destroying the gemstones inside. Handling a couple of them, I thought the best way was to remove the flaky feldspar since it had the least chance of harming the crystals. Feldspar had aluminum but so did more than half the gemstones.


    Decompose was too clumsy and brutish to use on the ore if I wanted to save the gemstones. I took some time and created a couple of chairs and a table from the silicon I had stored. I summoned my portable lab and took the pick and mallet. Let''s do this in the old-school style. My pick was not a miner''s pick. It was a precise tool to do exactly that, handle mineral samples with care. I broke the first chunk of the granite-like rock and released two quartz crystals the size of my thumbnail. I polished them using Decompose to shear a thin layer and they were clear with a lot of imperfections. Not very valuable, but maybe I could play with them later. I used more silicon to create bins for the gemstones. And a barrel for the minerals I''d just Decompose in bulk later.


    After a while, I took the small chunks of feldspar and sensed. Potassium and calcium feldspar. That gave me an idea. I took another chunk of pegmatite and sensed all around it. I felt some light metals and after a while, I could feel the individual resonances. The chunk was the size of a baseball but it had over fifteen different elements. I carefully removed the calcium, sodium, and potassium from the feldspar and mica, causing the structure of the rock to break and flake. A coarse grit was left behind after I removed the small beads of alkali metals. I sensed another resonance very similar to sodium and potassium but of a lighter element.


    I knew which one it was. Lithium. I carefully removed the lithium-containing part and it was a white-ish to pink cloudy crystal. I took my laptop and checked. Kunzite spodumene. On Earth, it comes from Afghanistan mostly.


    "Did this ore come from a place far to the northeast?" I asked Aran. I had a hunch based on geography, hydrology and other factors, but the biggest hint was these gods. If I were transplanting people from one world to another, I''d put them where they would be most at home. So why not in a geographic place similar to the one before?Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "Yes, it is from a mining village on the mountains above the grassy plateau," He answered.


    It could be a coincidence or not. Only time would tell. The spodumene was not gemstone-grade so I Decomposed it for the lithium and dumped the rest on the barrel. More low-quality quartz crystals into their bins.


    I caught Aran staring at the crystals and metals and decided to give him an explanation.


    "Well, these metals here are what we call alkaline metals. They react violently with water and create a corrosive substance. These are Lithium, Sodium, Potassium. They belong to the same family. This one is Calcium and he is from the second family, the alkaline earth metals. In the barrel, we have what we call aluminosilicates. They are plentiful and are made of silicon, the same material as the furniture we are using right now. And aluminum, the metal I used to hang the enchanted eyes above us."


    Aran gawked. "Marvelous. These metals are so soft I can''t believe they are indeed metal."


    I laughed. "Wait until you see mercury. it is a liquid at room temperature."


    To the iron age smith, all of this was surreal. I was enjoying everything so far and I hadn''t even made a dent in the warehouse''s contents. I bet the mountain where this came from was a dormant volcano. I wish I could visit it. For sightseeing and totally not to raid it for ores. Yeah, right.


    I went through the rocks and found more quartz, some nice and uniform crystallization of the kunzite spodumene that went into their own bin. Aran was watching me work and I almost asked him if he didn''t have a job to do since the smithy was bursting at the seams with activity. But that would be too rude and I knew his job was also to watch over me and make sure I didn''t steal anything. Trust, but verify.


    Hidden in one big chunk I had to ask Aran to carry over, I found our first treasure. A yellow-orange topaz, a roughly octagonal crystal three centimeters in diameter and eight centimeters tall. I lightly polished one of the surfaces with Decompose, feeling the sting of the fluorine that was released.


    "Now that''s a treasure!" I exclaimed, excited.


    I looked closely at the crystal, and it seemed flawless to my untrained eye. I had my minute vision boon though. I could see there was no fault, crack or bubble in the topaz even after I took my flashlight and beamed the light on it.


    "Can I see it?" I handed the crystal to Aran. He looked at it and smiled as he returned the crystal to me. "This one is worth a couple gold mina at least. More if you get to cut it without breaking."


    "Oh, I''ll take care of it," I told him as I summoned my handbag and carefully stored the topaz inside. I took a look inside it. The bag was so heavy I couldn''t carry it anymore. The straps or the bottom would rip off if I tried to. "But I think I''ll keep this one as a memento. I have quite the stash of gold."


    I knew Aran stole a glimpse of my wealth. "Quite the stash, indeed. You should get some of that gold bullion minted into coins. The demand for currency is great now. Lu-Ninurta has some minters working for him. Since it is being funded by the Enshi, the rates and taxes for minting coins are very low right now."


    "I will definitely visit him. Is Nephew putting his face on the coins?"


    "Nephew?" Aran caught on my Freudian slip.


    I got slightly embarrassed.


    "The Enshi. He''s the Nephew of the previous Enshi, so..."


    "Right. Don''t let anyone hear you call him that. You being a Minister or not."


    I nodded, showing that I would comply with his warning. "Thanks. Now, let''s get this show going. These ores won''t turn into useful metals on their own."


    Over the next hour, we demolished the pegmatite wagon. Not the vehicle, you barbarian. The topaz I''d found earlier was the crown jewel of the load but I got some small tourmalines and other less impressive pieces of topaz. The barrel of leftovers filled two times and I Decomposed the contents into aluminum and silicon. It was good to replenish my reserves of aluminum. I had a sizeable quantity of the alkaline metals. Lithium, especially, since I hadn''t got it before. I marked the mountain where the spodumene came from, to know where I could find more lithium if I needed it.


    Onto the next stash of ores. It was a pile of black rocks, and upon touch, I recognized the magnetite.


    "This is just iron ore," Aran remarked.


    "Magnetite," I replied. "Yes, it is mostly iron oxide, but I''d like to save some of the best crystals for later. I can buy them if you want since they are part of the deal. But I promise I can show you something amazing if you let me have them."


    "Agreed," Aran replied with a big smile. "For the iron and copper, we use these ingot molds. If you could pour the metal in the molds, it would help us a lot."


    "Yes, but I need to make my own molds. You pour hot metal in these, they shrink when cool so it is easy to remove. I''ll pour pure elements on them at room temperature. They''ll stick. Let me use some silicon."


    The way to make my own molds was easy. First I poured carbon inside the molds, making graphite negative-molds. Then I made my own molds out of silicon. This way even if the ingot was stuck inside the mold, I could just move the silicon away to get the ingot. The graphite negative-molds could be used to make more molds out of the recovered silicon. Nothing went to waste.


    Decompose was too handy.


    I started to work frantically to make the molds and during the work made eye contact with Aran. He seemed to be a kid from the slums that entered a toy store. I knew my expression wasn''t too far away from his.


    I went through the pile of magnetite, removing the iron from the rough magnetite and searching for the biggest crystals. Magnets would open a whole slew of things I could do, generators, motors, and other stuff. The magnetite would do while I couldn''t get my hands on a better magnetic material like ferrite. I checked on the computer, my books had the procedure to create ferrite. Even Wikipedia had the procedure in a nutshell. I needed barium or strontium for that. Better keep that in mind.


    I separated about twelve large crystals, the size of a soda can from the ferrite and converted everything else into iron and other stuff that was mixed with the ore like sulfates and silicon. Aran called some apprentices and they carted the literal tons of purified iron ingots I made outside. I left a pile of silicon cubes where the ferrite was. Too bad I couldn''t put sixty-four of them in the same spot.


    Next, I went for the largest pile at the back. It was yellow-black chalcopyrite mixed with malachite and bornite.


    "That''s not gold," Aran quipped.


    I turned around and poked my tongue at him. "This is pyrite, tainted with a lot of copper. In my world, we called this ''fool''s gold''. I know my minerals, master smith!" I faked a pout and stomped my feet.


    "Fool''s gold. A very fitting name for it," He chortled.


    Copper ore. Some iron, a lot of sulfides. After processing the huge pile of copper ore over another hour, I looked around for tin ore. I saw no cassiterite.


    "Not much tin?" I asked the master smith.


    "No," He shook his head, visibly concerned. "We weren''t able to secure much tin ore this time. What little we got is already at the forge. It seems another curse Prince Marduk left on us. He bought almost all the tin ore we had. Without it, we can''t smelt bronze and the copper is too soft.


    "We can''t make the weapons and armor entirely out of steel. It would be too expensive and would eat all our profits. And we can''t charge more for items made of steel when the commission is for bronze items."


    "Well, let''s work on it then."


    The copper ore was mostly copper, iron, sulfur, and oxygen. It had a little sandstone, limestone, granites and other igneous rocks mixed in but the ore grade was very good. I didn''t know how much rock was removed but it seemed to be not much. In fact, the ores in this world were highly suspicious. There were two possible explanations. One, sorcerers that specialized in Earth magic were mining the ores. Or two, the world was designed to be this much mineral-rich.


    I mean, gods and magic were real, who knew which one was true or even if there was another explanation?


    Pushing these thoughts aside, I worked hard on the copper ore. I extracted the beautiful blue salt copper sulfate because that''s exactly what I needed when the wooden boxes arrived. With a couple hundred kilograms of copper sulfate secured, I furiously dismantled all the ores in their elemental components. More ingots of bronze and a few of iron from the pyrite.


    I also got a couple hundred kilograms of aluminum, two dozen of zinc, and some unidentified oxides. I shoved everything else in my ever-growing army of silicon drums filled with stuff I had yet to identify.


    I looked around. After finishing the iron and copper ores, we had gone through more than two-thirds of the warehouse and it felt like lunchtime.


    "I have alternatives. We can make bronze without tin. Do you have zinc? Several bronze alloys can be even better than the standard tin bronze."


    Aran tilted his head and asked, confused. "A rainwater drain?"


    "No, not a rainwater drain (zinnu). It is a type of metal. I had some from the slag and there might be some in the ores we didn''t process yet, Samus took what I had back when he visited me in Abil-Kisu''s estate. Where are the metals he brought?"


    Aran gave me a wry smile and scratched his head. "He smelted everything, trying some combinations."


    "Well, that''s no good. And we will need almost a ton of the metal. We can use the aluminum."


    Samus entered the warehouse. He looked around and smiled.


    "Miss Sandra, you are a godsend! Literally!" The master smith and fire sorcerer bellowed a hearty chortle.


    I poked my tongue at him and sneered. "You don''t say!" I quipped, annoyed.


    "He''s right," Aran nodded, barely holding his mirth. "It would take us the best part of a month to process this much ore."


    "Many thanks. Hungry?" Samus pointed at the door. "We have food ready at the tent. Let''s eat!"


    I uncrossed my arms. "Yes, let''s eat. We can finish everything after restoring our energies. Now, mister Samus, what atrocities did you inflict upon my metals?"


    The big smith flinched. It was funny.

 Afternoon 31, Monday, Bull 23th

    Lunch was salad, fruit, and bread with milk curd. The two master smiths and I were sitting in the tent, away from the searing midday sun and enjoying our food.


    "I''m sorry we don''t have any meat. It''s hard to find any in the market nowadays," Samus apologized for the meal.


    I felt guilt. In Abil-Kisu''s house, there''s a diversity of meat that although didn''t feel out-of-place for someone like me that could walk two blocks out and get almost any kind of vacuum-sealed meat from the supermarket, if I only were a bit more mindful of the situation, it was something extremely odd for a place like this. Remember your history lessons, Sandra. Peasants only ate meat sparingly. To what extent will the food situation push the population? Worse yet, the wholesale slaughter of livestock can be a short-term solution but it would incur long-term problems.


    We had a surplus of vegetable matter. I was sure I could harvest and process the grass from the plateau but to convert it into meat... I would need herbivores to do that. An animal that had a fast turnover. What about rabbits?


    "Are there rabbits or hares around here?" I asked, glad that the words had a proper translation.


    "Yes, in the woods. A good source of meat if you can trap them," Aran answered.


    "Is there any animal people will refrain from eating? For religious reasons or other customs?"


    "I''d eat anything made of meat," Samus boasted, then reflected and added, "Except people, of course."


    Aran laughed to disarm the situation and I smiled at them. The two were from different ethnical groups, Samus looked more European but still had a strong Anatolian influence. He could pass as an ancient Greek back on Earth, one with Turkish ancestors. Aran, on the other hand, had a more Egyptian or Arab feel. His face was broad and his nose was clearly middle-eastern. They had clearly different backgrounds but they behaved as brothers.


    "Even the giant monster ants of the grass plateau?" I teased. He scowled but then nodded.


    "Are they even edible?" Samus asked.


    "No idea," I shrugged then looked toward the north. "I intend to find out soon and I''m glad you volunteered to try them with me. What about rats?"


    "I''ve eaten rat before," He confessed, a little ashamed. "Not my first choice. People in the slums eat them when they can. But why the sudden interest?"


    "A few days ago I was nominated Minister of Agriculture and Development by the Enshi. So, it kinda became my job to solve the food scarcity."


    "It makes sense," Aran broke his silence, "If the Enshi is making this many weapons and armor to go to war, he will need a good supply train. The farmers that stayed behind are unable to support the army as it is now."


    Odd. If Nephew was going to send the army out, who would build the damned ziggurat? Wasn''t he going to invite the remnants of Marduk''s army to join him?


    "Where did you hear that? As far as I know, he won''t send the army out."


    After a pause to ponder, Aran replied, "You should know more than that, your excellency," He jokingly addressed me formally, "But yes, we didn''t hear it anywhere. A large order of weapons and armor like this can only mean war, though."


    "Yes, we are making weapons and armor nonstop for days now," Samus added. "The apprentices are all tired from working the forge and anvil from sunrise to sunset."


    That wasn''t good. "Were there too many accidents?" It was the first question that came up. Overworking would surely lead to dire consequences. And as I watched their reaction to my question, I knew I nailed it.


    "Yes," Aran shook his head dejectedly. "Two apprentices. One hammered his own hand and another poured molten metal on his legs."


    "They are done for, poor kids. We sent them back home with what coin we could spare," Samus completed.


    No deaths so far, but that couldn''t continue. I looked at my plate and finished my food in silence. Then I stood up.


    "As a minister, is there anyone between the Enshi and me?" I asked more as a rhetorical question. I knew I only answered to Nephew. It was time to flex those bureaucratic muscles.


    "No. The prime minister, but he was recently executed for treason," Samus shook his head.


    Good that they knew that. Next, I needed to know whose bunions I''d be stepping on.


    "Who placed the commission for weapons and armor? The general?"


    "It came from the guard, but we don''t know. We are being paid even though it is at a reduced rate, so we didn''t ask."


    I sighed. Standing up from my cushions, I met each of them eye to eye. They too were tired but they were strong and resilient. I didn''t doubt they pulled several all-nighter forging sessions before during times of emergency. But they were dear to me. The smithy was like a second, or third home to me.


    "Good. I promised you I''d clean up the smithy, and I intend to do so right now. On my authority as a minister, I am now requisitioning the entire smithy," I said. "You will be paid the standard market rate plus a fifteen percent emergency bonus. Gentlemen, go out and stop the bellows. Weapon and armor manufacture is suspended until my projects are done.


    "What are you waiting for, gawking at me like that? It is a ministerial order, execute it immediately! Send anyone that objects to talk to me directly. Or to the Enshi."


    The two smiths exchanged a glance and nodded at the same time. A mischievous smile crept on Aran''s face, while Samus'' gaze became fierce. Both smiths stood up.


    "Your will be done, your Excellency!" Aran bowed. "Samus, it is time to use ''that''."


    "About time we kicked those damned soldiers out!" Samus barreled out of the tent.


    I saw him grabbing something on his way out but I couldn''t discern what it was. It looked like a weapon sheath or...


    A horn.


    The sound of a horn blowing soon quenched all the hammering. The smiths stopped working and I could hear the roar of coal being burnt in the central forge. Soon the suction noises of the bellows also stopped. Everyone was looking at us. Samus shouted.


    "Okay, everyone! We were requisitioned by the Minister of Agriculture and Development. All of you store your current projects for later now. Quench those ingots! We are all taking a break! Keep the forge lit though."


    I could see relief in the soot-smeared faces of the smiths and apprentices. And also the outrage of the soldiers. Several of them were already coming our way. One of them had the makings of a captain on his uniform tunic, just like Brandon.


    "What nonsense is that!" The captain roared from a distance at the same time he closed in. "What minister is that? I demand an answer! Get back to work!"


    From the way he seemed flustered, it seemed as if there were power struggles inside the government. The guard is not under-equipped and also not recruiting if I dared say I guess there''s a lot of gear left behind by the deserters. So why are these guys commandeering the smithy to make weapons and armor for themselves? And the Enshi is not that poor to resort to bullying members of the council for discounts. And this captain seemed too suspicious. Working the smiths to death?


    I took a step forward and mentally called Dime. He''d be here in less than a minute. I steeled myself. Time to win an Academy Award?. Channel your inner Natalie Portman.


    "The smiths stopped under my orders, Captain. I was not assigned as Minister of Agriculture and Development by the Enshi to watch the smiths suffer and die while you cart away weapons that aren''t necessary right now. I''m Sandra Rinaldi, by the way."


    I extended my hand with the palm and fingers pointing away and down from me and smiled at the captain. He scowled and looked at my hand as if it was dirty.


    "Woman, do not test my patience. I can execute you for sedition right here," The Captain barked. The word he used could also mean treason or insurrection. He turned his head over his shoulder and shouted. "Guards. Arrest these three!"


    I put my hand in my pocket and checked with the blessed sandstone tablet. This captain was not one of Tarhun''s.


    "This sword of yours leaves its sheath or one of you soldiers touch one of us, and you''ll regret!" I uttered a subdued threat.


    I''d like to say I was brave and daring but the guy was huge and I was slightly intimidated. Fortunately, that was all the time Dime needed to reach us. The presence of the mighty and rather irate bird gave me an injection of confidence.


    *SCREEEECH*


    The sky-lord soared over the Captain''s head, forcing him to duck. The giant eagle banked over us and landed on one of the support poles of the tent behind me, with his back to us. Dime then turned his neck a full one-eighty, something birds could do that always unsettled me. And to think they had the same amount of neck vertebrae than us humans. Giraffes too.


    The Captain hesitated as he took his time to analyze the new threat. A soldier approached from behind and shouted.


    "Requesting to report, sir! I know this lady! She''s the one that ran laps the whole morning in the garrison. She''s related to Captain Al-Amir."


    Related? I object... Oh, well. Whatever defuses this situation.


    Fact, I really needed to sit down with Brandon and have "the talk" with him. What would we do going forward? This distancing might even be beneficial as it gave me room to breathe and think about the subject.


    You see, I really didn''t mind and was even looking forward to becoming his spouse, under two conditions. One, no Ishta-brothel? for me and two, we enter marriage as equals. Three, I''m not going to be a glorified baby-making machine. I understand that they try to have as many kids as they can because children die like flies but really? It''s been four months, almost two weeks since we moved into Abil-Kisu''s place and I haven''t even HEARD the baby cry. Not even see his wife. Or put my hands on that chubby cute cuddly little poop-making bio-machine.


    Yeah. At most three kids. That''s fine. I already have what, sixteen kids, under my wing? That''s a bloody lot. Not one, being a single child sucks and I can say that with all the authority in the world. Worlds.


    But to do that, Brandon had to return. Stupid military missions. Why couldn''t Marduk''s soldiers just go home? I mean, people don''t think too much about armies after a war, but there''s a gruesome business. They say that in some places in Europe you can''t dig without finding human bones from the middle-ages. Yeah, I''d like to see some movie, even one with a medieval setting. Or any movie, to be honest. I miss the popcorn, and sitting in a cozy chair, lay back and dream of being someone else for two hours.


    Movies lately either are too long or too short. It is hard to find a good balance between telling a good story and spending too much time. Peter Jackson is the greatest offender. He took a three hundred page book and turned into nine hours of movie. No, no. Even if you showed me Mr. Bloom''s elven goodness for nine hours, that was too much.


    I wish he returned soon.


    Why were people yelling at me?


    Oh.


    "Is something the matter?" I asked them.


    I noticed that the two smiths and the Captain were in a heated argument. The officer glared at me and rattled his jaw. He was furious.


    "What are you daydreaming about, woman? I don''t care who you are bedding to gain--"


    My ears burned. I clenched my teeth and found a wellspring of indignation rising up like bile in my throat. I rushed forward without a second thought.


    *SLAP*


    I reached for the sword at his waist but he was gripping the pommel with his left hand. I overshot the crossguard and ran an open hand over the scabbard, using Decompose.


    I met the fury in his eyes with the same amount of my own and both of us knew we were irreconcilable. I shouted while he digested the humiliation. "Guards, arrest this man!"


    Sandra used ''bitch slap''. It''s super effective. Captain''s morale sharply decreased. Captain was afflicted with enrage.


    The captain was enraged. Captain drew his sword.


    Captain''s sword has no blade. He drew only the hilt and the crossguard. I Decomposed the blade while I distracted him with the slap. He dropped the now-useless piece of metal and cursed.


    "Stupid wench!"


    He punched me as he spoke, a solid lightning-fast right hook to my cheek.


    I saw pretty stars, the stars became black holes and then the world turned sideways and everyone became giants. I tasted blood in my mouth.


    I was so impressed and smug on how I neutralized his weapon that I couldn''t react. The man must be some war veteran to have such reflexes. No hesitation on his part whatsoever. , I noticed I was lying down on the ground, reeling in pain from the solid blow. I could feel a tiny amount of magic power spent to cushion the punch and the energy flowing to my recovery boon.


    From the ground where I laid, I pointed a finger at him and screamed.


    "Arrest the Captain or I''ll accuse every single guardsmen here of treason! This man assaulted a Minister of the City!"


    Nephew could even gain brownie points with the military by sparing this man from the execution. Because I was pretty sure that the penalty for his crime was death. Even with my cheek swelling from the punch, I didn''t want to see him dead.


    You see, they didn''t have the concept of putting people in jail as a punishment. A criminal was either sold as a slave, maimed, or killed. Hooray, Hammurabi.


    Around me, Aran was holding back an equally-enraged Samus. The apprentice smiths were gathered around the forges, watching. The guards were frozen with indecision as to whom they should support.


    And the Captain did not sit idle. He loomed over me and drew a dagger from his belt.


    *KREEEEE!*


    Dime dove from his perch and raked at the Captain''s eyes with his claws. The bird opened several large gashes from the man''s cheeks to the eyebrows before he beat his wings and gained altitude again. I was hit with blood droplets. The man dropped his dagger next to me and brought his hands to his face. Screaming in pain, he fell to his knees. There was a lot of blood pouring out from the wounds and I hoped that the eyes themselves weren''t hurt even though a dark part of me wished for him to go to hell.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I crawled away from him and climbed back on my feet.


    "What are you waiting for?" I shouted at the guards. "Go fetch a healer! You two. Come here and hold him still. Someone get me a lot of water!"


    Truthfully, this world was barbaric. Life, even one''s own, was as cheap as what most of these people hoped for was to live long enough to leave offspring after them. Their laws and punishments reflected that. I mean, their notion of a fair trial was to tie someone to a rope and toss them in the river. Or a big gaping bottomless hole. People exposed to such things for a long period would become numb to the horror. It was like when London ate the mining town at the opening credits for the city-on-wheels flop of a book adaptation. The citizens were cheering on London''s deck while fellow humans died below.


    And I was afraid I was showing signs of becoming numb too. I was torn between being glad that he wouldn''t be a nuisance anymore and the dread of having blinded a man.


    The guards pinned the wounded officer on the ground and I used Decompose to purify the water by separating it into a different container. I washed his wounds. The eyelids were badly scratched. But the eyes themselves...


    I couldn''t see a thing with all the bleeding and struggling.


    It was impossible to check the state of the man''s eyeballs. I summoned some regrown wet wipes, no longer wet, a PET bottle and the bag with the glucose grains. I moved some of the sugar to the bottle and hold it with both hands, using Decompose to break the glucose into alcohol. I see the crystals break and become liquid, the liquid bubbling from the carbon dioxide being released. I also break some of the glucose into the water and gather the free carbon as a pellet at the bottom.


    With the alcohol-soaked wet wipe, I cleaned the man''s gashes, regretting that they would become terrible scars. He screamed even more as the alcohol stung his wounds, but it was better than getting an infection. I took a sip from the bottle and my head spins. Too sweet, too alcoholic. At least one masked the other.


    "Lift his head, make him drink this."


    Two swigs and the Captain were in dreamland. With more reconstructed dry wipes, I removed all the blood and check the eyeballs. Dime was an apex predator. If it weren''t for my invulnerable eyes, he wouldn''t submit to me. Unfortunately, the eagle was flawless in his execution. The man''s eyeballs were torn in the middle, right over the irises. Ruined. And as far as I knew, healing magic was not a thing.


    With a sigh, I pointed at the guards holding him. "Keep his face clean and four of you take him away. The others, form up. I have some news for you."


    This way I can send the most loyal men with their snow-blind Captain and turn the others to my side. As expected, the two holding him and two others gathered and picked up the captain to carry him away. I looked down, shook my head. Another day where I had to either bleed or draw blood myself. Overhead, Dime circled like a vulture, beaming pride over our emotional bond.


    Eyes surely have a very special meaning for him. It''s his symbol of dominance. I wonder what he''d do if he had to fight against the thing with forty eyes.


    "Sandra, how are you. Here, put this ointment where he punched you," Samus said with a smelly paste. I could swear it was rotten.


    "I''ll heal on my own, thanks? Why the sour face? Is it looking bad? Oh, it IS looking bad!"


    "It looks like you were trampled by a whole chariot company," The smith said candidly. "And all of them got only your cheek and eye."


    I bathed in the brine pool. I bathed in goblin blood. I slept over the carbonized remains of the lich. I can handle one ointment.


    "Is it magical?" I asked, still wary of the thing.


    "Ask Nanna about it. She was the one that gave me it. It is good for burns and bruises and both softens and moistens the skin."


    "Sold!" I took a dab of the paste and smeared my face.


    Yes, it was swollen as I''d slipped into that heavyweight champion''s hotel room. Funny enough, it stopped smelling once it came into contact with my bruise.


    "Thank you, Samus. I''m glad you didn''t do anything to put you in trouble. Now," I summoned my tent and took a five-kilogram blanket of jerky out before I sent the tent back. "See that your apprentices all have their fair share of this, while I take care of your smithy with my new recruits..."


    I looked at the soldiers that stayed behind. They were all lined up and standing at attention. I counted them. Fourteen men.


    "That''s a bounty!" Samus gasped. "HEY ARAN! CHECK WHAT SANDRA GOT US!"


    Deo, is that you?


    I left the smiths to take care of their own and inspected my new troop. Dime was still circling over their heads and cawing them into compliance.


    "Gentlemen. As of now, you are working under me. I''m the Minister of Agriculture and Development, Sandra Rinaldi. And as for your first task, you are to clean up the whole smithy. I want you to sweep all the metal shavings, scraps, and dirt and pile it all right over... there!" I pointed at an open space. "One will fill barrels with well water, four of you will clear the slag pit and bring all the slag and debris to the pile. You may ask the smiths for tools and brooms to clean up. Go."


    I shaped the silicon into barrels and sent the guards on their tasks.


    I created a recliner and a beach umbrella out of silicon and laid down to rest while the men did their work. I mean, supervise their work. I confess I needed a break. The ointment and my recovery worked double-time to restore my face. I was sure that punch would be a concussion on anyone else. I''d probably lose a few teeth too.


    I rested for one hour, and the soldiers worked like ants to prove their worth. Dime kept harassing them with surprise swoops and close calls and I let the bird do his thing. My elegant and vicious sky-lord knew how annoyed I was at them and at myself, for letting the situation escalate like that. Now that my cheek wasn''t stinging and burning anymore, I thought on what I could''ve done to avoid blinding the Captain. I snapped and let my anger get the best of me.


    One hour later, I decided to get off my recliner and rejoin all the productive members of society. The sounds of hammering were replaced by snoring as I approached the pavillion tent. Inside, on the cushions and pillows, the smiths and apprentices were sleeping, happy faces and less empty bellies. My eyes met Samus'' and I called him with the universal come hither finger wiggle.


    We went to Samus'' private smithy, the first smithy where they began their metalworking business. It used to open at a secondary street and they bought the other lots in their block over several years to create the huge complex they used now. With Samus'' fire sorcery, they dominated the market and pretty much pushed the other smiths out of town. Or hired them.


    "If you wanted some cool recipe for a new metal alloy, you should''ve asked me, Samus," I told the master blacksmith.


    He even managed to make some alloys, I mean, There''s little chance to mess up catastrophically when all you are doing is melting different metals together. He made some strange combinations and some that were even very close to some known (to Earthlings) alloy, but in the end, he didn''t even have the proper instruments to measure things like hardness, elasticity, tensile strength, etc.


    "I got this one," He showed me a yellow metal ingot.


    I picked it up and sensed the ingot''s composition. Aluminum and copper. Aluminum bronze, he got one right even though there was too much aluminum.


    "Pretty good!" I praised him honestly.


    "If you can get me more of this ''A-L'', we can make all our bronze items with it. It could be one particular trademark of our smithy. Gold bronze."


    "Aluminum bronze," I corrected him, "And you used too much aluminum. We will try again, but this time let me check the right proportions."


    I separated the metals. One fun thing about metalworking with Decompose is that you can always recycle a hundred percent of your materials. Shavings, swarf, scraps. I summoned my computer and checked my material properties guide.


    "Try 5% Iron, 5% Nickel, and 12% Aluminum, The balance is all copper."


    He had a scale. It reminded me of my broken digital scale. We measured the metals, put them in the crucible and smelted the alloy. Samus used his fire magic on the crucible.


    "This gives me resistance to the heat, allows me to control the temperature and check on the metals at a distance," He explained even though I didn''t ask. "I must say, it is easier to do it with you here."


    "What?" That last remark confused me.


    "Your magic seeps into the environment and makes it easier for us sorcerers to use our own. It is like you are a torrential rain over very dry land. There''s not much ambient magic to work with normally but with you here? There''s plenty."


    Was that the reason Tarhun limited my magic pool to half its theoretical maximum capacity? So I would go around and magick up the environment? I reminded of the enchanted eyes, Nanna shooing me away from her liver potions, and the immediate effects of her magic-sealing cursed amulet. The amulet stopped me from leaking so the inexistent upper half of my magic pool filled up too. I remember clearly when the amulet broke that I could feel the power overflow from me.


    For the next two hours, I went out to Decompose all the trash the guards gathered, purify the water from the well and seal the silicon barrels, and prepare more materials for Samus to smelt bronze with. I retrieved almost eighty kilograms of iron from the slag pits and the debris. In a pinch, they could re-smelt the slag and the debris, but it was a pain to separate all the dross. Not to mention it skewed the ratio of the alloys.


    I was finishing with the dirt pile when a soldier came from the gate.


    "Milady Minister, there are some craftsmen with your order at the gates. Woodworkers, I believe."


    "Oh, the boxes. Please let them in, I''m eager to get to work on them. And be polite! They are doing me a favor."


    The woodworkers'' wagon entered and I soon had all forty of my boxes. The same man I talked with earlier today warned me.


    "The resin is still drying, milady. I think it will take at least two days for the boxes to be useable."


    "That''s fine. Thank you, master. Is there any additional costs I should cover?"


    The man quickly shook his head. "No. The lady was too generous already. I thank you for the opportunity, milady Minister."


    I could only fathom at the level of abuse government officials inflicted on the population to make the master carpenter so afraid of me. I smiled and sent him on his way.


    I set the boxes on a workbench and carefully placed my hand inside without touching anything. All the resin should be in the range of my power. I first spent five minutes to get the correct resonance and then used my power to speed up the natural drying and curing process of the resin. The hard part was to hold back and not overdo it and age the resin too much. I acted until I felt that the resin wasn''t changing anymore. I tested and it was well-cured. I repeated the process on all boxes and moved on to the next step.


    I measured the inside of the boxes and created two molds for the metal plates to fit inside out of silicon, my go-to material for pretty much everything. Too bad it was brittle or I''d have a castle built already. Using decompose, I poured copper in one mold and magnesium on the other. The thickness of the plates was different. The magnesium one was thicker. I could guarantee a smooth surface by using Decompose and a scraper to smooth the metal as if it were putty.


    Next, I needed a clip to hold the plates in place. The boxes looked like cubes on the outside, twenty centimeters long. The inside was split in the middle, making two rectangles roughly twenty by ten centimeters in size. Each of these would be one voltaic cell and each box would result in a five-volt energy cell. With forty of them, I could link them in parallel or series to go from two hundred volts or keep it at five volts and get a good amperage. This setup would solve all of my energy problems. It wasn''t as mobile as the solar charger as each box would weight almost ten kilograms when fully furnished but it worked regardless of the weather and time of the day. Or night.


    After measuring the middle and the thickness of the plates, I made sheets of aluminum with a few millimeters of thickness. I cut and welded the pieces until I had a set of clips that would fit over the lip of the box, hold the magnesium and copper plates on each side and provide the electrical contact for the current. After testing the prototype, I made a mold out of silicon and mass-produced the clips. Then I had to make another set of clips for a single plate because the one I had wouldn''t work to join two boxes together. I did make interlocking fittings to join the boxes and ensure electrical contact though.


    Finally, each end clip had a convenient lip protruding up where an electrical probe could easily be attached to pull the electricity from that spot.


    I had to adjust here and there using pliers but after an hour of work, I had clips and plates to fit in all the boxes. I was so absorbed in my work that I didn''t notice Aran watching me work.


    "Don''t just stand there watching me like some creep. Come here and help me assemble this!"


    He gave me a wry smile. "I just came to tell you that Samus finished your armor. He asked if you could go there and test the fit."


    "Oh, perfect. Let''s go."


    I left the clips and plates on the workbench, stored my Earth items and went to Samus'' private workshop. He had a pile of golden bronze ingots already.


    "Sandra! I finished your armor while I waited for the metal to smelt. Look how beautiful it is."


    My titanium mail. The ends were all with the interlocking clasps and it looked gorgeous. For a suit of armor. I could see it no longer had that square fit, looking more like a dress made of metal. I put on the arming doublet and slid the armor over my head with Aran''s assistance. The finished set of armor weighed around three to four kilograms. It fit on my body like a glove. The links had some room to stretch and the mail was taut against the doublet, without any slack except around the skirt.


    "Did you like it?" Aran asked.


    "I loved it. It does not hinder my movements at all."


    "Tie the belt around your waist to help take some of the weight off your shoulders," Samus suggested. "Also, there are some links you have to close since you didn''t want any rivets on the chain."


    I did the final adjustments and the armor was officially ready. Mirror polish. The skirt went a little above my knees and had two slits on the sides, a little to the back, to facilitate movement. The sleeves went up to the elbows and the neckline left my nape and solar plexus exposed. I wish they were covered but it was inevitable because my head had to go through the hole.


    "Now," Aran said, "You put on this arming cap and let''s try the coif."


    I tied my hair and put on the woolen cap over my head. Aran then slid over my head the chain coif. It left my face and jaw open but that was it. The coif went over the hauberk and covered the nape and neckline entirely.


    I summoned my phone and my first impression as I took a selfie was that I was about to go to a cosplay party. It was the real deal, however. The coif added another kilogram of weight. I was sure I could get used to the weight of the armor.


    I grinned and made some poses as I snapped a dozen selfies with my new armor and the smiths. After taking the photos, I singled out one of the apprentices that used to take slag to my house.


    "Hello, what is your name?"


    "I''m called Sao-Akitu, milady," He replied, clearly embarrassed.


    I beamed him a friendly smile. "Sao-Akitu, what a splendid name. Were you born in the new year?" His name meant ''new years'' bounty''.


    I could see a gleam of light caught in his eyes as he nodded. "Indeed, milady."


    "Could you do something for me? Get two of your fellow apprentices and two of these guards, and go to my house. There are soldiers garrissoned there. The two guards are to stay there and I want a squad of eight soldiers to return with you," I told him as I summoned one of my regenerated no-longer-wet wipes and gave him. "This will work as proof that you are working for me. Now, go."


    I folded the napkin and sent them on their way. Once they were outside the gate, I turned around and clapped my hands.


    "Good. Now let''s add some color to this armor, shall we?" Both smiths gave me confused looks. "Come with me, I''ll show you what I mean."


    "Are you going to paint the armor?" Aran asked.


    "Better. I''m going to use... lightning to give it color."


    "Oh, I want to see this. Can you wait just a few minutes for me to finish the last batch of bronze?"


    "Last?" I asked.


    "Last, latest," He dismissed the confusion. "I''ll probably smelt more tomorrow, but I''m done for today."


    I removed the coif and the hauberk and returned to my workbench with Aran. We put all the clips and plates in place and I filled the compartments with purified water.


    "I''m adding the last material now," I warned Aran, "Once I''m done, the elec... lightning it generates can be harmful. Do not touch any of the metal parts."


    I added the copper sulfate to the water and stirred to dissolve the salt.


    Samus, some soldiers and a lot of curious smiths circled us. I made a silicon tub underneath the workbench and filled it with water and common table salt. This would be the bath to anodize the titanium. A wire here and a wire there and I was ready to roll.


    After making sure I removed as much oxygen I could from the surface of the titanium without messing with the armor itself, I dunked the armor and coif in the tub and ran the electricity. By changing the position of the probe along with the interlocking boxes, I could change the voltage in increments of 2.69 volts.


    Around twenty volts the armor became brown. Then a deep violet, royal blue, blue, light blue, yellow, orange, pink, red, and dark purple. I upped the voltage to hundred-something volts and parts of the armor became turquoise but most stayed dark purple.


    The book warned that green was hard to obtain. Even stirring the armor around with the probe didn''t change the results. I disconnected the probes and retrieved the armor.


    I looked at the spectators that were silently watching all this time. I expected them to ask questions but it seemed it was not the case.


    "This way I can obtain any color I want. Except for green. But we are not doing green."


    Aran''s mouth opened in an ear-to-ear grin. "That''s amazing! How does it work?"


    "The lightning from the boxes forces the metal to acquire a specific type of... coating. If you scrape this coating, the metal underneath is still the same dull gray as before. I guess that the armor will have to be ''anodized'' after every major combat, but that''s not a problem. And yes, some metals can be ''anodized'' too but they are rare."


    To demonstrate, I touched a part of the armor and expelled the oxygen, removing the color. I would redo the whole piece to get the color I wanted anyway. I went over the whole suit removing all the oxides from the rings and prepared to anodize again. Now that I knew the exact voltage I wanted, I placed the probes ten cells apart and dunked both the armor and coif.


    I let the current run and even shifted the location of the probe until the entire armor was beautifully colored...


    Royal blue.


    Were you expecting pink? Oh, well. I''m not that girly. And since I can only change my voltage in increments of 2.69 volts, I couldn''t get the right shade of pink. Besides it is better for... stealth purposes. Yes, let''s go with that.


    I went to the warehouse to don my chain armor with some privacy and found out why squires were a must. It is a pain to don the mail alone. Especially over the arming doublet. And the cap combined with the coif heated up my head like it was stuck in an oven. Not to mention the loss of hearing. Not only the cap covered the ears, the mail rings of the coif clinking on each other drowned other noises. And to think a helmet would go over the coif.


    That was the reason why knights spoke so loudly. They couldn''t hear each other in combat. Also the reason Roman helmets went around the ears. Good coordination won battles more than leaving that spot enclosed lost.


    I went outside and felt the gaze of every soldier and smith present fall on me. I knew that my sparkling royal blue armor was a unique piece in this entire world. Look, I''m wearing titanium armor. Take that, fantasy!


    "How do I look?" I dropped the ages-old compliment-fishing question.


    One that men still failed to answer properly to this day. How difficult it is to just lay down proper praise, even if fake? No. They have to analyze. Formulate an opinion. Give suggestions, for crying out loud! I asked ''how do I look'', not ''what can I do to improve''. C''mon, be cheesy, load up on those adjectives and metaphors. Don''t dissect the outfit or the appearance like a sports commentator.


    "Yes, we need to add bracers and greaves now," Samus spoke.


    "Won''t the helmet scratch the ''anno-dizzy" color?" Aran added.


    See what I meant?


    I went back inside, removed the stupid coif and stupider deafening cap, and put on the black dress over the armor. I chose this one for today exactly because it had all sorts of adjustable straps. Pulling the dress over the armor was a pain and I vowed to hire a female squire for me. In fact, I should hire all the marriable females in the city. Then Nephew wouldn''t have anyone to put to work at his Ista-brothel.


    I cackled like a villain.


    And the dress finally slid down over the mail armor. It felt stuffy but after messing with the straps for a few minutes, it felt natural. The fabric was thick enough to hide the pattern of the links. I went back outside, wearing two skirts and trousers at the same time. I felt restrained but it was a matter of learning to walk in armor. I checked the sun''s position. One or two hours of sunlight left.


    I had to check on my other gifts. Time to re-visit the warehouse.

 Evening 31, Monday, Bull 23th

    Did Peter Weller had to live with all the metal bits clinking and banging against each other? But his was seamless metal plating so it might be easier but I bet all those servos whirring would drive someone crazy. Unless his audio receptors could filter out the noise. Maybe I can get used to that but I doubted that.


    At least the day''s heat was slowly seeping away into the cloudless sky and it was bearable to wear the padded arming doublet under the mail armor. Layers, layers. Samus did a wonderful job of fitting the mail to my body. It is really like a second skin.


    I''m made of titanium. Not! Silly girl.


    At least the darkness of the moonless night wouldn''t stop me from savoring my delicious bounty of strange and seemingly useless - to the natives - ores. But those same natives would soon retire for the day and I had to give them instructions.


    I called Aran to the tent and we sat on the cushions. I summoned my laptop and showed him some designs.


    "Aran, I have some projects I need to show you. Those are official commissions from the ministry. You and your smiths are to craft these devices here until I tell you to stop. Don''t push yourselves though."


    "I understand, your eminence, sorry," he withdrew his joke once I gave him a hard stare. "It will be done, Sandra. We need some molds but they don''t seem too hard to make."


    The designs I showed him were for two mouse traps. One was a rolling pin with four paddles. The rat would climb on the pin and inevitably cause it to roll. The paddles would push the rat down on a bucket where he could be captured or exterminated. The second one was a walking plank. A spring at the bottom would hold the plank until the rat was too far ahead to back off then dump the rodent down. Both were relatively easy to make and I needed hundreds of them.


    The rodent infestation of the city had to go. There was not enough food to keep the rat population going. And the rats themselves could become food. I did not like the prospect but I was sure I could at least convert the rodents into nutrients or do something else with their organic compounds.


    Next, I showed him the schematics for a snatch block. Two metal plates with a pulley in the middle, it could be easily attached around a cable to allow for traction. I was planning to build granaries and grain silos. Not to mention working at my mine and lifting things around. Also some hooks and fixed pulleys.


    "Your priority is the rat traps. You make the pulleys later. I don''t expect them to be perfect in the first run or even exactly like what I showed you. Take it easy and so long the pieces are functional, it is fine. And for you, I have a little challenge."


    Time to reinvent the wheel!


    I showed Aran the blueprints for one little device that would change the world. Ball bearings. Back on Earth, we took them for granted, but their contribution is invaluable. The biggest challenge would be to make the perfect spherical balls and the fittings.


    "Can I copy this to a piece of parchment?" He asked after looking at the design for a while.


    "Sure."


    Some time went by with only the sound of the pen scratching the parchment. Then Aran pointed at the screen.


    "Are these bands flanged? It seems so but I can''t be sure."


    The drawings were static so I couldn''t pan and rotate them like 3D models.


    "Yes. The big one has a groove on the inside, and the small one has a groove on the outside. Once assembled, the balls will spin between the inner and outer bands, greatly reducing the friction. Your biggest challenge will be the balls. They have to be perfect spheres. You don''t worry about it, just give it some thought. Tomorrow I''ll be here and we can see if we can''t make a machine that can make spheres for us.


    "But if we can get these ball..."


    And there we were again. They had no word for ''bearing''. The best I could get was ''gurguru'' that meant ''rolling pin''. Close enough but I was sick with this chronic lack of vocabulary. It was time for me to introduce my own neologisms.


    "These are called ''Ball be-ri-n-gu''. Ball bearings. A ''beringu'' is a kind of ''rolling pin'' but with balls instead of a pin. You can attach them to wheels and they will spin with much less resistance."


    "Ball bearings!" The natural curiosity of the smith made his eyes shine.


    "Yes. And if we can make them out of the golden bronze Samus and I made, we can later make grease to use as a lubricant. The golden bronze has great resistance to corrosion."


    Aran chuckled. "It won''t be easy to make him part with that metal."


    "Nonsense!" I protested. "The only thing that makes aluminum bronze so special is because nobody in this world except me can refine aluminum. But between you and me, aluminum is too easy to obtain. It is literally the third most common thing in the ground underneath us. And if you think it is so valuable, you just get all the copper you can. We can become filthy rich if you can pull it out."


    He grinned from ear to ear. "Maybe becoming rich isn''t too bad. But isn''t there a way to smelt this ''aluminon'' of yours without your powers?"


    I shook my head. "No. Unfortunately, we need a lot of electricity. See the boxes outside, the ones I used to color my armor? We would need a whole castle of those boxes if we wanted to refine aluminum. I can show you the machines that make them. Let me use the computer for a while."


    My metallurgy books had pictures of a bauxite foundry. I showed him the picture and the smith froze.


    "Everything is made of metal. Look at the size of this warehouse! Is that a person down there? Everything seems so huge! And that hanging cylinder, what might that be?"


    Can you imagine the face a physicist would make if they were shown a picture of the inside of a black hole? I can''t, but I imagined it would be pretty much like what Aran looked like at that moment.


    "I think it is a crucible."


    Dear journal, I broke the smith.


    I was about to show him more pictures of the metallurgic industry of the early XXI century when something happened outside. There were an argument and men were shouting. I tapped the computer and sent it back to storage before standing up and rushing outside. The weight of the armor shifted my balance a bit but nothing too troublesome. I ran past the canvas flaps and saw a lot of guards arguing.


    It seems the detachment of guards I called from the ministry arrived and they were arguing with the other guards that were part of the now-blind Captain''s men. These men were soldiers first and foremost since the city''s standing army was also the guard and police. And if there was one thing Stephen Lang taught me besides not using slow and dumb massive civilian aircraft on hazardous electronic-black airspace was that you need to show soldiers who''s the boss.


    I inhaled, tensed my diaphragm, aimed at the ceiling of my mouth, and shouted with the best angry voice projection I could muster.


    "ATTENTION! FORM UP NOW! DOUBLE RANK!"


    My voice didn''t break and my sharp soprano found its frequency bandwidth unhindered by the bickering soldiers'' voices.


    "Milady minister!"


    The soldiers from the ministry quickly formed up while the others stopped to decide if they should seize the opportunity to attack or just fall in with the others. From his perch on the roof of the smithy, Dime decided for them.


    *SKREEEEK*


    The apex predator knew where to stand to make the most of the fading afternoon sun. He spread his wings wide and cast a huge shadow over the soldiers. That and the memory of that he did to the captain was enough.


    I knew I had to look fierce. I used a little mental trick I read Jim Carey speak in an interview. He''d visualize and image train what he wanted to act like, how to interact. He''d use his experiences to draw the emotions he needed to act. I only had to think of Nephew and Marduk''s schemings to get my blood boiling.


    "What in heaven''s name are you thinking? We are here working our butts off to save this city from starvation and you are there helping cull the ranks of our own soldiers? SHAME! All of you, no! All of us are in the same boat! We either survive together or we''ll be swallowed up by the starving hordes. I can''t stop the soldiers from Elamitar from entering town since the very wise Enshi gracefully invited them to work on his ziggurat.


    "Now, I believe most of you have family and friends here. I know I do. You will either help me make sure they are all healthy and alive at the end of this or I''ll make sure you won''t be a hindrance to that goal.


    "Am.


    "I.


    "Clear, soldiers?"The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    *KRAAAAK*


    At the end of my speech, my pretend anger turned into real anger. I could feel my cheeks burn. Sensing my emotional state, Dime was about to jump on them. The fact that they would consider my speech a death threat given their cultural baggage wasn''t missed on me but right then all I wanted was to beat them into submission and it wasn''t my fault that they misunderstood me. I couldn''t spare the time to educate them. The first waves of recruited deserters would come back any day now.


    "Yes, milady minister!" one of the soldiers from the ministry shouted back. "I speak for our group, we all share the same feeling. What the lady has done is already amazing. We''ll support you."


    The others nodded in agreement.


    "Good. I promise you I will dote you with boons and deal out punishment only when needed," I told them, trying to erase my villainous threats from their minds. "And now we secured the smithy to help us. And it means we have to protect the place. We have new recruits and I want them fully assimilated into our working schedule. Break them down in groups. Two veterans, two recruits. We will work in groups of four from now on.


    "I want two groups, eight soldiers to stay behind and protect the smithy from outside threats. Outside threats. The smiths and apprentices are not to be harassed. Another group will go to the craftsmen''s street and help patrol the place. I want the patrols replaced every half-day. The others are to return to base and wait for new orders. The first schedule is to be decided between you. I''ll later organize the groups."


    The ones that spent all these days with me back at the villa quickly assert their dominance over the new recruits and decide on the teams. Eight soldiers remain and the others march out. With that out of the way, I could focus on the really important bits.


    Not rats, not food, not poor soil condition, not the destabilized moonless world, not politics, not orgies, not the god''s game, not sharing tech.


    Ores.


    Sweet, shiny, colorful, sparkly, mysterious ores.


    The sun was dipping on the horizon behind the mountains. I should calculate how tall they were compared to our location, triangulate their distance and height. But they weren''t snow-covered so there was some sort of anomaly going on. With rampaging moon-knocking Harbingers and scheming gods, I guess anything goes. I looked around. The smithy was sparkly clean. Nothing holding me from spending some time in the warehouse.


    The soldiers decided on the grouping by themselves and most of them left. The eight that stayed behind will prevent any larceny from hurting my precious metalworking friends. I went to the warehouse and checked the situation. Nothing seemed disturbed from the last time I was here. The magical light of the three goblin eyes shining from the beams would allow me to work into the night.


    The excitement I felt was much like playing Pokemon and trying to fill that portable encyclopedia with all the critters but mine was the periodic table. And I hadn''t worked hard at filling it. Time to change it. I should first go through the barrels of residue from the ores I Decomposed for the smiths. Aran graciously asked no questions once I showed him that none of the metals they wanted was left in the residue even though I knew he saw the tiny gold flakes mixed with the leftover dust.


    Approaching them, I thought that these silicon barrels were really useful. the material was inert, very resistant to corrosion and sturdy, with a hardness of 6.5, although brittle and heavier than a wooden one. So long it didn''t receive any shock or had to be moved around, it was a perfect storage for sensitive or hazardous materials. I could store a lot of pure water in them, or other chemicals that didn''t corrode silica If I let the oxide layer grow.


    And if I could somehow promote the growth of the oxidized layer. I''d need an enclosed oxygen-rich environment heated up to around a thousand Celsius. And if I could do that, I could also dope the silicon if I instead used a nitrogen atmosphere.


    But I was once again derailing myself in my own train of thought. Time to decompose the buckets.


    I went over them and cycled through my known metals. Of note, I got a lot of titanium from the ilmenite that was mixed in with the magnetite. The dark gray iron-titanium ore was only a few tones away from the latter and was probably mixed together because they both had iron. Also enough gold to mint a half-dozen shekels, along with decent amounts of vanadium and chromium.


    I checked and all the transition metals of the fourth period were accounted for. Gotta smelt them all.


    I converted all the metals into ingots using the molds. They wasted less volume than the cylinders. I still had two hundred kilograms of stuff I couldn''t identify left. But I didn''t want to waste time with the boring process of trying to feel new resonances. Time to attack the pile of ores.


    The first one that caught my attention was a deep blue one. Was it lapis lazuli? No. Lapis should be known to them and considered a gemstone. It also should be blue from minus three sulfur ions. This rock had no sulfur. It was made of carbonates and copper. Azurite. It was so pretty I couldn''t Decompose it. I converted one of the empty silicon barrels into a bench and placed the azurite safely on it.


    A lot of rocks with lead galena mixed with chrysotile asbestos. The mix of dark crystalline and white fibrous minerals was beautiful although dangerous. I went through the pile of galena and asbestos, separating the lead and sulfur from the galena and extracting the magnesium, destroying the asbestos. Only white silica and water remained.


    After that, I looked at the next pile. A light orange-brown ore with tiny round pisolites. I sensed Aluminum and didn''t need to check the guide to know it was bauxite. There were other stones in the pile of bauxite and on a hunch, I checked the other piles.


    The ores were not separated by type but they were clearly separated. There was enough space to walk between the piles and carts. If they were separated but not by type, then...


    I recalled the conversation I had with Aran. He bought these ores so I could test them and have something to play with but he was a businessman first and foremost. It meant he expected us to make some profit out of these ores. He needed to know the origin of the ores so he could send for more. The ores were separated by location. With that knowledge, I backtracked to the first pile and formatted my report by pile.


    The ridiculously ease to get pure aluminum from the ore made me think why there was no magic back on Earth. I knew my magic wasn''t normal even for this world''s standards but either there was a planet-wide block on magic or some big conspiracy to hide it.


    No. These two hypotheses made too many assumptions. Tarhun said this world was one of many he managed and this one was a low magic world. Therefore, Earth must be a null or dead magic world. To have someone actively blocking magic would be too troublesome, and conspiracies in the information age are just plain impossible.


    I mean, with the amount of magic I have, they would have approached me, or maybe even set some sort of weird ritual to sacrifice...


    That''s totally what Professor Andrews did, wasn''t it? Make a lot of people have sex like bunnies on top of a somewhat pyramidal structure and then sacrifice a maiden with a lot of magic power. But where did the right-side shoes went? Does it have something related to what Nephew was doing?


    It means he did everything in Devil Ridge for me? I''m so flattered. Not! It makes me want to go and castrate Nephew right now to avoid it happening again.


    Back to the bauxite.


    The pisolites make some really interesting patterns. I used my mallet and pick to break some of them looking for a nice one to keep as a sample. Yes, much like farming for that maxed-out IV specimen. We''ve all been there somewhere in our lives.


    After some time breaking rocks, my arm started to hurt and I chose one specimen that looked nice. Setting it aside with the azurite, I grinned at the rest of the bauxite and related ores. Time to restock on aluminum. The bauxite was twenty percent aluminum, five percent iron, two percent titanium. I got more than half a ton of aluminum and fifty-something kilograms of titanium. and one good surprise. Gallium.


    Gallium loves aluminum. Gallium also meant one step closer to getting P-type doped silicon. There was one thing I wanted to do that demanded P-type semiconductors. It''s a surprise, so I won''t say it yet. Be patient, dear journal.


    I stored the two kilograms of gallium in spheres of silicon. If the metal would be so kind as to dope the silicon by itself, I''d be very happy. Maybe I could even make something...


    I didn''t need to wait. I had everything I needed right here. I could dope the silicon right now. This was so huge that I needed to test it right away.


    I made a crucible out of titanium. Then I scrapped it because the gallium would react with and eat away the titanium at a high temperature.


    I needed something that could resist the insidious liquid metal. So I made the crucible out of pure graphite. First I made a block of graphite and checked the way the sheets were aligned. Then I cut a thick piece keeping the sheets mostly intact and shaped it inwards so the graphite sheets would make the lining of the crucible. Then I got slices of silicon, much like the wafers for semiconductors and adjusted them inside the crucible so they wouldn''t touch each other and there would also be room for the galium to move around. I poured the galium and dipped my hand between the silicon sheets to remove all the oxygen. Then I sealed the crucible with more graphite and wrapped it all in titanium.


    Now I had to cook this thing and hope it wouldn''t explode. At around a thousand Celsius, the temperature and pressure inside the sealed crucible would force the gallium to diffuse inside the silicon, creating P-type semiconductor.


    I went outside, it was already dark. The smiths were talking around a campfire. I turned on my LED lantern and walked over to them.


    Samus was the first one to see me. He smiled and waved, beckoning me closer. "Sandra! We are talking, care for a mug of ale?"


    "Thanks," I replied. I sat there and ate some bread with bean paste, the blanket of jerky I gave them long gone. A few mugs later, I breached the subject.


    "I have a job for you, Mr. fire sorcerer. There''s something I need to heat up in the forge and it is a whim. Would you be so kind as to do it for me? Now?"


    Samus chuckled, "Yes, sure. We never let the forge cool anyway. Where is it, is it too big?"


    "No. It is about the same size as your crucibles."


    "Let''s check this out, shall we?"


    With the help of some apprentices, we moved the titanium egg into Samus'' personal forge at the back. We placed it inside the forge and he heated it up with his magic.


    "I must say, Sandra. I wish you could stay with us forever. It is so much easier to heat up the forge with my magic with you here!" Samus exulted.


    "Well, I have places to go to and a city to save. I have to reluctantly turn down your proposal, master Samus," I replied.


    He chortled and shifted his focus to his fire magic. There wasn''t anything like jets of flame pouring from his hands. If I had to compare with something, it was more like he was there doing the jazz hands and the forge heated up on its own. I couldn''t see magic, thank you, Tarhun.


    "How hot do you want this thing?"


    "Make it glow white!" I replied, shying away from the heat. "But do not melt the metal."


    Samus seemed unaffected by it but I was sweating a lot.


    "How long will it take?" He asked next.


    "Just a few minutes. Then we can take it out and let it cool."


    And so we did. With some heavy-duty tongs, we moved the glowing titanium egg outside and set it on the ground to cool. It would probably be ready by morning. I couldn''t wait. If this worked, it would be a game-changer.


    No, I wasn''t going to make computers. Too early for that if I ever got to that point.


    "Should we quench it?" Samus asked.


    "No. Let it cook overnight. I really want the insides to blend well. I''ll be in the warehouse."


    Samus waved. "I can''t wait to see what''s inside. Can you tell me what it is?"


    I wanted to tell him but how could I say it in a way he would understand?


    "Do you know the silicon I can get out of rocks? If I mix it with a special metal I just found, it becomes really friendly to the same kind of lightning I used to color my armor. And there are some special effects I want to do with them. If everything works out, I''ll show it to you later."


    "Well, then. Good night, Sandra. I hope fortune favors you."


    Me too, Samus. Me too.


    I returned to the warehouse and barred the door behind me. I prepared a raised dais with silicon and set my thermal mat and sleeping bag on it. Then I fought to remove the dress and the suit of mail armor. I undressed and set my pajama aside. With water from a barrel, I gave myself a nice sponge bath. The night was still warm and I didn''t flinch from the cool water. I could use Decompose to remove the grime and sweat from my body but nothing could beat the relaxing feeling of a good soak.


    I felt my eyes heavy. It seemed the stress of the day took its toll after my bath. I slipped into my cotton pajamas and in the bedroll. The light from the goblin eyes didn''t bother me. I was fast asleep moments later.

 Day 32, Tuesday, Bull 24th

    In the absence of a rooster, Dime did the honors and woke me at the first light of dawn, without crowing. He was so annoyed at this critter he was hunting that he startled me awake when he finally got it at the first rays of dawn. But it made me think about the absence of the flightless avians and it was one thing that concerned me. Why didn''t people raise chickens? They had low upkeep and a high nutritional value even if you don''t kill them. Something to investigate.


    And speaking of chickens, my morning feast included an egg. Inorganic egg. I couldn''t wait to crack that beast. I rushed my morning routine and used Decompose to clean after me. It wouldn''t be proper to leave soapy water behind. I still had one ore pile to process, the excitement of getting P-type semiconductors surpassed my dwarven greed. And no, I''m not secretly the queen of the dwarves, she''s in another castle. I''m sure there''s only humans in this world. I begrudgingly donned the arming doublet and the suit of mail, without the coif, and layered a beige linen dress over the armor. My schedule included too much time under the sun to wear dark clothes over metal armor.


    I didn''t require cooking and I hoped the egg was already done. With some effort, I removed the wooden bar and threw open the door. Outside, the wheezing of the bellows denounced the start of a brand new day of work at the smithy. The apprentices tasked with the menial tasks of feeding coal to the furnace and operating the bellows waved at me. I was hungry but I had to check on the egg. I went to the back where the blob of titanium we warmed up last night rested on the ground. The bare dirt under the metallic object showed clear signs of exposure to the great heat, and it was still hot to the touch. I didn''t even need to make physical contact to feel the heat coming from the metal.


    I assumed a few hours was more than enough time for the gallium to infuse the silicon. I went to order a couple guards to carry a barrel of water for me. While they fetched the water, I created walls around the metal to hold the water from the plastic bag full of silicon I had in storage. Once the water arrived, I used my frying pan to pour water on the titanium until I was satisfied it wouldn''t boil or splash searing droplets. Then we dumped the whole barrel over the metal.


    The water warmed up and I estimated the temperature was almost fifty Celsius. I opened up a hole next to the wall and drained the water out while the soldiers went for another barrel of fresh well water... We repeated the process three times until the water remained cool. I used Decompose to purify and move the water back into the barrels. I also checked for the presence of gallium and found none in the water. The titanium held the other metal inside. I had no idea if the graphite broke but it should have resisted the pressure. I would have to wait until it was safe to open to figure out.


    I reluctantly left the titanium shell to cool in the water and went to the tent in search of nourishment. Breakfast was hard rye bread, ale, and salad. I ate the same as the smiths. Even though they stole glances at me I felt comfortable among them, and I was confident enough none of them would attempt anything. The furtive stares didn''t bother me and madam Cloe''s dresses didn''t show more skin than they should, given the ethos of their society.


    Speaking of which, I was slowly coming to understand that ethos. Not accept, just understand. While to me most of them seemed like assholes and opportunists, that was the way people behaved. It was as Nietzsche wrote regarding the master-slave morality in ancient ages. Rather than dividing actions into "good" or "evil", the master morality asserted its will on the world and conquered what they wanted through strength, courage, and "virtue". To them, "I am stronger than you so give me your lunch money" wasn''t bullying but the natural way of the world.


    Things would soon degenerate into savagery so the strongest among them, the Enshis and Lugals of the city-states set a body of laws that remained mostly immutable during these several millennia since they arrived here. it was still loosely based on the code of Hammurabi they brought with them from Earth. Therefore, rather than a zeitgeist born of a sense of community and cooperation, they had obedience to strength as their ethical compass. The Enshi wanted a city to rule so he forced laws upon the people. But he could take anything to himself as he was the strongest.


    Including women.


    The only reason Nephew left me alone and decided to accept my offer of cooperation was that he knew he couldn''t take me without dying. I still had a bag of calcium chloride with his name on it, not to mention the bags of phosphorus and aluminum shavings. Not for a lack of trying from his part. If I were powerless or weakened during that audience, the sorcerer that died of burnout would''ve done whatever he wanted to me. And the fact that he was profiting from the cooperation as I was working to help his city. Abil-Kisu and the smith duo were also part of this society. They too measured their interactions with me on profit and gains versus losses. The merchant lord wasn''t hosting me and my people out of charity. He was investing in a long-term profitable relationship.


    All of them had vast evidence of my strength, including the blacksmith apprentices, the altercation with the Captain yesterday notwithstanding. I had a squad of soldiers ready to obey any order of mine right outside. Dime was somewhere getting his breakfast. There was no doubt some of them had naughty thoughts as they looked at me. But they wouldn''t dare lay a finger on me. They would jeopardize their masters'' future projects, and their own as they too were learning from the new ideas and techniques I brought them.


    Therefore I could eat my breakfast in peace. I was too valuable and dangerous to be molested. I wasn''t happy with the reason they restrained themselves to just looking. But while I would prefer true respect, what I had was close to the best I could hope for. As Machiavelli said, the best world for the Prince is to be both loved and feared but if the Prince has to choose only one, he should choose fear. I was still aiming for both.


    After breakfast, I went outside and back to the warehouse. Even though the water was only lukewarm, it would be wise to wait so the pressure inside could have a chance to lower as the temperature slowly seeped out.


    The last pile of ores had some very strange rocks. I took one that had a yellow crystallization, an outer shell of low-quality quartz. I gently tapped it with the pickaxe and the crystal broke. I split it and it revealed a pink rhomboid mineral inside. I sensed and it was composed of calcium carbonate and another metal. An unknown one. It was a transition metal and its atomic mass and resonance were very similar to nickel.


    The only one I was missing from the fourth period was cobalt. To confirm, I broke off a small piece of the pink mineral and separated the calcium carbonate from the unknown. Then I lit up a candle and dropped the small pellet on the fire. It went silvery-white. Checking my chart, it was indeed cobalt. There were a lot of other metals that create similar flames but no unknown one near the atomic mass I sensed. I kept a sample of the pink ore and Decomposed the rest.


    Next on the pile was zircon. I could recognize the quasi-gemstone by sight. They had impurities and flaws inside the crystals, making them foggy and brittle. Titanium and aluminum oxides. I sensed the resonance of new metal and it felt like titanium but one "octave" lower. I didn''t sense the resonance as sound but the frequencies were harmonic to one another. Must be zirconium. I extracted it and tested a pinch over the candle. It became pink and it confused me. Yttrium was close enough to confuse my senses and also had a reddish flame. I checked my book and yttrium was usually found in phosphates, not silicates like the one I had in hand.


    I Decomposed the pieces of zircon, keeping some of the better crystals intact. I got two thumbnail-sized clear crystals that could be cut like diamonds, one brown and one yellow-orange. While I separated the zirconium, I found traces of yet another metal. Pouring some dust on the candle, the fire became white momentarily. It once again had a resonance that was one "octave" lower than the zircon and two apart from the titanium. Hafnium. It was present in very low quantities. Around one-thousandth to one in five hundred hafnium to the zirconium.


    Next in the pile was a bunch of dark rocks with red, orange, and brown mineralizations. Embedded in the granite I sensed phosphates and more unknown metals. Metals. As in several elements. I touched the rocks, savoring the unknown resonances of heavy elements when I found something bothersome.


    There were traces of radioactive material mixed in these ores. Just specks of uranium and another one. I extracted a tiny bead of uranium from the rock I was handling and against my best judgment, Decomposed it inside my clenched fist. My hand locked and I could feel the rush of magical power depleting my stores to force the decay of the metal. Once my arm started to hurt, I pondered why the hell did I decide to do this stupid thing. I could smell my skin burning from the heat released by the rushed radioactive decay.


    I had not. With all the mindfucking sorcerers and gods trying to control me, I was practicing mindfulness of my own conscience. I couldn''t avoid or even recognize it as it happened but, in hindsight, I felt a compulsion to neutralize the uranium. I cursed the stupid god that thought I could be a tool. I used my anger as fuel and fought to regain control of my hand. The power expenditure increased sharply as I fought back. It was as if my power knew it had little time to work and hurried the process. I had no idea I could still call it "my power" at that moment.


    The metal was burning my hand. I pulled my arm closer to my chest and suddenly the channeling of energy to Decompose stopped. I could still feel my magical power draining away but this time it was to alleviate the pain. As a well-engineered self-repairing machine, my body was restoring itself to working conditions. I hated it.


    "Sandra, is everything alright?" Aran shouted from the warehouse door. "I heard you scream!"


    Did I scream? I didn''t even register it.


    "I''m fine now. I just found some dangerous ore and had to neutralize it."


    Aran approached carefully as he scanned the almost empty carts for any threat. "Like the one that poisoned the Enshi?"


    "Yes, but in very small quantities," I replied.


    I checked my hand. The feeling was coming back and it itched like a hundred crawling ants. Biting acid ants. My magic power was low but not critical. After a moment I was finally able to open my hand and drop the searing pellet of lead on the ground.


    "This ore," I showed him the monazite, "Had traces of the poisonous metal. Nothing that can be harmful to people. But I tried to neutralize it all at once and it burned my hand. It will heal soon."


    It was a tiny pellet, less than a pin''s head. Yet it used more than half my magic to neutralize. What happened in that hole? How much into the negative did I fall to neutralize that much ore? I could sense my magic pool sitting still. All the energy generated used to regenerate my hand. It seems Nanna was right. My healing only actively used stored magic to recover from life-threatening wounds. Something to keep in mind.


    "What should we do with it?" The smith asked, fearful.


    "Nothing. Let me just catch my breath for a moment and I''ll be right back at it. Meanwhile, do you want to come with me open that metal egg I left sitting on a pool of water?"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    He didn''t answer verbally but his body language said he wanted really bad. We went outside and around the warehouse until we reached the titanium egg. It was not egg-shaped though. I tested the water, it was only tepid. The metal also wasn''t cold to the touch and slightly warm. That information baffled me. Why would it be so warm after sitting outdoors for most of the night and being cooled in the water?


    The materials inside were titanium, graphite, and gallium. All of them good thermal conductors. Very good conductors. I carefully sensed the titanium. Both the shell and my armor resonated back. I had to be careful to only manipulate the titanium in the egg. I projected Decompose out from my hand and peeled back the metallic shell. I expected steam to pour out but there was only a wave of heat. After I moved enough titanium out of the way, I could see that the graphite didn''t break. It seems my setup resisted the pressure of the expanding liquid metal very well. I touched the graphite. It was warmer than the titanium, around fifty Celsius. It would burn my hand if I kept it for too long but not too hazardous.


    I removed more titanium to expose the graphite to the water. I could feel the water warming up. Now, I could open the graphite but that was unwise. Given the temperature and how long it was still here, the galium would still be at high pressure inside. I had to find out why it was still that hot before I moved further.


    "What is the matter?" Aran broke the silence.


    "This thing should be cold by now. I have no idea why it is still hot even though it is soaking in water. I need to look into it before I open the ''graphite''... coal shell."


    "Yes, it is strange to be this hot," He said as he brushed his hand over the water''s surface. "It is even heating up the water."


    I could change the water but it already proved to be inefficient. "I''m going back to the warehouse to check."


    I sat at the table and chair I''d made out of silicon yesterday and poured through the books on my laptop. Either everything I knew of physics was wrong or something else happened to that egg. Why was the graphite, one of the best thermal conductors holding the heat? Had I inadvertently magicked something in there? Was it some strange law of physics that applied to this world? The many-worlds theory does predict that different universes may have different laws.


    Maybe that''s why Earth had no magic. Except it did. Or Tarhun wouldn''t throw lightning at some random campers. Except we weren''t random. Or maybe he was just bullshitting me.


    I threw my hands up in despair.


    That line of thought would solve nothing.


    Until I had solid evidence that this world had a different set of natural laws, I had to abide by what I knew. I pulled the table of thermal conductivity. My agitation was undeserved. Pure titanium was a poor thermal conductor, it was thirty times lower than copper. Good to know that. And for the graphite... it gave two values. Graphite was anisotropic. Its conductivity along the sheet was good, great even, but across the sheets, terrible. I recalled how I shaped the graphite crucible to host the galium and the silicon slices. I intentionally bent and weld the sheets so they would all face the inside.


    That meant the gallium inside would still be very hot. While it would be safe to quench the galium with water as it wouldn''t react, the sudden change in temperature could harm the delicate silicon sheets inside. I stored my computer and went back to the egg. I found some soldiers on the way there and called them to do the heavy lifting. I raised the walls around the half-peeled metal egg and had the soldiers dump more water to fully cover it. The water was warm, like a hot bath.


    I sent the men to get more cool water and set a barrel in the hole I dug during the night. After two cycles of exchanging water, I felt we drained enough heat to open the egg. I shifted the titanium as a lip protruding up from the graphite to contain the galium and reached over to touch and open the graphite. Liquid galium gushed from the tiny hole I opened and burned my hand. I pushed the metal away from me with Decompose and quenched my singed hand in the water.


    I should have used my power to push the gallium away while I moved the carbon. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, indeed. My hand hadn''t even fully healed from before. Remembering what Nanna told me, I went back to the warehouse and dumped all my bulk storage items except the food to reduce my basic upkeep and spare more magic for the healing.


    The scribes should be working on their catalog today. There was too much paperwork for them to go through but that should benefit the town greatly. We will have a proper registry of the property then. And it should be done by the natives, not by an outsider like me.


    I spent a few minutes staring at my hand. The speed it recovered without the burden of my storage was indeed impressive. I needed to stop hoarding so much stuff. But I still had one good hand so I went back to the monazite.


    I took a chunk with my left hand and sensed it. I could feel several heavy atoms along with phosphorus and oxygen. The phosphorus was problematic as it would react if I removed it carelessly. My best bet would be to Decompose this ore underwater. I prepared a bowl of water next to the ore pile and dunked the ore in. Underwater, white phosphorus wouldn''t react. The monazite broke and I added more ore, creating a large chunk of phosphorus in the muddy water. There was some silicon in the adjoining rock and I used it to wrap the phosphorus.


    The metals should all be in suspension as oxides. Removing the phosphorus created to little bubbles so the oxygen that was bound to the phosphorus should''ve gone somewhere. The water is a little alkaline. Some of these oxides could''ve reacted with the water but most of them are insoluble. I went through the process of singling out one resonance and drawing it out. I got a chunk of soft metal. Since it was monazite it should be either lanthanum or cerium. Both were soft and felt like a hard putty.


    Instead of testing what metal I had, I fished the others. I got another bunch of soft metal and while both had similar resonances, they were different. For a moment I thought that maybe isotopes of the same metallic element could have different resonances but I never found proof. Anyway, I went and fished for the third most abundant metal in the muddy water. It was even softer than the other two and started to oxidize right after I released my control over it. I was sure this one was neodymium.


    I cleared the residual elements from the bowl. There were other minerals mixed with the monazite, nothing of note. Once I had pure water, I resumed the process. In the next batch, I found more radioactive matter. It wasn''t uranium and its reactivity was lower. I was sure it was thorium.


    As an experiment, I removed everything else but the thorium. I knew that if I tried to use Decompose on it my power would lock me down until it decayed entirely. I then wrapped the thorium in lead and set it aside. I kept repeating the same thing, using more water and wrapping the small pellets of uranium and thorium.


    I had one-fifth of the pile to process when I found another type of ore buried in the other rocks. It was white-yellow with some quartz crystals embedded. It was still a phosphate mineral and had some thorium along with new and unknown heavy metals. Probably more lanthanides. I extracted the phosphorus underwater and checked the new metals. Both were harder than lanthanum and cerium. Both were electropositive and would react with the water to make weak hydroxides when I released my power. Probably samarium and gadolinium.


    There was one cool way to figure out which one was gadolinium due to one amazing property of the lanthanide. Gadolinium is magnetocaloric, meaning it heats up when it approaches a magnetic field and cools as the field goes away. I took some of the magnetite crystals I saved for myself and tested the two small pieces of metal I extracted from the white-yellow ore, monazite(Sm). The samarium didn''t react to the magnet while the gadolinium not only twitched when exposed to the low magnetic field of the magnetite but also slightly heated up. Unfortunately, there was little of the samarium monazite, maybe two dozen kilograms. I finished the pile, processing all the metals and cleaning up the area, doing one last scan for possible metals lost in the dust of the warehouse or in the cracks of the wagons.


    Back to the gallium.


    I checked the liquid metal that oozed out of the graphite shell. I could see now that some of the sheets of silicon broke and were floating on the hot metal. The gallium cooled but not enough. I reached down and Decomposed the graphite to open a hole at the bottom. The galium flowed out and emptied the inside, pooling at the bottom. After a few minutes, I pulled the graphite shell from the hot water and poured the rest of the galium into the water. Some broken pieces of the silicon rattle inside. I knew they would break loose, as the thermal expansion increased for each element I used but it seems that the galium infused a bit too much in some parts and weakened the silicon. I pick up the solid pieces and check using my resonance sense. Yes, there''s galium infused in the silicon. I hope it is enough to give a good conductivity. With the silicon in hand, I wiped the excess galium using a rag.


    Cleanup time!


    I gathered the intact sheets of gallium-doped silicon and the useable shards and Decompose to purify and retrieve the leftovers including the water. Then I went to the battery array and did a rough test of my semiconductors. I plugged the flashlight with two wires and hooked it in series with a sheet of semiconductor. With two sets of chopsticks, I moved the wires around the semiconductors testing the strength of the lantern''s light. I kept the good pieces and Decomposed the unusable ones. Most of the doped silicon was useable. Finally, I moved everything to the warehouse and set the elements in appropriate containers.


    Before leaving the warehouse, I tested my burnt hand. The skin was still tender but that was it. I estimated it would heal completely in less than one hour. I was low on magic power but not critical. I had more than enough to Decompose another ore pile. Not that was any left.


    Now I have to commission someone to make the contacts. I''ll cut the silicon myself with the Dremel. I went to the smithy looking for either Samus or Aran. I found the latter instructing the blacksmith apprentices on how to forge the items I asked.


    I waited patiently for him to notice me even though I wanted to get this thing done yesterday.


    Aran turned around and came near me wiping his hands on his leather apron. "Sandra. How''s your experiment? You have your ''good news'' face on."


    I noticed I was smiling. He was right. I was a few steps away from obtaining something invaluable for my comfort and commodity.


    "All done and it was a success! I got these plates and now I can do something awesome with them. But I need help. Is there someone very good working with really tiny and delicate pieces?"


    "We have a guy that does decorations and filigree for some custom jobs. Let me call him," Aran said and turned around to yell at the apprentices. "Fetch me Uki-Langor!"


    I hoped he was not a beastman barbarian. The apprentice returned after a few minutes with a young man, not very muscular for a blacksmith, a lithe and gracious build.


    "Milady, what is your wish," He politely bowed and asked.


    He had a charming smile. But I was there to talk business, not to refresh my eyes.


    "I need a specific device made, and it requires precision. Aran here told me you are good with small details."


    He gave me a winning smile. "I shall try my best."


    "Follow me to the warehouse, I''ll show you what I need."


    I used the laptop to show Uki-Langor the schematics for the device I wanted. I showed him the general idea and then the materials he''d be working with.


    "I need tiny copper cubes, about this small. And then the connectors, we are using aluminum. For the upper and lower pads, a thin sheet of silicon to work as electrical insulation and two sheets of copper. I''ll make these. You care about making the cubes and the connectors. You see, they need to be arranged in this snaking pattern, up, down, and back up. I''ll cut the cubes of the material I have here with me while you work on the rest."


    He looked around and I showed him a scaled-up version of what I wanted. After he understood, we went to his workspace and set ourselves to work. I summoned the Dremel and started to cut the doped silicon while he cut and hammered the copper and aluminum bronze ingots. We went on for three hours, mindlessly making the small cubes and the connectors. Once we had enough, I shaped the pure silicon sheets and thinned them the most I could. I made grooves in the silicon and handed a plate to Uki-Langor to set the aluminum connectors and alternating conductor cubes on that sheet while I worked on the next. Once the prototype was ready, I took it back to test its electrical conductivity with the flashlight while Uki-Langor assembled the next device.


    I sighed in relief when the LED lit up. The device seemed to have been assembled right, I just needed to test if it would work as intended. I moved the boxes, connecting the aluminum contacts and started a voltage test just like what I did with the anodized titanium. I reached a bit over 40 Volts with fifteen cell volts and the wires heated from overdrawing current. The prototype also overheated.


    Hovering my hand over it could feel the copper plate hot. With the chopsticks, I pushed the device aside and touched the table where it rested on. Cold.


    I opened a big grin and looked around to what I''d accomplished in these two days at the smithy. I got my armor, I got my voltaic cells. I had electricity, renewable even as I could restore the electrodes with my power. I unlocked almost a dozen new elements. I had plenty of metals to do a lot of projects. The smiths'' hammers were crafting rat traps around the clock.


    And this rectangular metal-and-semiconductor sandwich that would change everything.


    Everything.


    I was even salivating as I remembered the taste but it would be unwise of me to not have my best collaborators present for the first test.


    I went outside. The sun flew in its geodesic trajectory without me noticing. I had to fetch the two master smiths and see if Uki-Langor had a second unit ready. I had two aluminum cans with me, and getting a flagon of ale would be easy.


    With these Peltier modules, it was time to introduce them to the wonderful world of cold beverages. That was only the tip of the iceberg.

 Night 32, Tuesday, Bull 24th

    Savoring the tipsy feeling and the joy of drinking a few macho blacksmiths under the table, I was left alone in the warehouse with my piping hot Peltier prototypes. My recovery boon and poison resistance working overtime to heal my liver, I was sobering with each minute without booze as I watched the smiths leaving and dragging their friends along. The little semiconductor gadgets worked as intended but something was wrong with them. They required too much power for the amount of cooling they did. It pointed to some sort of electrical mishap. We were losing power in some contacts. They also required some sort of heat sink. Maybe I should make some like those old boxy the desktop PC had.


    I closed the door and confirmed it was already night. Since the noise from nearby dwellings still had to die, early night. I had time to do some last-minute repairs.


    I sat at my workbench and disassembled the devices. The first thing I checked was the integrity of the doped semiconductors. While I had enough gallium for a lot of silicon slabs, it was a bother to make them. Studying the contacts with my enhanced sight, I found some of the aluminum pieces were not touching the cubes as they should. The pure silicon insulators were good enough for thermal conductivity but they were not optimal for electrical conductivity. Maybe there''s current running through the silicon and skipping the cubes. While something fancier like aluminum nitride would''ve been better, I would take decades to be able to make it. I used Decompose to clear the surfaces of impurities like oxides and micro-pockets of air between the contacts. I slowly moved the aluminum to fill these pockets it stuck to the cube. It happened before but now I had a name to pin the phenomenon under.


    Cold welding.


    Just like what happened to the loose wrench in space, two metallic objects touching without anything between them will form metallic bonds between them. Maybe that''s why I can''t shape alloys. A metallic bond is not as much of a bond but the attraction between a metallic atom and all the other metallic atoms around it. As children in the slums, the electrons are free to party with whoever comes close. Like oxygen. Oxygen likes to party too much. It''s that friend that comes even when you didn''t invite them, rocks your house like there''s no tomorrow, and gets you wasted whether you want to or not.


    At least oxygen sticks around. Ugh. Terrible pun.


    Bad chemistry puns aside, I spent the next few hours fixing my Peltier devices. The silicon sheets might be conducting some electricity. I should promote the growth of an oxide layer to block it as silica''s electrical resistivity is orders of magnitude greater than silicon. It will add some thermal resistance but its thermal insulating is negligible at microns of thickness. However, even that microns-thick oxide layer takes days to form under normal atmospheric conditions. Fortunately, I had ways to make it faster though I would not do it now. I reassembled one of the finished Peltier modules and hooked it to the voltaic cells. It was now reaching what I considered peak cooling at twenty Volts instead of forty. Good enough. I reassembled and tested the other four modules then stored them after they cooled.


    I looked around and took inventory of my material stores. I had no idea of the volume of these ingots and was too tired to measure so I just tallied them by quantity. I decided against putting them in storage. They used up a considerable amount of magic as upkeep. And given that our wise and magnanimous Enshi was literally inviting the army that came to invade us to help him build a ziggurat so he could cheat death, I felt I would need all the regeneration I could. I would keep some silicon and aluminum for building purposes along with the rare metals in storage though.


    But I had a very good idea of how I''d protect my stash. I set some aluminum aside for Samus, I knew he''d want to make more golden bronze and used the rest to build a vault. Careful to not damage my armor, I overlayed titanium, aluminum, and tungsten, all seamlessly joined. I buried the vault in a corner of the warehouse, stashed my stuff inside and sealed the metal box. I moved the silicon on top and that was it. Finally, I retrieved my glowing goblin eyes and got ready to leave. My vacation was over.


    Outside, I called four guards. Two of the newbies and two veterans. My bet was that mixing them would make them less prone to betray me and would help spread knowledge. Only time would prove me right or wrong. I took Penny from the stables and sensed for Dime. The green-headed eagle was out near his old nest, hunting. I could feel his thrill. We walked back home. The pitch-black night was foreboding. Sometimes shouts, moans, weird noises threatened to startle us. I had my LED lantern on a pole and a sliver of its plastic case in storage. It seems that as long as it is attached to an object I''m carrying, it wouldn''t dissolve.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    The guards left me at Abil-Kisu''s gates and went to the ministry HQ. I had to claim back my house but the opportunity never presented itself. Maybe I should push my weight around and claim a headquarters in the middle of the city. Tomorrow.


    Always tomorrow.


    "Lipit-Ea, Huzzi-Ya, thanks for your hard work," I greeted some of my men by the gates as I went inside. They nodded and greeted back.


    Lipit-Ea grimaced and delivered some bad news, "Sandra, Nanna told us you have to go to the room where your things are stored. You are to take care of them before sunrise tomorrow, or she''ll throw everything away. We weren''t sure if you would return today or if she would go through her threat."


    "Message delivered and received," I saluted him and smiled. I felt like I had to soothe him as he looked very worried. "Don''t worry, and try to give the witch a wide berth. We don''t want to aggravate her. I''m not sleepy, I''ll take care of that now."


    I pat Penny''s neck and the mare went to the stables on her own. I made my way to the house annex where Nanna and the room I took for storage was. You see, there was a pattern forming where I''d go and stuff my friend''s places with tons of garbage.


    I felt terrible.


    I didn''t notice movement or lights in Nanna''s room and dimmed the lantern to avoid waking her up. I snuck into the storeroom and the stench of overripe potatoes assaulted my nose. Bags of potatoes, radishes, beets, citrus fruits, barrels of salt and oil. At a glance, it seemed all the stuff I purchased from the market a few days ago was here. And if something was missing, I wouldn''t complain. So I rolled up my figurative sleeves, rolled up my skirt, and put myself to work.


    The potatoes were the most critical. I created barrels of silicon and a stool to sit next to the bags. Picking one potato after the other, I separated the water into the barrel without breaking any of the other molecules and dumped the flaky dried potato skin in another bucket. After the potatoes, I Decomposed the other root vegetables. About three small barrels with around forty liters of water were filled and sealed. One barrel of starch and the leftovers, protein and some vitamins were sealed in a small silicon ball with the least O2 I could drain from inside.


    Next were the citrus fruits. From them, I wanted the essential oils and citric acid. With two brand new silicon barrels between my legs, I removed the water carefully on the first and dumped the dried fruit in another. Another hour and I had two more barrels of water, more starch from the fruit fibers, and another one with the starch-less fruit leftovers. I was tired and it would take me quite some time to single out the citric acid''s resonance. Its formula was too close to the glucose and other sugars. I wasn''t even sure if some didn''t slip in with the white powder.


    A task for another day. With all the perishables taken care of, I withdrew back to my room. Or at least I tried. Nanna was at her door, scowling at me.


    "It is hard to sleep when someone is burning a few master warlocks worth of magic next door," She groaned. "I''m going to get you another magic-sealing necklace, girl."


    "I''m sorry, Nanna. I had no idea," I spoke meekly. I meant each word.


    "Nah. Why waste time? Even if I were to make a greater seal for you, I don''t have the silver or the time to make something that would last just a couple days before breaking like a beaver dam in the rainy season."


    I had no idea they had beavers around here. Or maybe Nanna was from a place with beavers.


    "And there she goes, thinking silly and useless things. Your attention, please? Good. Now, I see you have donned some armor and that''s very good. You might not be as stupid as I thought," She chuckled. "I heard from the servants that some soldiers from Marduk''s army are already in town. Don''t walk alone. You are not invincible. And after you are done playing minister to your worst living enemy, come talk to me. I know what I want from you. You do remember you promised to do one thing for me, right?"


    I felt a strong urge to placate the grumpy witch. Nanna was important to me. "Yes, I''d do any... almost anything for you, Nanna. Just don''t ask me to whore myself or kill someone."


    She frowned. "That doesn''t sound much like anything but I''ll take what I am given. Are these the only two restrictions? No forcing you to have sex and no murder?"


    "Yes, basically that."


    "Even if I ask for all your gold?"


    "I''m afraid that would be a rather easy request to fulfill. Do you want my bullion now?"


    Nanna sighed and grunted. "No. I have enough gold, your merchant friend is fair in his dealings. What I have in mind for you is a little bit of trickery but it won''t go against those two conditions. Now, go to sleep. You look like a slave miner."


    Not too far from the truth. I did mess with tons of ores.


    "Yes," I yawned when the prospect of headbutting some pillows crossed my thoughts, "Good night, Nanna."


    I felt tired. The alcohol was long gone but it seemed that Nanna''s order forced my mind to acknowledge how exhausted my body was.


    "Good night, girl. Sweet dreams."

 Wednesday, Bull 25th - Morning

    Dime did the honors and woke me up again through our mental link. I know that raptors love to hunt in dawn and dusk because of the long shadows prey make but he really has to tune down on the gloating. I had no idea what he hunted but I bet it was some big game. All I knew was that he was around his old nest. I ended up jumping out of bed because I was feeling rested even though I had less than three hours of shut-eye. My circadian cycle was messed up and it wasn''t the only one. I double-checked for the absence of any speck of red in my fluids. You see, you spend your whole life complaining about it, but when it goes AWOL, you get worried sick. Maybe it was the radiation damage. I absorbed enough that I shouldn''t even call myself a living being anymore.


    At least I don''t have to worry that it was suspended by natural causes.


    I mean, Clark went to infinity and beyond on the third base. To think that my lousy gameplay was even praised! Theresa would become a goddess in this world. Speaking of which, where was he? I really hoped he wasn''t wounded in action. I sighed. He had his job to do and I had mine. Even though Nanna thought I shouldn''t be doing it, I''m doing it for the people, not for Nephew. Our interests meet and I think I got a good compromise. And if he crosses me he can breathe all the chlorine he wants. I doubt Ishtar would save him from that.


    You see, that''s why those authoritarian systems all failed. There I was, a minister of the state, plotting regicide. Pushing those dark thoughts aside, I did my morning beauty routine, stretched, and struggled to don my mail hauberk after spending some time admiring the royal blue metal. I donned a short-sleeved gown underneath to show the mail around my arms. I just had to remember to avoid too much exposure to the sun so I didn''t sweat buckets underneath the gambeson. But I adapted to the heat of the place very well, If I may say so.


    I decided to try wearing the mail without the arming doublet underneath. Just a bra and a shirt to protect my nipples. The first thing I noticed was that the armor felt just a bit lose. It would take time to get used to the feeling of metal touching me over the thin fabric but it was better than cooking inside the padded armor. I spent too long on these steps. I was definitely looking to hire a squire.


    I wished myself good luck in finding a female squire. Maybe some former gladiator? I bet they put chicks to fight. I decided to ask Huzzy-Ya for some tips on where to find one.


    Underneath the dress, I was wearing cargo pants and hiking boots. Reviewing my schedule for the day, we were going to clean up the burnt blocks. I''d love to show them the Peltier devices but I had no way of powering them without a good DC power source. The voltaic cells were too bulky and slushy to carry around. The best I could get with what I had in hand was five Volts DC or 120 Volts AC from the battery. No good.


    I dropped by the kitchen and took a mug of kefir and some flatbread with bean paste. Very similar to hummus but these were not chickpeas. After that, I went to the barracks looking for Huzzy-Ya. I found him with Abil-Kisu off-duty guards, playing some game of chance with numbered clay tiles. They would spin the tiles and bet on which faces they would fall.


    "Milady!" The hulking Tiwatura was the first to notice me. Not a hard feat since this rattly mail armor ruins any chance of being stealthy.


    "Hello, everyone. I''m here just to ask a quick question. As you can see I got myself a suit of armor..." I paused because Lah-Ueri was almost groping my arms to feel the exposed metal. He had so much admiration in his eyes that it didn''t creep me out. I had to trust my own staff. So I smiled, pulled back just a little and asked him. "Did you like it?"


    Caught, the former miner blushed for a bit. "Yes, yes. I was just wondering what is this blue metal. That color should not exist."


    "It''s ''titanium'' and I can coat it in almost any color but it is a dull gray. Tell you, I''m making matching armor for all of you out of it, it will be our heraldric signature." I extended an arm next to him. "Go ahead, you can feel the metal."


    He touched with reverence and I couldn''t hold back a giggle. "Okay, that''s good enough. This armor is the reason I came here. It is a bother to don and doff alone. I need a squire, a female squire. But I had no idea if female squires are a thing. I guess not. So maybe there are female warriors? Gladiators?"


    Huzzy-Ya nodded. "Sometimes they throw females in the arena. Not a nice sport, they barely receive any training but the spectators like new stuff. But if it is just to put on armor you can do alone, any girl would do," He shrugged. "Besides, there are rumors of problems in the slave market."


    "I would like someone that could fight to protect me where you men can''t," I explained and their reaction shocked me.


    The guards of Abil-Kisu''s side-eyed my guards with wary eyes but then one of them spoke. "Aren''t they all eunuchs?" To which all the others looked at him as if he had just found out that the rock was hard or the sky blue. It enraged me but I kept my temper and just retorted.


    "What does the lack of a cock have to do with the gender of a person. You are born men, you behave like men, you are men. It changes very little."


    Way to go, Sandra. I could see the conflicting looks in them. I had some idea of how important a penis was to them as some idiots back home thought that it would make a nice greeting card for prospecting sexual partners - it didn''t, if there''s one thing I''m glad I''ll do without in this world are dick pics - but to build up all their identity around an organ that is used for its intended purpose less than one in every ten thousand living seconds? Nope. But my cluelessness aside, I hit a very tender spot - pun intended - with my speech.


    "Look. I didn''t mean to offend. I know some of you even chose to have it cut off to take this profession. But it doesn''t change what you are unless you let them. Yes, the paranoid husband won''t have to worry about who is the father of the children if the only men his wife has contact with is unable to produce offspring but that''s that. Just to guarantee succession rights. And if you weren''t still considered men, there wouldn''t be a need to be wary of you.


    "Besides, I know plenty of stories of harem eunuchs giving pleasure to the harem ladies without a cock so there''s that," I paused because someone snickered and giggled in the back. I intentionally refrained from seeing who, I don''t want to know about their harem adventures. "I don''t regard any of you as less than a person because you were mutilated. And I wouldn''t ever enslave or mutilate people so they would fit some twisted world view of mine."


    I felt a knot in my throat and the confusion on the part of Abil-Kisu''s guards was painful to look at. My own guards knew my point of view already but they couldn''t get rid of the shackles of their society. I grabbed Lipit-Ea''s arm and touched the burn mark of the released iron.


    "Ask any of my men. The first thing I did with them was to release them from slavery and offer them the chance to go away. Or to work for me for decent pay. Which I have to remember paying soon."


    Some of them laughed. Lipit-Ea nodded and retrieved his arm when I released him.


    "We are honored to serve, milady." Huzzy-Ya roared. "And yes, you might find some in the caravanserai slave trader. I''ll go there with you whenever you want."


    "In three days then. I''ll be busy cleaning up the city until then. You could go scout for me. What do you say, Huzzy-Ya? Visit the caravanserai and buy me some female guards? I''ll release all of them but I expect at least four years of service before I do. They will earn their wages as well."


    "Can do," He nodded.


    I turned around and summoned my handbag on a desk. It dropped a few centimeters with a loud clinking noise. Poor designer bag, it is sagging from too much gold. #RichPeopleProblems aside, I took a handful of gold coins. "How much do you think you''ll need?"


    "Five gold mina will buy you a small army," He answered with a snort. "It is more a problem of availability. And I don''t think you want the slavers to go and find strong women to capture, so it is better to keep it modest. I''ll go there today and check for prices then you give me the gold when I report."


    I put ten gold shekels aside and stored the rest. "No. Take Kanu-Kasu to haggle and Tiwatura for intimidation. If there''s someone already available, I want you to release them. Also, I need people good with their hands, craftsmen, and all the women that are willing to work. Same deal, four years working for me and they''re free."


    It pains me to keep people as slaves but I know it is useless to just throw money at the problem. As in buy all the slaves and release them right away. It went so well the first time I did it... Sarcasm apart, I also can''t just finance slavery. I''m holding into the permits I have and the Enshi won''t issue more. Maybe that''s the problem Huzzy-Ya mentioned. A lack of authorized slave traders.


    "You''re the boss, milady. Your mission is accepted," He nodded and pocketed the coins in the holder I made for them, splitting them to the other two because he won''t hold all ten.


    "Ah, Sandra!" Shamash went ''aha!'' as he remembered something. "A message arrived this morning. Dipa-Tsu will arrive tomorrow or the day after with widows Banunu and Rubati."


    I smiled. That was awesome news. Despite trying to murder me, I got attached to her children. I wished the two widows could rebuild their lives with their offspring. "That''s good. I will spare some time tomorrow to talk to them. But it is getting late, I have to go now. Thanks to all of you and don''t spend all your money gambling!"


    After waving them goodbye I left the barracks and went to the stables to pick up Penny but the mare was already saddled when I got there.


    "That''s a very smart horse you have here," the stable hand that was fastening Penny''s saddle told me. "I could swear she one day will saddle herself."


    I petted her head, "That she is. Honey Cake and I, we saved each other''s lives enough," I whispered as I pressed my forehead to hers. "And we make each other stronger. Where I come from, all girls love horses."


    Especially the colorful, magical cartoon ones, even boys did. And that was awesome.


    "I too, love horses, milady," The young man cooed. "I wonder why she doesn''t wear a bridle though."


    "Oh, that''s easy," I replied. "We can talk through our minds. Honey Cake knows where we have to go or what to do. Come, girl, we have work to do."


    I recalled Dime and mounted. Penny was happily parading out of the stables, oddly relishing the attention. I let her be and just let myself be carried. We left the estate and I vowed to soon take a day off to talk to my people. If I could find a good place for the ministry HQ, I could reclaim my house back. The walk down the road was uneventful, the guards of the other wealthy estates already used to seeing us around. Some even greeted me to which I energetically waved back and replied with a smile.


    At the ministry provisory HQ everything seemed fine until one of the guards at the gate broke protocol and shouted, "The minister had arrived," probably to announce the others to hide their shady dealings, I joked to myself. They hadn''t shouted to announce me before. It was very suspicious.


    There was rustling and some sounds coming from the house and my intuition told me something was really amiss. Maybe they were doing something shady. Just some snacks and pep talk wouldn''t convert these guys to my cause. And I had no intention of using religion to ease the process. Getting away from my thoughts for a while, I checked my surroundings. The wagons and barrels I asked them to rent were there, ready to roll with the oxen and the drivers. I wanted to gather a lot of materials and clean the most of the burnt lots I could in a day.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    I walked with my head up into the house and found the scribes lined up and smiling. Like kids that broke the porcelain vase and were trying to hide it. It was not a hand after sunrise and they were already working hard. It was awfully suspicious. And from the bags under their eyes, these scribes were pulling an all-nighter. I could see the table was moved to the corridor where it would get better airflow and there were several scrolls on it, drying. Their ink was made of charcoal, acacia gum, and water. It took a long time to dry even in this hot weather and it seemed they were penned at night. That was awfully strange.


    "What is going on here? What were you doing before I arrived?"


    "We found some discrepancies with the records and the real properties and were fixing it, milady," Kuma-Nu said.


    And by fixing it they probably meant changing the records so some wealthy and influential people took over the abandoned buildings around them. I narrowed my eyes and steeled myself. Two could play that game and I would at least get to know who was bribing my subordinates.


    "I see. Did you find them by yourselves or someone else told you there were some problems?"


    The young scribe opened his mouth but one of the senior scribes harrumphed, clearly intimidating the younger civil servant into shutting up.


    "What is your name? Fara-Wil, I believe?" He just nodded. "Well, you won''t mind if I inspect your work, would you? Nobody touches anything," I warned and moved to the table.


    I summoned my phone and the LED lantern. It was the day but another light source wouldn''t hurt. I held one device on each hand and slowly recorded an HD video of the whole stack of tampered documents. I could see scratches where the ink on the parchment was erased and the new ink was easy to see as it still had that wet look. I hoped it was captured on video too. I took care to cover the screen with my palm so they couldn''t see that I was recording video but I felt dumb after the fact. It wasn''t like they even knew what that metal-and-glass brick did.


    After I was done recording the evidence, I frowned and studied the documents. Then I moved my hand over the fresh ink and summoned the water to my hand using Decompose. I took care to only take the molecules of water itself, and not break down organic compounds for their oxygen and hydrogen. It had the side-effect of making the new ink quite distinctive.


    "Are these our documents?" I asked Kuma-Nu. "Are there copies in the courthouse and palace?" He nodded and then Fara-Wil took a step and entered in front of the junior scribe.


    "Everything is fine, milady. These are just routine work, we wanted to hurry up with the job. The lady was so busy we all felt motivated to work overnight."


    Corruption. Forgery. And now he''d throw in my face that I spent two days at the smithy? Fuck it, I was doing volunteer work here. Whatever material benefits I earned from this endeavor, it wasn''t worth wasting my time here. I had so much I could do instead. What Nanna told me played back in my head. Was I making a fool of myself? Being so naive as to think I could make a difference just by playing minister like this?


    What should I do? I wished someone could tell me, or at least state clearly my options and what they could cause. Because I thought I had a goal but now it seemed that I was just running blind. What good is to do all of this work so jerks could come and modify the size of the deeds? I checked the modified deeds again. They gobbled up some small properties, not all of them abandoned and the scribes were changing the deeds to match this new reality. These smaller properties were changing hands without the owners'' consent and for less than a third of the price. And by the looks of it, they were very greedy. Some of them claimed entire blocks of the city.


    I clenched my fists. These Bronze Age barbarians understood only profit and power. They would take whatever they could if they had the strength to keep it, the damage to others is damned. They waged wars to capture the defeated as slaves to give them free labor. And by the smug look in the senior scribe''s face, he thought he could earn quite some gold behind my back. A thought floated in my mind and I quickly dismissed it.


    I could kill them for betraying my trust. Nobody would bat an eyelid as it was my right. I was a minister. Second only to the Enshi.


    I turned my back to him to hide the scowl that was forming. And to avoid escalating things, I was too angry to hide my feelings. I doubted he had anything that could kill me or even the guts to do the deed. I took the documents and piled them. Fara-Wil said something about wet ink but I already took care of that. Once I had all the documents piled, I summoned a plastic bag, one of the hundred-liter ones and shoved them inside. I twisted the mouth and after tying a crude knot, it vanished.


    "What did you do?" He asked. "We need those documents back!"


    There was a bit of fear in his voice.


    "Yes, they are with me and they are safe. We are coming back to them soon. Don''t worry, I''ll return them." I looked past him at the other scribes. I gave them a polite smile, swallowed my outrage and ordered. "I want everyone outside. Now."


    As they moved, I summoned the bag with the longsword and attached the weapon to my belt. Some scribes saw it but soon everyone knew. I went behind the last one of them. There were some of the soldiers outside, from both the original group and the smithy recruits. I waved a hand to call one of them. Tamiwa came.


    "What can I do for you, milady?" He asked.


    "Lock the gates and let two soldiers there. I want everyone else gathered here and lined up for an inspection. On the double."


    The idiom didn''t translate well but he was a soldier, used to following orders. I didn''t have to explain myself. Outside, asked the wagon drivers to ready their vehicles to depart at the front gate and gathered everyone except the two guarding the gate at the back, where the vegetable garden used to be. It was all trampled dirt now.


    A few minutes later, I had everyone lined up as if for a military inspection. My intention was to get them with their hands dirty. Not that they had the habit of washing their hands. But I knew I could find out the corrupted ones with a handshake. And that was what I did. I went around the line, shaking the hands of every scribe and soldier and using my power to inspect what was in their hands. I had to use Decompose to clean up my hands so no contamination would go from one person to another and cloud my judgment. After a full round of hand-shaking, I had the information I wanted.


    If I sprung on them now, there would be an armed conflict. I moved my evidence over my forearm and attached it to the rim of my armor. The tiniest spot of yellow amidst the royal blue. it is inevitable. When you handle a metal, a lot of its atoms will get stuck to your hand. And if it was a metal that is not usually handled, I could detect even the faintest traces of it. So I scanned for gold on each of their hands.


    My bet was that the ones that took the bribe yesterday would spend a lot of time counting and admiring their loot. Once I separated the grime, ink, and dirt from their hands, what was left was less than a milligram of gold but it was obvious who had their hands covered in the metal and who hasn''t.


    "Ok. Now, back in my world, we have these team-building exercises. We are going to do one of them now," I told them. It was a ruse to get them to lower their defenses. "I want to separate you in pairs. I will give one of your parchment and a pen, the other one a picture. Sit back-to-back to each other. The one with the picture will describe the picture but without saying what it is. You can only tell the lines of the drawing. The other will attempt to reproduce the drawing.


    "The teams that score the best will earn a prize, so look forward to it! Oh, and participants should drop your equipment."


    We move the chairs and lecterns from the house and I separated eight guards to work with the scribes. Since the soldiers were barely able to scribble with the pens, the scribes were the ones doing the drawings. We wasted one hour doing two rounds of the game but the end goal was clear. And since I was the judge, I could cheat my evaluation to eliminate those I wanted.


    The game in itself was pointless. I just wanted the corrupted ones singled out in the middle and unarmed. On the third and final round, I had just that. I moved to put myself between the men and the pile of equipment they kindly removed to play the game.


    "Last round won''t be a drawing contest. I want the ones in the middle to write an essay of no less than one thousand words on why selling themselves out is a bad thing. Why corruption hurts all society. And why it cannot be allowed to fester. Bribes, doctored documents."


    They were all staring at me. Fara-Wil slammed his lectern and stood up. "That is preposterous! What are you accusing us of?"


    I drew my sword. It was the longsword I looted from Balthazar''s caravan months ago. I had to get my titanium weapons from Samus soon. Or I wouldn''t be able to fight and use Decompose on the enemy''s weapons. I pointed the blade at him.


    "Guards, don''t let any of the men in the middle move away from that. On my authority as a minister, they are under arrest."


    Five scribes and five guards. There were more guards involved in the corruption scheme but the ones in front of me were the ones with the most gold in their hands. I could let a few of them slip by to avoid punishing an innocent, like someone with a fetish to rub a gold coin every night before going to bed for luck. I addressed the group in the middle next.


    "You can come clean and confess you took a bribe to steal properties from good people. Your punishment will be a soft one. No bodily harm. Otherwise, I''ll apply the code. I know there are entries specifically for fraud. And I have plenty of evidence that you indeed sold yourselves so don''t try to deny it. Look around. All of your accomplices are there in the middle with you."


    I was bluffing. I had no desire to mutilate them. For an artifact that was used in this world for millennia, the Code of Hammurabi suffered little changes from what I had in the Earth databases I brought with me. My choice of words was deliberate to show them what was coming. Or at least what I wanted them to think was coming. I feared I''d be forced to follow through with my threats if they didn''t give in though.


    I didn''t want that.


    I lost half of my task force in that incident. But at least I avoided bloodshed. My hope was that they didn''t try to do something stupid like fighting. They were unarmed and unarmored. After a few tense and long moments of this stalemate, Fara-Wil spoke.


    "Stupid woman, do you have any idea who you are crossing by doing that? These were orders from the Enshi himself, you are going to lose your neck!"


    He snorted and chortled like a good villain. But his threats weren''t well cemented in reality. Nephew wanted to get in my panties for his ascension ritual. Why would he jeopardize that for mere deeds? What was his gain in getting some...


    No. I could see it. I didn''t pay attention when I scanned because my mind was elsewhere, but I read the deeds while I was scanning. These deeds belonged to the council members that voted Enshi to the throne. The ones that gave him amnesty. So maybe the order to do so came from the Enshi himself. But why do so in such a convoluted way? He was the king of the city, I bet he could just move properties around as he wished.


    "You are willing to bet your life on that, aren''t you? Tamiwa, get scribe Fara-Wil away from the group and strip him. The rest of the guards, keep a watch over these traitors."


    I had no desire to see him naked but in a world without locks, he would either hide the gold somewhere or keep it on himself. Anything else would be as good as donating it to someone else. The scribe protested but the threat of sharp metal was enough. The others didn''t help his fellow corrupt scribe, probably thinking that I''d be satisfied with catching the leader. Hidden in the folds of his tunic, above the belt and out of the way was a concealed muffled coin holder. It was a strip of vellum with pockets for the coins so they wouldn''t be too bulky on the outside.


    And it was lined with gold shekels and four gold mina. I had a faint idea of how much a scribe earned per year, and that might be enough to be his retirement plan. Tamiwa handed the holder to me and it reeked of sweat. I removed and counted the coins. There were fifty-seven shekels. I placed the coins in a pouch hanging from my belt. It usually only had coppers because it was easy for a cutpurse to get them but I didn''t want to mess with storage right now.


    The naked scribe was fuming at me but he didn''t speak. I could hear the sound of his teeth grinding.


    "Fifty-seven shekels. Would I find more if I checked your sleeping quarters, scribe?"


    "The Enshi will not--" He protested but I cut him.


    "Enshi Es-Kina only worries about himself. And his pact with Ishtar. Do you really think he will crease one eyebrow for some lesser scribe? Is it your wish to go before him and denounce me for my unfairness? Go ahead," I told as coldly as I could.


    I summoned the aluminum bag and took two ingots. "Hold his hands on his back," I told the guards. Using Decompose, I shaped cuffs for his wrists. Solid cuffs. "Take him away. Don''t hurt or torture him. Also, get him dressed in the clothes he was wearing."


    We repeated the same for the other scribed and guards. I could see the rage in their eyes, directed at Fara-Wil. He might''ve scammed the lion''s share of the bribe to himself because I found less than ten gold shekels with each of the other scribes and even less with the guards.


    "Milady," One of the scribes pleaded as he was dragged away by the guards. "Please, I''ll tell everything that happened if you promise me to be merciful."


    GoPro time. I set the camera on a lectern, sat the re-dressed scribe in front and told him to speak only truths to the magical black box. And he didn''t disappoint. Some members of the council met with the scribes yesterday outside and gave them the task to steal the properties on their deeds. Fara-Wil later handed them the gold. It had nothing to do with Nephew as I suspected.


    "I''ll be merciful. You are still under arrest for your crime. Now, Kuma-Nu, Bur-Batolo, and Gu-Muranu follow me as we inspect the scribes'' sleeping quarters. I bet we will find even more bribe gold there."


    The three scribes closest to me were left out of the scheme. At least I knew I could trust them now. We went to the bedrooms and checked. They wouldn''t dig any secret compartment in the solid sandstone walls and floor of the estate so I paused to think. They had the carpenters here, why not ask them to put hidden compartments in the furniture? I knew it was commonplace and some of these compartments were hard to find, especially the ones for coins.


    Too bad I could sense the coins from afar. All I had to do was to run my hands along with the furniture and sense for gold or silver. In Fara-Wil''s dresser, I found the gold under the second drawer. it has a fake bottom that was thicker just enough for a thin sheet of wood and the coins sandwiched between.


    I broke it.


    There was a corkboard with the coins slotted in holes. It wouldn''t even rattle no matter how you moved the drawer. I saw parts of the opening mechanism, some sliding wooden tiles but paid it no mind. I just added another twenty gold shekels to my stash from that drawer and moved to the others. They had another thirty gold shekels and other denominations of silver. A few gems too. They had to pay back tenfold, that was their law. I confiscated all the valuables and sighed.


    It was time to go outside and clean up some city blocks.

 Wednesday, Bull 25th - Afternoon

    I unfolded the map of the city. It was about a meter wide and the blocks we were going to renovate were marked with red wax. Riding Penny hands-free was the best, really. I lost concentration and my mind wandered straight into the scribes and soldiers imprisoned in the former slave barracks. We didn''t have locks but I doubt they will escape five centimeters thick aluminum bars on their own. I thought about what I could do and all paths pointed out at their death. I didn''t want to get them killed but what choices did I have? I couldn''t think of anything.


    The convoy was moving slowly. The oxen were strong but slow. We had a dozen soldiers as our guard and I hoped it was enough. The population was scarce but they were jumpy. Wary. A teardrop away from a riot. Even so, with Dime soaring above us and the city guards clearly identified, we had no trouble reaching the first burnt block.


    I couldn''t shake this feeling that I was too small to jump the chasm I saw before me. The anxiety threatened to punch a hole in my stomach.


    "Milady, we have arrived," One guard stated at my side.


    His statement of the obvious shook me into action. I gave him a fake smile and nodded. What was this feeling? It was as if I had a stalker behind me. Something...


    Watching me.


    I looked behind me and frowned. There was nothing. Above, below, everything was normal. What was that pressure? It felt familiar but I couldn''t pin it. I brushed it aside and put myself to work.


    The block was half-burnt but entirely ruined. The houses used one another as supports and they fell like dominos. Maybe some wooden beams could be salvaged but I had no idea if they were damaged. I opted to act on the side of caution and intended to destroy everything with my power.


    "Thank you. Now, I want three barrels and the box with twenty compartments next to me at all times. Make sure no civilians enter the area," I barked my orders as I got down.


    Penny snorted and nudged me. Yes, I know I have to calm down. Easier said than done.


    I rubbed my hands. They felt cold even under the scorching summer sun. Once the containers were next to me, I put myself to work. Decompose the debris, retrieve the materials. Recycle them. One of the things I wanted to try was to manipulate the cellulose fibers instead of breaking them down entirely into glucose. I touched the wood and focused for a few minutes. The wood broke as if eaten by maggots and the white strands moved slowly.


    Decompose depends on familiarity. The more I worked a material, the easier it was to use my power on it.


    At the same time, I moved over the broken chunks of daub. I removed the silicon into blobs, exercising my dual manipulation. Around us, a crowd of curious onlookers formed. I kept two guards moving the containers around me as I worked and the others went to contain the crowd. Eventually I had to draft the cart drivers to help.


    The most common materials I just removed and left behind in a convenient shape for later collection, like blobs of graphite and silicon. The rest went into the barrels and crates, such as cellulose fibers from the wood, aluminum, and some other metals from the clay and broken objects, calcium carbonate, small amounts of common elements like potassium, magnesium, sodium combined as salts of chlorides, carbonates, and sulfates.


    The blurb from the crowd increased. People were now climbing on the houses adjacent to the burnt block I was cleaning to watch. The cart drivers had to go look after their animals and to stop theft of the materials.


    And then the house I was Decomposing crumbled and collapsed on stupid me and covered everything with a dust cloud. A wall fell over me, hitting my chest and pinning me down. I was dazed and in pain. I couldn''t even think of using Decompose to move the material away.


    Maybe I called the montage too early. Maybe I should be a bit more careful working the debris. Too late now. I had other things to worry about. As if it were their theatrical cue, they appeared from everywhere. The ruined buildings had become rat nests. Once the buildings crumbled and broke, they stirred out of their warrens. Dozens, hundreds of rats. Large rats. They were frenzied, large, and vicious.


    And hungry.


    I could sense them. Probably my animal empathy perk. I know it said "friendship" on the label but I didn''t buy it. The biggest rats were the size of terriers and their teeth shouldn''t be that big, I think. But this was another world, all bets were off. I was trapped underneath the debris, able to see around me but unable to move. The pressure on my chest made it hard to breathe not to mention my boobs crushed by the impact. It was a bad idea to eschew the arming doublet.


    "Attention! Prepare to engage!" Tamiwa shouted for the other guards. "Everyone, don''t panic! The rats can sense your fear!"


    Two things came to mind. Rats were scavengers, they would only strike a bigger target if they thought they would win easily. And the rat traps I commissioned were grossly undersized. No, seriously, where that throng of rats got food to grow this big and numerous?


    Dime cried and dove at the mass of rats. The guards waved their blades threateningly, making the rats flinch. Half of the bystanders ran away, the other half shouted threateningly. The oxen were agitated. I could feel the chittering of the rat horde in my mind. Their hunger. Their fear. It threatened to overwhelm me.


    The rats that were underneath the house pinning me down decided it was safe to get out. They ran and crawled over me.


    I screamed, my mind melting from the panic. I had nothing against the rodents but to have them walk all over me was too much. "STOP!" I crouched and shouted.


    The squeaking and crawling stopped. I could hear silence. At least in my mind, because the humans were still fighting the now immobile. I felt stings of empathic pain as some rats were killed by Dime or the guards. I opened my eyes and gasped at what I saw around me. The horde of rats was frozen in place, staring at me. Hundreds of black eyes. I trembled but it was not time to show weakness. I felt that if my mind wavered, they would all charge at me.


    And I was done with feeding monsters at the water goblins deep in the mines.


    I felt my power attempting to repair myself. The cracked ribs were moving back in place and I needed room for that. The soft organs damaged from the impact restored themselves and I could finally think straight. I used Decompose to move the silicon away from me. What was left was crumbs, fibers, and biomass from the daub. I tried to ignore that it was dung but I couldn''t move carbon on such a large scale or it would ruin my clothes. The sturdy and indestructible metal bikini armor slowly became more and more enticing.


    And my royal blue mail got scratches! Why hadn''t Brandon returned already? And what was Nanna going to ask as her favor? Would Rubati and Banunu be on friendly terms with me? Why did I volunteer to do this shitty job? I lost another dress. Cloe was going to kill me. Maybe I shouldn''t wear couture to work.


    I didn''t move. After I had enough room for myself under the debris, I focused on controlling the rats. They all should die. Several minutes went by and the critters I was sensing all but vanished. There were a few hidden in the warrens, probably small immobile and defenseless pups.


    "Milady, are you alive?" One of the guards asked.


    I had half the mind of siccing the animals on him. What kind of question was that? Shouldn''t he ask if I was okay if I was hurt, or how I was feeling? No, his concern was if I was already dead. Oh, how that irritated me. Pinned under debris? Fine. Crawled over by filthy rodents? Fine. I''m an outdoorswoman after all. But to cross me out as dead already?


    "State your name and rank, soldier!" I shouted back.


    The coward fled. I guess he got his confirmation. But he was doomed. I heard his voice and my memory boon would make sure I could remember it.


    Could I command these rodents? I knew I wasn''t bound to them like I was with Penny and Dime. Let''s start with something easy. I gave them the mental image of the pups in the warrens, that they should take them out because the area was no longer safe. Something that appealed to their instincts should be easy. When I relaxed my hold on them, some of the rats tried to flee the slaughter and some of them did go back to the tunnels to get the pups.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Funny how none of the guards came to rescue me yet. I could''ve dug myself out but I was focusing on the rats. Keeping them in check used more mental focus than I liked. After all the rats came out and were slaughtered, I Decomposed the organic debris pinning me, going slowly as to avoid further damage to my clothes. Cellulose.


    I might have better luck with the silk as the fibers won''t be plant-based. What was I thinking? Putting silk dresses in the way of harm? No way.


    I had doubts if rodents were considered food but that was dispelled once I looked around. The guards were now struggling to keep the bystanders from collecting the dead rats.


    I dusted myself, pushing the silicon away. I left the organic matter. Then I shouted.


    "All guards form up! No civilians will take the rats. Gather the corpses and load them in the wagon! All of you, on my authority as a minister, back off!"


    I had no problem giving the rats to the people, but I knew they would litter everything. Some of the bystanders were visibly angry but when someone crawls out of a collapsed building barking orders like it was nothing, they paused to listen. I approached with my olive branch.


    "Who among you are good with butchering and willing to enter my employ?" Some people raised their hands. I looked around and, as biased as I was, selected the females.


    "We know how to skin the rats, milady. We can also prepare the pelts," a middle-aged lady told me.


    "Good. How many rats can you butcher in a day?" I asked.


    "Five to ten an hour, milady," She answered with a grin.


    I had no idea how many dead rats were in there but twenty women seemed enough. I asked just to make sure. "How many people do you need to process all these animals?"


    "Thirty, forty. We will need a working space and tools."


    "Wages?"


    "One copper mina per person per day. To oversee them, I would beg the lady to pay me one silver shekel. I guarantee you''ll profit from the sale of the meat."


    The copper mina per day was the standard laborer wage. The silver shekel, however, was pushing it. It was the same I paid Aristunn and I was expecting him to die for me. I checked the time, we were approaching noon. I had cleaned a third of the block.


    I smiled at her and started the negotiations. "What is your name?"


    " I am called Zar-Kiira, milady." She pulled the ''i''s'' out. It was a Latin ''i'' like in ''dimple'' and not the English ''I''.


    "Okay, Zar-Kiira, could you find me at least forty women, preferably young unmarried girls. Working hours are from sunrise to sunset. I will offer everyone in my employ one meal a day, at noon. One copper mina per person as a daily wage, paid every seventh day. You will oversee them, but I''ll pay you only two copper mina. If your crew can finish the rodents here before nightfall, I''ll give you a bonus of two copper mina and a bonus of two copper shekels plus the meat of two rats to each person. I will make your tools now, you will work here.


    I had an ulterior motive to choose women and ask specifically for unmarried girls. If they entered my employ, they would be exempted from the "bridal market", colloquially known as city-wide-forced-prostitution-to-save-Nephew''s-ass. I tried for days to come to terms with their customs and consider it as just some weird religious practice but I couldn''t.


    "That is acceptable, milady. I''ll assemble your crew now."


    I felt I could negotiate it further down but to me, it was fine. The bribes I confiscated from the scribes alone could pay these wages for three years. That calculation showed me I could indeed fund an army with what I carried on my handbag.


    "Do that," I dismissed her and went to make some furniture and tools.


    The area was drenched in rat blood. The guards'' boots mixed the fluids with the exposed dirt, making a reddish-brown mud. I felt my stomach churn. Well, if I was the wielder of the power of recycling, let''s turn the situation around. I addressed the crowd one more time.


    "I want to hire eight strong men as porters. Any candidates?"


    To keep things short, I hired sixteen of them to stop them from fighting. They were the new barrel porters, freeing the guards to do their job. I sent some of these new hires to buy supplies, like salt to treat the meat and the pelts. It seems it is good to make fine parchment. Since these were giant rats, it might be true.


    The first task was to get rid of the - literally - bloody mud. I created a rough aluminum pipe that ended in a hook bending over the lip of the to pour the water and awkwardly moved around, using my power to drain the water from the mud and pump it up the pipe. With my hand opened wide, I could cover a thirty-centimeter wide path. It was awkward to walk around with my hand next to the ground but I was nimble enough to pull it. As to how the water moved up the pipe, I could push the water up the pipe the length of my elbow and five centimeters after that before it left my influence but as I gathered more water, I could push it further up the pipe. It was slow but did the job. We filled five wooden barrels with water over the course of more than an hour.


    "Praised be Tarhun," One of the barrel porters exulted. "Such is the power of the holy maiden, to draw the purest water I''ve ever seen out of the bloody mud. Can I drink from it?"


    I could do without the religious fanaticism but the praise ruffled my figurative feathers. I forced to keep it contained but I knew I was smiling. "Don''t dip your hands in the water. I''ll get it for you."


    After I created a solid platform to hold the water barrels, I prepared one of them as drinking water. I added small amounts of calcium carbonate, table salt, magnesium chloride, and glucose. Just a few pinches of each to mineralize the 100% pure water. Drinking it raw would deplete their electrolytes and given the quality of their nutrition. After I checked the hardness and quality of the water myself, I made an aluminum cup and ladle, attaching both to the barrel with strings. This way there would be no contamination of the water. I hoped.


    While the people eagerly drained the "holy" water barrel, I hid from my embarrassment making aluminum shovels and silicon boxes. And I ordered my porters to shovel the dry, blood-caked dirt into silicon crates. It would become an excellent fertilizer. With part of the block cleared, I made workbenches out of aluminum-covered silicon and a mold of my survival knife from the carbon balls left around. Pouring aluminum in the molds and sharpening them with the Dremel made them useable. I also made some hatchets copying my own Earth-made tool so the men could harvest firewood from the debris. I had no hope of getting useable structural wood out of the debris it was probably the best. I had no way to know if there was some fatal fracture.


    We resumed work, crews of workers shoveling the bloodmeal-infused earth into the boxes, another chopping the wood, and a third crew following me as I Decomposed the ruined buildings and retrieved the materials. It was past noon when the women started to butcher the rats. Each workbench had some silicon buckets next to them to separate the unedible entrails and bones. Boiling vats to treat the pelt and another bucket for the removed fur and bits of fat and meat scraped from the pelt.


    The afternoon went by without any other major events, the women dismantling the rats and me demolishing the buildings, now careful to avoid another collapse. I was partially successful if success meant not getting anyone trapped under the debris again. I learned that provoking a controlled collapse of the condemned structures was better than tempting Lady Luck. Yay for me? Wagons went back to base when fully loaded, returned empty. Silicon was the go-to material for containers when the ones I brought proved to be too few. The ladies skinned the rats and cleaned the hides, the men helped separate and clear the debris.


    "Milady, can I ask you something?" One of the men carrying the barrels and crates behind me spoke when I paused after finishing one of the houses. I faced him and nodded. "This metal, what is it?"


    He was pointing at the silicon blobs I was leaving behind. "That''s silicon. It is one of the materials that dirt is made of. What about it?"


    "I saw the boxes, tables, and chairs you made. Could it be used for something else?"


    "Not really. It can''t be smelted or sharpened and the other uses require techniques we don''t have here."


    He paused to think about what I was saying before speaking again. "I''ve seen it is quite brittle for a metal. But it seems hard. Couldn''t we use it for building? I thought you could make bricks with it. It seems to be no worse than one of the old mud bricks."


    I opened my mouth to answer but closed it right away. "Utuaa, did I say your name right?" He nodded. "Do you know any brickworks nearby? You seem familiar with them."


    "Aye, milady. My cousin used to own a brick factory near the river but he fled south," He lowered his head, sadness in his eyes as he recalled his cousin''s fate. "Heard nobody returned from that direction or got through the blockade by the invaders."


    I had heard the same from the horse''s mouth. The renewed outrage for the slaughter of civilians helped erase some of the guilt that was creeping back to the front of my mind lately.


    "Tomorrow I''ll bring a scribe here. Fetch me some mud bricks and we can do some tests. If what you suggested is true, this will be very useful."


    We resumed work but soon the first tones of orange dyed the few clouds in the sky, signaling the end of a workday. The moonless nights forced everyone to stay indoors. I paid everyone their goal bonuses. The meat from two rats and the coins. Their wages would be paid weekly, eight days from now.


    "Thank you, everyone. I expect all of you back here tomorrow morning, one hand after sunrise. We will work on other city blocks. Maybe catch more rats. We shall see. You now work for the minister of agriculture and development. Don''t abuse the borrowed authority though and I see you tomorrow, I guess? You are dismissed for today."


    "Thank you, milady," Zar-Kiira spoke for the group.


    They were smiling, each one with their packed meat under the arm. I had a pile of clean pelts for curing and a bag of rat meat in storage. I guess meat was meat, even if it was a rodent''s. A female rat could birth thousands of pups a year. Maybe rats could be cultivated as a food source? I pinned the repulsive idea for later. It was time to go back home. I mounted Penny and returned along with the last wagons. The rat entrails and bones were in sealed boxes as the stench was unbearable.


    The block was cleared and we learned valuable lessons that would help us clear the other blocks even faster. If the silicon brick idea worked, I would convert one of the reclaimed blocks into the new ministry HQ. But that was a task for another day.


    Back in my room, I booted the laptop and browsed. I had the data for the compressed earth blocks, CEBs, in my engineering books, as it was one of the subjects we studied in "ENG 402 - Understanding Third World Development Problems". A CEB should have a compressive strength of 2 to 3 MPa. Pure silicon ranged from 3 to 3.6 MPa. But if we allowed the silicon bricks to cure for a few days exposed to air, they should grow a layer of silicon dioxide. A hundred Angstroms thick. Useless except to protect the silicon underneath from water.


    I updated my journal entries, browsed a few more random world pictures but found nothing of interest, and went to sleep.

 Thursday, Bull 26th - Morning

    And then a month went by and we cleaned the city. Huzzah!


    ...


    Well, I wished. If it only were that easy. I know life and people have a talent to throw a wrench in one''s plans, but what happened to me today was too much. Today was a crappy day. But I am getting ahead of myself. Damn, I am so frustrated!


    Back to our normal schedule.


    My day started like the previous ones. With Dime fighting a lot of somethings next to his old nest. The flow of raw emotions and the thrill of the hunt erased any kind of drowsiness I had. I needed to seriously find out what he was doing. It was like the blasted bird was fighting an army. And he was winning. I could feel some pinpricks of pain but Dime cared not a bit about the shallow wounds he was taking. I could only get the empathic input and the bird was mighty angry. I was glad he hadn''t a slingshot.


    I had to stay mindful of my own feelings, bottling up what I was sensing from Dime and separating it from my own. Worse, I could feel Penny was also agitated. While she couldn''t sense Dime directly, she could sense me. I couldn''t let the sky-lord''s anger upset the mare so I had to keep it from upsetting me. But it did leave me on edge.


    After my morning beauty routine, I donned my armor with the gambeson, put on cargo pants, boots and threw a shirt over the mail hauberk. With a sports bra underneath everything, I learned my lesson. It was a bit tight but the shirt and pants were from Earth so any damage to my clothes would be repaired later. Better than to keep ruining designer dresses. I also attached a longsword and a dagger to my belt, along with some pouches for knick-knacks and a few lower denomination coins. Coppers and a few silvers. Then I went to the kitchen.


    As I walked past one of the rectangular, tall windows in the corridor facing south-east, I saw a plume of black smoke rising, far away. Another fire. I stopped to study the smoke. It was rising and the prevailing winds in the region blew from the grassy plateau to the north down on the valley. The smoke was going out of town. It was tall, indicating that the fire that created it happened at least an hour ago, in my rough estimate. And it rose as a column without broadening before the high winds picked it up and blew it south. It meant the fire wasn''t spreading. I made a mental note to ask around about it once I was out, but the fire didn''t concern me now. Maybe I would go there and clean it up as a priority, maybe not.


    I was a fool for taking this job without negotiating my salary.


    Anyway, I reached the kitchen. Belle and the cooks were busy with the endless struggle of feeding an army. A small one but I was sure there were over a hundred guards in Abil-Kisu''s place, including my own dozen.


    "Sandra, welcome," Belle greeted me with an endearing smile. I wanted to squeeze those freckles but I had to act with propriety.


    "Good morning, Belle-Sunu. Could you spare me a moment? I have something to ask you," Before she could answer I dragged her out of the kitchen.


    I explained to her what happened yesterday, and the butchering of the rodents. Also that I had about a hundred kilograms of rat meat with me. Giant rats, if you measure them by Earth standards. Then I addressed my main concern.


    "Is there any prejudice against eating rat meat? I mean, among the upper society?"


    Belle blinked. "Well, it is not something they usually eat, but no. Meat is meat, it is just that the rats are usually left alone. They are too vicious. Sometimes you hear a rumor that a child was eaten by rats. I never had one happening next to me, as I grew in a rich man''s slave pens, but the stories circulate too often."


    I remembered how scared the people were. Rats the size of dogs with whatever monstrous constitution the magic of the world granted them. I half-dismissed the tales of children becoming rat food as it was too convenient as an old wive''s tale to scare children and cover-up more gruesome endings.


    "So, you don''t eat tubers or roots, but you eat rats, eh?" I teased. To each their own.


    "The tubers are poisonous to people! And no, I won''t try those fried sticks of death you made last time!" She protested. "The gods made you nigh-immune to poison, but us, we are made of softer stuff."


    There was a sliver of devotion not entirely toward the gods in her speech. But Belle''s words deserved merit. Maybe there was a faint poison in these tubers, and I just tanked through it.


    "Okay. So, should I gift some rat meat for the house food supplies? Would the cook be offended?"


    She shook her head. "No. Not at all. Lord Abil-Kisu feeds his servants well, but meat is meat. I am sure the men, especially, would appreciate."


    "Let''s go somewhere I can dump my stash then. Oh. How are the preparations for the arrival of the ''ladies'' from the capital?" I whispered the last part to her.


    I wanted to make a surprise for the kids. Their moms were coming back to be with them, they should be thrilled and I wanted to do the best by them. I felt guilty for being sucked into this minister''s job and having little time to spend with them. Stupid Nephew trying to cheat death.


    "It is going well. We will make the fried pastries you taught us. Just make sure you are here before they arrive."


    We talked about some minor issues while we cleared a large and sturdy table at the back of the kitchen meant to process meat. Several shallow cuts covered the surface, showing how old it was. Concerned about contamination, I stopped Belle.


    "Let me do something about this table before we use it. I know they clean it up but these cracks on the wood are bad."


    I summoned my ingot bag and took three titanium ingots. I wanted to cover the table in a smooth layer of titanium to keep the meat from being contaminated. It was also a good practice to manipulate the metal without affecting my armor. One that could one day save my life if I had to do it in a stressful situation, like combat. I used my power slowly and found the first barrier. Having the titanium wrapped around my body and trying to affect only the ingot in my hand was like trying to have a conversation with someone a couple meters away in a rock concert. Every single ring of my suit of mail replied when I tried to tune the titanium''s resonance.


    So I had to learn how to filter out the noise. Ignore the rings in my armor and focus only on the ingot. It was like doing ventriloquism, like... I don''t know. Like that streamer husband playing League while his wife wanted him to go buy milk for the kids. It didn''t end well for both but I was amazed at his ability to ignore the woman. Not as much as I was appalled by the violence that ensued. I remember I even shook the computer screen telling him to stop being an ass and just go buy the damn milk. People watching the stream would surely understand. Anyway, that kind of single-minded focus stuck with me.


    I tried and spent a lot of time just isolating the ingot from the armor. I felt the need to affect the mail rings like an itch I needed to scratch and I tried to just bear it. Then it came to me. The beautiful royal blue tint of my armor. How I wanted to preserve it. The titanium oxide around my armor. I used it as a barrier to keep the noise down. Surprisingly, it worked. It also dimmed the resonance from the ingot but the oxide layer there was an order of magnitude thinner.


    No, I didn''t measure that. It was how I felt it, okay?


    And after trying for a few minutes more, I reached... nowhere. I just couldn''t do that. It was my first frustration of the day.


    "I can''t do it," I exhaled, breaking the silence.


    Belle was behind me all this time. "Don''t worry," She chuckled. "It is good to know there are things you can''t do, whatever you were trying to do with that metal and the table."


    I sighed, swapped the titanium for an iron ingot and covered the table in record time. Then I dumped the rat meat on top of it.


    "Here''s your job. Prepare the meat for serving or for drying. There should be enough salt in my storeroom in the annex. Just don''t disturb Nanna."


    The girl was wide-eyed at the pile of rat bits. "Yes..." She mumbled. "I need a knife."


    I left Belle working on the meat and went to eat my breakfast. At the stables, Penny was already saddled. After gracefully nodding at the stable hand praising the mare''s intelligence, I left the merchant''s estate and went to work. The first roadblock of the day was, well, blocking the road. A throng of people, including several armed guards was in front of my estate. The ministry''s HQ. And then I was spotted, reported, and the throng''s attention was on me.


    I could see two councilmembers that bribed my scribes, some scribes I don''t know, more wealthy people, and the workers I hired yesterday. And Dime is out of town. It would take several minutes for him to get here. I almost willed Penny to turn around and run away but it would solve nothing. I was the second most powerful person in this city''s administrative hierarchy, for crying out loud.


    "Hey, you! Woman!" Councilman who-are-you-again shouted, angry.


    I looked over the crowd. My guards were at the gate, looking at me. Without any intention of coming to my aid. I snapped an HD pic of the scene so I could later tell who was present. Then I addressed the angry man.


    "Yes, counselor? May I help you?" I replied with my business smile.


    "I heard you seize my documents and imprisoned some honest scribes! I had to come to see it by myself!" He shouted back.


    So straightforward. I was thankful that he at least saved me the trouble of guessing. But just that.


    "I did either, counselor. I took the documentation from my ministry for safekeeping and I imprisoned some corrupt scribes. The ones taking bribes to falsify records," I answered and deadpanned at the end. "The ones that corrupted my scribes are still out there. I intend to bring them to justice."


    "Well, we need those documents," One of the scribes entered the conversation.


    This one had fancier clothing than the other scribes. It felt familiar and after a while, I remembered. It was the same style of tunic Nephew used when he was acting as the magistrate, but fancier.


    "Pardon me, I don''t think we were introduced. I''m Sandra Rinaldi, minister of Agriculture and Development," I greeted the possible new magistrate.


    He huffed, annoyed. "I know who you are, woman. I am the new senior magistrate, appointed by the Enshi Es-Kina. And I demand the documents you took."Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The pieces were falling in place now. This guy had the same power as that old mind-bender turned vegetable that tossed me in the hole, Sun-Goro. Meaning he was quite powerful in the city, and if we fell into a dick measuring contest, I''d lose by default.


    But then again, dicks were not that valuable nowadays in Es-Kina, with all the scheduled imports. Nephew wanted to build his ziggurat and cheat death with women as fuel, and in particular, me as the cherry on top, pun intended. As William Hurt proclaimed, as long as I was available for business and not committed, I had huge bargaining power with Nephew. It was disgusting to even entertain the thought but going through yet another of these Bronze Age judicial trials would be even more disgusting and troublesome. I had no idea even if they had a harder trial than being tossed in a bottomless crevice.


    "Well, I''m sorry to disappoint you, honorable senior magister. The scrolls in possession of the ministry are just copies for our use in planning the Enshi''s Ziggurat. There are some scribbles and notes made both by me and the scribes, and their value as proper documents is null."


    He wasn''t pleased. I guess being talked back by a woman was not something he was used to. He clenched his eyebrows and rattled his jaw. "That doesn''t matter. I am ordering you to hand over the scrolls, and you will do it now."


    I sighed before I noticed and held my breath. "That I cannot do, magister. If you want the documents, you can use the copy your scribes have in the courthouse. The scrolls we are working on have sensitive information regarding the ministry."


    He stared at me as if he was asking if I was mentally handicapped. Then he turned sideways and pointed at the plume of smoke. "The courthouse burned down to the ground tonight!" He screeched, his voice raising an octave. "All the documents inside burned down with it! The only copies of the deeds for the whole city are with you!"


    He pointed an accusing finger at me and the crowd behind him grew angrier. I stared at the smoke and my jaw relaxed with the surprise. "The courthouse burned down?" I mumbled.


    "Yes, you dolt!" He insulted me with a term that meant to compare one''s intellect with a goat''s. "Hand over the documents or I''ll have you executed."


    On the magister''s left, councilman early-vote smirked. Nephew probably owed these guys a lot because they saved him from slavery and a trip to the water-goblin-depths and it seemed he was intent on calling it.


    "And don''t think the Enshi, magnanimous though he is, will side with you, wench," He barked at me, raising his voice like the ''good'' politician he was. "Your plans to take over the city failed. I bet it was you who torched the archives."


    At least I could agree with him in one thing. I''ve seen the security in the courthouse. The fire was no accident, it was arson. He wanted to incite the crowd behind him. I could see the people I hired yesterday confused, while the ones they brought with them shouting and inciting the crowd. But he gave me a golden opportunity to solve this problem and take him out of the equation. I cringe inside but I can''t be naive. That guy wanted blood. He shall have it.


    "Magistrate, I take offense at that accusation. I did no wrong and never left Abil-Kisu''s estate during the night. I have his guards as witnesses that I did not set fire to the archives. I demand a trial."


    As if I was going to back down. I knew very well this course of action could end with the councilman''s death or mine but my hands were already tarnished with royal blood. Behind me, I heard Nietzche snickering and saw Machiavelli with a thumbs up. I was too weak to reach the other solution. The one where nobody died.


    "Ha!" The councilman shouted in defiance. "You are like a weak twig. I won''t even need a champion for that. Get off that horse, girl, so I can give you what you deserve."


    Before moving, I tried something to confirm one thing that was bugging me. With my hand in my pocket, I summoned Tarhun''s tablet and checked the crowd. The whole crowd, one by one. There was no reaction. At all. It was quite impossible that nobody in this crowd worshipped Tarhun so something was amiss. I needed to talk to Nanna, later.


    I got down and instructed Penny to back off. Councilman wont-tell-name-to-women-cuz-its-custom took a sword from a guard and I drew mine. Again, I should get a titanium weapon. This duel would be over the moment he swung his blade at me if I did, my fine control in a hurry lacking. Maybe I can break his weapon without affecting mine. The reason I couldn''t manipulate the titanium without affecting my armor was that I had too much of it all around me and it was distracting. And if I fail, I''ll just break both our weapons. But I could use that... yes.


    I detached the sword from the belt and stowed it on Penny''s saddle. Then I drew the dagger and lowered my stance, my feet wide to start the ginga.


    "I''m ready. Should we start?"


    He roared and came with the sword on a two-handed grip. I weaved and dodged closing in, trying to get to stab him with the dagger. To my surprise, he didn''t try to bring his sword to bear, he just lifted his leg and kicked my shin away, removing part of my balance for a moment. I gave up on the attack and dropped low and tumbled away.


    I got back on my feet at the same time he readied another overhead swing. Our eyes met and I looked down. He smirked and drove the sword down, aiming at my neck. The swing was different this time, he was not committing everything, saving some strength to shift the blade''s path. I shifted sideways and the sword cut into my shirt, drawing sparks as it slid over the mail underneath. Instead of moving to slash again, he drove the sword up while it was still next to me, planting his dominant leg firmly on the ground and shoving me off my feet. Then he headbutted me and stepped back.


    I spun with the headbutt and fell on my back. The difference in physical strength was huge. The sword came, sharp point first and I rolled sideways. Another slash dug into the ground where I was and tossed dirt around and over me. Time to sacrifice the plum tree and save the peach. On the next roll, I got on my knees and stopped. The sword came at my neck. I shifted the dagger in my right hand and raised the left hand to block the blade.


    He had this habit of putting his whole weight on the dominant leg to transmit more power to his swings. I could see his maniacal grin as he saw I wouldn''t dodge his swing. Instead, I waved my left hand, drawing his attention while I threw the dagger at his immobile thigh. The sword dug into my hand and I could feel it chip my bones. We both shouted in pain. I tried to grip the sword but my hand wouldn''t obey.


    The pain was too great to concentrate on Decompose to manipulate the metal. Instead, I rusted his sword, accelerating the decay process of the metal and feeling the flakes of rust drop.


    "Don''t pull the dagger out, you moron!" I heard the new magistrate''s voice.


    Focusing my sight, I could see that the councilman had the dagger deep inside his thigh, a hand on each weapon. My own hand was rapidly healing and the feeling was returning.


    "You are dead, woman!"


    Councilman roared, dropped his sword and grabbed me by the neck of the mail. Then he headbutted me again. He let the dagger in the wound and moved to grab my neck. With both hands, he held me and pressed down on my throat with the thumbs. Tarhun''s boon of half-damage meant he could only choke me halfway. I struggled but there was no escape from his vice-like grip.


    Then I kicked the dagger deeper into his thigh and felt the blade scrape his femur. He released me. I gagged and gasped for air.


    With mad eyes, he roared and pulled the dagger, drawing a gush of blood out of the puncture. He grabbed my shoulder, pinning me down, and came to stab my face. I kept my eyes on the weapon. Decompose. The iron flowed away from me, ruining the weapon and also dying the blood a sickly yellowish purple.


    And now my hidden card. This close and with his attention on me and the dagger, he missed the movement of my right hand. I summoned my survival knife and stabbed his stomach, pulling the weapon sideways and storing it when it stopped cutting.


    It was his time to gasp. He didn''t let go of me but looked down to see the wound.


    "Your loss," I told him and moved my hand next to my chin.


    "Not yet, whore!" He hissed and raised his head to give me another headbutt.


    I watched as his head came down. Then I summoned the knife again in my hand and pushed it against his neck. He impaled himself on the knife but still delivered a half-strength headbutt.


    Then he gargled blood and dropped to the side of his wounded leg. I pushed him aside and stood up.


    "There, problem solved," I shouted. "With the gods as witnesses, it was proven that I didn''t set fire to the courthouse archives. Magistrate?"


    Play along or face the crowd, jerk.


    "Yes... yes! The gods have proclaimed their judgment and I witnessed it. Councilman Merem-Selit lost the trial and is considered guilty of setting fire to the courthouse. All of his assets are now confiscated by the court."


    That was... a shitty move. By their laws, his assets should be mine but I will let this asshole get away with it. But he wasn''t done.


    "Miss Sandra, I still need the documents."


    I told you it was a crappy day.


    "I don''t know where they are," I technically didn''t lie. I know how to get them, but where did the stuff I stored go, I had no idea. "And now I am going to clean the blood and put on clean clothes. Go back to your courthouse and try to salvage something, magistrate. I am busy."


    A staredown contest ensued as Merem-Selit exsanguinated on the road. Penny dug at the dirt, impatient. Then a raptor cry rang above us. Dime arrived, late to the party. I rose my arm without breaking eye contact and the Sky-Lord landed on it. I couldn''t hold him for too long but I felt an updraft and the weight reduced. Dime''s wind magic also had the effect of ruffling his feathers and making the bird look even more menacing.


    "So?" I asked.


    His eyes shifted to take in Dime''s imponent figure. "Are these... guts?" The magistrate asked, disgusted.


    My attention shifted and I felt the stench of carrion. I looked sideways and saw Dime, covered in gore and dried blood. And indeed, there was a piece of bowels stuck to his chest.


    "It seems I need to clean my bird too. I don''t know what it killed but it wasn''t anything healthy."


    And now that I took a good look, his crop was full. He was eating well.


    "Ugh," He gagged. "I don''t know if that''s a sky-lord or a vulture anymore. Have it your way, miss. We shall meet again."


    The magistrate took a few steps back. I nodded. "I won''t make any promises, but I''ll try to make copies of the documents. I hope we can work together toward Es-Kina''s prosperity, instead of... what this guy was doing. Else I fear your tenure in the office will be a short one, magistrate."


    ''When the chieftain has penetrated enemy territory but not too deep, he is on facile ground. On facile ground, halt not,'' Sun-Tzu said. I would keep the pressure on this guy until he caved. Hesitating now would make Merem-Selit''s death pointless.


    "You dare--"


    I cut him and spoke over. "If it were not for Merem-Selit''s machinations cutting me and Abil-Kisu''s votes from the council, the previous magistrate wouldn''t even be the Enshi. And speaking of transferring assets, I claim his votes in the council to myself. You can''t sell these to rebuild your courthouse. Which you will have to do without my help, by the way.


    "So, yes, I dare. Try me, magistrate. I''ll make you think Sun-Goro catatonic state was a blissful retirement. You can have his business, his land, his gold. I keep the votes. Are we in agreement, magistrate?"


    DIme crowed menacingly, raising his wings and lowering his head as if he was about to pounce.


    "So shall it be. We will take our leave. Guards, take this corpse away. Justice was done here," He said with a nervous flair. "And we shouldn''t take more of the minister''s time for the sake of the city. Farewell, milady."


    From dolt to milady, that was quite the improvement. Now, the key to politics was to always leave your opponent an exit. And always try to drive him toward the exit you want him to take. The magistrate got his justice, he filled his pockets, I got more votes in the council, and he was soon to be out of my neck. A win for everyone. I had no delusions that they would leave me alone. Maybe I''d have to kill a few more.


    Maybe I should''ve taken over the city and then burned it to the ground. Instead, here I was, working for free and getting double-crossed at every corner.


    The magistrate was moving away and the guards were carrying the body. Then I remembered that I still needed his services.


    "Magistrate! Wait." I shouted at him.


    He turned around, clearly holding back his anger. "What is it, milady minister?"


    I pointed at my estate. "I have some corrupt scribes and guards imprisoned. It is your job to judge them and give them proper punishment."


    He raised an eyebrow. "Imprisoned? Why didn''t you just execute them? It is well within your power to punish your underlings." He seemed very curious. The word he used could also be translated into minions.


    "I dislike killing," I sighed.


    He shifted his gaze on the councilman''s body. "I can see that. Well, let nobody say I shied away from my duties. Bring them to me and I''ll grant them justice."


    I walked toward the gate. As I moved past the magistrate, I whispered, "You better not release them."


    "I won''t," He grinned.


    I could see the gears in his head turning. These scribes were useful to him, weren''t they? I halted. "What are you going to do with them?"


    "They shall be sentenced to slavery. I will have them in shackles, copying documents until their hands fall off and they die."


    Well, a scribe was expensive to raise. It made sense to not slaughter them outright.


    "I hope you aren''t trying to have them falsify more property deeds."


    "No. Now that the one pressing for the documents is gone, we can wait until you find where you misplaced the ones in your possession."


    "I''ll need more parchment and ink. But I can get the scribes working for me to make new copies. I won''t say when, though."


    He nodded. "That is acceptable. I thank you for your cooperation, milady minister." Then he turned to the crowd they brought. "Good, everyone. The issue here is settled. Miss Rinaldi is going to help us. Let us be on our way."


    Son of a... priestess of Ishtar. He made it seem like he convinced me to help him.


    "You owe me a few favors, magistrate," I told behind his back. "And I''ll collect them."


    He turned around and clapped his hands. "So shall it be. I''m in your debt, milady." He said loud enough for everyone to hear.


    The crowd parted, the ones brought by the councilmen and the magistrate went away, while my workers and the wagon drivers stayed behind. I waved a hand to get their attention.


    "Okay, everyone. I am going to freshen up and clean my bird, then we are off to work. Everyone, come inside, let''s meet the rest of the team."

 Thursday, Bull 26th - Afternoon

    To keep my mind away from the horror of just having killed a guy, I distracted my mind with philosophy.


    I heard the story once in a motivational speech. A sculptor was asked to make something representing opportunity. He then presented, after a long time of contemplation and work, his masterpiece. It was a dynamic statue of a woman, running, with a very distinctive hairstyle. The back of her head was bald and the front had a toup¨¦e large enough to shame the 45th POTUS. When asked for an explanation, he said that Opportunity is something everyone covets and runs past you at once. You got only one chance at grabbing it by the hair and that is right as it passes by you. Once it went away, you can''t do anything to it.


    Caveman''s allegories aside, that is a pretty good image of what was happening in Es-Kina lately. In the turmoil of the succession, the outbound refugee crisis, the starving army looming in the southwest, the desperate bid for a sliver of godhood to save the king''s life, the fires that claimed almost a third of the city, in the middle of this shitstorm, everyone is trying to grab what they can. At everyone else''s expense.


    Such was the motivation to the raid on Abil-Kisu''s warehouses, the bribing of the scribes, arson at the courthouse, the fight with the councilman, and a ton of things I only caught rumors of or had no idea. The city was imploding with their esteemed elite''s own greed and none was the wiser.


    Meanwhile, stupid me was trying to salvage it. For free. Oh, you could say I obtained the gold used to bribe the scribes, the council votes of late Merem-Selit, and my own private army of followers. To an outsider, it might look like I was one of those voraciously tearing the city apart to fill my own pockets. I didn''t seek any of these situations, however. It was just me picking the aftermath of some crap that was thrown my way. If I were actively trying to seize power...


    I had no idea what would happen. In fact, I could barely recognize myself in the mirror. The bookish college girl that loved camping and singing birds became someone that murdered for breakfast. Even the bird by my side was now murderous and tone-deaf. But one thing I was certain from the earlier encounter. A woman gathering power in this city was a threat. They would keep attempting to control me. I had half the mind of getting out of it and just walking away, but the rest of the world was the same. Moving elsewhere would mean restarting the process all over again.


    I had to keep moving forward or lose all I achieved so far. Surely I could defeat almost anyone in one-on-one combat just because I was pretty much tireless and unkillable, or at least able to sustain grievous maiming injury just to get one win. But if everyone ganged up on me, there was only so much one person could do. Since I couldn''t learn magic and toss fireballs everywhere, I mean.


    Philosophical conjectures apart, the first thing I did when I entered my estate was to take a bath and clean Dime. I didn''t wash the sky-lord but I used my power to remove all the extraneous grime from his body and feathers. It removed some of the oily coat of his feathers but he promptly perched on the windowsill to preen and groom himself, getting more oils from the glands at the base of his tail to coat his feathers.


    I paused to think about him. He stopped giving me offerings of his prey and I guess he no longer fears me. I had no way of reading his thoughts so I can''t guess but I think our relationship has improved. He felt my attention, took his beak from underneath his wing and chirped. His combination of brown, white and emerald feathers felt odd to my earthen senses. I waved and he went back to grooming. I washed the blood off of my armor and clothes, sighing at the scratches on the blue galvanized coating. I could coat it again, repair this damage. Maybe I would do that, I had to visit Samus to get my weapon anyway.


    Freshened up, I went downstairs and gathered my teams to assign the work for the day. Utuaa and Zar-Kiira approached me, the two of them became the leaders of the workers by gender. I would allow them to keep the positions if there were no problems.


    "Yes?" I asked.


    "Milady minister," Zar-Kiira bowed and delivered her line with sugary words. "There were some women that wanted to join our workforce. I brought them here but if you think it is too much..."


    "Me too," Utuaa added. "Several men want to help you. They are strong."


    The mason hadn''t the same social grace as Zar-Kiira but I felt the sincerity in his words. The people of the city were desperate. They were the ones that failed to flee when news of Marduk''s army arrived or ones that returned after the roads proved too much of an ordeal. Without guidance and stability, the city was on the verge of a rebellion. Theft was rampant and they were looking at rats as a protein source. As Belle put, ''meat is meat'' - and meat was a luxury.


    "I will trust both of you to get everyone a job. We are going to do the same as yesterday, without the part where I bury myself in debris," I drew a chuckle from Utuaa. "But I won''t be as generous with the rat meat as yesterday. If people want meat, it will be part of their pay. Anyone that disagrees can go find work elsewhere."


    "No, no!" Zar-Kiira hurriedly denied. "We all understand that the lady was extremely generous yesterday. And yes, we would all take some meat home as part of our payment. I only hope the lady doesn''t overprice it."


    She let escape some of her worries. No doubt the prices of food were jacked up to extremes by the greedy merchants.


    "No, I am not trying to make a profit. We will discuss this later. If things go well, I might even get something nice for everyone to feast on later. Now, let me talk to everyone."


    "As you wish, milady," They bowed slightly and returned to their groups.


    I climbed on a wagon so everyone could see me.


    "We are going to clear up more of the city today," I addressed the almost hundred people in the backyard. "The scribes will work on making copies of the deeds for the courthouse, without the changes made by the corrupt scribes. I want a guard detachment to stay inside watching the scribes work, another at the gates to help unload the carts. Nobody will either enter or leave this estate while I am out. I''m leaving Bloodstone the sky-lord here to keep watch, with orders to peck out the eyes of anyone trying to get in or out.


    "Cart drivers, you are to unload the crates outside, next to the wall. Do not block the road. We are only working half-period today but you will be paid for a full day. I want one fast runner to stand by Abil-Kisu''s gates and come to warn me when the two ladies I am expecting to arrive today get there. Meanwhile, we are going to work on repairing our city."Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    They shouted in agreement when I paused but then I thought of something and raised a hand to silence them.


    "What happened earlier today was a sad happening. I had no intention of killing that man but I also could not back down. I am not trying to increase my properties by bribing scribes to doctor documents and stealing from my neighbors. I am not even getting any wages from this job. I am not doing this for the Enshi. This city became my home now that I can''t go back to my birthplace. I have no doubt that what happened earlier today will happen again. People will come trying to take advantage of us. Trying to bully us and steal from us. I ask you to not let them and also to not fight them. I will fight if needed. I only ask that you stay with me."


    I don''t know if they understood the depth of what I said but they cheered loudly. The cart drivers and the guards moved to exit the gate and the workers filed up behind the last cart. I mounted Penny and rode along. Little I knew that my speech would become a prophecy.


    With more hands and more experience, we cleared a block in less than half the time of the previous one. Without accidents as I knew now to collapse structures before getting nearby to Decompose them. We got two very strong men some mauls I crafted and they put themselves to demolish the condemned buildings. It couldn''t fall on me if it was already on the ground.


    Regarding the rats, I figured out my "animal friendship" was more like "animal domination" than anything. That explained why I bonded with Dime even though he feared me because of my invulnerable eyes. I''m glad he got over it and acts friendly, but I might never know if he had Stockholm Syndrome or not, like Ash''s Pikachu. But back to the rats, I could dominate the rodents and make them do my bidding. Even if my bidding was to stand still while they were killed by the women to become meat and pelts. I could even drag rats from nearby blocks, and the female crew was elbow deep in rat butchering. Quite literally.


    We were halfway through the second block when the mood shifted. I felt a chill down my spine when I turned around and saw one very young and well-dressed lady approach, the workers parting in fear of staining her fancy dress, the noise of the women chatting and butchering the rats dying, even the men loading the carts with materials stopped. I dropped what I was doing and approached. She was making a beeline toward me anyway. Her dress looked like one of Cloe''s models. In fact, it looked very much like one of the ones from the fashion game app. It was no coincidence.


    Here comes a new challenger, I heard inside my head.


    "Sandra Rinaldi!" She shouted from a few meters away. Quite rude because we had already made brief eye contact.


    "Yes, may I help the lady?" I asked her.


    Nevermind being polite by Earth standards, people in this world just didn''t introduce themselves. Did they just assume everyone should know who they were? I was dumb for not asking Abil-Kisu or Nanna about it.


    "Ha! You are the scourge of this city. Give up on him, you seductress! And go away before you bring us all ruin!"


    What was she talking about? Some weird prophecy? Who should I give up on? "I''m afraid you misspoke. What do you want exactly?"


    She huffed


    "It is all your fault! Ever since you came to this city, everyone is dying left and right! And you seduced my man! I tell you, go away while you can or you''ll suffer!"


    I studied her and she seemed very familiar. After a while, I remembered. She was the same social butterfly that was annoying me in Abil-Kisu''s baby shower. And if I remembered well, she had a thing for... Brandon.


    "Are you talking about Brandon?"


    She scowled. "Yes. Captain Al-Amir is my fianc¨¦e! Give up on him, stop trying to steal my man. You should never have crawled out of that abyss!"


    I looked behind her. Eight very well-armed guards were lined up behind her. This pampered princess was looking for blood. I moved to the side and found the one with the fancier armor.


    "Are you in charge of protecting the princess here?" I asked the guard.


    He pretended he didn''t hear me. Princess tantrum didn''t like that I stopped paying attention to her. She tried to grab my arm but withdrew her hand as she felt the mail underneath.


    "You... you are wearing armor? You are a woman! Oh, that''s hilarious. You are really a barbarian, aren''t you?" She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.


    Well, forgive me for my unladylike attire, your Highness. But to call a cosmopolitan XXI century woman a barbarian was a bit too much. See, I told you this day was hell. I really didn''t want to drag myself down into an insult contest with this dimwit. But maybe she could be useful for one thing. I was worrying where he was. Maybe her information network was better than my non-existent one.


    Yes, I should but suddenly, I don''t want to lose to this entitled brat. It was something that welled up from somewhere and now I felt like a lioness defending my pride-lands. Step in the circle of life if you dare, girl. I never had to fight for a man. I never had a man worth fighting for, and maybe it is preposterous to consider Brandon mine, but I don''t want him to be hers. She''s not worthy and I am a jealous bitch.


    But that would not be my venue of attack. I had something better. I leaned to the side and met the guard''s eyes.


    "Hey, guard guy, if you are here to protect this lady, you better take her back home. She is obstructing the work of government officials. I''ll have to punish her if she doesn''t leave."


    The guard shook his head. "Milady minister, we are aware of that, however the young lady--"


    The spoiled princess cut the guard''s words, "My father is the general! Not even the Enshi dares go against him! If you dare touch me, my father will run his sword through your bowels!"


    That made sense. Why this girl was so infatuated with Brandon, why she thought she owned him, why she thinks she can trample over everyone. I also knew the general and he was too pragmatic. I bet he spoiled the princess rotten, but I doubted he would act unless I truly harmed her, like scarring her face or maiming her.


    "I''ll sentence you to a day of forced labor if you don''t leave. I''ll have you spend the whole day tomorrow butchering rats. I bet your father will approve, as the meat shipment tomorrow is destined to the army''s provisions. I bet the army needs lots of meat and the general would be elated to know his daughter is putting in the effort to help and learn useful skills for when she becomes a wife."


    The women nearby nodded in approval. One of them even held one of the aluminum knives with the cable facing the girl. The disgust in the princess'' face was priceless.


    "Me?" She almost retched. "Butchering rodents for a whole day? Are you insane? I am the most valuable woman in this whole city! The general''s daughter! I would never soil my hands with this... filth." She finished with the most disgusted face I''d ever seen.


    "My, my," I used my cue to press on the attack. "Aren''t you a special snowflake? Such a spoiled..."


    And I trailed off because it was like I had name-dropped a bomb. Some women were chatting, some were working on the rats. But as I delivered that line, everyone froze. The princess looked like she had witnessed me murder her whole line of ancestors right in front of her. Silence reigned in the demolished and half-reclaimed city block.


    I kept my mouth shut and looked around. Everywhere I could see fear and eyes staring at me and the princess. I had no idea what happened but it was bad. Then the girl''s eyes teared up and she sobbed.


    "What did you call me?" She asked with a soft, fearful voice. Her chest was rising without rhythm and she was quivering.


    "A special snowflake?" I repeated.


    She broke down, crying. Her face went from disgust to fear to rage and back to disgust. Her tanned skin flushed red, her fists were clenched and she ground her teeth.


    And then I remembered. Snow in this part of the world is synonymous with death. The flakes of possible radioactive fallout that pushed waves upon waves of refugees as it turned wherever it fell uninhabitable. Even Brandon is one such refugee.


    On a scale from one to bitch, I''d just hit "yeast-ridden frigid cow-whore" levels. No, I''m not good with insults but I managed to insult her like nobody else in this world could. It was like calling Emma Watson Voldemort''s slut.


    Her shoulders slumped down and her arms sagged by her sides, in synch with her sobs. Then she turned around and ran away into the middle of her guards that formed a protective shell around her and retreated.


    I''d won and felt like I lost at the same time. This victory felt even more hollow than killing the councilman. Worse yet, I''d probably incurred the wrath of the general. I think it wouldn''t be worse if I had the girl flogged.


    Terrible day. I almost wished someone charmed me into jumping back into the pit.


    It was far from over.

 Thursday, Bull 26th - Night

    Did you think the day was over? I did. I wished. But no. There was more coming.


    We were packing the resources gathered from the third block we''d cleaned when I saw the runner coming in from the north. The dark clouds from previous encounters disappeared when I heard what I was expecting.


    "Milady Rinaldi! Banunu and Rubati have arrived and are waiting for you to join them!" He shouted between pauses to catch his breath.


    I clapped my hands. "Okay, everyone. We are done here. Wrap up, gather everything on the wagons to ferry away. Zar-Kiira, Utuaa, see that the meat is evenly distributed and take note of how much each person took. Stow the bones and entrails in the boxes, I need to seal them shut. Hurry up, we are ending earlier today!"


    It was as if I''d kicked an anthill. People went around, piling up the pelts, gathering the scraped fur, entrails and bones to put in the silicon boxes already on the carts for composting and I went around closing them. The wagons were about to move when they came. Soldiers pouring in from every street. They were wearing Es-Kina''s colors, so it could only mean Princess Snowflake cried on daddy''s lap and he decided to take action. I still had no titanium sword.


    "Minister Rinaldi. The general requests your presence," A captain shouted as he approached. He was decked out for war in his scale armor with an ornate breastplate covering the upper torso and two longswords on one side. I recognized his rank because he wore the same insignia as Brandon.


    I stood still. Not because I was afraid but because I felt this heartburn and a wish to torch the rest of the city. It felt like everyone was out to get me. I was even thinking how I''d poke a hole in the captain''s armor to stab him. All eyes were on me and the workers parted to allow the captain and his retinue to approach. I felt cornered. It seemed that whoever defeated me would become the next pirate king.


    I moved next to my helpers. "Utuaa," I called. "Get everyone out of the square and send a runner to the Enshi''s palace to report this. I can''t fight if I have to protect you from the soldiers and I don''t want you involved in a brawl."


    "We are willing to fight for you, milady," He answered.


    I glowered. "If you are willing to do something, then work twice as hard to repair the city. Bleeding on it would only ruin my work. Now, scram. Get the women, wagons, and men on their way." Then after some thought, I decided I had to speak the lingo angrily even though I didn''t want to. "I cant unleash Tarhun''s wrath if you are in the way."


    He nodded as his face cleared in understanding. "Your will be done, milady," He nodded and turned around to shout at the people around. The guards seemed okay with letting them go. They were citizens anyway and I think it would leave a bitter taste to slaughter them.


    "What is your answer, woman!" Captain rude barked as he noticed my attention was not his.


    "No. Tell the general that I will meet with him tomorrow morning. Not now, I have somewhere else to be."


    I felt like testing him. Were these orders to drag me down dead or alive? I wouldn''t go without a fight. Not today. I had somewhere else to be, and I didn''t want to raise any weird death flags. The captain seemed indecisive. As he wasn''t going to speak, I seized the initiative.


    "As you recognized yourself, I am a minister of the city. Only the Enshi has authority over me," I showed him the cleaned lot. "And I have a city to rebuild. Tomorrow morning. I''ll meet the general in the garrison. You go and convey my message to him."


    He frowned, that was not what he was expecting. If he wanted to just deliver a message, the general wouldn''t send a captain and twenty-something soldiers with him. No, this guy wanted to capture me.


    "You won''t disobey the general''s orders," He barked, enraged. There was something strange about how pissed off he was. "You will come with me, woman."


    And there it was. The gender card. It irritated me even more.


    "And what are you going to do, captain? Drag me? I outrank you. Go away!"


    He threw a punch at me. I rolled with it, falling backward in a roll and standing up a meter away from him. Why? The man was very angry and it was unreasonable for him to be so just because I disobeyed an order. He looked at me with disgust as if I was a cheating wife.


    "You, woman, are a plague set upon this city. Esteemed members of our society are dying left and right ever since you arrived. You attracted Marduk''s wrath on us, he wouldn''t bring his army here without you. You maimed my cousin and seized the smiths that make weapons for us. It is your fault that the Enshi was poisoned. Even now you destroy the city to fill your pockets. You drove Emes-Bintu to tears with your cursed mouth. The general''s orders are absolute. Guards, seize her!"


    A... what could I say? The devil was in the detail and in the context. The truth was as subjective as one would like it. I mean, the magistrate was very happy pinning the blame for the arson on... Maybe it was the councilman that burned the archives anyway. But was I that much of a villain in their eyes? And while I was frozen in contemplation, two guards grabbed me by the arms.


    I snapped back to reality and realized one thing.


    "You like her!" I shouted with amusement. "You were already frustrated that she had the hots for Brandon and now that you''ve seen her crying, you just... You poor romantic! You are doing everything wrong! It is not by bashing me that you are going to win her heart."


    I couldn''t react yet. The people that worked for me were still in sight. I had to put up with this ''Freaking beta'', as Theresa would put it.


    As I delivered my next words, his face showed surprise, quickly shifting to anger and then doubt. "Look, I want her out of my hair. You want to marry Emes-Bintu," I said the name I thought was the general daughter''s. His slight embarrassment confirmed it. "I can help you. C''mon, tell your men to let go of me and come. I''ll show you how to win her heart."


    I grinned. He punched my stomach. I was glad to wear armor. The mail and the padded doublet underneath distributed the impact enough that my half-damage boon made it feel like a harsh push. It was still a shitty move from him.


    "Son of a..."


    Angered, he slapped my face. I went with the blow and looked over my shoulder, the guards behind me were watching the last wagon disappear down the corner. Another punch came for my face but I now acted. I drew iron from the soldier''s armor and moved it as fast as I could over my shoulders and up my face. The fist connected and the iron went dead stiff. I felt the metal hit me but it was like a mask, the force of the punch perfectly distributed around the area.


    The metal escaped my control around where he punched as he made contact. It never happened before but right after he removed his hand, I regained it and it resumed its fluid state. I kept drawing more iron from around me, ruining my dagger, one of the swords and the two guard''s armor. I kept the metal flowing around my neck and lower face.


    "What!" One of the guards let go of me. I reached with my now free hand and slapped the other side of the guard, drawing more iron to me. He too let go out of fear.


    "Now, gentlemen. It seems it''s payback time."


    The captain drew his sword. I rushed him. Keeping my concentration on the metal under my control was hard but I could do that. He brought the sword down and I moved iron to block. Once more it stiffened when the sword struck but then it was as if the weapon started to melt into my own personal space. I moved closer and punched his breastplate while he watched his weapon dissolve.


    I pulled with my power and his armor obeyed. I had no trouble controlling the metal near his body, it seemed only a sudden impact would disturb my control. He released the weapon''s hilt, only the wood-and-leather handle clattered to the ground.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "You demon!" He gasped.


    He didn''t waste much time as he reared his leg and kicked my shin. I felt my leg move from underneath me and I fell on a knee. I had too much iron around me, weighing me down. I could keep it somewhat afloat around me but I couldn''t get rid of the weight. But I still had a trick up my sleeve. One I wasn''t loathing to use for the first time.


    "Captain. Catch," I tossed him a small latex ball.


    He instinctively caught it. Then the condom dissolved, exposing the phosphorus to the air. He screamed as the sparks flew at his face and burned his glove and hand underneath. With a jolt, the burning material flew away in a random direction. I used the time to dump the iron down around me in a rough puddle-like ring. I was burning inside.


    None of us were thinking straight, our anger blocking any kind of peaceful resolution.


    "You wretched--"


    I was down already so I planted my hands down and rotated my legs behind me in a corta-capim sweep, bringing them around and taking his legs down from under him. I flipped back and regained my footing on a backward roll.


    "C''mon, asshole!" I shouted back at him. "Come and die to a woman! How will your precious snowflake think after you lose here, eh?" In hindsight, I regret that taunt. It crossed too many lines.


    He charged, drawing the other sword. A brown and white blur came down from the sky and struck the captain. Dime had made his entrance. The Sky-lord drew a spray of blood as his talons dug deep gashes down both sides of the captain''s face from the brow to the cheek, ruining his eyes. He then beat his wings and took to the skies.


    I deflected the now unguided sword with the sleeve of my mail and summoned my knife. I slashed at his neck but stopped almost too late.


    Taking a step backward and covered by the sprayed blood, I screamed my lungs out, an ear-splitting unbridled sharp cry. Penny whinnied loudly, rearing up. Dime screeched up in the sky.


    On his knees, the captain clawed at his face. He too was screaming.


    <hr>


    I was sitting on a stone bench, watching the sunset through a rather large window in the sandstone walls of the palace. Across the room, I saw the scowling face of the general. The man was beyond pissed.


    The soldiers withdrew with their maimed captain. Then I met the general and the envoy from the palace summoned us. Longs story short, we were waiting for an audience with Nephew. The mood in the waiting room was awful. I wanted to talk but I knew it would backfire on my face. So I ignored him and kept staring at the sunset. The dry environment allowed the rays of the sun to pierce deeply and dye the sky with beautiful shades of red and orange.


    Just like all the blood I spread on the streets today.


    "Did you--" The general started to talk but stopped.


    By my side, Dime gave a low and long chirp-growl, dropping its neck down and staring at the general as a warning. I moved my and petted the green head of this marvelous mallard-colored eagle.


    "Did he? Did he have to brutalize me?" I asked back, without turning to face him.


    I felt as if I''d start another fight if I looked at him.


    "No, he didn''t," He replied with a stern tone. "He was at a fault and he paid dearly for that. You were very cruel in not killing him. Living as a blind man will be worse than death for him."


    "He can go kill himself if he doesn''t want to live," I felt my heart sink as the words left me. "I killed too much already. Don''t wanna."


    To my surprise, the general chuckled. "I''ve seen the devastation you wrought on Marduk''s camp myself. Bones picked clean by scavengers, broken beyond recognition. Do you know how the soldiers we captured called you?"


    "Don''t care."


    "The female Harbinger. Tarhun''s wrath," He said with an amused growl. There was no disrespect in his voice, at least not toward the god that put me in this mess. "They even avoided coming near the city fearing you and for that, we have to thank you. They could very well assault the city and we would pay dearly to repel that many desperate soldiers. They spread to the south and some were even crossing the wastes heading east. Very few dared to return home."


    Jerks, all of them. I kept my mouth shut, looking at the slowly fading light like I was visiting the Louvre.


    I heard fire crackling. The servants were going around, lighting up torches. The Enshi''s palace would function deep into the night today.


    "I''m sorry I''m late," The magistrate''s voice rang from the door leading outside of the waiting room. "Milady Rinaldi, it is good to see you healthy."


    I sighed. "I''m pretty sure it is almost impossible for me to die, magistrate. Not for a lack of people trying to, though."


    "I heard of your latest exploits already," He replied with a neutral tone, keeping his cards to his chest. "General."


    "Magistrate."


    Silence reigned. I missed Banunu and Rubati''s arrival. I wasn''t spending time with the children I was supposed to look after and it was grating me. I blinked and the tears rolled down.


    Why the heck was I doing this? What was I supposed to do? Yes, volunteer to help. Great. Couldn''t the Enshi''s powers keep the jerks from trying to bite a piece off of me? Because mine obviously couldn''t.


    I punched the side of the windowsill and used Decompose to imprint my knuckles into the sandstone. The silicon crumbled down in flakes but the aluminum I moved under my hand and welded it to the titanium as a small bead next to the gold.


    Not even the scribes, dammit.


    "Please refrain from destroying the palace," The general''s stern voice rang behind me.


    "Maybe I should be as they call me," I replied in a bitter tone. "Destroying just a palace is beneath me. I should finish the job the other Harbinger started and destroy this world. How would you like it, general?"


    I turned around, sat straight and stared. The rugged veteran didn''t flinch from the eye contact, staring back. An eternal moment passed and nobody spoke. The magistrate watched our altercation with amusement.


    "My friends prosper and live happily. My enemies, they seem to be too dumb to avoid ruin. Where do you stand, general?"


    He blinked. "I''m not dumb."


    That I got a defensive statement from him was already a minor victory.


    "I was too naive. I thought we could cooperate, work together for the greater good. But the hearts and minds of the people here are too dim, too small. Too petty. They only see personal gain at the expense of others. The magistrate there, for example, was too quick in seizing the dead councilman''s assets underneath my nose before even his blood dried."


    Yes, I was out to pick a fight. And I would take every single one of them. The general broke eye contact and stared at the magistrate.


    "He torched the archives! We caught his slaves that confessed the whole thing," He said defensively.


    "Yes. After I caught the scribes he and others bribed to change the deeds so they could own more land inside the city, he thought that destroying the other copies would force the doctored ones to surface."


    "And now you own the only copy of the records," The magistrate added.


    "Weren''t there a third copy? Here in the palace?"


    "Only of the most important documents," He replied bitterly. "And the land deeds are not one of them."


    The doors to the audience chamber opened. An old scribe I''d seen before came out.


    "The magnanimous Enshi Es-Kina will see you now. Please be polite in his holy presence. I could hear your bickering from behind these heavy doors."


    The scribe gave us a cold glower. Even the general seemed contrite. The three of us moved and entered the audience chamber. It was just like I remembered. Without a roof, the torchlight glare made the top seem like an endless abyss. On his stone throne dominating the back of the room, Nephew sat.


    He was a wretched sight. Whatever blessing Ishtar gave him to stave off his radioactive poisoning, it seemed to just slow it down, not halt or reverse entirely. He looked like Freddy Kruger, Palpatine and Eddie had a love child and that child then played with boiling acid.


    The general and magistrate took a step forward and knelt. I stood at the back. Nephew''s eyes met mine and he smirked. I could swear a flake of skin fell from his cheek.


    "Gentlemen," He spoke. Even his voice was raspy. "Minister Rinaldi. I summoned you here to ask,"


    He made a dramatic pause to catch his breath. I could see he was forcing himself not to cough.


    "Why the hells are you giving my minister of development and agriculture trouble?" He roared. "She has done a splendid job cleaning up the debris left behind by the fires, which I think are not over yet," He glowered at the magistrate and the man curved down. "And yet your greed keeps causing her trouble. I can find a new magistrate and general easily. You tell me where will I find another blessed maiden with her powers."


    The way he said that was creepy. I felt goosebumps rise in my arms and a chill down my spine. His threat to these two couldn''t be clearer but that wasn''t what bothered me. It was the reverence with which he said ''blessed maiden''. Nephew''s message was clear, he wanted me up there in that altar with him. And my heart was like, ''Nope, nope, nope''.


    "Milady, minister Rinaldi," Nephew addressed me. "What punishment should I give these two, for bothering you?"


    And now the jerk was making me their executioner. But I had just the thing.


    "They should report for duty tomorrow in front of the ministry headquarters. Each of them should bring forty able-bodied laborers and ten women. The general''s daughter should be one of them. For the next three days, they will be stripped of their ranks and work under me, faithfully. Should I deem their work acceptable after three days, they will be reinstated in their positions without any further repercussions and the events of today shall be put behind us as just a bitter memory, none of the parties involved shall seek further compensation or vengeance."


    In three days I hoped to turn their opinions around. Or I''d just quit this shit. Call me dumb for trying over and over again, but this was my world now. Should I walk away and become a hermit in the mountains? Pilgrimage to the Ruined City of Snow I saw on the pictures?


    I could see Nephew didn''t like my proposal but he clapped his hands, a sign of approval.


    "They call the Enshi magnanimous but the Lady''s mercy shames me," He joked. "So shall it be. You are stripped of your ranks and positions for three days. An audience shall be held at dusk of the third day when I will hear Lady Rinaldi''s opinion of your work. I suggest you give your best to cooperate with her, gentlemen. You are dismissed."


    The general and magistrate stood up and moved backward until they left the room, then turned around and made a beeline for the exit. I was about to go after them but the old scribe blocked my path.


    "Milady Rinaldi, please join me for dinner," Nephew ordered.


    Worst.


    Day.


    Ever.

 Thursday, Bull 26th - Dinner

    Under the watchful eyes of two dozen guards and servants, Nephew and I sat on opposite sides of the semicircular table while more food than ten people could eat streamed from the kitchen.


    "You are not eating, do you dislike this food," Nephew asked me.


    I picked a peach and bit it. Couldn''t talk with food in my mouth, could I? I was avoiding to make eye contact with Nephew at all costs. One reason was to avoid making faces at the condition of his body but another was to avoid derailing this forced date into something more serious. Like proposing to take my virginity upon the altar in his freakish Mesopotamian ritual. My fanny felt like it would sew itself shut from the fear I was feeling.


    "Is the drink not to your liking?" He insisted. "Bring the lady something else to drink."


    Their alcohol sucked. And I couldn''t afford to get drunk. Or could I? He wouldn''t rape me because he needed me for his ritual. I summoned a PET soda bottle with water.


    "I''ll make my own drink," I broke radio silence.


    I poured some water from the bottle into a cup, took a sip and passed it to the servant that gave it to Nephew. He downed the water without a second thought.


    "I never tasted better water," he commented, staring at the cup.


    I filled another two cups until the bottle was half empty. Then I shaped a funnel with silicon and started to use my power on the fruit. Peaches, grapes, plums, tamarinds, and sour tangerines. The latter proved that Nephew was spying on me as the only reason this fruit would be here was the fact I bought tons of them to extract essences. From the fruit, I drew the essential oils and the starch, then I poured it down the funnel, mixing it with the water. Once the bottle was full with a slurry sugary solution, I screwed the cap on and shook it.


    Then I used Decompose again focusing on breaking the glucose. Each would become two ethylic alcohol and two carbonic dioxide molecules. I moved my hands up and down the bottle, taking care to not decompose all the starch so the liquor would stay a little sweet. The plastic bottle became stiff with the pressure but the cap held. I gently set it aside.


    "It needs to sit for a few minutes," I said. "So, Enshi, why did you invite me for dinner?"


    "To praise your achievements, of course!" He said with a smile. It was hard to look at him so I pretended to blush and look away. "I heard that a bricklayer suggested you could make solid bricks out of the dirt. Ishtar told me I should seek your help to build the ziggurat."


    There was the pitch. Not only he wanted to screw me on the altar, but he also wanted me to build the blasted thing. Bile rose in my mouth.


    "If you helped build the ziggurat, we could cancel the recruitment of the foreign soldiers. Less work growing food, less time for the women in the temple," He suggested.


    I ate a ripe plum to avoid having to reply.


    "Glad you found your appetite," He commented. "You don''t have to be on the defensive, Sandra. Can I call you Sandra? I have a report to share with you. Our troops, led by Captain Al-Amir, have already recruited two thousand from Marduk''s army. They are being trained and sorted outside, that''s what held the good Captain away from the city all these days."


    I almost choke on the plum. Was he telling me he was holding Brandon away from me as some sort of hostage? I wished it was just my imagination and paranoia but I couldn''t shake the feeling off.


    "So I make that ziggurat, Brandon comes back... What happens to Marduk''s soldiers?"


    He smiled, glad that the conversation was happening. "They become slaves as is the fate of every captured enemy. It would be ours if they won the siege. Some of them I could use as officers since so many of them are being decommissioned nowadays," he made a morbid joke. I winced.


    "How big that ziggurat has to be? And where are you building it? I''m making no promises though. I just need to know so I can plan accordingly."


    He summoned a servant. "Get me a map of the city," He ordered. "I''m glad you decided to cooperate, Sandra," he cooed. "You and I, together, we could take over the world."


    I looked into his eyes for the first time tonight. "Funny you said that. Those were the same words Prince Marduk told me before I drove a dagger through his kidneys."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    He guffawed but some guards brought their hands to their weapons.


    "That was a good joke. By Ishtar''s tits!" He slapped his knees.


    "It wasn''t a joke though," I deadpanned. "I did murder Marduk with a dagger through his back. Not proud of it though."


    And not loathing it as much as to not speak about it anymore. I was changing and I was afraid of what I''d become.


    "You did that, didn''t you? Oh, the face Marduk made when you stabbed him, must''ve been priceless!" He laughed manically. "He had you, in his arms, whispering sweet words, sure of his victory, and then.... chuck!"


    I felt terrible. It was as if each of his laughs were a splinter digging into my flesh.


    "You should be proud," He added, thoughtful. "So that''s why he is limping," Nephew concluded.


    It was the last drop. "Why should I be proud? I killed the prince, I killed a thousand soldiers. I''ll have to live with that... wait," Something he added last wasn''t right. "How do you know he was embracing me, and what is this about limping?"


    His mirth was toxic. He just smiled and savored my distress.


    "You have no idea, do you? Tarhun is an idiot for not explaining it to you. Well, let the Enshi pick up where the god failed," He told me with a predatory smile.


    "Marduk is alive, Sandra. You may have killed the soldiers and officers, but the prince endures."


    He let his statement sink. I gasped in disbelief. The whole day was too stressful and I was surely hallucinating. Marduk was alive? How? How? HOW? I massaged my temples. This was too much.


    "How?" the question escaped my terrified lips.


    "Easy. The same way I am here before you now. Ereshkigal and Nergal pooled their power and rescued the prince from the explosion. He made an oath to bring you to the main temple of Nergal in exchange, just as I vowed to Ishtar to consecrate the city of Es-Kina to her on the great ziggurat.


    "There is a game the gods are playing as we speak, with you in the center, Sandra. The fate of the world rests on the choices you make. But the gods won''t just let you choose at idle. They are scheming, goading, enticing you to take this path or another. Using whatever tools they can."


    I held the table to avoid collapsing. I was sitting on a cushion but it felt as if I would fall behind forever as my head spun. The bile came back with a vengeance and I grabbed the first bucket I saw in front of me. It had some lobster-like cooked critter inside and I threw up in it.


    Glad I didn''t feast as Nephew wanted. Just some fruit and drink. A terrible day became even worse. On one side, I hadn''t committed regicide, on the other, Marduk was up and around and driven to vengeance.


    "I''m glad you understand. This is the reason I want you to build the ziggurat. We don''t have to literally invite the enemy inside our walls."


    I shuddered. "Is Marduk coming here?"


    He slapped his knee and laughed harder. "Only if he wants to die for good this time! I''d have him executed, quartered, and shipped back home in pickled pieces," He kept laughing. "Oh, Sandra, you are too much.


    "Now, seriously. Help me achieve my goals and I would do anything for you, Sandra. I''d even let you live your life however you want. I''d protect you from afar. I will grant you every single wish. Anything, you just have to ask."


    I wiped my mouth, took a swig of water from one of the cups I poured earlier, washed it back and Decomposed anything in my teeth, then I spat on the ruined lobster bucket. I bet that shit was expensive as heck. Not even in Abil-Kisu''s banquets had lobster been served.


    After I downed the rest of the water to calm my body and mind down, I stared Nephew hard.


    "Anything?" I asked with a businesslike tone.


    "Anything!" He replied enthusiastically.


    Anyone had a price, and mine while it was expensive, was not infinite. I knew exactly what I wanted.


    "Find a way to send me back to my home-world a hundred years in the past and I''ll be your wife, your bitch, build you a snowman, paint the sky blood red, or anything. I want to go home, to my own time. Live the life I left back there. Can you do that? Can Ishtar do that?"


    Nephew closed his eyes and it felt like he was meditating. Or communing as next an energy poured from him. Then he opened his eyes and they seemed old, eldritch.


    "No. Ishtar said that there is no way back to your world, unfortunately. And no way to go back in time either."


    I opened the soda bottle and the familiar hiss of the gas escaping was refreshing. Bubbles rose in the liquid. I poured some in the water cup and tasted it. Tasted like a fruity sweet bubble wine. Strong as Russian vodka or Brazilian cacha?a.


    "Bottom''s up!" I downed it like a pro, it burned down my throat. The liquor hit an empty stomach.


    But I was rewarded with the spike of dizziness that came with sudden alcohol poisoning. Exactly what I needed right now.


    "You should taste it. In fact, everyone here should taste it," I said, feeling my lips and tongue numb.


    "Serve the liquor Lady Rinaldi created around. Half the guards only, I want them sober. Get me a cup!" Nephew barked.


    We drank. The booze should be over forty percent alcohol and hit like Penny''s kicks. But we drank. Some less than others and none more than me. And if you thought one nephew was ugly, try with two of them. Good things came in pairs my arse. I drank another cup of fruit bubbly wine and they became four. It was getting worse, I needed more booze.


    The bottle went around and soon it was empty. I retrieved it and stored it separated from the cap. The leftover liquid splashed in the cushion.


    "And we are done. You come up with good payment for that ziggurat, and I''ll build that shit," I then pointed a finger. "But you are so not getting in my pants, Nephew," I told him as I tried to stand up. I didn''t.


    "Matron, get some guards and take the lady home safely. Thank you for your company and the entertainment, Sandra. We''ll see each other soon," Nephew commanded.


    Some ladies-in-waiting, probably part of Nephew''s harem, came and lifted me. I threw up on one of them.


    I don''t remember much after that but I woke up the next day in my bed at Abil-Kisu''s estate. I was clean and dressed in one of Cloe''s dresses.


    What woke me up was a bloody and grime-caked Dime that crowed victoriously over my windowsill. What had he murdered today, by all that was holy?


    I shook my head. How would I find it out?


    But I had no hangover, if anything was a silver lining.

 Week 5 cast

    Ministry of Agriculture and Development staff:


    Kuma-Nu


    - A younger scribe from the team of eight assigned to help Sandra. He''s proud he can do all four "basic" (by modern Earth standards) mathematical operations. The guy is practically a genius. No, seriously. He is in charge of accounting.


    Gu-Maranu


    - The eldest scribe of the eight. He is proud, disagreeable, and a sycophant. But he knows what is at stake and that he is strapped to a "mars or bust" kind of rocket. They either get the job done and become heroes, or they don''t and become corpses. He''s trying to figure out what color of cape he wants.


    Fara-Wil


    - A senior scribe with a fine taste for gold. He wasn''t as good at earning it so he turned to the dark side. It didn''t end well.


    Tamiwa


    - One of the thirty guardsmen/soldiers (no, there''s no distinction between the two terms) assigned to assist Sandra in enforcing the ministry policies and keeping the minister safe. Also, report what she was doing to the Enshi.


    Bur-Batolo


    - A scribe that likes maps. He was promoted to lead cartographer.


    Ministry civilian hires:


    Zar-Kiira


    - An opportunistic and outspoken woman that snatched the job of overseeing the ministry civilian taskforce. At least the females because the men wouldn''t endure two sausage-less bosses. Sandra gets a free pass because of her status as both a minister and Tarhun''s chosen.


    Utuaa


    - One of the male civilian workers, his late cousin had a brickworks. Suggested to Sandra she could use silicon bricks as a building block for small projects. Hired to help with the male workers.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Elsewhere in Es-Kina:


    Sao-Akitu


    - One of the apprentices at Samus & Aran''s smithy. He used to deliver the slag to Sandra''s house. His name means "New Year''s Bounty".


    Merem-Selit


    - One of the councilmembers that called a vote too early for Sandra and Abil-Kisu to attend and elected Nephew the new Enshi. He also bribed some scribes to forge documents. When that plan failed, he allegedly set fire to the records at the courthouse and challenged Sandra to a duel. He lost and died. The new magistrate seized his assets but Sandra negotiated to keep his council votes to herself.


    Emes-Bintu (Princess Snowflake)


    - The social butterfly daughter of the general. Thinks Brandon Al-Amir belongs to her and is dedicated to getting all thots away from "her" hunk. In a world where the word "snow" is synonymous with "death", the nickname Sandra gave her was a mortal insult.


    Captain MyEyes


    - One of Brandon''s coworkers, this perfect specimen of beta male thought that removing all obstacles on Emes-Bintu''s path would make her look his way. It doesn''t work that way, guys. He picked a fight with Sandra and Dime raked his face from top to bottom, poking both eyes. In the general''s words, killing him would be bigger mercy.


    Prince Marduk


    - Getting stabbed and having one''s innards turned to boiling soap from a deadly charge of sodium and a subsequent hydrogen-oxygen explosion is nothing compared to the power of faith. Prince Marduk survived all that because he made a pact with the deities Nergal and Ereshkigal. Get Sandra to an altar and "sacrifice" her to the deities and he will live, otherwise, he''s on borrowed time. I know where I''d put my money.


    Banunu & Rubati


    - The widows of "fancy-toga" Hama-Tula they fled to the capital to evade the debt collectors until Sandra... "collected" such debts to herself along with the belongings of said debtors. She pardoned the debt - the children were the collateral, legally void because of herself - and summoned the women back. They arrived and marveled at the splendid job Sandra did raising their kids all these months. They decided to work for Sandra because she would let them freeload for very little work.


    Bronze Age Collapse (not a person, but important enough to make an entry here)


    - A real-world event where the civilizations of the Near East almost vanished in less than a century. That really happened IRL and you are a bad person for skipping history classes. In truth, the gods decided to cut their losses and transmigrate their believers to another world en masse, creating the void historians bash their heads to comprehend. Roughly four millennia later, a bespectacled bookwormish environmental sciences student got hit by divine lightning and here we are.


    The "Patriarch" (@ Ancient Earth)


    - His name starts with "Ab" but names have power, so we won''t mention it here. He was a citizen of Ur when a God of Creation (capital letters, doh) did a pact with him to beget his chosen people from his loins. The salty gods of the Near East and that land-between-rivers didn''t like that and departed Earth as the sore losers they were.


    Nootesh-Geerzu


    - The General, father to Emes-Bintu and Brandon''s boss. He is an honorable man that works for the Enshi, period. Spoiled his daughter rotten. A cautious man not prone to rushed judgments, he is giving Sandra a chance to prove her worth.


    "Kazeed" the Magistrate


    - Not his real name, as every Magistrate forfeits their name and holdings upon taking tenure. He took Nephew''s old job after he was crowned Enshi of Es-Kina. A person that plays with his cards close to his chest, he used some greedy arsonist merchant to test the waters with Sandra and quickly threw him under the bus while looting everything he owned to pay for the damages caused.

 Friday, Bull 27th - Breakfast

    The problem with passing out drunk, besides the risk of getting sexually assaulted, is that tomorrow mixes with yesterday. Even if the booze doesn''t give you a hangover, it messes up your memories. Thankfully Nephew has to keep me virgin for the altar, not that I have any intention of participating, but he won''t touch me or let anyone here do that.


    That was my first thought as I regained consciousness in the morning.


    But I was careless as heck, wasn''t I? I could smell the citrus-scented soap we made on my skin so I knew someone bathed me when I arrived. The fabric was rougher than my satin pajamas but still softer than the crap people wear and a quick glance down revealed it was one of Cloe''s dresses.


    *KEEEEEE!*


    Dime chirped on the windowsill and I rose to look. He was bloody and caked in grime. I''m calling meat-and-viscera bits grime, okay? So, I knew I had to clean him up again.


    "To the perch, Bloodstone. I''m going to clean you up," I told him.


    He flew inside and I shut the window. The light filtering through the cracks in the shutters wasn''t enough so I lit up one of my goblin-eye-lamps and undressed entirely. Since I was using Decompose to clean Dime, it was better to avoid damaging my clothes. I checked the bird for any signs of damage, plucked one or two old feathers that were dead and about to fall off to keep with the others I was collecting, and started to use my power to remove the grime and collect the elements. Once I reached the talons, I found bits of...


    Human skin.


    It was clearly human skin, I had no doubt about it. I could see the cracks and the hairs stubbing out from the ripped piece. It was less than a square centimeter in size but I felt my stomach rise and lurch inside me. Dime was fighting people. Killing people. I Decomposed everything, removing the water and bunching the carbon with everything else in a pellet that I tossed in the coal brazier. Then I did a thorough check to see if he had any wounds. I found none.


    I couldn''t believe Dime would be able to fight and kill this much without a scratch. But maybe... Our boons were shared. I knew Penny healed her lame leg that earned her a lazy horse reputation and that Dime regenerated from the wounds he received from the hunters when I bonded with him rather fast. Maybe he was regenerating the wounds and probably he also had my half-damage boon as well. Add that to the fact he had his own magic reserves plus what he could take from me through our bond and you get an apex predator from hell.


    But a burning question remained. Who was the bird hunting, every single day? What faction? Nobody was complaining about a psycho bird in town and I bet either of the men I met yesterday would be glad to bring me down a peg by mentioning it if Dime was indeed attacking people from the city. So it was not that.


    I recall I sensed him fighting around the Aerie, how I named the rock hill that looked like Devil''s Throne in Wyoming. Were Marduk''s troops stationed around that?


    Dime nodded.


    "Can you understand me?"


    Dime nodded.


    "No shit?"


    He shook his head.


    "Bloodstone, are you intelligent? Rational? Can you think?"


    Nothing. Dime crowed and I felt he didn''t understand me. Right. We could share feelings and ideas through our bond. That was the problem of my workaholic life. I had no time to spend with the people - and creatures - that were important to me.


    "Were you fighting the bad guys of that invading army?" I visualized Prince Marduk''s army. Dime nodded.


    It couldn''t be a coincidence. Marduk''s troops were around the one geographical feature I cared about. Given that two gods chipped in to save him and what Nephew showed yesterday, it would come as no surprise that he had intelligence about me, the gods whispering in his ear. I needed to talk to Nanna, and fast. There were so many things I had to ask her I picked my phone and made a list.


    Why isn''t Tarhun''s tablet working?


    Is Marduk getting Intel from Nergal and Ereshkigal?


    How small can the Ziggurat be?


    Why is my fine control of Decompose so messed up lately?


    Is there a time limit on Nephew''s ziggurat survival plan?


    Any way for me to regain magic faster? Like meditation or some other crap?


    If Ishtar can talk to Nephew, Nergal to Marduk, why does Tarhun keep radio silence?


    What other enchanted items can she make?


    What deity did she worship when she was a priestess?


    Should we pack up and leave Es-Kina for good? Leave these divine envoys to kill each other on their own?


    From the top of my head, that was what I could come up with. I didn''t expect her to have answers for all questions but I would be a fool to not ask. I petted Dime, summoned my carry-on and did my morning routine, then dressed up and donned my scratched armor. Then I picked up the bird on my falconry bracer and went outside.


    As I moved down the corridors of Abil-Kisu''s villa, I felt as if I was walking on eggshells. While I had no pretense that the city and the people wouldn''t survive without me, I felt like I could do so much to improve their livelihood. Was I doing my best? I had no idea. I could only try. But the looming sense that dark forces conspired all around intensified. Now it was not petty officials or merchants trying to get profit beyond their just dues. The stage was one of the gods playing games. The kind where people died by the troves.


    And how much different it was from what was happening right now? People were dying left and right, on both sides. And Nephew was intentionally keeping Brandon away from me. Jerks. All of us. I went out through the back door and reached the annex entrance. I wanted to eat fries for breakfast. Poisonous or not, I was salivating for some golden oil-soaked sticks of potato starch. I walked down the corridor and carefully opened the door to my storeroom next to Nanna''s to avoid waking up the witch. I barged in and heard a scream.


    Two half-naked female forms lurked on the ground among some furs. Out from one of the furs poked the heads of Gadudu and Kiya. I knew immediately what happened. They hadn''t any rooms available for the two women so they used my storeroom. And I''d just walked in on them sleeping.


    "Oh, I''m sorry to intrude!" I shouted and prepared to close the door.


    Rubati quickly jumped on her feet, one hand keeping the furs from exposing her modesty. "Milady minister, please wait!"


    Her plea using my rank stung. I froze there with the door half-closed, avoiding looking inside. I could feel the knot in my throat and my eyes stung. I was an outsider everywhere. A threat. What the captain barked at me was how the people saw me.


    The Harbinger knocked down the moon from the sky, poisoned the land and killed countless people. I could not have the same powers as him but to the people of this world, it didn''t matter. I was a force of destruction in their eyes.


    A threat.


    I swallowed the sob that wanted to get out. I couldn''t cry right now. I turned around and ran back through the straight corridor and out in the morning sunlight. I had to get out of there. I had to go somewhere I couldn''t hurt anyone. Back to the mines to lay with the dead, maybe.


    I shouldn''t have taken this job. I should gather my people and leave. There''s a lot of undeveloped lands everywhere, we could go away and live our lives away from all this shit. Educate the children, raise the technology level, create a society more like...


    Home.


    I halted halfway through the backyard. That was stupid. I had nowhere to go. I couldn''t just take people away with me and bleach their culture out to replace them with mine. I couldn''t live alone like a hermit either. I needed people around. I had no choice but to keep going forward on the path I''d set myself on. See this circus burn down to the last ember. I looked up for an answer but I could only see faint wisps of clouds against the scattered blue light that covered the stars beyond.


    I felt small. Insignificant. A canker that needed to be excised. As long as I existed, people would die around me. As long as I existed, the god''s game would grind the world for their power plays. And Tarhun made it so that I couldn''t even end my life easily. My legs gave and I fell down on my knees. Then my hips lost their strength and I sat on my ankles. My arms limped by my sides and Dime took off. I kept staring at the sky as if demanding an answer but the only thing that happened was that my eyes stung and the sky blurred, the stars beyond where home lied as unreachable as ever. The moisture trickled down my cheeks and I let it flow.


    "Sandra!" A female voice called me. I didn''t heed it.


    The wind blew and my hair stuck to the tears. I felt motion around me but I paid no mind.


    "Sandra!" Another female voice called my name. I paid it no mind.


    Something blunt hit me, rattling the links of my mail underneath my shirt. It didn''t hurt so I did nothing. Then again.


    "Stop that! Why are you hitting her?" Belle''s voice chided someone.


    "That stupid girl is wallowing in self-pity. She''s wearing armor, tapping her with this stick won''t hurt her and even if it did, Tarhun made her out of tough stuff. Get yourself together, girl. This is not the time for shutting yourself in and the world out!"


    Nanna''s stick hit me twice more, with increasing strength.


    "Stop that!" Kiya''s extremely sharp and cute voice rang and the whooshing of the stick stopped before it hit me. Then her small arms embraced me and she put her face right in front of mine. "Sandra, we are sorry! Mommy was tired from the road and had nowhere to sleep! If we knew you''d be so upset that we took your room we''d sleep in the stables!"


    She was crying as well, snot dripping from her nose. Kiya''s small arms squeezed my neck and she rubbed her cheek on mine. I was such a fool. My arms moved on their own and hugged the tiny girl.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "No. I''m not angry that you used that room. I''d rather have you sleep on my bed with your mommy than lay down on the filth. Don''t cry, I''m okay."


    "You are not angry that mommy took your furs?" She asked.


    "No. Keep them if you want. I was the one that called them back, why would I be angry at them? Whatever happened between us is past. You and your siblings are now my kin and that makes your mommy my kin too."


    The girl''s candid smile and tenderness washed away my worries. Nanna snickered.


    "See?" She nudged Rubati with an elbow. "Is that woman splayed on the ground the fearsome Harbinger you talked about? The one you heard about in the capital?"


    The witch cackled. I got a bit angry at her but I needed her help and I was the one making a fool of myself. I tentatively laughed but a sob-hiccup spasm slipped halfway through. Then I laughed for real. Tiny Kiya beamed on my lap.


    "Banunu, Rubati, welcome back. I''m happy to see you two in good health!" I told them from the bottom of my heart.


    I went through so much that Banunu''s attempt at poisoning me felt like a teenage prank. And in her mind, I was about to destroy her whole family so I can kind of understand why she did it. I''m not a mother but I feel that I could raze a city to protect my children. I ruffled Kiya''s ebony hair and gently pushed her off of me. I met Banunu''s eyes and she blinked some tears away.


    "We can''t thank you enough for taking such good care of our children, milady," She replied.


    "All of them spoke highly of you," Rubati added. "We are forever in your debt, milady."


    I smiled and they reciprocated. Kiya hugged her mother''s skirt. Both mothers were somehow disheveled. They dressed up in a hurry to chase after me. I almost wished I could stay on the ground forever, making a fool of myself. Maybe if I posed as harmless, people wouldn''t come after me that much.


    Who was I kidding? In this savage society where Lextalionis rules supreme, a harmless woman is a toy to be seized, used, and discarded. If I showed a weak and harmless side, I''d be married to Marduk now.


    "I''m glad you feel that way and I intend to honor that feeling. However, I expect we can look at each other as equals here. I don''t know what you two will want to do but you have my support. Now, could someone help me get back on my feet?"


    "I''ll do that!" Arwia came from behind Belle and as the cook parted I could see the throng of kids and preteens coming behind her. It seemed my antics woke up the whole household. "Grab the other arm, Belle-Sunu!"


    The two girls heaved me up. My legs still felt as weak as a newborn doe''s, probably from sitting seiza without proper preparation. I skipped a bit to pump some blood up and down my legs and felt the characteristic tingling.


    "So. I''m sorry I wasn''t here to welcome you back, I was forced into an audience with the Enshi and he kinda trapped me. Terrible evening, worst company."


    "You shouldn''t speak like that of the ruler of the city, milady," Banunu warned with concern in her voice. "It might be considered treason."


    She glanced down at the children before resuming eye contact. I nodded. We''d talk about that later, just between us adults.


    "You knew him well, didn''t you, Banunu?"


    "Yes, he was very close to our late husband," She sighed and Rubati held her hand. "I think it was him that got husband interested in ''foreign business''."


    I could almost see her wiggling her fingers in the air quotes. We both understood that ''foreign business'' meant the bribe Prince Marduk paid them to capture me. I grabbed Banunu''s other hand.


    "Well, come on, everyone. I''m starving and I am sure everyone could eat some breakfast. I''m thinking of making something new. Let''s go."


    "There''s one thing we wanted to tell you," Banunu cautiously broached some important subject.


    I stopped pulling and turned to give her my undivided attention. "Yes? What is it?" I asked with a smile to make her feel at ease.


    "Rubati and I, we have no idea how we can thank you for taking care of our children. We want to repay it but I know you don''t care about gold."


    I chuckled. "I have too much gold. Not giving any away though. And the kids, they are lovely. After they warmed up to me, we had a wonderful time. It was no bother to look after them and to be honest, it was mostly Arwia''s doing."


    Rubati shook her head. "No. Your servant was doing your bidding."


    "Employee at most," I corrected her. "Arwia is not my servant. But I can take some credit, can''t I?"


    "Our wish," Banunu said, "is to help you. Repay your kindness. Would you let us become your... employees as well?"


    "That would be wonderful. I don''t want you serving me though. You can live with me just like Nanna. I won''t boss you around but I''d love to have your company. And we won''t have to separate the children."


    "But--"


    Banunu was about to protest but the cheer from the brat crowd drowned her voice. I just smiled and pulled her along. At the kitchen, I made starch porridge with kefir for everyone. We hadn''t vanilla but I used essence to make tangerine-flavored porridge. The thing was sweet but I committed a terrible mistake.


    I underestimated the sweet tooth of children and what sugar did to their metabolisms. You see, they had little contact with sugar. They just didn''t sweeten their food. Now add the thrill of a new experience with the raw glucose caressing their tongues and you have the recipe for chaos.


    I cooked thirty bowls of porridge thinking it would be enough. The kids wolfed down, no, they inhaled the white goo faster than I could make more. Then they begged for more but Arwia and Banunu took them outside to burn the excess energy. I stayed in the kitchen with Belle, Rubati, and Nanna.


    "What devilish concoction was that?" The witch asked. "It reminded me of the Askelian berserkers."


    "Just sugar. It does that to children. Makes them livelier," I shrugged.


    Rubati came and put a hand on my neck. "You are near your period, aren''t you?" She asked with a low voice.


    I perked up. I had no idea but my period was overdue. I mean, not late by any measure but I had no idea when it would come or even if.


    "How can you tell?" I asked back.


    "This woman has a very minor adept power. She can gauge the health of the person she touches," Nanna explained.


    "It helps keep my children healthy," She blushed.


    "Oh. I was worried about it since I spent most of the four months trapped in the underground unconscious," I confessed. "I mean, I woke up with some dried blood... there... so it must''ve happened but I had no idea when."


    "Soon," Rubati said with a smile. "Do you have the napkins?"


    I had panty liners but they were for everyday use, not for periods. "No. And I have no idea what you use in this world."


    Rubati giggled. "I''ll see that you are well-supplied. I''ll visit the market today."


    I blinked in confusion but I was feeling fuzzy inside. If there was one thing I was sorely needing, it would be validation. Was it selfish of me to bind all these people to me? maybe. I wasn''t forcing them though.


    "Cool. Let me fetch you some money."


    "Let it be a gift from us," She suggested.


    I nodded. "Fine then. I have to go to work soon but I wanted to ask Nanna a few things before. Being a super-important minister tasked with saving the town from starvation is hard, didn''t you know?"


    "Yes. Come to my room, super important minister," The witch snickered and left.


    "Excuse me," I went after her.


    We walked without a word to the annex and into Nanna''s room. She crossed her arms and kept staring at me. Once the door was closed and I got used to the strong herbal smell, I spoke.


    "It seems Nephew... The Enshi can talk to Ishtar. And that Prince Marduk, that was saved by Nergal can talk to his god too. Why can''t I talk to Tarhun?"


    She rolled her eyes and suddenly was she was someone ancient and wise. "The answer is as obvious as the sun rising for someone in a vigil that waits for the next day. What do they do that you don''t?"


    I was a fool to expect a straight answer. And the way she put it made me feel stupid. Is the sun reference a metaphor? Like the dawn of enlightenment? Oh. Enlightenment.


    "They seek their deities'' guidance," I replied.


    Nanna didn''t flinch or shift her facial expression. "What else?" She asked with a neutral tone.


    The fact she didn''t scold me meant I got it partially right. "They pray."


    "Indeed. Have you prayed to Tarhun? Even though he gave you great power, you showed no piety. How is he going to talk to you if you don''t talk to him or don''t try to listen?"


    That... made a lot of sense. "Is that the reason his tablet isn''t working?"


    "No, that''s Ishtar being petty and running ahead of the horse," Nanna scoffed. "She spent a lot of energy and claimed the city before the ritual. If everything goes right she gets that energy back, if not, she loses."


    That also meant she would fight to protect her investment. "Keeping the Enshi alive also uses energy, right?"


    "The major expense was when she blessed him but as he is severely poisoned, she has to keep him from dying, so yes."


    I check the list on my phone, "Is that why my power is out of control recently?"


    "Probably. I have no way of telling for sure."


    "Is there any way I can recover magic faster?"


    She snorted. "No. There''s a way for sorcerers near you recover magic faster because you saturate the air around you with your excess magic but for you? No. There are fewer mortals stronger than you I''ve seen than fingers in my hands. I see your confusion, let me explain.


    "Can an oasis drain water from the desert sands around it? No. Most of the magic in the air around you came from you. You are the one to quench the wretched thirst of this world. Hum..."


    She assumed a pensive pose, her eyes unfocusing and her gaze on the endless horizon. Then she smacked her lips and smiled at me.


    "Let me tell you a little story, one I learned when I was young. You know the people of this world came from yours, right?"


    I nod, "I recall Tarhun mentioning something about that."


    "Yes, that was true. There was an age that your historians call the ''Bronze Age'', where civilizations thrived in the middle-east. And so the gods these civilizations worshipped also thrived. They invented several things, built marvels that I know amaze your people even millennia after their crafting. Yet like all things, it was bound to end. It happened so that the gods of Hatti, Babylon, Akkad, Sumer, Assyria, Ur, and other empires were so engorged in the prosperity and worship of their people that they did not notice the other peoples and their own gods envy at what we had.


    "And these other deities came and took a piece of land here, a bit of power there, a prominent person or two. And in their high ziggurats, the gods did not act until too late. First, a creation god did a covenant with one man from Ur. He would be the patriarch of a new civilization, you know of whom I speak. Say not his name or mention that creation god. That man was strongest in both spirit and soul. His seed grew and for the first time, the gods took notice of the envy around them."


    "Oh, are you talking about Ab--"


    "NO NAMES!" Nanna Interrupted me with a baffling amount of pressure. It was as if I was a little girl with a roaring tiger right at my face. "Names have power, girl! Tarhun almost had a fit and destroyed this section of the continent when you threatened him with foreign scriptures. Names have power, don''t speak of them. Not of this patriarch, not of the deity that took him. It is a bitter moment for most gods here. We will talk about it later, but keep that in mind. Don''t say one''s name unless you wish to grant one''s power."


    I nodded. "Sorry. My bad. I will take care. So, that man, did he cause envy?"


    She cleared her throat and continued. "They manipulated to bring misery to the people of that patriarch but that only made them stronger. And then the savages of the inner sea attacked. Trade with other regions stopped and suddenly the wealth that was circulating stagnated. As if a brick from the bottom of the tower was removed, so these civilizations collapsed."


    History was never my strong subject but I remember the Bronze Age Collapse. When the civilizations that lived in what is today Turkey, Iraq, and Iran basically vanished in less than a century. The trade of tin from faraway lands was vital to their bronze industry and so were several goods from other regions as far away as China. Or India. I don''t recall very well. The waning trade coupled with climate changes that hindered their agriculture put them in a pinch but when the Sea Peoples invaded the Mediterranean, it was the last drop.


    There is a lot of controversy and speculation regarding that so the true reasons are not known... But what Nanna said...


    "And the gods decided to emigrate to another world," I concluded out loud. "They brought their people here, to start anew!"


    "Yes, girl. The Greeks, Egyptians, and the ones to the East decided to stay behind and try their luck. The Hittite, Mesopotamian, and part of the Elam gods decided to migrate. We brought seventy-seven million people here."


    "We?" I ask, startled.


    "Don''t interrupt me as I recite the scriptures, girl. It was written from the gods'' point of view!" She scolds me.


    That makes sense. "I''m sorry," I try to placate the angry witch.


    Indeed it felt like the people just vanished. So they literally vanished. I can only imagine how much power it took to transport that many people from one world to another.


    "A lot of power was used," Nanna continued as if she could read my mind, "almost all the power the gods had. Some of them with similar domains merged to survive. But not much power was left to seed the world with magic."


    "Is that why I''m here? To be an oasis in the desert? To keep leaking magic until the world saturates?"


    She did a half-smile, half-scowl. "I do not dare know what is in Tarhun''s mind but that might be the case," She said without much respect for the curly-bearded god. Thinking back to how she said, it was kinda patronizing. "I can see you have more questions in your shiny glass thing," She said with a tired voice, "But remembering that was tiresome. Begone, girl. You have a city to save."


    I knew better than to linger around in Nanna''s place longer than I needed or past my welcome. I made the phone vanish and stood up. "Thank you for your lessons, Nanna. If there''s anything I can do for you, just ask."


    I was going away but I heard her grumble, "Just wait, girl. I know exactly what I need you to do."


    I felt a shiver running up my spine. It was as if I''d made a pact with some ancient dragon. The kind where the mortal always got the short stick. But that might be my hormone-fueled paranoia speaking. If I was close to my period... well, everyone knows what it means.


    I left the annex and made a beeline for the stables. I didn''t ask all I wanted from Nanna but I got more than I expected so it was fine. The sugar rush was still on and the children were tramping the grass and making a ruckus on the backyard. I lowered my head and mounted Penny. I knew I wouldn''t leave if I went to spend time with them and I had some special guests today.


    I was rather late, already.

 Friday, Bull 27th - Interview

    A crowd larger than the two previous days waited for me in front of the ministry HQ. I could see they were separated in groups, the general and his soldiers further apart than the hired workers and the magistrate and the people he brought. If I had to guess, there were three hundred people there. I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me and if it weren''t for the stirrups and Penny feeling my own sense of balance I''d have kissed the ground.


    I forced the bile back down my throat and approached. "Good morning, everyone," I shouted with the best fake smile I could muster.


    It was not the time to show weakness. Although I had three days before I had to show up before the Enshi to reinstate the two to their jobs, they would surely use anything they learned here to oppose me. I had no reins to hide my hands so I crossed them behind my back to avoid fiddling.


    Greetings were thrown my way but I was distracted. I got down and Penny instinctively went to have a nice chat with the wagon drivers'' oxen. She was here. Princess Snowflake, or Emes-Bintu to those that cared about her. I didn''t. I do mind her existence but I don''t care what happens to her. I won''t stoop as low as to torture her during these three days, however.


    "Minister," General smiled and saluted as one would a superior civilian officer. Emes-Bintu, I won''t address her by the nickname, was about to speak but he clapped his daughter''s shoulder.


    "General," I made a point of using his rank. "Magistrate, miss Emes-Bintu, welcome. I see you brought more than the required amount of people. Well, I have something special to do with a workforce this huge and this motivated. I hope you all do your best today, for the sake of this city. Zar-Kiira, Utuaa, please come inside with me, we will hold a brief meeting."


    I usher everyone inside and let the workers into the backyard that got a bit crowded. The three VIPs and my two taskmasters follow me into the main house where the scribes are waiting for us.


    "Minister, good morning," Gu-Maranu greets me. "We finished copying the documents you requested."


    He points to a pile of parchments that are still drying on the racks at the back of the room. I can see the magistrate is keen on getting his archives restored but I raise a hand. I also notice the scribes are tired, certainly from pulling an all-nighter.


    "Our deadline to deliver the documents is in three days. We will have the Magistrate and General, as well as miss Emes-Bintu here as our guests to learn about our job. The blurb you hear outside are the extra hands they kindly brought with them. On the third day, we will hand over the documents to the Magistrate."


    "I am no Magistrate, milady," He protested. "As you surely remember, the Enshi temporarily demoted me."


    "And speaking of that, I want to know your names. You are right, I can''t call you Magistrate and General and nobody introduced you to me."


    "I''m Nootesh-Geerzu," The General politely said, "And I am looking forward to seeing how you work, Minister."


    His military discipline is something enviable. Of all three, miss Sno... Emes-Bintu is pouting, the Magistrate is brooding but Nootesh-Geerzu - and I''m transcribing it phonetically - is disciplined and eager to work.


    "Pleased to meet you, Nootesh-Geerzu. In my homeland, we have a saying, ?????????? (yoroshiku onegaishimazu). It has a really deep meaning, mostly used as a greeting as a way to say "thank you" but goes along the lines of let''s work in harmony and achieve our goals together, in this case. So, ??????????!"


    As I was the higher-ranking one in the room by a whim of the King, I did just a polite nod. To my surprise, Nootesh-Geerzu didn''t reply immediately. He tapped his chin and then smiled.


    "Captain Al-Amir warned me, but I didn''t believe him. I''m sorry, milady. I''ve talked to your taskmaster before you arrived, and I am convinced. Let''s work together then. I won''t insult your language by trying to imitate your greeting."


    Their way of speaking was really different from ours. If I had to explain briefly, they used the back and roof of their mouths more. And they snap the T''s and hiss the S''s. It is sometimes slurry, definitely sounds ancient. The crystal clear Japanese phonemes are hard for them. But he was respectful and it made me happy.


    "There''s no problem. I am glad the spirit was conveyed. My people put a great deal of emphasis on working with harmony and mutual respect. And you can ask anyone here, that''s how I do my things."


    With that said, I shifted to face the Magistrate. I knew they abandoned their names on tenure but I was curious as to what he''d do.


    "You can call me ''Kazeed''. That will be acceptable," He said with his uppity tone of voice.


    "Great! And miss Emes-Bintu will be with us. In fact... Can I leave the gentlemen alone for a moment while I talk to her? Please?"


    The men nodded and the girl made a face of terror. I took her by the wrist and tugged her up the stairs. She only uttered a yelp when I first tugged, remaining silent until I closed the door to give us privacy. Then she went to the far side and turned, the face of a lioness.


    "My father will avenge me!" She hissed.


    A misguided lioness.


    "Em--"


    "I know you won''t let me get out of here alive. But you won''t have Al-Amir anyway!" She dialed crazy to 11 and rambled on. "He will avenge me. You can''t have him. I''ll curse you in the name of Ishtar!"If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "I..."


    "So kill me. C''mon. Father told me my life was forfeit anyway. That you had power over us and the Enshi''s ears. How does it feel, to bed such a wretched creature? I bet he left flakes of skin all over your body!"


    She was screeching so annoyingly sharp and loud anyone would flinch. I had no idea where she was coming from or why all that was happening. I think were we on the ground floor, she''d have fled through the window. She was trembling, crying, her whole face flush with blood. Her eyes darted around looking for a way out. I was blocking the door. I couldn''t let her go out as this or she''d just set fire to everyone downstairs.


    "Emes-Bi--"


    "Curse you! You... homewrecker! Whore! AH!" She just shrieked. If any crystal cup happened to be around, she''d have broken it.


    Crouched on the ground, not even looking at me, hair falling over her face, she screamed her lungs out. I... couldn''t do anything. So I let her scream. The walls were solid sandstone but the rooms were far from soundproof. But there was one thing I could do.


    Shoot her.


    A video, I mean. I took my GoPro and quickly turned it on, recording. It had a better sound quality than my Android phone. After some solid ten minutes of wailing, she tired out. Emes-Bintu sat down on the floor, her eyes puffed from crying.


    "You are still alive," I told her. "I won''t kill you. No reason."


    "Liar," She pouted and panted.


    Someone knocked on the door.


    "Milady minister, is everything alright in there?" Kuma-Nu''s voice.


    "Yes," I shouted back without opening the door or taking the camera off her. "Tell Nootesh-Geerzu his daughter is hale and just venting her frustrations. I''ll join you as soon as she calms down."


    "As you will, milady," He saluted and moved away. I heard his steps going downstairs.


    Alone again, I tried. "Emes-Bintu, can we talk now? I won''t hurt you."


    "Shut up!"


    I wish I knew something to cheer her up but nothing came to mind. She was really a very special... tiny ice crystal from a rain cloud. Therefore we just stayed in the room wasting valuable time, me standing up holding the camera and the girl sitting on the floor, massaging her sleeping feet. I should make her sit seiza to reflect but I didn''t.


    "Do you want some water?" I asked her, holding a PET bottle. "It is not poisoned, here." I drank a swig. "Go ahead."


    I held the bottle but she''d have to cross the room to take it. Emes-Bintu didn''t stand up, she just looked at me and mumbled.


    "Let ''em have him," She whimpered. "I''ll even let you be the second wife."


    I think that was my cue. She wasn''t rejecting me absolutely.


    "No can do. And I don''t own Brandon. You can''t have him, he''s not for sale or grabs. And if he''s going to be with me, it is either me alone or none of it."


    She stared at me as if I was an alien. I mean, I came from another world but I was a human. Still human. I guess.


    "You can''t tell your husband what to do," She gasped as if it was perfect commonsense.


    Probably was, in their culture.


    "From where I come from, people don''t marry several other people. It is either one or none. If Brandon is not willing to commit, then he won''t commit. Neither will I. Your voice is cracking. Drink some water."


    She took the bottle. "Thanks," She said curtly.


    This girl received the best education, I was sure. Not a girl, an adult already. I''d give her fifteen years. Most women were already mothers at this age, putting the recycling rate of the population at that many years plus one. Men died in troves, a sad reality. Dangerous jobs, fighting, wars. I bet most places would send an army to fight elsewhere when too many men gathered just to cull their population. So long the women kept living and birthing, the Realm would prosper.


    There was also the matter of the "bridal price", that should be paid to the father to compensate for the cost of raising the woman. It was a double, no multi-edged tragedy.


    First, the father wouldn''t "invest" in education because it didn''t pay off in the price of the goods, leaving the girls uncultured.


    Second, they were treated like merchandise, the upcoming "bridal market" proof of it. They had little to no choice on whom to marry.


    Third, it caused pressure in the male population to save money to buy a bride.


    Fourth, the daughters were sold much earlier than the brothers. Most of the money from the sale of the girls - I''m disgusted from writing it - would go to buy brides for the sons but it wasn''t enough. They had to work to cover the difference.


    Fifth, the dispossessed men would turn to crime to get money fast.


    Sixth, the wives would be treated like property forever.


    Seventh, the wealthy would usually buy several women, making harems. The poor girls would be little more than slaves, never mention experiencing love.


    Eight, they were pressured into producing heirs. A woman that couldn''t give birth would be discarded or sent back, even if it was the man that was sterile.


    Do I have to go on? No. This is my journal and I say enough is enough. Just to not leave it hanging, It is bad for both genders. My bias is obviously with the female camp but it was terrible for the men too. All the violence they were subject to, for one.


    Excuse me but I need a break.


    <hr>


    Sorry for breaking the wall you should not speak about. After I took a short walk outside under starlight I feel better. Right, back to the room with the princess.


    Those brooding thoughts took me away from the room I was currently sharing with Emes-Bintu. The girl took to the water bottle like a wanderer in the desert. But it was a two-liter bottle and she stopped halfway. Once she noticed how much she drank, she felt guilty and handed the bottle back to me.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll fill it later. Feeling better?" She nodded. I used that goodwill to probe her. "Does Brandon even have the money to pay your price? I mean, your father dotes on you enough to give him a discount, but I know our esteemed Captain is not wealthy even though he lives frugally."


    I recalled Nanna telling me that Brandon was a traditionalist. I doubt he''d take her without some sort of monetary compensation to our dear Nootesh-Geerzu.


    "He has to put up the effort if he wants to be worthy of me," She scoffed, haughtily. "If only some cheap whore wasn''t straying him from the path," Emes-Bintu snickered.


    Game on. As if I''d let that slight slip.


    "Cheap? Prince Marduk-Sapik-Ziarat brought fifty thousand soldiers to pick me up, girl," I replied. "And it wasn''t enough. Have you seen what I''m doing here? Do you have any idea how valuable is the knowledge I have? Go around and ask. I saw you wearing one of Cloe''s dresses the other day. One she was making for me. Did you like it, thief? I bet you pressured her into selling it to you. Did you feel pretty wearing my clothes, your highness?"


    "I didn''t... I paid well for that... Prove it was yours!"


    GoPro on one hand, phone summoned on the other. I browsed to the folder with the ripped images from the fashion game. It took me a few minutes but I found the image that inspired the dress she stole. It was worth to see her stretching her neck to see the images I was flicking through. "Here. This is the original design. And there are thousands of clothes in here you would never even imagine.


    "Too bad we are not friends. You can''t see them." And the phone vanished back to storage. "I will tell you the same thing I told Nephew, girl," I did a Freudian slip. "My friends prosper, my enemies suffer. Pick your side carefully. We''re done here. Let''s go downstairs to work. And worry not, miss Emes-Bintu. In respect of your father, I won''t give you any menial job like clearing the latrines of the hundreds of people working with us."


    I didn''t give her a chance to talk back. I dropped the mic and left the room, gracefully.