Triple Strength

241. Desert: Wiremu

Goodbye, Waiouru. It was fun, but it was painful to leave. Not the city, Kelda. I just feel empty. Dry, like this desert. Kelda left for Hrothgar two days before we left Waiouru. She joined a trade caravan to Hrothgar. Duchess Irena insisted on sending a troop of her personal guards with her for protection. She sent a message home so they would meet a troop of Hrothgar guards at a midway point. It will take her over three months to get home. The skin grafts went well, and her face and neck scars were less noticeable. They even grew some eyelids to keep dust and dirt out of the eye sockets.

Rodion and Runa dragged me out to drink the night Kelda left. They had found a small distillery with a dwarven whisky and a Lizardkin …. Something. Wild Bill was not the life of the party. In fact, he got quite morose. I don’t think drinking actually helps my mental state.

The next stop for us was a Lizardkin-run city called Almaeadin. It is in the middle of the desert and is a central trading city between the empire and the kingdom. It will be filled with spies from both sides. We decided Quinn needed to disappear, so we spread the rumour he was so love-struck he abandoned us and followed his lady love to Hrothgar. I wish it were true. I almost made it true.

I complained about the rumour, but Tabitha and Rodion were adamant about it. “It will also be a fitting end to the Bard's songs,” Rodion said.

“I am sorry, what Bard songs?”

“The Mighty Quinn vs. the Blood Wolf.” At least that was a working title the bard had. She was considering shortening it to just Mighty Quinn.”

Where is the hole I can crawl into?

“Don’t forget the “Countess and the Dragon,” Runa added. “That promises to be a real foot stomper.”

Tabitha and I looked at each other then I looked at them suspiciously, “Who is it providing the bards with this information?” Rodion glanced at Runa, and they both just grinned.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is I am Wild Bill in public from here on. I might take this trip to grow an actual moustache for Bill. That might be fun. It might be a problem when I switch to Dianne, though.

Before we left Waiouru, I checked on the bounty on Slave Taskmasters. There had been 215 claims, 198 of which were verified and approved. 195 were from within the Empire. One was from Almaeadin, where we were headed. The other two were in places I had never heard of. The number of claims had dropped significantly, now averaging two a month. The easy targets had been culled, and the Taskmasters were protecting themselves. Or the Empire was protecting them. It should also make people think twice about becoming a Slave Taskmaster.

What was more worrying was the sheer eyewatering bounty on one Wiremu Hunter. The Nystad Empire placed it, and the Emperor himself added the promise of a noble title to the person or group verified as responsible. I would really need to keep my head down.

This told me two things. Firstly the bounty kills were seriously hurting the empire. Good. Secondly, it confirmed the loyalty of my companions because I was tempted to hand myself in with that reward. The Empire had confirmed that I was travelling with a female thief, probably with a shadow affinity, who was possibly a former imperial Citizen called Tabitha Carter. One of my aliases is possibly Warren Carter, Tabitha’s brother. Warren and Tabitha were reportedly killed in Hrothgar four years ago, but this has been proven false. I had been identified as having a snake bond. I was also a known associate of the Mercenary groups the Mothers Tusks and the Canine Queens. This will bring trouble down on them, I hope they have changed group names. There is nothing I could do about it now. At least a snake bond is not unusual around here. Two of our six guides have them.

All the information was patchy but accurate if old. Unfortunately, there seems to be a trail that could be followed, and I know there are bounty Hunters out there with special Skills. The reward for information alone might bring out more connections. They obviously know I got as far as Kirghiz, as the bounty was posted from there. I keep racking my brain as to who else might know my real name. The king does. I am not worried about him unless he needs a political scapegoat, but how far has it spread in his advisors etc? Will they make a connection to Kelda? It is out of my control, but my brain won’t stop churning it over.

Right now, we are five days out of Waiouru in the middle of the desert. The desert is hot and dry but more hard, gravelly rock than sand. We did spend two days trudging through the sand, but the trade route to Almaeadin mostly follows a rocky path. The rock is better. The nights are cool, so we travel at night and rest during the day. Tabitha hired a guide and some helpers. We have a small caravan of fifteen camels. No wagons, just pack animals. Half the load are supplies for us, and the other half Tabitha intends to sell in Almaeadin.

Our hired helpers treat me as royalty because I have an affinity. I have shown my Granite Affinity because Težka needs a cave to hide during the day. Once I built it, Ruku used his Refreshing Mists, and most of us stayed with him. He is so out of place the desert guides don’t know what to make of him. He will be something we can be tracked by because he stands out so much and is hard to hide. This could be a problem after Almaeadin when we head into hostile territory.

Every day when we rest, I try to distract myself by pondering my affinity. The desert is one of the ideal places for me as it is all rock and sand. Modrica and Ruku are finding it a real struggle. Modrica because there is little to no soil or earth. Ruku because there is no water. All of Ruku’s skills are costing him much higher energy than normal. Težka is the most obvious one struggling, but the one who has it the worst is Ruku’s salamander bond Wai. Wai dries out very easily and quickly, and they are spending a lot of energy just keeping the little guy hydrated.

Hot and dry does not affect rock. This place is basically rock. What makes a desert is a lack of moisture. Life is sparse. Rock is plentiful and on the surface. Granite Quake and Granite Wall are my two lowest levelled Skills. I have been a bit smarter in using my skills. Instead of brute forcing a cave with Granite Manipulation, I have been using my Granite Sense to find weak areas and cracks and then enlarging them with Granite Quake. I then use Granite Manipulation to enlarge the cave, but instead of using it to smooth the rough rock, I create Granite Walls for the sides and sometimes the floor. I used my new Skill, Stone Shaping, to smooth the ceiling and make some interesting wall patterns. I then make a soft floor with Granite Sand. Contrary to Ruku, I am finding my skills cost less energy here. I have levelled all of those Skills except the Senses.

Today is different. Five days of travel means we are almost a third of the way to Almaeadin. I got Težka and Wai settled in their cave and then went exploring. Our guides had their tents up and were relaxing. Everybody thought I was mad going exploring in the heat of the day. Tāoke came with me, but nobody else would.

My Granite Senses had located something near the campsite, and I wanted to check it out. I dropped out of sight into a gully and followed it, continually checking the ground. I was pleased with the time I spent at the Quarry in Waiouru. I paid the Stone Mason a fortune to learn Stone Shaping, and even then, I think he only agreed because I was there on Duchess Irena’s recommendation. I managed to do enough to change the Quarry Worker Class into Stone Shaper. It dropped back to Level 10, but I got an extra point in Spiritual Agility per level. My Spiritual Agility jumped ten points.

Stone Shaping is pretty much what it says. It uses less energy than how I used to do it with my Manipulation Skill. I am also pretty close to getting the class back up to eleven with all these caves I am making.

I stopped in front of the gully slope. This was as close as I was going to get. Now I needed to dig. I used a focused application of Granite Guake to loosen things up and then used manipulation to create a narrow passage. It starts about twenty meters in, taking me a couple of hours. Tāoke has wandered off to explore.

The Ore is mixed with some highly spiritual metal. It is not Blacksteel, Deep Iron or Cargonite. My Spiritual Metals Lore is only level 3, so I am lacking knowledge. I manipulate a good chunk of ore from the wall, enlarging a working space. I drag it to the entrance and use my stone shaping to carve out a small smelter from the rock. I put the ore in, and Puia very kindly helped me by heating it up. I think Puia is quite excited as this is one of the ways he grows, but he absorbs Spiritual minerals. It is also one of the reasons he chose to bond with me. I don’t mind sharing.

I get Puia to heat it slowly using my Thermal Sensing to find the melting point. Eventually, a green-tinged metal starts floating to the surface. Metal has a lower melting point than most rocks. I formed a pure granite bowl and scraped it in to let it cool. The green tinge gives me an idea of what it is, but I can do some more tests once it cools. I have about a teaspoon volume of the metal from that moderate amount of ore. Whatever it is, it will be worth heaps as the Spiritual intensity is extremely high. I go back for more ore while it cools.

Four hours later, I have a small ingot of the metal as well as my small teaspoon. I have drunk both of my water skins dry. The Condense Water enchantments on them work very slowly in this dry atmosphere. I covered the entrance to my mine and walked the fifteen minutes back to the camp. I am dressed in the loose-flowing gowns the locals prefer, but mine are now filthy.

I gather Tabitha, Mayakku and Runa. Tabitha, for her trading experience, Mayakku has the most knowledge of Spiritual materials, and Runa spent some time at her family’s mines. I pulled out the small sample and went through what I had found and the tests I had run. I figured it was either Orichalcum, Osmium or Necrodermis. I was leaning toward Necrodermis, but it was the rarest of the three.

Mayakku ran another test and then almost had a fit in excitement. It was definitely Necrodermis.

“How much is there?” she asked in a whisper of wonder.

I pulled out the small ingot, “I got this from the amount of ore of maybe half the size of Težka’s cave. There are maybe a hundred cave sizes of ore there before it goes beyond my senses, although it gets fuzzy at the edges as the density decreases. It is not in a clump but a vein that goes quite deep.”

“We need to turn back to Waiouru and get a mining team out here!” she said, “This is worth a fortune.”

I figured that already. Necrodermis has an incredible capacity for self-repair if processed properly. It is used in small quantities, and various alloys and self-repair enchantments last an amazing length of time. I looked at Tabitha. I knew she was aware of the size of the fortune sitting on the ground there.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, “It is your find.”

Indeed, my Prospecting Class had levelled, and that had not happened in a long time. “I don’t want to turn back,” I said. We were finally getting close to solving the Slave Class issue, and I didn’t want to stop now.

“We can send a map back to Tāttā and let him organise or sell the info as we did for the other find,” Tabitha suggested.

“It would take forever to get this to Tāttā and then him to organise everything from Kirghiz. What about the people you employed in Waiouru?”

“I wouldn’t trust them with something of this size. I did make some initial business arrangements with Irena's family business, but this is magnitudes bigger than what I was thinking at the time. Just the small piece there,” she pointed to the teaspoon-sized bit, “would probably buy Irena’s mansion, depending on the purity. That may be an exaggeration.” Mayakku was shaking her head. “We can send the map and sample to Irena, and I think she would be fair.”

I nodded, “let's do that.”

“Just to clarify, Wiremu, This is your mine. This is your income.” Tabitha stated.

Mayakku was looking at her, confused. Tabitha clarified for her, “When Wiremu got his first big payout, he took some money for some armour and weapons and hasn’t looked at it since. I invested it, so he is a half-owner of Elemental Traders, a third now Tāttā has bought in. He owns twenty percent of a luxury spar in Dohovno along with a farm, a quarry in Obalno and a number of rental buildings throughout the kingdom, and he has no clue.”

Mayakku looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I am.

“He could retire right now as a rich man, especially with this,” Tabitha said, pointing to the ingot.

“If I own all that, you must be much richer,” I told her.

“Of course, crime does pay, and it is my job,” she replied, “You would be one of the richest men in the kingdom if you weren’t paying the bounty on Slave Taskmasters.”

“Well, my job is hunting and freeing slaves. Coin only has value for what you can use it for.” I shrugged.

“I think I need to sit down for a bit,” Mayakku said.