Surviving Arkadia

Of course Agnes didn’t stick around to explain the plan. She was far too busy for that.

Jez and Ursula also left to spread the word about the true cause of the Fever to anyone who cared to hear it.

For a moment it was just Amris and I, sitting alone around the huge table. Everyone else had something to do and somewhere else to be. I tried to enjoy the moment of peace and companionable silence but it felt wrong. I felt like I was slacking, like there was something important that I should be doing but I could think of nothing that I could do without getting in someone’s way.

I decided to do what I usually did when I had nothing to do. I looked at the skill tree for something to grind.

That was when I remembered that during the fight on top of the train I’d heard at least one Achievement ding and at least one level up. The notifications were there. In the bottom left corner of my field of vision as I gazed at the skill tree. There were also a few glowing nodes on the tree.

The first Notification was JUST A FLESH WOUND. I’d got it for having been shot by a gunpowder weapon and lived. It gave me a bonus level of the GUNPOWDER WEAPON SKILL and a 2% boost to REGENERATION effects when regenerating from gunpowder weapon wounds.

There was a second Achievement. I hadn’t noticed it at the time but given what it was that was hardly surprising. GIFT OF THE JUGGERNAUT - YOU HAVE WITNESSED BOTH THE JUGGERNAUT IRRESISTIBLE AND THE JUGGERNAUT IMMOVABLE AND LIVED. YOU ARE FAVOURED BY THE JUGGERNAUT. That must have dinged round about the end of the fight, when I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the injured Ostian soldier screaming. It gave me a low level regeneration effect that triggered whenever I was attacked. It was only 1% of WOUNDS regenerated per 10 seconds but that 1% was multiplied by the level of my highest combat skill.

My highest combat skill had been CLAWED STRIKE at 5 but that was now matched by CLAWED KICK. Those both added my base skill in UNARMED COMBAT of 6. So the regeneration effect was 11% of total WOUNDS every 10 seconds. This regeneration effect also counted as an additional stack of the JUGGERNAUT’S REGENERATION AURA, both for me and for the JUGGERNAUT.

“Hey,” I said out loud, “Did you get this Gift of the Juggernaut ‘chieve?”

“Yeah,” said Amris, “I’m going to spend the afternoon working on my Claw Slash attack and try and get that regen ability up a bit.”

I checked my progress to the next level of either of my clawed attacks but there was no chance of levelling either of them.

“You know, I was planning to survive the next battle by standing behind Agnes but this regen thing makes standing behind Sarah a much more effective tactic.

Looking at the rest of the Skill Tree I’d gained 2 levels of the BASIC WEAPONS SKILL and unlocked SHORT SWORD, RANGED WEAPONS, and CROSSBOW at level 1. Apparently if you kill someone with a weapon you automatically unlock that weapon skill. The whole Murder Hobo thing was starting to make sense.

On second thought, I didn’t feel like grinding anything. I waited, and fretted. Then, when I had almost reached peak fret, Jethro returned with a small pot of coffee and two mugs. Drinking the coffee was definitely a bad idea. I was already full of stress hormones and adding caffeine to the mix wasn’t going to help. Not that I was going to let that stop me.

“Well,” said Amris, “This tea is well and truly stewed so I’m going to leave you two to catch up while I dispose of it.”

I tried to fill Jethro in on everything that had happened since the Citadel left the city but I could tell that there were large parts of it that he was struggling with. I could almost see his brain switching off every time I talked about anything adjacent to the Fever.

He was sad about Trudy and angry about the Ostians demanding the children but these things seemed to be oddly abstract to him. In the end I couldn’t stand it any longer and I changed the subject.

“You must be looking forward to seeing Anika again?” I said.

Jethro’s reaction was the instant wide grin and puppy-dog eyes combination that betrayed that he was more in love with Anika than I had realised. The expression was only there for a moment before he got his face back under control. “I don’t want to be presumptuous, we’ve been apart for a while, and she might have found someone else, or just gone off me, but…” he tailed off.

I waited, hoping he would say more, since he seemed to have something else he wanted to say.

He looked around, as if checking that we weren’t overheard, “I did manage to get a message to her. Agnes put a few words into a crystal mail message for Gertrude. Anika did send something back, only a few words, and in front of other people, but she seemed happy to hear from me.”

I hid my own grin behind my mug of coffee.

“So do you plan to panic about Anika all day or do you have work to do?” I said.

“You know what life is like in the Woods,” he said. “There’s always work to be done.”

“Brilliant. Can I help? Inactivity is going to drive me mad. I’m an endurance build. It’s morally wrong for me to sit around and do nothing.”

###

The work turned out to be helping Fred and Aldo grind their latest batch of charcoal into a fine powder. I was delighted to see them. Still alive and still together.

Once the hugging was over it was back to work. The unbroken charcoal was poured into a rough wooden bowl carved from the base of a giant tree trunk. Then we pounded it with long, straight branches, stripped of their bark.

“It’s a good workout,” I said, as Fred showed me the technique, “It’s a pity it doesn’t level a skill.”

“Oh but it does,” said Aldo. “Technically this is just a very big mortar and pestle. You don’t get much for it but it does level the COOKING and APOTHECARY skills.”

We spent the whole day turning batch after batch of charcoal chunks into a fine black powder. Periodically a person wearing an Alchemist’s coat or an Apothecary’s apron would come and take the powder away.

I assumed they were taking it away to mix it with saltpetre and sulphur to make gunpowder. My GUNPOWDER WEAPONS skill gave me the recipe for gunpowder and I began to idly calculate how much gunpowder they must be making, based on how much charcoal they had. I was sure I was calculating it wrong because the figures I was coming up with were terrifying. Particularly since this was just the latest load to be processed down to powder.

In the afternoon I saw a distant speck in the sky that slowly resolved into the Citadel, inexorably advancing towards us.

###

It was nearly dark by the time the Citadel lowered itself into a fresh clearing. The very tip of the under-hanging rocks plunged into the leaf litter and soil but it didn’t dig in very far. Then it hung there, looking like an impossible inverted mountain, with the street level well above the tops of the trees.

Jethro insisted on rushing over to the Citadel as soon as it stopped moving. When we arrived at the clearing Geraldine was already there. It was the first time I’d seen her since the Ostians attacked and she looked as elegant as always, standing next to Agnes, wrapped in a delicate knitted lace shawl over her plain big city clothes. If you didn’t know her you’d never spot the slightly crazed look in her eyes that bore witness to how much she’d missed Gertrude.

The first Gondola left the Citadel just as the Mayor joined us. The flight time of that Gondola was only a few minutes but it felt interminable. Jethro paced on the spot. Unwilling to go anywhere but unable to remain still.

At last the Gondola reached the ground and the people inside poured out. Anika was one of the first out and she threw herself into Jethro’s arms the moment she spotted him. I’d been worried that their time apart might have killed their blossoming romance but that did not seem likely from the way they mutually tried to inhale each other’s faces the moment they were within smooching range.

Geraldine and Gertrude fell into each other’s embrace. Geraldine wrapped her long, flexible Otter-kin body around the much smaller Gertrude. Gertrude stroked her wife’s sleek head and kissed the space between her large eyes.

At first it looked like the Mayor would interrupt them but he clearly thought better of it and just waited.

While we were waiting for Gertrude to be ready to speak to the Mayor, Jethro and Anika slipped away between the trees. I assumed they were headed for Jethro’s tent. Silently I wished them luck.