Chương 15: Slag and Fire

"I'm going to diiieee…" I whined. I knew I was whining. It was childish and stupid. I did it anyway.

"Back to work! You're an adult now!" Mom called, her words nasally. Springs and clips weren't a thing here. Instead, she'd tied two sticks together with a string and pinched her nose with that, as she continued mixing the disgusting concoction.

"But death, Mom! Imminent death!" I replied as I stirred my own mix. Your skill, Chemical Resilience, has improved. Not the first time I'd heard that in the past few days! I was considering dropping all of this and vowing never to return to it until I had invented a proper clothespin to truly cinch my nose shut. Pepper spray, as it turned out, smelled awful. Worse, it burned my eyes.

'It's worth it, it'll be worth it, oh my heavens, let all this be worth it,' I thought to myself desperately. I dipped a pitcher into the latest batch of the stuff before bringing it to a cleaned sheep bladder. We'd never be able to use this pitcher for anything else, but if we really could get eighty copper for a handful of this stuff, we'd be rich before the harvest was over. We'd decided on a forty-sixty split.

Sixty percent of our stock of peppers would be used to refine troll spray, while the rest would be used on the paste that had already proven effective, if disgusting. I'm not sure if Lieutenant Berkenem had noticed, but Mom had only offered him a price on a handful of the paste. He'd left with several samples of the stuff, as much as I'd been able to make at short notice. She hadn't set any price on what a full dose in a sheep bladder might be, let alone the price of a barrel.

And there would most assuredly be barrels of it. Fortunately, we'd had the sense to do this at the far end of one of our fields. With Dad and Reid helping, we'd quickly turned a small unclaimed field near the outer edge of our land into a mini production line and commenced the gruesome task of making barrels and barrels of liquid war weapon. Reid got to avoid the worst of it. He was off gathering and cutting leather to line the bladders with.

They would last longer and be sturdier, but it quickly became clear that bladders wouldn't be able to handle extended squeezing for long without reinforcement. Fortunately, people had been making water skins like this for ages. Leather lining fixed the problem, but we didn't have nearly enough leather to make hundreds of them. So, of course, we bought it from Reid and his dad. He was cutting them for free, though. Stupid, sweet boy. I grinned as I remembered his torn features.

He'd wanted to play with the new bow so badly, but work came first. It wasn't often someone bought silvers worth of leather, after all. After some trial and error, I'd created a prototype. I could squeeze the leather pouch, and liquid would spray out and splash someone. A man armed with this would have trouble missing a creature the size of a war troll. Still, I expected we wouldn't sell too many of those. Not to the army anyway. They'd want to buy in bulk. The barrels we had were big.

The sort of things that I could barely roll uphill while empty. We were pretty sure we'd have a ready-made buyer as soon as Berkenem got back to the rift. Admittedly, that might take quite a while, but that gave us the time we needed to perfect the formula. When he got back, either we'd have plenty of supply for him to buy, or we'd have a potent weapon for the attack I was sure was coming.

Till then, my sinuses remained clogged, my eyes were burning, and I was pretty sure I'd have been a happier girl if I'd let the troll kill me. We worked on the formula all night. The stock of ingredients had been more than fulfilled, and one gold had been a little too much to buy the supply from the entire town, even after adding in the leather. Even at a fair price, a gold coin was a lot of money. The coin was valuable enough that I'd had to talk Lupkep into helping us break it.

He ended up with the actual gold piece while half the town walked away with heavy pockets of copper and silver. Making money was nice, but it wasn't the primary reason for this. I fully intended to give every family in the village at least one troll spray-filled pouch for free. Would it be enough…? The pepper spray was a good start, but we weren't facing just one enemy. I remembered how Reid's bow was needed to shoot goblins. Not war trolls.

This was a full-scale attack, and as many people as possible needed to be ready to get to safety or fight. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. In the meantime, my talent was on fire. My mind was filled to the brim with the needs of the entire town. All I needed was a glance, and the need formed. I then actually needed to be close enough to understand the need, but once I did, I never forgot them.

Each one slotted into a permanent spot in my mind that I could bring up at a moment's notice. To make any of them, I'd need to start gathering resources the next morning, and asking people for help. None so far had been as simple to make as my Mom's had been. Dad had been happy to help set up the barrels, but eventually he'd had to return to the fields. Harvest was beginning, and farming wasn't a job that could be easily neglected.

Especially not for someone like him, with his Harvester talent so useful to any family with a farm. That left my mom and me to the drudgery. Even Mom's dedication waned after three or four hours of mulching peppers and mixing them with ashes and oil. You have gained a point in Crafting! I blinked at the notification. It had been ages since I'd managed to level Crafting. Without words, Mom and I came to an agreement that it was time to be finished.

There was still a bit of light outside as we left, and I took the opportunity to marvel at the two suns. Big Brother and Little Brother. I didn't know if Little Brother was actually a sun or if its light was just reflected from Big Brother. It could only be seen in twilight and at dawn. It still felt strange to me to think of a world where there was no Little Brother, even though April's world clearly only had one star.

Big Brother looked just like April's Sun, but Little Brother glowed blue as it set, contrasting its larger companion's deep red hue. The two suns were never far apart, suggesting they were probably orbiting each other very closely. Of course, that was based on knowledge I'd gleaned from watching April's life. For all I knew, they were just magic lights that acted like suns.

"Heavens, I'd forgotten the smell of fresh air," Mom said as she came up beside me, and we began to walk towards home.

"Me too," I breathed.

"We just wrecked the property values on that land." She eyed me oddly, but I wasn't bothered. If there was anyone I could let my oddities out around, it was Mom.

"So what did you see with your talent today?" she asked softly. I grimaced.

"More of the same. Different things people could use to escape from, hide from, fight, or kill trolls and goblins. Akkiwa's is actually kind of like your new one: wood and a gem. Some ether dust, too. Hers requires pearls, though. You know Everesta? Hers is actually the only one I've seen who doesn't need something related to the war trolls. Instead, the thing she needs most seems to be some sort of washcloth."

"For the baby?" she asked. I nodded.

"It's got multiple uses. Might help in childbirth, and will also help keep the baby alive to reach his or her nameday. Other than her, it's always the same. War trolls or goblins. Something's happened down at the Rift. Something big." She huffed at that.

"So, it's to be war again."

"War?" I asked.

"Not just a rift break?"

"The Rift has been contained almost since you were born, Mera. They call it the Ever War here, but the truth is in the words of the soldiers. The Ever Chore. There's no fear to be had down there. Only the drudgery of maintaining a stable defence. If there has been a rift break so massive that they can reach us here, then some other country is the cause. Some new weapon, or a talent that massively turns the tide in their favor."

"That seems a bit premature to me," I said.

"I mean, there's no evidence from my talent that anyone will be hurt by people. Just rift monsters. Couldn't the break have just overwhelmed a portion of the army?"

"I doubt it. The biggest break since the rift was contained before the troll attacked you was over five years ago. It only managed to reach Lindolen on the other side of the lake."

"I think I remember," I murmured.

"Oh yeah! We all stayed with Haddy, since she lives so much closer to town!" Rather than head to the house, Mom veered off toward the stable where Stoutgruff was sleeping. I was curious for a few minutes, but that cleared up the moment she pulled the spellbook out from behind a pile of tools. My eyes widened.

"If it's my most pressing need, I'd best spend as much time as possible learning what it can teach, but I don't see any reason for you not to learn. You're… going to be hiding your talent for the rest of your life, heavens willing. What's one more skill to conceal?"

"You don't want Dad to learn, too?" I asked. She shook her head.

"From what I know, those with growth magic like your father will find it incredibly difficult to learn to use fire. I'll give him the option, but I doubt he'll spend the time on it. I do think you'll need to craft whatever it is he needs, though. Surely it can't be much more difficult to gather the supplies for him than it was for me?" I shook my head.

"Loose metal, thread, and leather. I was planning to make it for him in the morning."

"So little? Do you love him more than me, Mera!?"

"Definitely," I said.

"He sneaks me extra apple pie when you're not looking."

"That little shit," she said with a laugh.

"Metal and leather… any idea what it will be?" I shrugged.

"It will help him kill goblins and war trolls. He's not secretly a swordsman or anything, is he?" That startled an unexpected snort out of her.

"Joenal? Hah! Your father is many things, Mera. Give him a seed, and he could make it grow in a blizzard, but I don't think he's ever held a knife, much less a sword."

"Rude," came a sudden voice from inside the house.

"Am I wrong?" Mom shouted, jokingly. The door opened, and Dad stood there.

"No, but what's this about goblins and war trolls?"

"Ah. Heard that too, did you? I swear, you hear like a bat."

"Atrinaska," he said sharply. She nodded. The time for joking was passed.

"We'll talk inside, hon," she said before stepping around him into the house. Dad and I shared an eyeroll before we followed her in. The moment I shut the door, Mom held up her hand and snapped her fingers. Immediately, a flickering flame formed just above her hand. Dad and I both blinked.