All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 125: Nighty Knight

Susan took a couple of seconds to finish drinking the whole bottle. Afterward, Bee lowered her head back onto the ground. It wouldn’t take long for the potion to take effect, but the woman would still need to rest for a bit while it did. Still, Susan felt the need to answer Bee’s last question before she passed out. “I came from… Caleb.”

Bee leaned back on her heels. Susan had come all the way from the province capital? That was a very long walk. But even more concerning was that the massive city seemed to be under attack.

Since the woman was now unconscious, Bee couldn’t get any more potions in her. Now she had time to examine Susan for less obvious injuries. She had mentioned that she had to pass through the undead’s lines. She likely wasn’t infected, as she would have already turned, but they needed to be sure there was nothing else that could endanger her life.

Bee started at the scalp, carefully looking for any head wounds. She found more than one lump, but nothing too serious. Of course, there might have been some internal bleeding, but anything too severe likely would have killed her by now. Otherwise, then it was minor enough that the treatment Bee had already administered would be enough.

Still, Bee used a little topical potion to help target those areas, just to be safe. Carefully she felt down the neck and along the collarbone. Looking for any contusions and tracing the skeleton, Bee found several nasty bruises and some broken ribs as expected, but most of the blood had come from the bite in the calf. Besides the things she had already taken care of, Susan mostly only had to deal with dehydration and exhaustion.

Finally convinced that she hadn’t missed something that would cause her patient to die on her, Bee leaned back and swiped a layer of cold sweat from her brow. Looking around, she found Tony not too far off, watching over the sheep.

Catching his eye, she motioned him over. He gave the flock one last look before hurrying to her side. Squatting next to her seat, Tony looked at Susan’s limp form. “Is she going to be alright?”

Bee could hear some real concern in his voice and read the same on his face. “Yeah, she should be.”

Tony’s posture relaxed slightly. “Oh, good. Doesn’t her face look familiar? I feel like I should know her from somewhere.”

Bee realized that Tony hadn’t been there for the discussion between Void, her, and Susan. They had just let her go without bothering to tell anyone. The castle was large enough that it was conceivable that he hadn’t met her or didn’t really remember her.

“You do, or should at least. She lived in the castle for a few weeks.” Bee said with a sigh. Maybe they shouldn’t have let her go without warning her a bit more. That the adventurers from so long ago had thought Bee was brainwashed too and attacked her. Still, she seemed to have a good idea of how Void was viewed, so it hadn’t seemed necessary. Maybe Bee had been wrong.

“She wanted to leave and try to work out an understanding with the authorities, maybe get some help with the undead and ease their worries about us a little. It didn’t work.” Bee finished lamely as she gestured to the unconscious woman.

“Clearly.” Tony sighed as he heaved himself to his feet. “I take it that we won’t be leaving for a while?”

“Probably not.” Bee replied. “She should be okay to be moved, but won’t be able to move herself. Maybe tomorrow the healing will be mostly done.”

“I’ll go care for the sheep then. We’re going to have to find a way to keep them on the road. I’m not letting them off this easy, not after we spent so much time trying to get them here.”

—

Bee and Tony had been gone for quite a while. I was beginning to worry about them a bit. Still, they were pretty capable, and I had responsibilities that I needed to take care of. This morning I had something special planned for the children and their games with the sticks. I thought they would enjoy it.

Normally they didn’t like getting sprayed with water, but this might be an exception. My plan involved slightly larger sticks I had made the previous night. As part of my training regime, I tried to work on a few different skills each day. Last night my focus was on Void Manipulation.

Training this was easy in principle. All that needed to be done was to make things in the void of my dustbin. However, I found that just moving things around didn’t really help much. I could feel my control improve, but by absolutely minuscule amounts. And that was before the diminishing returns kicked in. It was like my other skills. I needed to use them for a purpose and in new ways to train efficiently. The novelty was the hard part.

When training my sword, I cut new things in new patterns and ways, which was easy enough. But with Void Manipulation, I needed to make things, and it wasn’t always easy to figure out what to make. So when I considered how to train my Spray Bottle and the children’s reflexes at the same time, everything seemed to fall into place.

I went a little way outside the castle and cut down a tree with a single swipe of my sword. Once I had consumed it into my void, I only needed to shape it. The convenient thing about this project was that each stick I made was different. I had good models for the children. I knew their size and strength, so for each one, I made a custom stick that best fit their dimensions.

The first part was a long flat piece, averaging about two and a half inches wide. I made it to fit each kid. After that, I made a thinner, rounder bit on the other end of the stick for them to hold onto. Taking into account each of their hand sizes, it should be comfortable to hold. Lastly, I figured that a little protection for their fingers would be a good idea.

The largest issue that the morning training ran into was the sticks whacking into each other and then sliding down to hit the fingers. This was a bit of a cheap tactic that I managed to convince most of them to forgo, but it did happen from time to time. So to avoid that, I molded a little lip right above the handle.

Popping the first one out, one that I had intended for Felix, I waved it around a few times experimentally. It felt pretty good! One more thing to test. Going up to a tree, I struck it with as much force as I calculated that Felix could produce. There was a loud crack as the stick broke.

Hmmm, that was too bad. I might need to change the structure of the stick a bit to make it a little more sturdy. Carving off a new piece from the wood I had stored in my dustbin, I started again.

It didn’t take me long to fix the structural flaws and produce one for each child.

When I gathered them all in the morning for their games, I had Felix come up to the front so that he could explain the game we would be playing today. First though, I had to pass out their new sticks. I selected the one I had made for him and drew it out with my claw.

Felix watched in amazement as I offered him the new toy. The corners of his mouth stretched upwards into a deeper arc than I had ever seen, but at the same time, beads of salty water rolled down his cheeks. Shaky hands took the proffered stick. Felix planted the long, flat bit in the ground and went onto one knee. “Thank you, milord. This blade will ever serve you.”

He was speaking in his best imitation of the adults. Really, he needed to learn to stop that and just call me Void if he really needed to. So far, no one was willing to call me Spot, so I had tabled that project for later. Still, I accepted his thanks for the gift, even if it was a bit extreme. I mean, the water was still spilling from his eyes. I was pretty sure humans only leaked there when they were sad. But he was also still smiling. This was so confusing.

Well, anyway. I attempted to comfort him by patting him on the shoulder. It seemed to work as he stood up. After that, I started with the next gift. I asked Felix to call up the next child to receive their stick. The next one was Leanne, who repeated the same actions and words. “Thanks, Void! Um, what did you say, Felix? This sword will always be yours? Yeah, Void, this sword will always be yours.”

She didn’t give Felix a chance to answer, but she was close enough. I reached out to pat her shoulders as well, though she thankfully didn’t spring any leaks. After she stood and started to admire her gift, I had Felix call the next one up. Each child repeated the same ritual. They would kneel and accept the blade and didn’t stand up until I patted their shoulders. It was a bit strange, but oh well. I was just glad that they all were developing a healthy desire for pats.

We went in order of size, and as each smaller kid came up, they got progressively worse at speaking, and the words became a little less coherent. Eventually, the smallest one took her stick and was just able to mumble out something that I had no idea what it meant. It went on significantly longer than any of the kids that went before her.

Once the whole thing was finally done, we had already taken up a significant chunk of playtime. It took almost an entire hour to hand out all the sticks. Normally the kids got bored if they had to wait for more than a few minutes, but they were all here bouncing excitedly and swinging their sticks around the whole time. Finally, it was time to introduce my game.

Getting Felix's attention, I had him explain the plan. They would all need to stand in a line in the first guard position. I would spray a jet of water at them, and they would need to dodge, block it, or get wet. This caused some excitement, and they started jockeying for position in the line. Once we had got that all sorted out, I moved about twenty feet away.

I was going to try and work on control rather than power. Control and range. Rather than a misty spray, I wanted more of a projectile, like a small ball of water. They wouldn’t be able to block mist, and I needed them to be able to track the projectile so it couldn’t be too fast. I would need to lob it in an arc as well, especially at first. This would be good practice for me indeed.

Positioning myself, I worked out the most viable trajectories and targeted Felix. A small stream of water lazily arced in a shallow parabola toward the small boy.