All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 174: Go and Sin No More

"So. It sounds like you released a natural hot spring into camp." Arthur leaned back as he summarized my jumbled explanation. I like all my things neat, but language was way harder than I ever thought it would be. Organizing the words before writing them down was an entirely different skill than planning how to clean a room. I would need a lot more practice before I was good at putting words together efficiently. Especially when they all had so many different meanings that could be misunderstood.

As it was, I kept to simple sentence fragments since they seemed to cause the least confusion. It had generally gotten the point across to Arthur, even if he seemed to interpret them in a more generous light. Only after our little conversation did I understand how silly my search for missing oil was. There was no stolen oil, at least not in the way I had thought. When I had mentioned I was looking for it, Arthur said they had already "found" it.

He explained that the one stealing it was one of four people they had already captured. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to understand that there was no missing oil in the literal sense. Whoever was supposed to buy it had just bought less than they were supposed to and kept the leftover money. Luckily, I was able to pick this up through context clues, so I didn't think my processing speed came across as too slow.

Arthur scribbled down something on a piece of paper and stamped it with some melted wax. One of the young runners came in as he was called and grabbed the paper, dashing out of the tent soon after.

"I have to thank you on behalf of my men. They will all enjoy taking some time to soak in a hot spring, even if they will have to take shifts. We should be able to create a barrier to keep the water in with relatively little effort." Arthur told me. I wasn't sure I understood, but if he was happy, that was fine with me. Especially if they could help keep the rest of the water from getting everywhere. I carefully wrote out that they were welcome before setting the pen down.

Before the conversation could move on, one of the aides entered the tent. "Sir, we have an update from Lieutenant Jerico." Then, noticing me, he gave me a slight bow. "My Lord."

"Well, what is it?" Arthur asked. I was curious, too, as it seemed like Arthur had already formed a good idea of what had happened. What else could Jerico have found?

The aide slid a piece of paper over the desk. Arthur unfurled it and frowned as he read. After he finished, he set it down on the table so I could read it too.

It wasn't a very complicated note, just that Jerico believed that he had a good idea of who the perpetrator was but couldn't prove it yet. What did it take to prove someone was the guilty party? This was a tricky problem. Just because I knew information didn't mean I would be able to communicate it to others. Teaching children is a perfect example of this.

I imagined if I had to solve any of the kids' problems when I hadn't seen the situations play out with my very own sensors. Most of the time, their stories were rambling and incoherent. It was all I could do to get the gist of them, and that was only when I had personally witnessed the events. Now, if I had to prove to one child what another child said was true…. That would be hard.

Arthur sighed as he stood up. "Might as well take care of this now. I don't want to still be on this tomorrow. Void, do you want to come?"

Sure, I beeped. This time he seemed to be able to understand the beep just fine without any elaboration. I followed, floating just over the ground as we made our way to the outskirts of the camp. There was a normal tent that didn't stand out from any of the others, but somehow Arthur knew which one he was looking for. As we crossed the threshold, I noticed a few runes on the edges of the tent flaps. Once we were inside, I noticed that the sounds from outside were dulled than expected - almost 81.2 percent lower. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it seemed intentional.

A gruff-looking man glanced over at our entry. There were four other humans sitting in chairs, looking rather uncomfortable in the center of the room. One of them was the man who had given me the rope I used to seat the gates of Caleb. "Ah, Commander, I'm glad you could make it back, perhaps we can resolve this tonight."

Arthur nodded to the man but otherwise didn't say anything, so the gruff man continued. "So far, we have confirmed that only these four have had access to the records…."

I relegated the guy's words to a subprocessor as I found something far more interesting. Opening my soul sense, I looked at the four humans in the chairs. None of their spirits stood out as partially dim, nor were any bright. On the surface, they all had some amount of filth on them, but not too much more than an average amount from what I had seen. One of the younger men had a bit more than normal, but by no means the worst I had seen, even today. Was one of them really responsible for this?

To be fair, I didn't know how my skill worked very well yet. But if the stuff on the top was from bad things done recently, it didn't seem that any one of them had erred too much. Still, the gruff man and Arthur seemed convinced that it was one of them. To be thorough, I got to work scrubbing off the soul grime from each one of them.

While I was cleaning their spirits, Arthur and the man who seemed to be named Jerico were talking to each of them in soft tones. Each one was proclaiming their innocence, providing countless reasons why it wasn't them. I noticed that when I finished cleaning the spirit of the one lady, she seemed a bit more relaxed. After a little bit, the two men almost entirely stopped questioning them. I wasn't sure what they were doing exactly. I recalled situations like this in my human's shows at home, but when humans asked other humans questions in those, they usually split the people up.

I let them do their work as I continued mine. After polishing the first person's soul to a dull shine, I started cleaning one of the young men's souls. This time, as I progressed, he didn't relax at all. In fact, he got more and more tense, and I could see drops of sweat rolling down his temples. Arthur picked up on this almost right away.

By the time I was finished cleaning, the man had broken. Tears started rolling down his face, and his shoulders shook. When he finally looked up, it was as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. After I finished with him, I moved on to the other young man, but I listened to the confession.

Apparently, he was indeed responsible. He claimed there were reasons for what he did, something about a sick niece and potions being too expensive. Maybe that was why his soul wasn't as dirty as I would have thought? Did having justifications for doing bad things make it less bad? Or was it that he didn't feel as guilty?

The very dirty souls didn't seem to be only possessed by people who thought they were doing bad, so that didn't seem right either. I also didn't think that causing mess and disorder like this was very defensible, despite excuses, But I'd have to think about it. I would need more data points to figure out how this skill worked.

—-

Bee couldn't contain her smile as the valley entrance appeared on the horizon. It wasn't that she really wanted her journey to end. While it wasn't her favorite thing, it hadn't been awful since the rain stopped. She just really wanted to be home. These last few weeks away from Void had been hard. They felt… off, somehow. It felt like part of her was missing. Like there was a hole in her heart.

Realizing how much she leaned on her god for support was humbling. It also amazed her how much Void managed to do without her realizing it. Without him around, so many little things popped up that required her attention. She was lucky that she had such good repair skills. A number of small things broke that she was able to fix easily, like cartwheels and clothing. It was the first time that she used the skill on things other than her own body with any regularity.

It was a bit of a boon as she felt real growth in the skill, but in the back of her mind, she knew that if her master had been around, there wouldn't have been so many problems. Nonetheless, it was coming to an end. Soon, they would be back in the castle. There, with her friends and structured roles, there wouldn't be such a burden of leadership on her. The support system she had worked out with the others would do a lot to lift the stress off of her directly. She only had to integrate the newcomers in.

That shouldn't be too hard. She wasn't sure why, but these people were relatively easy to lead. It helped that there were only a few clear, unquestioned authority figures. Aside from herself, the only other ones were the Captain and Gertrude. The military made sense, but the others… Maybe something about living in a city made them more likely to listen to authority than people from the more rural areas.

When she stepped into the trees, she noticed a man appear next to the road as if by magic. One of Susan's scouts. No one else seemed to notice him as they walked past. As she looked over at the man, he fell into step with her.

She recognized him from the first group that Susan had started training. "Mat, right?"

"Wow, you remember me!" The man said, his voice drawing a lot of surprised stares. "Welcome back, High Priestess. Is the Lord Void around?"

Bee was a bit taken aback by the address. The title hadn't been common; most people had just called her Bee when she had left. It seemed that things had changed in her absence. "No, Void is hunting down the root of the undead problem. I am coming with refugees from Caleb."

"The city fell?" Mat asked. She noticed as his shoulders tensed slightly.

"Not quite. Void got there just in time. But as they are vulnerable, we are taking the ones who won't be useful in the rebuilding for now. We also have a contingent of guards to help along the way." Bee explained.

Mat relaxed somewhat. "If you can give me numbers, I can send a runner ahead to get things prepared for you ma'am."

"That would be greatly appreciated, Mat." Bee said. After telling him how many to expect, she then asked her own question. "It seems there have been some changes while I was away. What did I miss?"