God Class, page 10
“The name is Rae, but friends call me ‘Get out of here you no good bum’ sometimes.” Rae paused for a minute and sat upright, resting his forearms on his knees. “But I prefer Rae. How about you?”
“Silas,” he answered, and they nodded at one another. It was nice to have a real conversation, but if what he had seen in here so far was any indication then they probably had limited time. Figuring this, Silas decided to just jump into more questions. “So, why are we not food? I don’t mean to be upfront about it, but I couldn’t help but notice the cooking pots full of human meat in the main cave, and it seems like you’ve been here a little while.”
Rae laughed and stood up. He wandered over to the small pile of dried wood and threw another log on the crackling fire. Silas had barely noticed that it dwindled so low, nothing but a few soft flares gnawing on blackened wood. The fire sizzled and ash flew upward as the log landed, the flames almost instantly finding their new feast. Billows of gray smoke rose up to the portal overhead. An exit so close yet somehow so out of reach for both of them. A window to freedom that seemed to exist more to mock them than to relieve the smoke. Silas guessed there was another in the main cavern, but he had been too rattled to look away from the scene around him.
“We aren’t not food,” Rae said, snapping Silas from his thoughts. “We are just too valuable to be just food. There were more of us a while back, maybe a month or so. I stopped counting the days after the first one of us was taken away and never returned. Lost their value.”
“Shit…” Silas said softly, and Rae whipped his head up and grinned. “I mean… Sorry. That must have been tough.”
“Eh,” Rae muttered and shrugged. He stoked the fire with a long branch that was blackened at the end. “I didn’t know them too well. I was in here first, and they came only a few weeks after me. We got to know one another, sure. Six of us total, all from neighboring villages, except one from the capital, Tartune. Two of them were cartographers and helped the Goblins create detailed maps of the forest and surrounding areas, but that only gave them a couple weeks more in their lifespan. One was a beginner alchemist, and he was a tricky one,” Rae said through a chuckle and prodded the fire again, shaking his head as if enthralled in a fond memory. He spoke to himself again under his breath, but this time Silas chose not to listen too closely, allowing the odd man his moment.
“He called the cartographers mom and dad; they thought it was a riot. I was weird uncle which seemed fitting. His name was Garther, stupid name, and he was maybe a couple years younger than you. Well, he was brewing elixirs for that Gob-Bitch who runs the show, helping to keep her people free of disease and all of that alchemist stuff. But the kid did not like that at all, especially after what they did to mom and dad. So Garther gets this idea in his mind that he is going to poison her and as many as possible. Kid was smart, but he lacked real wisdom.”
Ray stood, paced, spoke to the walls, then sat back down, prodding at the flames once more.
“Garther convinces a band of scouts that he needs Crimson Root for a potion that would help their hunger. Basically, told them that if he muddles it with rainwater, he could add it to the stew, and it would seem more filling. Well, obviously this sounds great to them since these bastards are always hungry and food is scarce. Crimson Root is harmless, but it does cause some stomach irritation and occasionally an itchy rash. Garther’s idea is to then claim he has elixirs to cure it and that it is just a side effect of whatever he added to the stew, but the antidote was actually the poison!”
Rae had become wrapped in his own story, eyes blooming with excitement and anticipation. It was obvious to Silas that this man had been alone on and off for a long time. Rae stoked the fire again, trying to quell his mad giggling so he could finish his story.
“Everything is going to plan… but here is where it turns. See, we all knew one another’s jobs, but we did not actually know the specifics. We knew the map makers were making maps of the area, but never for what. We knew Garther was making potions but never asked what kinds exactly. So, the plan is in motion, Garther is ready to dump the Crimson Root in the stew when out of nowhere comes the Gob-Bitch, snarling in their strange tongue and holding up a book of ingredients she got her hands on. The crazy fiend figured out his plan, the scouts reported the ingredients they had been gathering for him and she figured it all out just before he could manage it all.”
There was a silence that could be felt within the cavern. Even the campfire’s hiss seemed to be weighed down by it, smothered in the palpable nothingness. Rae had stopped poking the flames and instead just watched the dancing flames play out a performance, mumbling to himself. His wide, eager eyes and matching grin had faded, replaced by buried tension that reared its head with malice and teeth. His tongue slid along his top lip, catching a bead of sweat that had only just tumbled from his forehead.
“By the time they got him it had been weeks of planning and set up. Weeks, Sil. The other two had long since been removed by then, leaving just Garther and I to plot revenge for them all of that time. One was a chef, her usefulness died out when they decided taste was irrelevant and the other… he was a blacksmith by trade. We would hear him hammering away in the crude forge early in the morning hours, arming those fucks with shoddy weaponry that they would then use to capture more of our own kind. He could not take the guilt and…”
Rae shook his head, sighing heavily. “It does not matter. It was Garther and I, and when she came out with her book on herbs and alchemy, we both knew it was over. I never saw Garther again, but that night I heard his screams… They lasted for hours, Sil. I begged they would end, I pleaded to whatever was still watching from the stars to just end it for the poor kid already. Dead Gods do not listen, Sil. Always remember that. When it was over with, I said a quick thank you to the full moon and then caught some sleep.”
Rae ended it with a shrug and then pantomimed a yawn. Once again, his expression had shifted from a somber, lost aura to one of cheerful, cartoonish glee. Silas could only quietly watch Rae, studying him and desperately trying to understand the man. He was almost unreadable.
“Wow, I am tired. Memory lane really takes it out of you when you get to be my age! Which is…” He eyed Silas carefully. “Sixty… three?” Rae shrugged, laying down on his bedding then turning over. The straw shifted and crumpled at his movements. He raised up one arm and offered a peace sign. “Do not worry about the fire, kid. Too low to be a threat anyway. If you need a piss just crawl through that little passage between us, it leads to a big hole where you can take care of business.”
Silas sat and wordlessly let the story play out in his mind. If this was truly a dream, then why would it play out so… humanly? The interactions, the relationships, and even the mistakes. That was true pain on Rae’s face, Silas knew it. The stranger mourned the loss of what few friends he had in this cruel place, and it was more real than most of the nurses and hospital staff who stopped in to care for him. Yet something had stood out for Silas, a detail of the story that he just could not let go.
“Uh, hey… Rae?” Silas called out, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly as the man tossed a bit and grunted a response. “You didn’t say… What was your job? Or is your job?”
Rae rolled back slightly and turned a head over his shoulder. The hair covered most of his face, but no matter what he tried to hide Silas could see it. He could see the shimmering gloss like the trembling surface of a glassy lake. He knew that look, the one people hide when they need to protect themselves or others. No matter what Rae had said, how he acted or what he had done to hide it, Silas could see that Rae was crying.
“I am the scribe,” Rae said and shrugged once more, pushing a false smile onto his trembling lips. “I write their books.”
Silas had lay awake for most of the night. The stars seemed to shift and dance above him from the small smoke hole above. Their distant pulsating glow winked in, and out as dark clouds drifted over them. The moon was just out of sight, but its aura poured over the treetops like a stage backlight. Watching the cosmos swirl by above him gave an odd sense of comfort in an uncomfortable situation.
His mind seemed to wander, stopping on Rae and his story for one moment before drifting off to his H’alik promise another. Never staying on one for more than a few seconds. On rare occasions it landed on himself, on the young man who was bed ridden and fragile only a day before. The idea that this world was real, that the flames of the campfire were truly warm, or the stench of the Goblins was truly terrible, seemed impossible. More than impossible. While Silas had not completely written off the idea of it being a dream, he had come to know something about this world was just too authentic. Every sense seemed to be working overtime here, and even the creeping pains of hunger practically seemed to shout at him that this was not all in his mind.
When Silas thought of Rae it puzzled him even more. The man’s mind was clearly gone from the way he seemed to only remember the ending of his story moments before actually telling it, but his flaws made him seem truly alive. Silas felt for this stranger. He thought of the pain he must have endured all of these months, if not more, of being under the Goblins’ lock and key. Watching his own kind come and go, hearing them tortured and eaten. Silas winced at that; his heart beat thunderous war drums again when he dwelt on his own situation. The fact that he may very well be the next one in a long line of thrown away humans was more than unsettling.
But Rae survived. Rae proved his worth, and so would Silas. He would lie, buy his time even if it meant granting whatever [Minor Bestowment] was to the Goblin leader, and he would make it to thirty days. It was a long shot, but it may be his only shot.
When dawn broke over the trees and washed away the stars, Silas had managed to catch only a few hours of light, restless sleep.
[Warning! Debuff found, Tired. -5% Mana Regen, -5 Wisdom]
[Warning! Debuff found, Hungry. -5% Health Regen, -5 Strength, -5 Vitality]
[Warning! Debuff found, Thirty. -5% Stamina Regen, -5 Dexterity]
“Agh, stop!” He grunted, trying to will away the notifications. “Knock it off!”
Silas audibly groaned at the morning sun when the blaring voice told him of the debuffs. The vocalization of it only added insult to injury since he had felt all of those stat decreases from the moment he opened his eyes. Telling a person who was tired, hungry, and thirty that they were tired, hungry, and thirsty and being penalized for it seemed redundant, but Silas tried to shove it out of his mind and prepare for the day.
He had two days to gain a single level, and other than combat he had no idea how to do it.
“Oh good, I didn’t just dream you up,” Rae said as he crawled from the bathroom hole. “It was still just a bit too dark to see you when I went for a leak. Sun rises quick here, couldn’t have been gone that long…”
Rae seemed lost in thought as he stood up, scratching the back of his head and glancing from his bedding to the bathroom hole and back again. After several long moments he shrugged and went back to his straw pile.
“So, Sil… right?” He asked and Silas nodded. He snapped his fingers and nodded back. “Knew it. Anyway, the day should be starting soon for them too. Do not think the green bastards ever sleep, always just eating and screwing, but they tend to grab us pretty early in the day for work. At least we get some breakfast and water out of the deal.”
Silas’s stomach responded with a roar of defiant hunger at just the word breakfast. He placed a hand on his stomach as if to quiet it.
“It isn’t… well…”
“Human?” Rae waved it off and huffed. “They would not waste meat on us, you got nothing to worry about, kid. Mostly it is whatever they forage that doesn’t end up in their stews. Nuts, berries, that kind of stuff. It is not much, but it gets the job done. The water is just from whatever pond they find or rainwater we can collect, but we do have a pot somewhere around here to boil it…”
Rae shuffled through the straw bedding, starting with his own then working his way counterclockwise.
“Got a strainer too,” he said as he continued to dig. “The chef human got both for us. Goblins will drink the algae, the fish, the leaves, they do not care all that much. I did not care either at first but let me tell you the strainer and pot make all the difference.”
Silas silently groaned at the thought of drinking algae water and eating a diet of foraged berries. In the hospital he would have eaten anything that had a taste, practically would have eaten dirt itself just to consume something that wasn’t completely tasteless goo through a tube. He hoped his body had also recovered some of those basic senses, but selfishly he wanted his first meal to be something a little less… well, dirty.
Rae sprung up from the straw pile with arms outstretched over his head, one hand holding a dented iron pot and the other holding a crude strainer. A rogue tiny tin cup tumbled from the strainer and bopped him right on the head, but Rae just seemed to ignore it entirely. He howled with joy as if it were buried treasure, which made Silas laugh a little harder than anticipated.
“Alright, alright,” Silas said through his laughter and stood up from his pile. He stretched long like a domesticated feline and allowed himself one more yawn to break in the new day. “So, what about work then? What exactly do we do?”
“Hmm,” Rae pondered and placed the pot and strainer beside the dead campfire in the center of the room. “I have a hard time telling what day it is these days, but they seem to have a schedule. We’re probably both in the mine today, carving out more halls and caverns along with whatever scouts are being punished. Other days it is whatever your purpose is for being here. Right now, they have me making them some kind of book that lists the different creatures around here they find with information like what they taste like, if they are even edible, if they are dangerous, what they look like. If they are edible…” He said that last part twice then lost himself staring off into space again. “But I only work on that every few days. In between that I’m just down in the mine. Speaking of that, what is your whole thing?”
It was a good question, and one that Silas didn’t fully understand himself. Did he have a thing outside of his Class? Destroying that big Goblin was pretty much all he had done of note that they would be interested in. He was tempted to tell the stranger everything, but after a long thought he decided against it.
Rae seemed okay, if not just a bit off-balance and unstable, but if Silas truly was the only one with his same system, then it could be a dangerous tool. Besides that, the [Minor Bestowment] ability clearly offered something that was wanted; at least by H’alik. Rae could want it as well, and Silas knew that [Minor Bestowment] could not be utilized in rapid succession and also had chaotic results. For all Silas knew, it would make the robed man explode into a confetti burst of meat and bone which would almost certainly spell out doom for Silas himself. Better to learn more about the Deity class and abilities first, then ask forgiveness for the secrecy later.
“I’m teaching H’alik things from where I come from. Nothing special, probably things you’ll eventually write down for them.” Silas shrugged and tried to scamper away from the topic. “The more important question is… breakfast? Where’s it at?”
Rae seemed happy enough with the answer and shuffled toward the cavern entrance, then poked his head out haphazardly.
“Hey! Gob-fucks! How about some food?!” He shouted with a fiery tone. “Come on, do not have all day over here! Those pickaxes are not going to swing themselves! Or… Or are they…”
“Dude! What the hell!?” Silas said and placed a finger to his lips as if to hush the deranged man. “Don’t piss them off!”
Rae shrugged nonchalantly and leaned on the stone wall of the entryway.
“What? I thought you were hungry. They are late.”
“I am hungry.”
And thirsty, and tired, Silas thought.
“But I also don’t think we should provoke them! Writing isn’t all that hard, you know. They could just replace you. Do you want to end up as stew? Because that’s how you end up as stew.”
Rae chuckled as the distant sound of footsteps drew closer.
“Maybe writing is not some rare talent where you are from, Sil, but it is around here. Garther could write, so could the map makers, but that still is far from everyone. You can bet your bare ass that most of the ones in their cooking pots cannot read or write.”
Silas took a moment to twist his head over his shoulder and look down. He grunted with embarrassment when he noticed the back of his shredded hospital robe actually was even more open than he assumed the day before, giving a full window into his forest-scraped cheeks. He quickly worked on cinching it shut again when two scout Goblins wandered in with a large bowl of green-ish brown-ish water along with a pile of nuts in various shades and sizes. There were also two hunks of what looked like stale bread. The left scout placed down the bowl of water in the entrance while the other practically dropped the wooden tray of food, causing the nuts to leap up and down and some to scatter on the dirt floor.
“Kra’ket ga te U’n!” One said before they left the room.
Its stench lingered for a few moments before disappearing out of the entrance with it.
“Your feast has arrived,” Rae jested and mocked a deep bow.
Silas and Rae shared a somber laugh before Rae went to work on the fire. Silas took the time to pick up the scattered nuts and put them back in the pile, careful to wipe them on his hospital gown. He knew it was covered in his sweat and dirt, but it still made him feel better doing it. Once they were collected, he moved both the food and the water closer to Rae and sat on the dirt beside him, watching the robbed man add straw to the two logs then strike two fist-sized rocks together over them. He repeated this action again and again, each time a single, gentle spark released only to dissipate just before landing on the straw.
Silas found himself wishing for a fireball spell all over again.
Finally, after several minutes, the straw caught a free-falling spark and ignited with a barely visible flame. Rae wasted no time adding a small bit of straw on top of the fire, feeding it and blowing on it gently, then began the process of boiling the water. He dumped the water from the bowl into the pot with the strainer device covering it. The strainer caught the larger items, such as sticks, leaves and other foliage, but most of the dirt and algae slipped right through. Rae was confident that the water would filter that out as it heated and sink it all harmlessly to the bottom, then the two would drink from the top.
