Inkitt Link

The next several days were actually a peaceful time of construction and renovation underground. Jess was tending to the two girls, who were ever so slowly seeming to regain their strength under a constant flow of her healing magic. Mongo and Skeet were recovering their strength rapidly now that they were getting enough food and drink once again – though they were beginning to look a little paler as their natural tans were beginning to fade within the eternal darkness of the crypt.

Dino, Crystal, and I didn’t really have much to do except twiddle our thumbs while passing time, so I decided to work on some improvements in our temporary living conditions. After a little carving and hacking through the stone, we now had six rooms that we could separate and stay in. The first room everyone cleared out of rather quickly, and it became the latrine. Truth be told, it’d already been used for such purposes many times – but what else can one do when it’s the only room they have to live in? -- and no one wanted to stay in there any longer than necessary.

The two girls were sick, and couldn’t be moved far, so they were moved into the immediately adjacent room. Jess didn’t want Dino, Crystal, or me to get around them any more than necessary, since we may not have been exposed to whatever illness they had, so Skeet and Mongo were forced to move them. Even tired, weak, and ill, they did what was necessary without complaint. Unlike some other roommates of mine, they were willing to do what they needed to do, and put the group’s needs first.

Jess wanted to stay close to her patients, so she took the next chamber over as her own. Nobody really felt comfortable being alone in the overbearing darkness, with the dead scratching and clawing at the stone doors leading out; and since she didn’t mind, Dino stayed with her. The next room over somehow became the “common room”, where we all gathered, sat, and eat at. Mongo and Skeet took the room after that, and that left the last room for Crystal and me to settle into.

The first order of business to make life a little more bearable for us all, I thought, would be the cleaning of the rooms – especially the first room which had the smell of sickness and human waste. I asked Dino to go use his fire magic to burn everything in there to a crisp, to “cleanse by fire”. He whined. He didn’t want to. What if the dead got in, and he needed his magic for protection? I wanted to strangle him, but it was Mongo who settled the issue. With on hefty THWAP against the back of Dino’s head with the flat of his hand, he simply ordered, “Go on. Do it.”

Unbelievably, Dino listened! Why the hell do I have so much trouble getting him to listen to me?!

While I was muttering lightly to myself about how impressive a specimen of human kind Dino was, I used the energy of the air to purify what we were breathing and to blow and push all the dust, dirt, and cobwebs into the room Dino was working his magic in -- which may have ended up accidently covering him in a layer of dusty cobwebs. Accidently!

When he came out, coughing and hacking, he cussed and whined for an hour. Honestly, I suppose it ended up being all for the best as listening to him gripe for so long finally made me want to do something to get him to simply shut up! Since there was plenty of loose stone around from where Crystal had carved her way through the walls, I decided to try a little experiment with it. Channeling the slightest of fire magic into the rubble, I waited to see if whatever mysterious force was in this place guiding the corruption would fight me again. When the stone heated without growing cold, I slowly increased my flow of energy until I completely melted and turned the pile of rubble into a bubbling heap of molten lava.

While everyone was abuzz, chattering back and forth to Mongo and Skeet about my work, I slowly and gently tapped out to the molten rock and manipulated it with the energy of earth. It was my first time actually trying to do anything to the earth around me since the corruption had assaulted me through my link, and I was ready to drop my connection at the first inkling of trouble – but none came and all went well. Apparently breaking the stone free from the rest of the walls of this place, freed it from whatever mysterious source was controlling and defending the corruption.

Once I saw I could shape the melted stone as I wished, I formed it into a large square bin and then raised it near the roof on four solid supports. Once it seemed shaped more or less as I wanted, I altered the bottom of the bin and extended a small nozzle and perforated it with many tiny holes. Colling the whole thing into smooth obsidian, I took a step back and inspected my work.

“There ya go,” I declared triumphantly to Dino.

“There I go, what?” He asked, confused. “What use is a box up so damn high you can’t put anything in it? I guess it keeps people from tripping over the loose stone in the dark, but honestly I think I’d rather have a chair to sit in, or a table to eat at.”

“Fine,” I snorted. “Apparently you’re too Dinoish to understand what a gift you’ve been given. Crystal,” I turned to her and bowed slightly. “Would you be so kind as to finish stripping for us and then come stand over here?”

“If you want,” she answered, while undoing the side of the string holding her panties up. Skeet whistled as she ignored him and walked over to where I indicated. If she was the least bit embarrassed, she showed no sign of it as she strode proudly, with her head up and not trying the slightest to cover herself. “Here?” She asked.

“That should be perfect,” I nodded. “Just a moment while I work a last touch of magic, please.”

“Certainly.” Calmly, she stood there and watched as I gathered my magic once more, paying absolutely no attention to any of the others. Skeet was still whistling, and Dino was muttering something about “shameless rich hussies”, while Mongo simply sat and enjoyed the show. In some ways, I don’t know what the big deal was – slaves are naked all the time, so everyone has to be used to seeing the naked female form.

Just the fact that she’s “noble” or something seems to make it hard for Dino to accept that she’s a woman like all others under her clothes. If only he could meet Le’Nara someday, he’d learn more about a noble’s modesty! Truth is, I think Le’Nara would care about as much about him seeing her naked, as she would a cockroach – and in many ways, Crystal was channeling that same air of superior indifference towards the boys now.

Using my own internal energy for a change, instead of pulling on the flows of energy around me, I created water and filled the bin above Crystal with it. A quick burst of fire magic to heat it, and by the time it started to come spraying out the nozzle, it was a nice warm mist falling over and around her.

“My Lord!” Crystal gasped, looked up, and slowly stretched a hand towards the falling water. “You’ve made it rain indoors!”

“It’s not raining,” I told her with a laugh. “It’s a shower. Surely you’ve seen one before?”

“Never,” she said staring at me in wonder. “It’s like you’ve captured a warm spring’s cloud and brought it inside somehow.”

Somehow, looking around, it appeared that everyone was staring at the water falling quite intently. I suppose in a world where it’s hard to pump water, heat water, and move water, people don’t have showers. The school has a large bathing area, but that’s a communal bath. For all I know, I may have just invented the very first shower on this world!

“Well just don’t stand there,” I laughed, feeling rather proud of myself. If no one here knows about the things from another world, and I introduce a few items to them, that’s just me being a genius and taking advantage and implementing prior knowledge. It’s not really cheating, is it? “Hurry up and wash down. The water won’t last forever. You’ve probably got less than half a candlemark before it runs out,” I warned.

Nodding, Crystal slowly stuck her head back under the shower and started to wash herself as best as she could with no soap or washcloth. Soap, I could probably do something about with a little magic. I’ve heard of soaps being made of ash, or pumice. There’s even a soapstone out there I think. It shouldn’t be hard to alter the stone to make it soft, brittle, and soap-like. I’ll have to give that a try sometime later.

“Tat’s ‘bout ta sexiest thing I tink I’ve ev’ah seen!” Skeet exclaimed.

“She is rather attractive,” I agreed, stopping to step back so I could enjoy the show while Crystal washed and cleaned herself from top to bottom.

“Not ‘er! Ta showar!” Skeet clarified. “I be next!” He boldly declared.

“Now wait a minute!” Dino complained. “I was supposed to go first. I should be next.”

“Me ‘n me two blades don’t care ‘bout ya should. We only knows we is!” Skeet pulled both his blades and twirled them to show how loudly they were arguing his point. Mongo simply slapped him and Skeet both on the back of the head. “No fighting, or neither of you get one. Jess is next. The girls go first.”

Laughing lightly, Jess wiggled out of her robe and fidgeted back and forth from foot to foot waiting her turn. Crystal had barely moved from the spot before she had taken her place and was indulging in scrubbing herself almost raw. One interesting thing I noticed different between the two girls was what seemed to be their priority. Crystal’s main concern with the bath was scrubbing and getting as much dirt and grit as possible from her hair. Jess’s obsession seemed to be her arms and hands as she scrubbed them almost enough to rub them raw under the water; her hair only got the most cursory of washings.

After the two girls enjoyed their baths, I refilled the water in the bin and left it to Dino to keep it warm for the guys to enjoy. I figured I could always take my bath last. I certainly wasn’t going to go before Skeet or Mongo, not after they’d been trapped down here for a few weeks, and I wasn’t going to try and go before Dino either. For one thing, the complaining he’d do over it would drive me batty. Plus, I did feel slightly guilty for blowing everything from the other rooms all over him earlier. Accidently.

While the guys bathed, I melted and reshaped some of the other debris to make a couple of thin, but sturdy small stone boxes. Dragging one of these into the room with the sick girls, I filled it with water and warmed it so Jess could help bathe both her patients down, and the other one I filled with water in the corner of the common room and filled it so Crystal could do the laundry as best as possible.

Shower, clean clothes, clean rooms, and purified air! After the first day’s work, our quality of life and spirits rose considerably. On the second day, I worked on shattering some of the stone to fine sand, heating it rapidly, and then forming it into small glass balls. With a little effort and time, I managed to fill the inside of the glass with fire magic, much as I had the crystal in the center of Le’Nara’s staff, and I altered the stone to absorb the heat and not get so hot to burn anyone who touched them.

Basically, I created mana-powered lightstones!

Over time, they’d dim and would go out if no one fed them energy; they didn’t pull from the natural energy around them like Azure Skyrose; but I made recharging them Dino’s responsibility. In the morning -- or at least, what we started to call morning, since we couldn’t actually see the sun to tell time -- he would power the four stones I’d created and they’d glow brightly. As they dimmed during the ‘day’, we’d mark the passing of time by their slowly fading glow. “Morning” they were as bright as lantern. By night, dim as a “candle”. By the time “morning” came around again, they were barely as bright as a jar full of fireflies.

If it wasn’t for the constant scratching at the doors, and the endless feeling of the darkness watching us, waiting for its chance to devour us, life wouldn’t have been so bad while we waited. Jess helped create fruit, and Dino started to learn to make water. We had showers, clean clothes, warmth, good food and plenty to drink. And now we had light to live by. We went from a single-hole hell to a bearable underground shelter.

Skeet and Mongo were starting to call me “my Lord”, just as Crystal did, and she had somehow became “my Lady”. Somehow, they treated us – and even Jess to, but to a lesser extent – as some sort of strange and glorious set of gods to watch and wonder over. Jess got the respect of a healer. Crystal got the respect of a Lady. I somehow got the respect of a divine Maker.

And Dino? All he got was ignored. They were used to him, so they simply treated him the same as ever; which honestly I found quite amusing. At the school he was the center of the world. Here, he was just another roommate; nothing special at all. In some ways, I almost felt sorry for him.

But, what could I do about it? I made things; I didn’t fix people. I might be great at many things, but fixing someone like Dino was well beyond my scope of ability!