Blood Shaper

Book 2: Chapter 19

“So that’s Meten and Darten’s story,” Kay told the gathered group of dwarves, plus Darten and Eleniah. “He asked if he could bring his people here and have them join the settlement that’s going to be built, and I said yes. He left last night to go get them and bring them here.” Kay glanced at each of the dwarves as he spoke, “So I’m officially informing you of all this and inviting you all to join whatever it is we’re building.”

Vened shot him a confused look, “Wait, we weren’t already joining? I thought we already had.”

Kay sighed. “I wasn’t going to assume anything without asking anyone, not for a decision like this. I hadn’t even formally decided that this was going to happen until last night!”

“Oh.” Vened glanced around and shrugged. “We totally thought you’d already decided. We’re totally joining.”

The rest of the group nodded or voiced agreement and went back to eating their breakfasts.

Kay sighed again. “Great. Eleniah has Agreements that we made last night, so look them over and sign them after you’re done eating. After that, we’ll start making concrete plans.”

“What do we need to plan out?” Senik asked.

“We have new people that are going to join us, so we need housing for them, we need to make sure that we have enough food to support everyone, we need to make sure we’re well-defended, and all kinds of other things.” Kay waved his hand around, indicating the whole area around them, “The valley isn’t endless, and there are parts that we can’t build on or should avoid, so we need to plan out where things will go, how we’ll transport supplies, where to store valuables…” Kay waved his hand around some more, “There’s all kinds of problems that could crop up later if we just start doing stuff willy-nilly, so we plan now to avoid problems later.”

“Oh,” Senik frowned and looked down at his meal, “Huh.”

“Sadly, no one that Meten is bringing back is an architect or a city planner because we could use both of those.” Kay spaced out for a moment, worrying about all the things they needed to do or plan. Eventually, he forced the worries away. “A lot of the stuff I’m worried about won’t become a problem until we hit a certain size and number of people, but there’s no point in aiming small.”

A few people chuckled as everyone split into their own conversations. Kay took the opportunity to move over next to Senik. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you for a bit if that’s alright.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I’m going to have some version of this talk with everyone, but I wanted to start with you because you’re a bit different from everyone else. You’ve been the leader of the nine of you up until now, and now all of a sudden, I’m saying I’m in charge, and everyone is just going with it. I wanted to check in with you.”

Senik swallowed his food and pointed at Kay with his fork. “Honestly? I’m happy about it. Leading is hard, and I’m average at it at best. All that stuff you said about planning things out, so we don’t have problems later? I didn’t even think about any of that. Really, Ahthia was doing most of the leading while we were traveling. Everyone just said I was in charge because I was the first one to start talking about leaving.”

“Really? So you led the charge out?”

“I wouldn’t say that; I just started talking about it first.” Senik gestured at the group of dwarves, “We’re all from the same hill-town, and we started hanging out because basically everyone else pressured us to give up our dreams and follow our families’ paths. We encouraged each other. One day I got fed up with my parents pressuring me and got drunk and started ranting about how it would be better if we just left. Everyone else took my drunk idea seriously, and now we’re here.” He smiled fondly as he watched his companions eat.

“What’s your dream?” Kay asked, “I’ve heard about a few of you guys and what you wanted to do instead of the traditional path set out for you, but I haven’t heard yours specifically. What do you want to do?”

“My families are tailors and weavers, but I want to cook.” He tapped his plate with his fork a few times. “Times like this moment, when someone is eating something I made, and they enjoy it? It’s so amazing. My family gets the feeling, at least when it comes to seeing people enjoy what you made, but they insisted I follow tradition and be a tailor or a weaver and then cook for my family at home. But I wanted to do more than that.” He scowled at his plate, “And everyone was fine with the same meals over and over again! Experimenting with recipes is seen as dumb because our ancestors made these meals, so there’s no point in changing them.” He shook his head. “I want to make new things, and improve recipes, and use new ingredients, and make new foods! And drinks! We brew the same damn alcohol all the time! Why can’t we try new things?”

“Well, I don’t know anything about making alcohol from scratch, but we need someone to cook and be in charge of food stores. You want the job?”

Senik looked over, a bit of embarrassment on his face. “Sorry, I got heated. I would love to do that.” He glanced around the room, “The talk you’re going to be having with everyone, are you just planning on trying to match desires to what we need right now?”

Kay nodded, “Exactly.”

“A couple of us aren’t going to get to do that, but we knew that already. Everyone will be fine with doing what needs to be done.”

“I don’t want to make people work jobs that will give them skills they can’t use for the build they want,” Kay muttered.

Senik shrugged and patted Kay’s arm, “Don’t worry about it too much. Everyone ends up with some Skills at level five that they never advance. As long as you aren’t trying to push people to take Classes that don’t match their future builds, it’ll be fine.”

For a couple of the dwarves, the job planning went well. Rhia wanted to farm, and they definitely needed the food supply, so Kay set her on finding the best space to make some fields. Darten got seconded to her in order to remove any obstacles from the location she picked since his magic would make it faster to finish.

Her husband Devon was an Apprentice Carpenter, so he got assigned the job of making furniture. They needed tables, chairs, beds, and doors more than anything else furniture-wise, so those were the first things to be made. There was a good chance that wherever the fields got located, they would need to pull trees down to open up the area, so he’d start with those trees, and then Darten would help bring down more, again with his magic.

As Darten’s new student, Leya got told to stick with him and learn earth magic as best she could. She wouldn’t be able to help with making the fields and pulling down trees too much, but anything was better than nothing.

After talking things over with Vened, Kay asked him to help Senik with their food supply. When he had time, he’d fish in the lake and assist Senik in preparing them so they’d last longer. Any other time he had would be spent foraging or otherwise helping make sure they had enough food for everyone, including the new arrivals they were expecting.

Dolik wanted to be a fighter of some kind, but he hadn’t fully planned out his build. He’d taken Novice Axe Wielder as his first-class, which made him effective with the axe-guns he had, but he wasn’t sure what else he wanted to do. Unlike the others, he didn’t have a chosen profession he wanted to aim for; he just hadn’t made up his mind, which in The Weathered Clans was just as bad. Kay assigned him to help bring down and break up trees for Devon to process into furniture. Hopefully, swinging an axe around, even if it wasn’t in combat, would be somewhat helpful.

Then there was Argen, who wanted to work with gemstones. They didn’t really need a jeweler, and they didn’t have anything for a jeweler to do anyway, so he got put with Senik and Vened, making sure everyone had food.

The last person Kay had to talk to was Karl. “Look, Karl,” Kay said as he sat down next to him, “I’ll just come out and say it. There’s not a lot of demand this instant for making gunpowder or guns.”

“I know,” Karl grinned at Kay, “I wasn’t expecting there to be. I’ll work hard at whatever’s needed, and then eventually, there’ll be time to work on what I want.” He grinned wider and winked, “And I can always bother you during breaks.”

Kay laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know that much about guns or gunpowder. I can tell you some random facts about the history of them back on Earth, but I don’t know anything about actually making any of it at any point.”

“Personally, I think that’s better!” Karl exclaimed excitedly, “I still get to do real work figuring it out. If you just showed up and told me all the answers, it’d be boring! If I get stuck somewhere, what you know can be a hint, but it won’t be spoiling things!”

Kay scratched at his chin. “That’s… good?”

“I think so. Anyway, I can help with cutting down trees, but I also have Novice Miner as a Class, so if you want me to, I can explore around and look for metals or other minerals that would be helpful!”

Kay snorted. “And the fact that you might find saltpeter deposits would just be a happy coincidence?” He asked in a dry voice.

“No, it’d be a useful mineral.”

Kay laughed and stood up. “Alright, we’ll go with that. But you’ll take someone with you if you start moving around the valley.”

“Do you take someone with you?”

“When I’m going far enough away, definitely. But I also have multiple combat Classes. Do you have any?”

“No, I don’t even have a combat class slot. I’ve got a good number of non-combat slots, though.”

“Isn’t that pretty rare to not even have one?”

“I think so, but I’ve never really asked. I just went about my life.”

“Huh.” Kay sat there for a second, then pushed himself up, “Alright, I’ve got three more people to talk to, so I’m going to go do that.”

“Enjoy! I’m going to try and remember what little I know about standard and magical mineral formations to see if I can figure out what we might find around here.”

Kay waved behind himself as he walked off. “We can always make saltpeter from piss if there isn’t any around here.”

“You can make it from what?”

Kay ignored the shouted question and tracked down Darten. “Hey.”

Darten was outside practicing his Earth Manipulation Skill with a bit of floating dirt. “Hey!” He let the dirt float back to the ground. “Before you say anything, I wanted to say thanks.”

“Huh? Oh! For letting your village come here.” Kay shrugged, “I didn’t really have a good reason not to, and your uncle gave me a lot of good reasons to let you all join.”

“Still, thank you.”

Kay patted Darten on his arm. “No problem. Now, since you’re officially one of us, whatever we are, it’s time to put you to work. I’m sure you overheard me talking to Devon and Rhia, but you’re in charge of clearing a field or fields for Rhia to start growing things in, taking down trees with Devon and his team so he can make furniture for us all, and once Ahthia, Eleniah, and I talk it over, you’ll be in charge of making new buildings. Oh, and you’ll be training Leya in earth magic too.”

“That’s a lot of work.”

“It is, but you aren’t going to be expected to do all of it at once. The fields come first since food is our biggest thing. Our supplies won’t last forever, and we can’t depend on hunting being reliable enough to support us. You’ll probably have to remove a lot of trees to start any kind of fields, so that’ll probably get Devon all he needs, so that’s not too bad. And for the last thing, I’m going to talk to Ahthia and Eleniah and use their combined experience to come up with some kind of plan for what kind of buildings to make and where to put them, so you won’t have to do any of that until we have a solid plan and the other two jobs are done.”

“What are you going to be doing besides that?” Darten asked.

“Exploring, mapping, training, and doing my best to learn how to be a leader.” Kay stared at the small group of people starting to get to work around the base. “I’m brand new at this, and we’re about to more than double our population in a few months. I really hope I can get good enough by then.”

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