The Butcher of Gadobhra

Ozzy took a moment stare around him. Nothing was moving towards them in the water...no...not water, the smoke? An ocean of smoke? He bent down and put his hand into it. It was cold and insubstantial. Not as thin as air, but less dense than water. He could pick it up in his cupped hands, and then pour it back out. It had no smell at all. "So, what do you call this place?"

Woodrat looked up at him from where he was lying flat on his back, resting. "The Smoke."

"Just that? The Smoke? Are we in a certain part of it? Like on an ocean? Is there land nearby?"

Woodrat chuckled and sat up. "Bound and determined to give me the giggles, aren't you? If a man doubted if you had just fallen out of Sky, all it would take was you opening your mouth to convince him."

"Yes, The Smoke. You want to get fancy about it you can call it 'The Great Smoky Sea' or 'The demi-plane of Burning Vapor'. What you call it doesn't change shit. It's the Smoke."

"As to your other questions: Yes, it's an 'Ocean', but not like what you mean. No wet to it, anywhere. Wet is bad. Very, very bad. As to nearby land, you're damned lucky I listened to the crazy stories my grandpappy would tell us. Not one man in twenty would know anything about your crazy talk. This is the smoke. You have some Fire, and some Sky, and the place it all comes together. It's a long way to find Rock or Wet. And you wouldn't like it. You'd starve without smoke, go cold without heat. There’s a little wet and a little dirt in some places. All of it bad. Really bad."

Woodrat knew he shouldn't be taking such a tone of voice with the new guy. He was a mate, and a mate was above him by a big notch. If the good ship Inyourdreams bounced over the horizon, Woodrat would be lucky to sign on as a shipwright. The new guy would be over him, riding his ass and giving him orders. He just shouldn't be talking at a mate like he was some idiot new fish. But damned if the guy didn't ask some silly questions.

And Woodrat didn't expect to be alive much longer, so who cared how he talked?

Ozzy just nodded to that. Some of that made sense at the moment. Other things didn't. "Why aren't we sinking? How is the wood floating?

Woodrat grinned at such a question. "Basic law of nature, lad. Wood floats. If it didn't, ships wouldn't float, and then the world would make no sense at all. You have to have ships. Wood has a lot of hot smoke holding it together. You'd float if you jumped overboard because you've got a hot fire burning in you. Hot smoke goes to the top, cold smoke goes down. You float, I wouldn't. Not enough fire left. So, don't go flipping us over."

"So how long have you been shipwrecked for? Anyone going to come looking this way? Or do we just float forever?" Ozzy could see nothing in all directions except black clouds in a pale sky, and a sea of grey smoke.

Woodrat spat a glob of thick smoke and ash into the sea. "Something like a week, I think. Hard to remember with one day going into the next. I was on the Indestructible. A good ship, and like her name said, she was considered the toughest thing afloat. It sure was a surprise to the captain when another ship rammed us and broke the Indestructible into kindling. I got lucky enough to land near this piece and grab hold. It was a dark night and thick with smoke from the ship breaking up. I could hear screams, but had no way to find anyone. I sat in the center of my little raft and listened as the sharks and smokesuckers came looking for a meal. In the morning, I was alone, with not even another piece of wreckage nearby."

"But don't worry about someone finding us. When you fell, you were leaving behind a plume of fire and smoke 10 feet wide. It was like a giant arrow pointing to you. Sooner or later, there will be someone coming to see what that arrow pointed to. Who it is, that's what you have to worry about."

"So what happens until then? Just sit and wait until a ship shows? Or more of those things that tried to eat us?" Ozzy was rapidly deciding that the situation wasn't to his liking.

Woodrat closed his eyes. "Pretty much. You don't know how to work the smoke, and I'm nearly cold. I don't have the smoke left to even fish up dinner, and I surely don't have enough heat to make smoke or man a sail. So, we sit and wait for tomorrow when I can get a little more smoke and heat." He rolled over and curled up, pointedly ignoring Ozzy, and went to sleep.

With nothing else to do, Ozzy carefully made his way over to where the small raft was tied to the larger wreckage with a piece of chain. It looked like something Joe could make. The smoke golem had been trying for weeks to get Ozzy to manage a similar task, but he hadn't succeeded beyond a few links. This chain was a work of art compared to his. Each link the same and finely made. He sat and felt the chain. It was solid in his hand and slightly warm, but he knew that it was just barely strong enough to hold the raft in place. He tried to copy one of the links. Holding the image in his mind he breathed out a smoke ring and tried to form a link. It felt much easier than it had working with Joe, but he still couldn't come close to the links Woodrat had made. But it looked like he was going to have a lot of time to practice.

Woodrat awoke hours later. When you were low on heat, you had to sleep a lot more. He hated how it made him feel weak and old. At least the new guy had quit talking. Looking around, he saw Ozzy sitting at the edge of the wreckage, making chain. Or trying to, it didn't look like a good attempt. "Who the hell taught you to make chain that way?"

Ozzy finished his latest link in his nearly three-foot long chain. Every link was different, but this was the furthest he'd gotten. "No one, really. I was never able to make good links, so Joe kept me working on manipulating my own smoke and working up to it. But I'm open to a little instruction."

Woodrat shrugged. Nothing else to do, and the new guy would owe him a favor. "Use that piece you made to secure the raft, and unhook mine and bring it over." He wouldn't get much back after this much time, but at least he wouldn't lose anymore. Every bit was precious when you were down this low.

"I'm assuming you've got enough extra smoke to be wasting this much? No sense in teaching you if it uses up your smoke and you die."

Ozzie looked at his stats. Sure enough, he'd lost some smoke. "I'm a bit under 1400 now. Is that bad? And fill me in on how things work. Is smoke really my health now."

Woodrat cursed a bit under his breath. "Compared to the other people on this ship, you’re in the lead, and not going to be the first to die. According to my grandpappy, when someone from the junction hits the smoke, there numbers move around a little and get converted to how we do things here. Smoke is your life. No smoke and your lifeless and not moving. Or, if you're really unlucky, lifeless and moving around looking for a meal like those fellows we killed earlier. How about your heat and fuel?"

"I'm a little over a thousand fuel and have a lot of heat. Maybe you could explain a bit?"

Woodrat sent out a prayer for patience and a promise to never again complain about being alone. "Sure, mate. Not a problem at all, just remember I'm doing you favors. You have Health, Stamina, and Mana before? You don't have those now."

"Fuel is the easiest to come by. It powers your Heat and your Smoke. You can get some Fuel from eating other living creatures. You can suck some smoke out of them too, if you are quick enough. Fuel goes into your furnace to raise your heat. For every point of Fuel you burn, you raise your Heat by two points. But there's a limit. You can't feed in more Fuel to raise your heat than your furnace can handle. That's where I'm at now: Waiting for tomorrow so I can raise my Heat by feeding in some fuel after my furnace limit resets."

"Heat is used mostly to make Smoke. If you burn a point of Heat and a point of Fuel, you created ten points of Smoke. It's a balancing game. You need smoke to live, to make your muscles move and keep your lungs breathing. When you fight, you'll bleed smoke. When you work, you'll lose smoke. Making chain and other skills will drain it."

"Fuel to Heat to Smoke. That's your existence now."

Ozzy looked at his numbers. "And how fast do they come back? What's the regeneration rate? Overnight?"

Woodrat gave him a funny look. "I'm not sure what you mean by 'regeneration', but yeah, we wait for dawn. At dawn you can eat some more ambient smoke to gain some fuel and your furnace resets."

Ozzy was realizing this was a lot tougher place to live. That wasn't a lot of regeneration. With 51 in smoke eating, he could use 25 to raise his heat by 50, and 26 more to make 260 Smoke. And that was just keeping even. "Damn, so it takes forever to get full up?"

Woodrat smiled at him. "Welcome to the Great and Glorious Smoke! Full up is for officers, not folk like us. Although you have to be pushing mate with the Heat I can feel inside of you."

That was another thing Ozzy didn't understand. "What do you mean by that? Officer, mate? Are you talking about levels?"

"Yep. Levels. Tiers. Different words for the same thing. But if you're on a ship, you better get the terms right or you'll take some lashes. Crew or Hands are all level one to level five. If they get powerful enough, they might eventually make Mate and advance up to Level 10. Officers are higher than that, going up to fifteen I hear, but higher on the big ships. Wherever Officer stops, Captain starts up."

"Yeah, I'd be a Mate then, by that way of thinking. What about you?" Ozzy was guessing he was still Tier one.

"Oh, I'm Crew for sure. I've pushed my skills up to Level 5 and had them maxed out now for decades. But making Mate takes more than that. Politics and being willing to kill the guy whose job you want plays a big part. Only so many Mates on a ship. And even if you do manage, that just makes you a target for whoever is next in line. The best I can hope for is a good battle that wipes out half the crew and all the mates.”

“I'm a shipwright, not a great fighter, so I need all the help I can get. Most ships want Mates that keep the Crew in line so the work gets done."

Ozzy tried to absorb all of that, then looked at his sheet again. "Ok, I think I'm getting an idea of how things work. I'll have to remember to ask myself 'What would Billy do?' if I'm ever on a ship. Hull is mitigation? Sort of like armor in a fight?"

"You have some Hull? That's good. You'll take less damage the next time you get bit. Explains how you survived that fight too. You should have been dead and me next to you. Any more questions? Only so much school time in me and you still want to learn how to make chains.

Ozzy nodded; it didn't seem like Woodrat was used to talking so much. "I've also got Aura and skill called Smokestealing. What exactly do those do those do?"

Woodrat's voice got calm and low. "How much Smokestealing?"

"120 points."

Woodrat stood up suddenly and pointed. "Damn, a ship by that Island. We got lucky as hell. Look over there, you can just see them on the horizon."

Ozzy turned and scanned the haze. Woodrat must have much better eyes than him. "I don't see it."

"Keep looking!"

Ozzy still didn't see anything, he turned back to Woodrat only to find the man had jumped onto his raft and undid the chain. A swift push against the wreckage and the raft was thirty feet away and drifting further. Ozzy yelled at him. "What the hell is going on?"

Woodrat jammed his oar into the center of the raft and Ozzy could see a slight shimmer of heat suspended from it. "The hell if I know! You're the craziest thing I've run into. You don't know shit about the smoke, or about ships, but your strong as a Veteran Mate and have a belly full of fire. Then you casually tell me you could suck the life out of me. I'm not playing your game any longer. I'd rather sail off and die to a shark than be turned into a husk."

Ozzy slapped his face in frustration, then sat down and folded his arms. He wasn't anxious to lose his only source of information, especially when he was so confused. "I don't suppose you'd be up for continuing the conversation from a, would you?"

Woodrat just raised the middle finger of his hand, showing that some gestures were universal.

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