LOCATION: THE CRUCIBLE, 50TH FLOOR
PLANET: LAPIS DIVINUS, ORION LUMINARY INSTITUTE
YEAR: 1 | DAY: ?? | TIME: ??
The smell of freshly baked sweet rolls and coffee made its way to the rooms upstairs, and Kaela woke from a surprisingly deep sleep.
It had been a long time since she had slept in a comfortable bed, and she did not want to leave.
She opened her eyes and stared at the wooden beams making up the ceiling of her room for a few minutes, recalling the conversation she had with the mayor and innkeeper the previous night.
Kaela had told them she would stick around and help defend the town for as long as she could.
In reality, of course, she was just trying to understand what her purpose was on this floor of The Crucible.
“But hey,” she grunted, sitting up in the bed and raising her arms over her head. “At least I get a comfy bed, good food, and great beer while I work on it.”
She chose the casual cloth tunic and breeches they had laid out for her again, saving the armor for later.
Kaela checked herself in the mirror. She reached for a brush and spent several minutes brushing out her hair.
The System truly was a wonder. Even after so many long months of not taking care of it, her hair was still soft and compliant as she slowly pulled the brush through it.
No knots, no tangles. Just soft, long tresses willing to take the direction she set for them. She looked at the band she normally used to hold her ponytail, shrugged, and left it on the dresser.
She could always come back later to get it before the torches and lanterns were lit.
Done with her preparations, Kaela left her room and followed her nose to the tavern dining room below.
“Good morning,” Aveline said, setting a cup of coffee down for her. “I’ll bring the sweet rolls out in a moment, dear.”
Kaela mumbled her thanks and took a sip of the strong brew. It wasn’t quite coffee like they had on Earth, but it was a very close analog to it. The taste was a little lighter, but the zing from whatever equivalent to caffeine they contained worked the same way.
But as she slowly sipped, thinking about how she was going to handle her day, she noticed something.
There was a slight hint of a peculiar flavor. It felt familiar. But she couldn’t quite place it. Was it herbal?
Before she could think about it any further, Aveline set down a plate with three strips of crispy bacon-like meat, eggs, and two puffy, glazed sweet rolls.
All thoughts of the mystery in her coffee were forgotten as Kaela tucked in and devoured everything. Every item on the plate was bursting with flavor.
The salty strips of meat, the savory eggs, and then the rolls. The sweetness not overdone, but just right.
Kaela closed her eyes and thanked whoever designed this floor for the reprieve from those endless, boring rations in the safe rooms. They were like oversized crackers infused with the ability to speed resource recovery. But apparently nobody gave a thought to the idea that they should make the rations taste good.
She closed her eyes and exhaled again. When she opened them, she nodded.
Time to get to work.
Aveline came over to take her plate.
“Oh, someone was hungry! Would you like more?”
Kaela smiled and shook her head.
“No, thank you, Aveline. It was wonderful. Exactly what I needed. I don’t want to bother the mayor too early. I assume there is a village guard. Can you direct me to their quarters?”
Aveline wiped her hands on her apron, then stepped outside the double doors and into the street.
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“Follow this road to the square. It’s quite a ways, but a pretty straight shot. Turn left there, and I think four or five blocks later you should see the guardhouse.”
“Thanks, Aveline. You’ve been wonderful. I have a question. Why does a town this size not have stone walls or gates? It seems like—”
“Oh,” Aveline said, wringing her hands and averting her eyes. “That’s a question for the men. I know nothing of such things.”
Kaela nodded, staring off into the distance for a moment.
“I see,” she said. “No problem. I’ll return later. Thanks for breakfast. I don’t know how I can pay for my room yet, but I’ll figure something out.”
Aveline waved her hands in front of her.
“Oh no, please don’t worry about that. Mayor Halford has already committed to cover the cost of your lodging from village funds. It’s the least we can do for your help at the south end of town last night.”
Kaela thanked her again and headed off in search of the guard quarters. She had a lot of questions for them.
“So you’re saying that Greyhaven has never been attacked in the hundreds of years since its founding?” Kaela asked.
“Yes.”
The Guard Captain was beginning to get annoyed with the line of questioning from this stranger. Mayor Halford had sent word ahead to cooperate with her, but who the hell was a little girl to tell him how to do his job?
He tried to maintain a straight face, but his frustration was evident. Kaela was Level 37 now, and it didn’t take 89 Perception to see that she was getting under his skin.
She decided to back off and left, heading toward the mayor’s mansion with the mystery still fully intact.
She still had no idea what was driving wolves to attack night after night. And if it had been going on for over a year now, why had Greyhaven not chosen to erect any sort of wall or gate?
They hadn’t arranged a city-wide alarm system to signal where the wolves were attacking.
And to top it off, it seemed that the guard was utterly disinterested in training the villagers to defend themselves.
As she walked back, people rushed about their various tasks. They were trying to get it all done before nightfall, when they would once again have to lock themselves inside their homes until the daily threat was dealt with.
It was a barely workable solution to a problem that was clearly not going away, and Kaela couldn’t understand why they refused to marshal a better response.
She had asked directions to the mayor’s residence, and used the metal knocker on the wooden door.
There was no response, and she knocked again after a few minutes. Finally, Marris Halford opened the door and smiled at Kaela on his porch.
“Kaela,” he said, “please come in. Did you just wake?”
She looked at the mayor. He appeared to have just gotten out of bed. His hair was unkempt, and his tunic wasn’t tied correctly.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been up for hours now. Can we talk? I have a lot of questions.”
“Oh. Uh, sure. Let’s sit.”
He stepped backward, letting her inside, and indicated a chair in his sitting room. He took the one opposite her.
Kaela stayed quiet for just a moment, studying the man in front of her. There was so much that she—
“You said you have questions?” the mayor asked, causing Kaela to shake off her thoughts and get down to it.
“Yes, sorry,” she said. “My first question is probably the simplest one. After over a year of these attacks coming day after day, why have you not erected a better defensive barrier than the makeshift barricades I’ve seen at every entrance?”
“Ah, that.”
The mayor looked down at the floor and wrung his hands together. Then he caught himself and returned his eyes to his guest.
“It’s embarrassing, but I suppose you should know the truth. We don’t have the funds, or the masons, for that matter, to install stone walls. And wooden walls would require us to cut down so much of the forest around us. We have already cut down so many trees to build our homes…”
He trailed off, and looked down at the floor again.
“So instead of that, you choose to risk your civilians every night by leaving a hundred possible entry points into the village? It seems shortsighted,” Kaela said.
She paused a moment, but the mayor offered no further explanation, aside from wincing at her accusation. She sighed, her frustration beginning to build now.
Kaela leaned forward, getting the mayor’s attention again.
“Look. They will come again tonight, correct?”
“Certainly. They never fail,” the mayor said.
“How do you handle it?” she asked.
“Well, the Guard Captain spreads his troops out to cover as many potential entry points as possible.”
Kaela nodded.
“Then I gather any willing men, and try to cover the others.”
“Do the wolves ever split up and attack more than one place at a time?” Kaela asked.
“No, that has never happened.”
Kaela pursed her lips.
“I noticed last night that when the wolves attacked at the south end of town, the men there didn’t raise any sort of alarm,” she said. “If the wolves always attack together, wouldn’t it be better to raise an alarm and rally troops to that spot?”
She couldn’t understand why such a simple and obvious tactic had not occurred to them.
Mayor Halford was quiet for a few minutes as he considered her suggestion.
“I suppose we can try it tonight,” he said. “I’ll get word to the Guard Captain and set it up.”
The mayor stood, and straightened his tunic, just now noticing it was tied wrong. He scoffed at his mistake, but let it go.
“I had best get going, then,” he said. “Wait by The Cracked Tankard tonight, and listen for the alarm. The village will be quiet enough that you should hear it.”
Kaela could only shrug. She spent a few hours walking around Greyhaven. Young men were repairing barricades at different points, but aside from that, everyone was behaving as if nothing was wrong.
But it was. And Kaela was going to get to the bottom of it.