Ch. 6
Zack took care of the big guy, his strength able to compensate for the brutes size. I rushed to Lilith, using my inherent Dust to add as much speed as possible to my dash. She was ready, however. As I rand, she waved her wand again, and the ground in front of me turns extremely hot, burning through the soles of my boots. I jumped high and saw that the wand now had another bar glowing on it, this time orange. I spun from the sky and delivered a full weighted over hand chop on her. She dodged and stabbed me in the waist game of my armor. Another notch in the wand, this time yellow.
She fired another fireball, forcing me to make a wall of red from the flames to block the rest of the deadly attack. Another notch of red on the wand. (*There's a point for me describing the notches, but that will be obvious later. Way later. Like, twenty chapters later. I'll tell you more of why this is, but I need you to understand that there IS a purpose to this)
I strike fast with a shield bash, which was blocked with a blue counterforce. A notch of blue. I spin with the force and go for a backhand strike. I manage to score a small hit across her arm, drawing black blood. She snarled, wiped the blood on her blade, and then came at me again. I blocked with my shield, but the blood warped the metal wherever it touched. I kneed her in the gut, then swiped a leg out from under her with the same leg. She pivoted on the other one and went with a backhand slap with the hand holding the orb. My helmet was grazed, but again the metal was warped where she touched me.
I jumped back and made the light around my armor more solid. Now she would hit my light armor before hitting my actual armor. I again went with a shield bash, but at the last second I jumped. Another counter force, this time green. I spun with it and delivered another counter backhand chop. However, now in the air, I use the expected block as leverage to flip over her and heel kick her solidly in the back. Then, pouncing on one leg, I follow with a shoulder bash between her shoulder blades.
She ducks under the blow, making me go right over her with my attack. As I get back on my feet, she point the blade wand at me. I see that there is now a black and green notch on the middle tube.
"Die," she says, and the colored notches all rush to the tip of her blade. Red, orange, blue, yellow, green, and black swirl around the tip in an elemental ball of light before launching at me. I do what I can to raise a light shield up in time, but it won't be enough.
But as I make a wall of gold, a section of ground between me and the attack raises from the ground, making a new wall of charred Remnant that blocks the attack. The explosion was an amazing swirl of dark and vile colors. I know that that sounds contradictory, but as a guy who fights with light, I've learned that a bunch of ugly colors can make some incredible sights. It's not too saw that they inspire positive emotions, just that they can inspire awe.
"Sorry we're late," said Clar. "We were stuck on how to move through the frozen mass of Grimm."
I turned to see that Clar, Priest, and the younger Hunters were coming into the circle through a path of their own forging.
"She controls the other one," I said. "Take her out, you also take him out."
"What, no thank you?" Clar asked.
"I'll kiss you when we're out of here."
"Like hell you will," Zack and Priest said.
"Look, can we focus on the enemy Dusters for now, please?" I said, trying to get them focused.
"Wait," said Cassy. "If they're Dusters like you, why not ask them to join us?"
"Tried it."
"And?"
Zack was then thrown by the big brute at us, causing us all to dodge so as not to hurt anybody.
"That was a summary response," I said.
"Oh, you brought our renegade brother and washed-up sisters," Lilith said. "I'm ever so happy. Now I can deal with you all at once. Franklen, make us a party, would you?"
So said, Franklen smashed his hand into the grown, making his fist buried to the wrist. I saw a weird, moving shade run across his arm under his arm and pulse across the ground. After a moment, the ground began to quiver at certain parts. Cracks began to form in the solid soil. At one area, a tiny, bony hand began to poke from the ground.
All around, dead bodies were coming from the ground. From squirrels to wolves, deer to birds, the buried dead were coming back to life.
"Hmph," said Lilith. "I've seen you make better gatherings. Then again, they were at cemeteries."
The limping carcasses were given a wide berth from the Grimm and droids. I saw one dying Grimm get walked on by a small, limping squirrel. Wherever the thing touched, the flesh . . . wilted. It didn't just die, it decayed at an extreme rate.
I heard a scream of pain. Turning, I saw Cassys leg get grazed by a mostly skeleton snake. The edges of her wound where it touched were black, the blood initially dark and disease-looking, the muscle now visible.
"Priest!" I yelled. "I need you to focus on healing these wounds. Clar, give her some protection so she's safe to do so. Nobody touch these things bare-skinned. We all need to start getting out of here."
"You'll never escape," Lilith said. "His death thralls will follow you all the way to the other side of Remnant."
"We'redeadwe'redeadwe'redead," repeated Joseph.
"Fall back," Chaz said. "We're getting out of here."
Priest got to healing Cassy as Clar protected them. Zack got distracted in fighting the thralls, so I went back to fighting Lilith. If I knocked her out, it may get her pet and her pets' pets off of us. I charge again, getting ready to hit her with the flat of my axe. (*Killing her was something I was going to avoid at all costs. Even if she was as bad as she described herself to be - making the tests, working with the enemy, loving the pain and misery of others - I was not going to kill what was essentially my sister. Remember, Dusters are made from machines, so family ties are rather strange)
But the behemoth blocked my path, scoring a hard hit across my shield arm with his weapon. The pain was intense. There was a coating of some deadly substance on the metal. I swear I felt grubs burrowing into my bones. I drop to the ground, gasping in pain.
"PALADIN!" Priest cried as my vision begins flashing black spots. Everything is momentarily blurry from the agony of my arm, and I feel my head resting in the cool dirt. I see Lilith sneering over me. She's proud that her little lapdog took care of me so easily. He's there as well, apathetic to what he has just done. He doesn't care about the state he has put me in or what will happen to anything around him.
But it can't end like this. I had barely even gotten free of 'The Program,' and I'm going to die like it never mattered. The others are too overcrowded to save me, as I lay here in complete misery. I can't accept this. I can never accepts this. I will not allow this to be my final stand.
I begin to focus on a last ditch effort. I pull every last once of power of the remaining Dust in my body and I put it all in my good hand.
"So this is it," Lilith says over me. "I thought you were supposed to be the best of us. Your scores were always the highest out of all the other 'Dusters,' as you put them. Even those of your own category never performed as well as you did. But I guess that was the problem. You never faced any part of the real world we didn't think you couldn't handle."
"You know," I wheezed between labored breaths, "You talk . . . too much."
So said, I thrusted my hand at them and released all of the Dust energy I had been storing. Five bolts of lightning shot from my fingers. Three hit Lilith, one even getting her in the head. The other two managed to graze Franklen, but he shrugged them off as if they were nothing.
Lilith flew off a few feet from the maneuver I pulled, landing face first into the ground. Frank sighed and went over to her. He checked her pulse and, finding her only knocked out, put her over her shoulder. He then turns to me.
"You can go now," he said, his voice pure gravel.
"You're not . . . gonna . . . capture us?" I asked.
"I don't care," he said. "But you may want to move as soon as you can. The Grimm were scared of Lilith, but with her knocked out, they'll become violent again."
He turned and walked into the crowd, given a wide berth by the Grimm. His thralls went back to being dead, and I pass out in pain, fatigue, and relief.
All in all, a hectic escape.
"He handled that rather well," said the bigger of the two in a sarcastic tone.
"He did, actually," said the other. "He didn't allow the fear a wound like that inherently holds control him and instead took measures to ensure that everyone would not be left defenseless of the threat, while at the same time dealing with the threat himself so as not to endanger his new friends."
"That may be, but he still lost the fight and is about to lose his life."
"I'll take care of that."
The skinny one raised a boney, white hand in the direction of the ongoing conflict. Shadow wrapped around his hand, swirling into an unseen vortex in his palm. Suddenly, he flicked his wrist and sent the dark essence into the air. If one paid close attention, they would have seen the black, now thin substance seep into the heads of the Grimm. The result was quick, effective, and very subtle.
The Grimm, as a whole, slowly lost the will to fight. Their desire for pain and negativity was nearly quenched, and so decided that they didn't need to risk their lives killing the few survivors to completely satisfy them. They could always hunt some of the fearful wildlife that had ran from their massing.
As such, a large majority of the monsters left the field, no longer interested in the deadly quarry (*Who would be my new found friends) and walked off the empty battlefield. The ones relatively close to the others would not leave, but they were small in number compared to what was now leaving the field.
"That should give them some reprieve," said the skeletal one.
"Let's hope so," said the other. "Now if you'll excuse me, I must reprimand your subordinates. They both know better than to act as they did."
"Do not go easy on them. She knows better than to gloat too much, and I would think he would have learned by now not to walk from a fight we tasked him with."
"I hate that I agree with you on this."
"Then use your anger as you tell them off. I must report our mission status to Ironwood."
I woke up in a small shack made of old wood and a moss-covered ceiling. The bed I was in was a simple thing, carved out of a stone like a bowl and filled with dry grass, dead weeds, and more moss. The cover was a simple sheet of linen, and the blanket a dirty thing once cotton. It had a small table and a simple fireplace in one corner made of rocks and baked clay mixed long ago, with a small spit with which three pigs currently turned slowly. Priest was the one spinning the pigs, half asleep and in a pair of brown shorts and a red T-shirt. Her head rested in her free hand and her eyes were half closed.
I thought back to what had happened before I had woken up, as I usually do ever since 'The Program' started drugging me and leaving me in weird places. There was the mass of Grimm, then I fought Lilith, I organized the others to fend of Franklens thrall hounds, I used the last of my inner Dust, Frank walked away with Lilith, and . . . that's when I blacked out.
I rose from my bed, startling Priest from her stupor. She ran to me as I found that I was now wearing a plain-gold T-shirt and a pair of beige cargo pants.
"Hey, big guy," she said, "take it easy. You really taxed yourself at the fight. Don't try to move so fast."
"I'm rather use to it," I told her, turning myself so as to sit on the lip of my bed. I rubbed the linen to feel the softness of the foliage underneath. "Did you know I haven't slept in a bed for over six years? 'The Program' would instead leave me in an empty room, completely bare, the door such that it became another wall when closed."
"That doesn't surprise me. But how are you feeling? You've been out for a full day."
"I'm fine now. My nerves are very dependent on Dust, so if I use too much of what's in me, I go into a kind of coma until my body figures out how to work again."
"Well, still, take it easy, okay?"
"Oh, trust me, I plan to enjoy myself by relaxing for a few minutes. But I gotta know, how did we make it out after I clocked out?"
"Well, after you blacked out, most of the Grimm lost interest in us and walked off. Not the ones near us when you fainted, but after we killed them all, the rest were long gone. So we took the opportunity to bug out and head back to Zack and Clars village, Refuge."
A distinct smell of burning pork interrupted our conversation at that point. Priest ran over to the spit and quickly put it on the table. She pulled a small cooking knife from her pocket and peeled the charred skin of the middle hog, the black pieces shattering as they fell on the wooden surface.
"Okay," she said. "Not my best work, but these guys are ready for consumption. Which one would you like?"
"I'll be nice and take the one you worked hard to save," I said.
"Ah come one, you must be starving! Here, take the biggest one. She should be arriving any minute now with some fruit."
"She?" I asked.
As if on que, the door opened and a small woman walked in. Around five feet even, she had bright blue eyes, short, white hair, and small but various wrinkles all over her face. A small bead of sweat ran down the side of her face as she held two large baskets of various fruits and vegetables under her arms.
"Oh," she said, a soft voice that instantly like the woman, "You're awake."
"Let me get that for you," I said as I got up from my bed.
"No no, it's fine. I got this."
"You've have been so kind as to feed me. Please let me do this small task to show my appreciation."
"Well, if you insist, then take both of them. My back is killing me."
So said, I grabbed the baskets and bring them to the table.
"Put them next to the table on the side closest to the wall," Priest instructed. "I need the room right now to finish the pigs."
As she worked on the meat, I walked over to where the new woman.
"I haven't introduced myself," I said.
"Don't bother," she said, "I know you don't have a name yet besides what they gave you, and unless you're as weird as that one there, you probably don't want to be called by the same name here."
"Fair enough," I said, and sat down on the other end of the bed where she sat. She constantly rubbed the lower part of her back. "Is something wrong with you?"
She gave a short laugh at that.
"You know," she said, "you being bigger than the other ones brought here by Zack and the others, I thought you would have more manners than that."
"How do you mean?" I asked, puzzled.
"The way you asked that question was very rude. A better way to say it would have been 'Are you alright.'"
"Well, are you?"
She chuckled.
"I'm fine, my body is just a little too old for hard labor."
I used my Semblance to see the condition of her back muscles. It was an average case of overstimulation to a main muscle group with a side of stress, so I reached over and gave her a quick shine of healing light.
"Well, I'll be," she said as the pain faded away and she did her best to see what I was doing to make it so. "I knew that 'The Program' made weapons out of people, but I didn't think that they would make an angel like you."
"I'm no angel," I said, "And I would ask of you not to say that name if you don't have to. Now, to go back a bit in this conversation, you mentioned something about there being others?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "She over there would not stop trying to find you. So when she was lucky enough to find another base that once held you and the others, she would storm in as soon as she thought she had the power and try to save others like you. So many of your kind have been in this room."
"Will I be able to meet them soon?"
As soon as I asked, her mood changed and became gloomy.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but whenever she found one willing to come with her, they would be too younger. They never survived more than a few days. It actually looked like you would become like the majority and not make it."
Waves of emotions rolled over me. She had tried to save others like me? But they never made it because they were so younger. I should have gotten out of there sooner. I shouldn't have kept her in fear of what they were doing to me. Why did I think staying in 'The Program' was ever a good idea? All that happened was a lot of death.
I looked at Priest as she made dinner. She had a huge smile on her face and even radiated a soft glow, no doubt the result of her excitement and her Dust.
"Well," I said, "at least she's happy now."
"Yes," said the woman, "I have never seen her so bright before. You must really mean a lot to her."
"We were probably the closest thing to siblings in 'The Program.' Not only were we partners, but we also have the same Semblance. It's a unique . . . kinship that we share."
"Well, I'm just glad that you are awake and well-rested. I don't think she could have taken it if you had died."
"Dinner's ready!" Priest said. "Now stop talking about me and eat this wonderful food."
"Yes, ma'am," I said as I went to eat at the table. "Oh, Priest, can I get any Gold Dust anywhere nearby? I'm going to need to refuel on that as well."
"I got one for you right here," she said as she took a glass bottle of the magical substance from another pocket.
"Thank you," I said as I took the bottle. I grabbed a plate, filled it with all kinds of food, sprinkled a light coat of Dust over it, and chowed down.
"I still can't get over the fact that you straight up eat Dust," she said. "I would think that would be lethal."
"For normal people," I said, "it is. But our bodies run on this stuff, so we had do have some natural way of absorbing it."
"I've been meaning to ask you," Priest said, "when I looked into your body after you had fainted, I saw that they had made a lot more operation on you. If I'm going to heal you in the future, I need to know what else is in you. You know, organs and chemicals and such."
"NOT while I'm eating," the woman said. "Wait until I've left the room once I'm done."
"Okay," I said. "So, Priest, you've been out of 'The Program' a lot longer than me. What's it like?"
"Oh, you'll love it. No walls if you don't want any, free to move as you like, do mostly as you please, and sooooo many tasty foods."
"Do mostly as I please?"
"Well, if you try to kill anyone, people would try and stop you."
"True. What are people like?"
"People?"
"The only ones that talk with me would only tell me what I had to do or talked about my statistics. What to people outside talk about?"
"Would you please not talk with your mouth full, child?"
"Yeah, it's a little gross. But as to your question, people talk about lots of things. They talk about movies and music, book and comics - do you know what I'm talking about?"
"I got a basic teaching in arts, but I've never actually listened to a full song or read a full book."
"Oh my Light! I have to lend you my copy of 'The Story of The Seasons.' It's a wonder fairy tale of what to hope for in the days to come."
"I'll hold you to it."
The conversation continued pretty much like that for a while. I had some of the best food I've ever eaten, I got to talk with an old friend - it was the best time of my life. But there was only a limited amount of food at the table, so we wrapped it up when all the plates were empty.
"Priest," said the woman, "Please take care of the plates. I need to go babysit Melissa's children as she goes out hunting today."
"Tell Nick I said hi," she called as the woman walked out the door.
"So who was she?" I asked, never getting a name from her.
"That was Malinda. She acted as my mother when I got out. Hey, since I'm going to go through the town to get to the river, why don't you come with and I can show you around?"
"Well, I got nothing better to do. Let's go."
I walked out the door and saw the town.
It was a small village, the houses made of the same materials at the hut I walked out of. There wasn't a real order to how the homes were spread out, but it wasn't completely random, either. Pathways between houses were made from the constant tread of the villagers, who mostly wore the same kind of clothes as me. I realized that I had forgotten to ask Priest a really important question.
"Where is my gear?"
"Oh, Zack took it to the blacksmiths shop where he works. He's been holding on to it for you."
"Can we visit his place along the way? I feel . . . exposed without my armor."
"Wow, look at the hunk over there," I heard a girl say as she walked past. She was around five foot five, had short, black hair, tanned skin and dull green eyes. "What I would do to him . . ."
I was instantly on alert.
"What would you do?" I asked her as she walked past what counted as a front yard.
She started at my question, then hurriedly walked off while averting her gave from me. I was about to chase her when Priest put a hand on my arm.
"Paly, stop," she said. "She meant to malice by it. She was actually complimenting you, albeit in a selfish way."
"Well, she should be careful about what she says," I said. "That sounded like a threat to me."
Getting close to my ear, she whispered what she really meant by what she said. I reflexively blushed, but otherwise did not reacted as if she explained a double entendre.
"Oooooh, now I understand. But why did she get embarrassed when I called her on it?"
"Because she was talking to herself, not you."
"But if she's saying it out loud, wouldn't that mean she doesn't care if she's overheard?"
"Apparently not. I know it's weird, but even if your hearing was normal, some things are said without a desired reaction."
"That seems rather pointless."
"I know, but stuff like this happens out here. Anyway, let me show you around."
At that, we walked through the town. Well, I guess it could have been called a small city. There were buildings that were for specific purposes, like a weapon shop and a preserve store. These places were made of thick stone, the thinnest being around a hand span thick. The doors were also made of metal, and swung on large poles rather than separate handles. All of them had submarine-like locking mechanisms.
Zack's shop was no different in design, but the actual look of the place confused me at first. I know about different kinds of blacksmiths, so I knew a lot of different kinds of forges fore wielding the hot fires a smith would need to craft such quality materials. They generally have a large, bulbous room so as to keep the large furnaces for keeping intense heat, or even a large, deep fire pit outside of the buildings themselves. But as I walked up, neither one was visible to me. I stopped not that far from the building and asked about the shop.
"Zack doesn't need a furnace," she told me. "He just increases his body's heat until it reaches the temperature he needs, them molds the metal with his own hands. It's really something you must see to believe."
I believed her. I had seen how hot Zack had gotten in the fight, causing flesh to burn at ten paces. So there was no doubt in my mind that he could bend metal like that. But I had no idea where he would do the work. He still needed a place where he could heat up without burning anything. But there was nothing outside for it. So where did he work?
We walked in, and I had an answer. We had gone inside of the largest furnace I had ever seen. (*I mean large for what it actually was. It was still pretty cramped when compared to an actual living space. At least in terms of height, as my hair touched the roof when fully standing) Me and Priest had to make our own light bubbles just so we could keep cool. Even then, the heat was pressing down on us, baked by Zack as he worked in the middle of the room. He was working on my axe, reforming it with nothing but his hands. It was like watching clay being formed in a dry heat sauna turned way too high.
I was stunned at first as I saw him work. It wasn't because his arms - bare for his work - glowed bright red as he morphed the metal as he worked, but it was because he was working on my axe itself. I didn't know what to think of it. On the one hand, that tool represented 'The Program' and every evil deed that I had ever done. On the other, I had bonded with the weapon. It was an extension of my own body, I had used it so often, and had saved my life many times more than I had killed with it. Was I okay with him salvaging it for whatever he wanted?
After a moment, I decided that it was fine. If he could give the thing new purpose, all is the better. I don't want to keep anything from 'The Program' if I don't have to.
I saw my armor and shield in a corner where a small vent let cool fresh air come from an underground source. Since heat rises, it made a kind of sense that it would be there and not in the roof. (*While normal carbon monoxide is lighter than air, Duster lungs also attach a small particle of used Dust onto it, making it a little heavier) But before going to it, Priest called out.
"Hey, Zack! We're here for Paly's ge - what are you doing!?"
"Oh, hey!" he said. "How you doing, Dreaming Huntsman?"
"Never mind that," Priest said. "What are you doing to his axe?"
"I'm making him a new weapon. What else?"
"You know you need to ask him before you start messing with his stuff! What were you thinking?"
"He didn't want the blade."
"Why would you think that!?"
"Didn't you see the shape it was in?"
"Yeah, so?"
He paused for a second to think of something. (*I should mention that I hadn't even considered the fact that I owned the stuff when thinking about Zack messing with it. I had never actually thought of the gear as 'mine,' just 'The Programs.' So the fact that Priest was making a fuss about it threw me off for a bit)
"Sorry," he finally said. "I forgot you don't work with weapons like me."
"What's that got to do with anything?" she said.
"Well, when you work with weapons and armor for so long, you can gain an estimate of what kind of person holds it. An example would be that if saw a man with a broken blade, you can guess that he jumps into situations first and fights with force. With his blade, it was obvious that he didn't want it. It was only ever repaired by machines. You could tell by how the reworked areas all had the same pattern of repair on them."
"He's right," I said. "Though I only realized it a little before you two started talking."
"Well," she said, "If you're fine with it, then I guess I was in the wrong."
"No you weren't. You didn't have enough info to make a wrong move, just an incorrect one."
"What's the difference?" Zack ask.
"Wrong, in this context, mean it didn't fit with her moral code. Incorrect means that she did something that didn't have the desired outcome. Anyway, will you be needing the rest of the gear as well, or can I take it?"
"Oh, take it. It suits you too well."
"I don't know," Priest said as I bubbled the gear (*It was too hot to touch, so I used light) and brought it over to where I was. "Wouldn't you want something lighter? Something that gives you more speed and agility?"
"Not really. The armor is light enough for me not to be impeded, is stronger than most metals, and I have ways of increasing speed and agility with no problems."
"Okay. Well, we'll leave you to your work, Zack. I'll be showing Dipsy the town."
"Alright," he called as we went through the door. "See you at the ceremony!"
"Right!" she exclaimed as I shut the door. "I had forgotten about that!"
"The ceremony?" I asked.
"Yes! Paly, at the end of the day, there's going to be a small ritual of manhood for all the other boys coming of age. We need to get you to the Headman fast."
"Which way?" I asked, taking this as seriously as if we were saving the boys from certain death. (*For all I knew at the time, we were)
"Follow me," she said. "I know a shortcut to the stage."
And so we ran. I saw a lot of thing not normally seen in a city tour. I saw the fields of small farms as we ran in the middle of them. I saw the dirty result of tightly spaced of houses up close and, in one case, personally. We vaulted over fences, dodged through houses, and leaped over ponds. At one point, we climbed up one building and ran across rooftops. But we arrived to the stage on time.
The stage was just a raised platform of stone on the base of a wide, old tree stump, the corners supported by rusted metal rods in the ground. The thing was about twenty meters across on every side. In the center, a man with a short, white beard, thin wrinkles, and glasses sat at a small, wooden desk with a line leading to its front. The line was mostly younger people, probably around my age. There were parents with a rare one every now and then.
"Get to the back of the line," Priest told me.
We got there and waited. I began the slow process of cooling my gear as Priest fidgeted.
"So what is this ceremony?" I asked as I separated my chest piece from the pile with care and fanned it with a small green turbine. (*Not as noisy, but still had similar power)
"It's this village's way of respecting the moment when someone becomes of age," she explained. "When someone is of the age of eighteen, they go through a small ritual that, for them, makes a boy a man."
"What exactly is this ritual?"
"Later in the day, while the sun it setting, you will approach the Headman, the leader of this village and the one we're about to talk to. He'll have you kneel, say some lines of 'power,'" here she uses quotation fingers, " and will ask you to state your name for everyone else to hear. He'll say a few more things, rub your head with an herb or Dust 'the spirits' tell him to use, say a few more, and then you respectfully leave."
"I wonder if I'll glow again."
"You will. Zack and Clar did when they went through the ceremo - wait, again?"
"Yeah. When I captured Cassy for info, we had a bit of a weird conversation and she did a 'blessing' (*Now fingers that time) thing and I glowed. I glossed over it when I cut my hand to her."
"Oh yeah, you did mention that. Well, you will."
"Okay."
We would have kept talking, but we were finally at the desk of the Headman. He was writing something down on his paper as we approached. A little mirage showed me that it was the names of all the people that had come before us, plus some basic information about them, like family ties.
"State your name?" he said before looking up to see Priest. "Ah, Priest! Glad to see you. Uh, is this the one you saved?"
"Yes, Headman," she said respectfully. "This is Paladin. We're here to participate in the ceremony."
"Good to hear. And what a man he will be. No wonder you've been wanting to save him so badly."
"Headman!" she whined. I just stood there, not understanding what he meant by the last statement. (*I know now, though. Heheh)
"Well," Headman said as he got up to shake my hand, "to introduce myself properly, my name is Hedmund Croutch. I do what I can to keep this place safely running."
"Hello, sir," I said, putting my armor down and shaking his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Yes, well," he said, looking behind me to look at the long line of people behind me, "Sorry to cut this short, but I'll have to talk to you after the ceremony."
"Yes, Headman," Priest said as we walked away from him. "We'll see you later."
"Why do you call him Headman when his name is Hedmund?" I asked as I put on my chest piece.
"Well, the kids thought of it. Since his name sound like 'Head man' and he's in charge of the village, we gave him that nickname. Now come on! Let me show you around."
And that's how much of the day went after that. The buildings were a mix of wood and stone, though the stone ones were primarily for businesses like groceries, tech, and Dust, while wood was mostly for homes and inns. It was beautiful, really, if with a constant theme of discord in how everything was organized and built. Priest told me of everything and everyone we saw. I asked a few questions here and there, but I mostly focused on what was around me.
"We need to think up names for the ceremony," I said towards the end of the tour.
"Yeah," Priest said. "I never really liked my name. What do you want to be called?"
"I know I want Kuraz for my first name, but I don't know about the others."
"Why do you want to keep a name like that?"
"Because I was called that in the first conversation I've ever had with someone outside of 'The Program.' What about you?"
"I was thinking Jalen."
"Isn't that a boys name?"
"Unisex, actually. But we each need two more, don't we?"
"Yeah. Know anywhere we could look up names?"
"I left my Scroll at my place, but we're not far. Let's head over there and we'll look some up."
"Sound battle plan."
And so we went to make a name for ourselves.
