Chapter 50

Day 10 since entering the gnomes’ warren…

“Is he awake?” it was one of the others. I didn’t recognize the voice but it was a girl’s. It wasn’t someone from my team. That made my anxiety grow a little bit; but it sound like a human voice.

“No, I don’t think so. Wait, I’m not sure. Did you see something?” Another voice an adolescent male with a bit of high pitched in it from growth spurts; one of the students that was brought to this world with me but I wasn’t sure which or who. I felt someone moving closer to me too. There was the sound of footsteps on the cavern floor.

“I thought I saw movement like a finger twitching,” a gnome said. Gnomes have good eyes and dexterity it seems. He appeared to be a guard of some kind, but my eyelids felt stuck together and my vision wasn’t good like normal people when they are overly tired and first try to look around.

He was equipped with some kind of gnomish mail and a type of pole axe, along with a short sword hanging from his belt. By the look of it the gear was well made but worn in places to suggest he’d been at this for years and that he knew what he was doing. Further it was well cared for despite its age. It was shiny and clean and nothing out of place.

“Ah maybe I was wrong?” the same voice as right before said.

I think I was stirring. I tried to get back up. But my body was heavy.

I thought I heard a fire crackling. But my eyelids were as heavy as my body. I think I groaned from the sting of pain when I’d tried to move.

My hand and finger twitched and I was able to move it over to my wound. Things were like lead weights everywhere. When I opened my eyes I noticed I was in a big cavern. It was the gnomes warren but it wasn’t in one of the tent structures. It looked familiar though, but this area looked more heavily protected and guarded than other areas that I’d been in.

Because it had like gnome special symbols and stuff written on the walls I surmised this must be some kind of special place for the elders that they’d brought me too. It also had a few specially placed banners hanging on stands.

It took me a minute to recognize things, but I think I’d seen this place before.

Then I recognized it was the big center warren where we’d first entered the gnomes cave system. Apparently it was some kind of gathering place and important to them.

If they took me here then…

Why?

Why had I been stabbed? It didn’t make any sense?

Shit! Did they take my stuff?

“Ah he is awake,” the gnome guard said.

Feeling around I was relieved when the stealth belt form of the demon box was still there. I’d been keeping it in stealth form but I had no idea I’d actually have to use that form until now to keep it from being taken.

Whew that was close.

“Confirmed, he’s awake,” a girl said. She was at the edge of the light from a fire and the bug lanterns. I couldn’t see part of her face from her hair hanging down too. She stood over me like she was a mortician. I didn’t recognize her at first.

“Wh-who is it? Who is there?” I gasped. My throat was all dry. My eyes were focusing better now. I just needed to move around a bit it seems.

“It’s me Vira, you know the one that plays tennis? Or rather I used too. I guess that’s a different life now,” the girl said bitterly. She got closer and I could see her face. She had a look of concern and was looking me over.

“Here drink this; it’ll help with the pain. You also need more fluids in you. She gave me some kind of special water skin bag with a close-able nozzle cap. It was cleverly made with most of it made from some kind of animal skins reinforced by something on the inside. The cap was some kind of dwarvish screw on metal cap design. It seems to be gnome made for long trips.

If they had this level of technology it made me hopeful. Every sign that people didn’t have to suffer too much in this world made things a bit more bearable.

I take a big swig and nearly choke on it because I’m not used to so much at once. I was also surprised that it wasn’t water exactly. It did taste ‘watery’ but there were other things in it too.

“It’s a low alcohol mead medicine drink,” the gnome that could speak our language explains. He seemed to be pacing around the whole camp. He also would avoid the firelight and kept trying to peer out into the darkness.

Did gnomes have night vision? I’d forgotten to ask about to what extent they could see in the dark.

“Alcohol is medicine huh? I’ve heard that before,” the other boy says.

“Are you mocking our mead?!” the gnome guard seems a bit offended and scandalized.

“Well, uh…sorry, just saying you know how it is,” the boy shrugs.

“How do you feel?” Vira asked.

“Hurts,” I croaked.

“I still can’t believe you are still alive. That was like touch and go for awhile there,” she says.

“If he hurts that’s good right? Means he’s like healing?” the other kid said.

Now I recognized her. It was the tennis champ girl? Wow she was keeping an eye on me? That was surprising. I thought it might be some of my own team.

“Wh-where are the others?” I rasped.

“Relax, you’ve been asleep a few days. It’s night so a lot of the others are resting,” a boy said. I didn’t recognize him until he got closer.

Oh it was the kid with the bad arm that I’d been trying to heal. He was still in a lot of pain I could see. Despite many days healing him a wound like that doesn’t go away easy. He was trying to avoid any ounce of pain on his arm. There was a ragged bunch of bandages tied over a stump that had still bled a bit recently.

He’d been mostly unconscious and in shock so I’d never actually heard his voice until now.

“Hey it’s you,” I said.

He nodded. “We’ve been assigned to guard you at night. They wanted people that knew how important your skills were I guess, because they were afraid some of the humans, err some of our people might’ve been involved somehow. So they picked us who had been kept alive from your skills directly even though I can’t fight. By the look of things,” he glanced at his watch. “It’s about 3 AM in the morning. Everyone’s asleep except us, but they were here earlier worried about you; some of them at least.”

“Well, what about Rina, Asakura, and my team?” I said.

“They were guarding you during the day but the gnome elders thought we’d be best with some handpicked gnome guards that usually watch over their elders for watch at night to keep you alive,” the tennis girl said. She was dressed in gnome overalls too.

“You know the gnomes are pretty mad that someone got in their cave system. Your getting hurt actually has helped them see that not all humans are bad,” Vira said.

“Huh. That’s surprising,” I said.

“I’ll say it is. We were surprised. We’re still not sure who it is. But they think it was from outside,” she affirmed.

“Wait, it was someone that came from outside?” That surprised me.

“Yeah it was. It took a few discussions to admit that. But the gnome guards kept reaching that conclusion after several times going over all the clues,” Vira said.

“Wow. The guards have been pretty good. We wanted to help out too,” the boy said.

“The security of the fence is being re-evaluated. They’ve put more people at the entrance too. They want you alive at pretty much all costs. Some of these guards are their own elder’s personal bodyguards,” she said.

But I noticed, in addition to that she was now armed too. In fact I think everyone here was. And not only that, she had some kind of glowy light that felt almost like heavy on top of us the way it projected; that was as bright as a campfire.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Thanks to you, I’m a paladin,” Vira said smugly. She also was well armed now. Somehow the gnomes had trusted her enough to give her a short sword made from steel. It felt unfair though. Steel was a highly prized gift and a privilege that not everyone had I’d learned from watching them the last few days.

I was jealous. They had only wanted to sell us stuff but for her they’d done extra?

“Eh? You have a job? And a good skill?” I was in shock.

“Yeah, everyone has a job now. But some of them are crafting jobs and stuff too. Even I’ve got one,” the other boy said. “But I’d trade it away to get rid of this pain permanently,” he limped closer. He was holding up the bug lantern and then resting it by his stool. Then he stoked up the campfire better adding more fuel and poking at the hot coals.

“Eh?! No way!” my mouth was wide open. I wanted to ask what his job was too, but it didn’t feel good to sit up and talk. I liked just resting and it felt like the bedding under me had a few good layers of cushioning. The softness was trying to pull me back to sleep I think.

“Yeah, no healers except for you; but plenty of other stuff,” Vira said. “The gnomes say I would have died from the poison and the infection in my wound if you hadn’t helped me. They didn’t give me the weapon, but are just lending it to me after I said I’d aid in their colony’s defense. They are pretty edgy now that they saw how someone could slip in past their supposedly impenetrable defense.”

“That’s still better than no weapon. Plus it being steel and all,” the other kid encouraged.

“Is it…is the wound gone?” I asked wanting to look at her but my neck was too tired.

She shook her head, “it still aches a lot. But it’s getting better every day and that’s been going down. I expect I’ll probably have a full recovery. This kid over here is in more pain than me, so if you get a chance maybe you can help him some more.” She nodded at the other kid who waved at me with his good hand.

“Damn,” I said coughing. I tried to sit up. It was difficult and suddenly there was a ton of pain in my shoulder, where it had been a dull ache before. Now it was like something hot was poking me.

“Easy, easy, don’t try to get up to fast. You took a bad hit,” the boy said. He looked genuinely like I was made of glass and held together by duct tape. I probably was.

But before I looked at myself I wanted to get an idea what was going on.

“So why’d they pick you guys for guarding me at night instead of Akira and people I know? I heard some of it already, but there’s got to be other things going on,” I asked.

“You want the truth or the politically correct version?” the boy said sarcastically.

“That’s enough you, he doesn’t need to worry about stuff like that right now,” Vira said shutting down the other kid.

“Well he saved us. Doesn’t he have a right to know?” the boy contested.

Vira turned to me, “unfortunately Akimoto and Steve the gnome elder have been under pressure to produce more resources. The girl trying to push everyone out of the way didn’t help either.”

“But I talked to Steve just a while ago about resources. Everything was fine,” I protested.

The girl shook her head. “That was before, things are different now.”

“What? But I’d talked to him about this. We had an arrangement. Everything was going to be fine. In fact we even believed it to be profitable for the future,” I said.

She shook her head again, “that was before. Things have happened. Things started to unravel a bit when they thought you wouldn’t make it two nights ago. You were kind of holding it together. Then you almost die, so what did you expect?”

“How could this be?” I exclaimed in frustration.

Tennis girl sighed. “It was good up until Akimoto’s goons sacked that gnome. Things got a lot worse when the gnome he attacked died while you were asleep and the gnomes are now pushing their elders to have the humans evicted.”

“You think that could really happen?” I asked.

“It could,” the boy said with a strange serious lilt to his voice.

“As I said. You were the real leader. The others were poser wanna be types,” Vera adds verbally.

“The gnome elders want to wait for you to get better first, since you helped them. After that, who knows what could happen,” the other boy added.

“Damn, crap. If I hadn’t been attacked he would be alive still,” I said.

“You think so?” the girl asked.

“I believe it, but he probably would still hurt like hell and wish he was dead,” the other kid said. It was natural that he would since his wound was as bad as the gnome stabbing wound was.

“Yeah, I would definitely have kept on it and stayed on it. But, getting stabbed…” I shook my head.

“Yeah, double damn,” the other boy said. “The worst part of it is there’s something out there circling the gnome colony.”

“Eh? What do you mean?” I asked.

“The dwarves are late on delivering supplies. The gnomes say they are never late. So whatever is going on it can’t be good. And some of the guards think they’ve heard stuff out there,” Vira said.

“I thought you didn’t want to tell him that,” the other boy said.

“How do you know that? You might be wrong?” I suggested.

“Look, people talk. Some of it’s pure bullshit I know. But the people I heard that from weren’t stupid. They had actually looked at the details and variables around it. That’s why it makes sense,” Vira said confidently.

The boy shrugged, but seemed to agree.

“So you are sure huh?” I said.

She shrugged, “If I didn’t do it you would have. Might as well, go with it now since it was a bust on keeping it quiet.”

I needed to get better fast, like yesterday.

I cast another heal, on myself where my worst wound was located at. It took a small amount of the pain but I was far from being full health. I tried a couple more in the same spot. I had to be more careful this time and space them apart. I did everything I could and it was starting to look better. If I could just keep this up for a couple more days I’d be fine.

It was also lucky that it wasn’t my dominant arm’s shoulder.

“Wish I had a heal ability. Nothing is worse than pain,” the boy said. They’d been watching me use my sparkly little heal and how it sparkled in the darkness when it went off.

Suddenly I was really sleepy…

But what they said about the late dwarven convoy and stuff outside worries me so much.

Zzz...