by David Burke
Maybe that was okay though. This could be a chance for him to practice control rather than power. It was like when he would choke up on the bat. It was all about precision and putting the ball into play rather than popping it out of the yard. Nodding, Kyle decided he could work with this.
Lucas showed him where he was to work, and the other men had all clearly stopped working to watch him. Even the foreman was watching from a distance. Kyle wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he could feel their appraising eyes on him. Perhaps it was like when a scout watched him play.
Oh well. He smiled and decided to put on a show for them.
He looked at the wall of rock that he was supposed to work on and started swinging the pick. Kyle was careful to only use a small portion of the strength he could feel in this body. Even then the pick sunk all the way to the shaft into the limestone and spidery cracks went out from the spot he had struck.
Lucas sucked in his breath behind him, and he wasn’t the only one, but Kyle just ignored them. He quickly pulled the pick back out. That wasn’t what he had intended to do.
Dammit, he would master this. He was Kyle Hudson. There was no one in the world—no one in the history of the world—who was better with a bat than him. What did it matter if it was a Louisville slugger or a pickaxe?
Kyle went to work, firing off quick rhythmic blows. The rocks that he chipped away were much larger than the ones the other workers managed, but he kept going. He had been right. It felt good to just hit something. As he got into the flow of it, things started to feel natural, and he found each blow was knocking away more and more of the rock.
It was almost like the pick was becoming sturdier. But he didn’t care. He only cared that he was doing something. Doing something meant that he didn’t have to worry about his problems as much. He was lost in a world that he knew nothing about, trusting a voice in his head. That, or he was insane. Either way, all he could do was act.
His hands felt warm. It was almost as though the heat flowed through him and into the tool in his hands. Then from there, it flowed into the rock.
“Careful, you are drawing too much attention. Even these nearly blind mortals are going to see that you are something more,” Ild’engel said in his head.
“What do you mean?” Kyle thought back.
“I didn’t say anything at first because I was thrilled that you were utilizing essence so instinctively. I apologize for my earlier doubts. You are clearly not a mortal. If this menial task is what is necessary to help you learn your power, then so be it. But you are using your essence to shape the world around you.”
“I’m just swinging a pickaxe at some rock. What could be more mundane than that?” Kyle replied.
“No, that isn’t what you are doing. You may not consciously realize it. Not yet, at least, but you are pushing War Essence into the formerly mundane tool and then through it into the rock. Look around you.”
Sure enough, when Kyle looked around, he found that he had broken through ten feet of rock. It had felt like only moments. That couldn’t be right. The foreman was yelling at the other men to get back to work, but they still were all just staring at him.
All around him, broken chunks of limestone were spread, the force of his swings having sent them flying. But when he looked at his hands, there was none of the fine white powder that clung so thoroughly to the others. He looked himself up and down as best he could, and even his feet were free of the dust. It was as though his body simply refused to be sullied by something like dirt.
Then he noticed the pick in his hands. It had grown to be at least five feet long. The shaft was as thick as a small tree trunk, and there were strange markings carved into it. Whereas the pick he had been handed was a small thing near to splintering, this shaft was made of a darky ebony wood and had the look of just having been freshly oiled.
Taking care of his bats had always been an issue of pride for Kyle. The clubhouse offered to do it for him, but he had no respect for a ball player who didn’t take care of his own equipment. The joke from the other players had always been about how much Kyle liked to oil up and rub down his shaft, but he didn’t care. They weren’t the five-time player of the year.
The head of the pick had changed too. The original one had been a dull gray metal, battered to the point it barely had a tip. It had been shaped on one side only, with a twelve-inch spike for splitting rock in one piece of metal, formed around a ring through which someone had jammed a wooden haft.
Now, it had a spiked tip that narrowed to a fine point and was a good eighteen or twenty inches long. The back side of the metal ring had a wider head that looked more like the head of a war hammer than anything else. It extended out about eight inches from the shaft and was equally thick with a rounded flat head. More than that, the metal was a glistening silver that looked like it had come straight out of a smithy. The same strange rune-like markings were marked into the metal, but not so much as a hint of limestone dust could be found anywhere on the head.
As he looked at it, he felt a certain pride in it. He was always a man who took joy in working with quality tools. This was a tool he could certainly be proud of. Seeing it only drove home how right it felt in his hands. Not for breaking rock, but just sitting there in his hands.
“You have summoned your sword, Sjaelkamp.” Ild’engel’s voice was almost reverent in his mind. He heard her musing slip through, even if he had not been intended to. “How has he achieved this so quickly? Did I misjudge?”
“Maybe you’re the crazy one. This looks nothing like a sword,” Kyle replied.
“I know what I see,” she snapped back. “Who is the guide here? But if you don’t believe me, hit the wall with all your strength. I wager that Sjaelkamp can handle it. It is what you would call a magical weapon, one which is soul bound to you.”
Kyle knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself.
He wanted to cut loose, needed to in the worst way possible. Since that first leap that had him falling through a roof, he had been trying to move so carefully. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if this was real or not, but sometimes you just had to swing for the fences.
With that thought in mind, he pulled back the pickaxe, rotated his hips and drove the tip forward with all his power. What was the worst that could happen, after all? The spike was only eighteen inches long. Everything lined up just right, and he contacted the wall more squarely than any fastball he had ever turned on.
What followed was beyond any expectation he’d had. The wall split. No, not just the wall. The entire side of the mining pit split. Men who were working on higher levels up above fell, some of them more than fifty feet before striking the ground. The crack went all the way up the wall and into the ground at his feet.
The onlookers around him leapt back, screaming in terror as the very ground shook. A rockslide came rushing down and Kyle had to leap quickly to catch Lucas up in his free arm and jump far enough away to prevent them from being crushed by tons of stone.
When the dust settled, an entire section of the wall had caved in and there was more broken rock ready to be hauled away than the rest of the men had created all day long. He saw the foreman running towards him and wondered if he had screwed up big time.
Maybe he should just make a run for it, but no. He needed a job. He needed some income.
Chapter 5 - The Essence of the Matter
“It is critical that you say the words I tell you to say. We need them to think you are just a down on his luck warrior who was fortunate enough to have a soul bound weapon. That is going to be a hard enough sell. We can’t let them get an inkling of who you are,” Ild’engel said in his mind.
Kyle didn’t bother to answer. His mind was too busy spinning this. It was all about pointing out the good. The foreman was likely mad, and why wouldn’t he be? Kyle wasn’t too sure that some of the men who fell weren’t dead, and even those who weren’t, had to be badly injured. On the other hand, he had just broken up a hu
ge quantity of limestone, so that had to be worth something.
When the foreman got there, he started talking to Kyle, who once again couldn’t make heads or tails of what he had to say. Annoyed, he thought at the voice in his head, “Can’t you just auto translate or make it so I can understand what he says?”
“I’m not some silly AI from those books you read. Verden is a real world. If you want to learn the languages, you will have to do it the old-fashioned way. But from what I saw of your memories, you have something of a gift for that.”
Kyle couldn’t be bothered to focus on what she was saying any longer. He was too busy reading the body language of the foreman. It was obvious the man was angry. Beneath that was fear. But there was more there. Jay could see the sparkle of greed in his eyes. It was always like that when he was negotiating contracts. Except he was used to having an agent help him through those.
That made him laugh, which apparently was not the reaction the foreman had been expecting. It looked like Ild’engel was going to be his agent here. He just needed to make sure that he was valuable to them.
The foreman was yelling at him and his inner voice was translating for him. Apparently, he was angry because now he was going to have to pay the families of the men who’d been killed or crippled. Kyle definitely got the impression that the foreman, whose name was Dannor, didn’t care one whit about the lives of any of his workers. That was a good thing to keep in mind.
On the other hand, the foreman kept demanding to know how Kyle had done what he did. He repeated what Ild’engel whispered into his mind, trusting her because there really wasn’t anything else to do. Thinking of her as his agent made him feel a bit better about it. He’d often had to do what an agent recommended, though he’d certainly never trusted any of those snakes.
They were attorneys. Everyone knew you couldn’t trust an attorney.
As Dannor calmed down, he sent some men to go around and measure the rock that had been knocked down. Then he appeared to be doing calculations on what passed for a clipboard. Before yelling at another man who went running. Ild’engel translated for him.
The gist of it was that he was going to be paid for the amount of limestone he had broken. Apparently, a laborer was normally paid five copper per day. The translation included the idea that this was about the equivalent of $50. No wonder Lucas and Freja lived in a dump, if that was all he could earn.
It was then explained that pay was based upon productivity. The lowest job was the rock haulers, the next lowest the rock breaker, and finally then there were the ones who handled the animals. They had calculated that he had broken down the equivalent of four years of limestone, after the costs of paying the families of the men he had injured or killed.
Kyle felt bad about that, but also knew there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He hadn’t intended it. A teammate of his had once hit a fly ball that cracked the skull of a kid. The guy hadn’t been able to put it behind him, and it ended up ruining his career. So, it might be callous, but Kyle didn’t believe in accepting blame for things he hadn’t intended. Yes, results mattered, and he would make amends if he could, but he had no time for feeling bad about this.
“You know he is robbing you. There is no way that a mortal worker could have done that much work in ten years, let alone four,” Ild’engel said.
“That’s fine, but how many days are there in a year here?”
“Three hundred and fifty. Thirty-five weeks. Nine days of work each week, and the mines work all nine of those days. The first day of each week is set aside as a holy day for the various worshippers of the gods, although just as often people spend it at the coliseum,” she replied.
About that time, the man who Darron had sent running off came back with a hand cart. In it were what appeared to be three bags of coin. Two much larger and one smaller one. All were made of leather with drawstrings. Kyle learned that he was being paid the equivalent of $63,000 in the form of three hundred copper and two hundred silver in the larger two bags and forty gold in the final bag.
Darron seemed to think that he was being generous, and before he handed the money over extracted a promise from Kyle through the words of Ild’engel that he would return the next day. Greed just oozed off of the man, and Kyle assumed it was because he was seeing dollar signs behind having a worker who could produce so much in one day.
Kyle asked Ild’engel, “So how do I say that this is worth ten years wages, not four?”
“Oh good, so you don’t want to let this mortal worm rob you?” she asked back.
“We likely won’t get ten years’ worth, but never, ever take the first offer. My first agent told me that. Good rule to live by.”
“Ah, I understand. Very well.”
Kyle then began to haggle with Darron using Ild’engel as a translator. He just tried to play off the time that he was waiting for a translation as though he was lost in thought. The more he paid attention to Darron, though, the more he realized that the man wasn’t very worried about the negotiation. In the end, he agreed to pay him another four years wages as long as he would show up the next day. It was suspicious, but since he needed money to start his life here, Kyle decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He and the rest of the one hundred and forty-two rock breakers who could leave under their own power were told to leave and return the next day. They grumbled at first about not getting a full day’s pay, but Kyle was proud of himself for negotiating that he wouldn’t come back the next day if these men didn’t get a full day’s pay for today. Several of them thanked him, but far more were afraid to meet his eyes and simply took their money before running off.
Even Lucas was clearly worked up. He kept talking to Kyle on the way home and calling him Stor-en. Apparently, that meant ‘great one’. Kyle eventually asked Ild’engel to give him the words to say that he didn’t feel like speaking now. Lucas bowed humbly, apologized, and then walked back with him in silence.
It wasn’t that Kyle didn’t want to talk, it was that he needed to learn more about his situation and talking to Lucas through a translator wasn’t helping with that. He did start pestering Ild’engel with questions.
“So, I know this body is strong, but how on Earth—or how on Verden—did one blow do all that?” Kyle asked.
He could hear her laughter mocking him, but it was still so sultry he wished she wasn’t just a disembodied voice inside his head. “Did you feel how right that swing felt?”
“Yeah, it was one of the best ever,” he replied.
“That rightness was you instinctively drawing upon the essence within you. It wasn’t just brute force, although your body has plenty of that. It was War Essence channeled through your strike that did all that damage,” she explained.
“War Essence? Wouldn’t it make more sense that it was Earth Essence or something like that? I think you said there is a god of earth or land or whatever. Sorry, that is gonna get confusing in my head, given what my planet was called.”
“I would be shocked if you could utilize Earth Essence. But why wouldn’t War Essence work for this? War Essence is the metaphysical basis for smashing, cutting, piercing, and otherwise destroying. At a higher level, it is also all about tactics and strategy, and courage. Basically, anything that makes for a good warrior. So, think back. What were you feeling as you made that swing?” Ild’engel asked.
Kyle thought for a moment before he replied, “I just felt the perfection of the swing. Everything fell into place, and I was entirely focused on putting my entire being into the force of that swing. I wanted to drive the pickaxe through the entire freaking wall.”
“And that is how you will tap into your War Essence. With practice, you will learn to exercise it with an even finer level of control,” she said and while all he could do was hear her voice, Kyle couldn’t help but feel like she was smiling.
“So, am I the only one that can use War Essence then?” Kyle asked.
In an instant, her
invisible smile was gone, and he had the sense she was looking at him wondering if he had the sense to come inside when it was raining. “Of course not. Any mortal can utilize it during combat.”
“Fine. Instead of mocking me, why don’t you just start at the beginning and explain it to me?” Kyle said indignantly.
“There is far more to tell you than we have time now. You will be back to Lucas’ home in just a few more minutes,” Ild’engel said.
“Well then, you better get speaking. I think you said you were bound to me, or to the mantle of the war god. Either way, that means you work for me. So, this would go much better if you were more helpful. Oh, and I can’t keep thinking of you as Ild’engel. That is just too much of a mouthful. So, hmmm… How about Ilde? Or we could go with Hilde. You’ve kinda got that Swedish bikini model sound to your voice.”
Kyle felt that his words had flustered her in some way but said, “Yeah, I like it. Hilde it will be.”
“You are no less frustrating in this incarnation. Just remember that while I need you to be able to manifest on Verden again, you need me to be able to stay alive,” Hilde said.
“Yeah, we’re teammates. And I also help my teammates, but I don’t take shit from them either. So, you said I’m more like a demi-god? That means I am mortal as far as I understand it. Why shouldn’t I be able to use other types of essence?” Kyle asked.
“As you wish, Lord Krig, I will do my best to fill you in on the eternal secrets of essence in the next five minutes. I believe I already explained to you about the eight deities of Verden. So maybe the best place to start would be with an approximation of your current abilities. I have formulated this into what you would call a character sheet.”
Name: Krig (Kyle Hudson)
Race: Demi-god (War God/human)
