Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus

by Blaise Corvin (ed)

  I touched my hand to the side of the log and let off the smallest amount of force possible in a constant blast. Then I incrementally increased the amount of force I was using. Before the tree moved, I was getting shoved backward. I had a sneaking suspicion that below the tree there were branches dug into the dirt working like stakes to hold it into place. I had more power to use but if I let it loose I would get thrown backwards. I also noticed that when I focused on force power my beams were a lighter shade of purple. The more I focused on heat, the deeper the shade of purple they became.

  Then I had another idea, and I hoped it wasn’t stupid. I placed one hand behind me and one to the side of the log. Then I let off a blast of force with the hand behind me, a pretty low-powered one, but I was still shoved forward hard into the log. Within a split second I somehow knew the force was too much and that my wrist would be shattered if I didn’t compensate, so I let off an equal blast with the hand I had on the log. Since the hand I had on the log blasted a split second after the first, I was shot up a few feet into the air diagonally backwards. I managed to land on my feet, but while I was in the air I had heard something promising. The branches below the downed tree had cracked, at least some of them.

  I readjusted, crouching a little lower to get my hand cleanly on the side of the log, and started up wide-angled force beams with both hands at once, one hand behind me just like last time to work as a counter force. I didn’t apply too much because I was afraid I would break both of my shoulders or arms with the effort. Either way, the force was enough. More cracks sounded from the wood and the log rolled over a few times. The experiment had been a success! I was so excited with my victory that I jumped in the air and sent a blast downward in triumph, blasting myself about five feet into the air. I came down with a huge smile on my face.

  ***

  I will always remember the fort guards’ astonished faces as they saw me hauling ass across the open field while force-pushing a twenty-foot-long section of log that probably weighed hundreds of pounds and would have taken teams of people to move otherwise.

  “The gate, open the fuckin gate!” I shouted as I ran, not wanting to lose my momentum. The guards hopped to and got it open so I could continue force-shoving the log through. I was behind it lengthwise so it fit through nicely. The guest house was just inside the gate off to one side so the German looked up from his blueprinting to see what the commotion was. I stood there triumphantly smiling with one foot up on my log. The German walked over with a blank face and casually lifted the log, then walked it over closer to our build area to get it off of the main path. Then he set it down and got back to blueprinting.

  “You ass,” I said at his casual display of strength, which I had to admit had made me reevaluate my own power. Something that had taken me all afternoon to do had taken Otto, the German, only a few seconds.

  We went on like that for days, learning our powers and building the guest house. The first night was uncomfortable and it was pretty chilly. We were able to get two functioning beds together and we slept under a lean-to we had made out of some of the lumber from the old guest house, but it was hard to sleep with the commotion of the wall guards nearby and my natural soldier paranoia whispering that the area wasn’t secure enough for my liking. The first three days went quick and we made massive amounts of progress.

  It turns out when you have super strength like Otto that you can push a wooden peg through a hole pretty easily without a hammer. And when you have heat and force blasts like mine you can bore a hole through wood very easily. So even though we didn’t have any nails, the frame of the new guest house ended up being extremely hardy. It might have even been more durable than if we had used nails.

  At the end of the third day, Captain Rauli showed up and kicked both of our asses simultaneously to make sure that we weren’t overestimating our own abilities. We gave her a run for her money, but by the end of the fight I could tell she’d been humoring us.

  “You are more than just that fancy equipment,” I shouted at her as I spit out some blood. “What kind of power do you have, anyway?”

  “Know your place, Terran. You aren’t my husband, my kin, or my friend, so that knowledge isn’t for you.”

  “Alright, alright, no need to get moody. So what about the mission details?”

  “If you weren’t already bleeding, I would slap you,” she said while staring at me and assessing our build in progress. “There is an enemy stronghold about a five-day walk from here, just on the edge of our influence over this area. They captured a few of our fastest runners just a few days before you arrived. We were going to try to send for the army, but that was already a last option for a number of reasons. I could probably get the runners back myself, but then no one—” She paused. “No one like me would be left to guard the fort. So I was quite lucky that you two arrived. Providence, so to speak.

  “You two can pay back your debt and help some good people out all at once. I think it’s safe to say this appeals to both of you, yes?”

  Me and the German both nodded and she continued, “My scouts haven’t been able to figure out why the enemy chose that spot to fortify. It seems pointlessly dangerous for them to be this close to expanding civilization. An inevitable conflict was bound to arise, but this seems to happen often on Ludus. Our prevailing theory is that there is an unknown dungeon somewhere nearby and the inhabitants got tired of living underground in the dark and moved outwards. They’ve established a fort just like this one, only much smaller. Their fortifications are sound and they are dug in. It would take siege weapons to bring it down.” She gave us a meaningful look. “Or two orb-Bonded volunteers.”

  I interrupted her then. “Are you being purposefully vague about who these people are? What’s their motivation for capturing your people? Why do you keep calling them enemy?”

  “In Luda we call them Warthog-Toothed, Thick-Hided, Man-Demons, though their common colloquialism is ‘ork.’ They’re large and robust, proficient in battle, violent, and blue skinned. You won’t miss them, trust me. Oh and before I forget, they have a penchant for eating those they kill, sometimes they even eat people who are still alive. So I recommend not losing this battle.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard at her comment that I almost injured myself. “You are quite the ray of sunshine aren’t you?” I ask rhetorically. “So what are our objectives? Do you want the captives back, or do you want murder and mayhem? And do you even know if your people are still alive?”

  The captain said, “As of the last scout report, they are alive. Your priority is to rescue the captives. If you can damage the orks’ fort as well and make them regret crossing us that would be ideal, but I would settle for my people back. We will talk more later, I’m heading out on patrol. Oh and I’ll bring you some armor and weapons in a few days and start getting you familiarized with them. I recommend you two finish this house up sooner rather than later so you have more time to train and prepare for your mission.”

  After that she turned and ran out the front gate without preamble. I couldn’t help but stare at her shapely backside, but then I felt kind of grossed out knowing that I was staring at the ass of a senior citizen, which to be honest didn’t stop me from staring. I’ll try anything once!

  We doubled down on our construction efforts and we had already been speeding up as it was. We had fine-tuned usage of our respective orb powers and we were finding new ways to be more efficient builders with them by the hour. I hated to admit it, but the German, Otto, really knew his shit when it came to carpentry and construction. Everything he did was beautifully crafted. Sometimes he would give me instructions that seemed almost meaningless, but I followed them and soon parts of the building would come together quickly in ways that I had never even considered. He was using some kind of ancient German architecture style.

  The more the house came together the more it started to resemble a giant cuckoo clock. As we neared the end of construction, Otto ran around the house drawing designs into the frame and on
the siding we had added so far. I used his charcoal markings as a stencil of sorts and either burned away the bits he had indicated or etched in the designs he had wanted. It reminded me of dot-to-dot drawings I used to do as a kid.

  By the morning of the sixth day, we were putting the finishing touches on the build. I had noticed that my bruises from fighting Captain Rauli had disappeared, and the injuries I had sustained while experimenting with my powers were mostly gone too. I was healing faster, not amazingly fast, but what would have taken me weeks to heal from before, now took me only a few days. I had healed from my fight with the Fideli the first night too, but I thought that had been a byproduct of initially bonding with my orb. I was glad to find out that this would be my new norm.

  The German had me pop in a few quick holes on the window frames and he slid in the custom-made wooden storm shutters he had been working on most of the evening before. Then he shoved in a few wooden pegs that were just slightly too big for their receiving holes by using his super strength. The pegs would hold the shutters firmly into place. He tested the wooden hinges on the shutters a few times very carefully. Friction would wear them down eventually, but in the meantime they were works of art. The German had etched flowing designs on all along them using nothing but his strength and a rock he favored. I had done the same over most of the house by following the German’s charcoal markings. We both walked backwards and stared at the building.

  Otto had used some kind of structural roofing method that I had never seen before and could probably never replicate that made each side of the peaked roof a curved incline instead of a straight angle. When you combined the interesting shape with the overly large wooden shingles we had used, it gave the building a fairy-tale-type appearance. He had let parts of the frame that held up the roof extend past the eaves and he had carved the tips of the wood in those places into decorative deer heads, or other traditional German designs. I had even helped with a few using my powers, but I had done simpler designs, mostly just making them rounded and upturned.

  In my opinion the roof alone made the house beautiful, but we hadn’t skimped on the rest. Otto had carved downward-facing points along the eaves under the roof and he had me burn diamond-shaped holes along it at different intervals. They didn’t serve any structural purpose, but they looked nice. For siding we had placed planks horizontally, but we had carved diagonal slots for them to sit on the frame so each siding plank flared outwards a bit, which only further added to the beauty of the house. Along the sides Otto had instructed me to burn in his drawings of herds of deer and falling autumn leaves.

  The roof extended a half-dozen feet past the front wall of the house and we had added four great pillars to hold it up that all came down onto a wooden deck. This was the kind of house that you might see on the side of a lake in Switzerland back on Earth, something you would pay a lot of money to stay in with a fine lady. A stone fireplace would have really been great but we didn’t have time for that.

  “Well Otto, you are a shit person but even I have to admit that you are a great builder.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Otto replied stoically and slowly. Everything he said came out pained, like he hated talking.

  “It’s missing something.”

  “What?” Otto replied.

  “The front porch needs two rocking chairs.”

  Suddenly, a slow clapping started behind us. Captain Rauli walked up with a small wagon in tow being pulled by the female Areva who’d brought me food on my first night here. She winked at me like she had on the first night and blushed.

  “The guest house looks great, good job, you two. As a reward I brought some gifts,” said Rauli.

  We headed over to the small wagon and look inside. It was covered in different types of armor and weapons.

  “See what fits and pick a set,” said Rauli.

  “Where did you get all of this?” I asked as I picked up a bronze chest plate.

  “Some was bought off of traveling traders, others were found on dead adventurers. You know, here and there.”

  “Ew,” I said as I dropped the chest plate back into the wagon.

  “Oh don’t be such a baby. It was cleaned before we stored it.”

  I end up settling on a nice pair of leather chaps that seemed tougher than leather from Earth. I briefly wondered what it was actually made from. They could be strapped on over my existing uniform pants pretty quickly and they provided a nice layer of protective cushion. I figured the chaps should also protect me from slashing-type attacks. More importantly I felt like I could move around in them and they wouldn’t hinder my running speed.

  I also grabbed a bronze scale chest piece that was just my size, and a really lightweight stand-alone wooden pauldron that was held in place by a leather strap system. Unfortunately there was only one in the wagon. It would have been nice to have a set, one for each shoulder.

  Picking a weapon seemed pretty dumb for me since my hands were weapons, so instead I chose the lightest shield I could find. It was made of wood and it had a very thin piece of bronze attached to the front of it to prevent chipping. It had a sling so it could be worn across the back while traveling. I put on the shield and moved around a bit to make sure it didn’t slide around or get uncomfortable quickly but it passed my cursory tests. Lastly, I grabbed the lightest short sword and the sheath that came with it. I figured it would make people think I was some kind of lightweight speed fighter with this gear and hopefully they wouldn’t see the energy blasts coming.

  Otto grabbed the polar opposite of everything I took. He took something that was basically two giant pieces of bronze with two extremely thick leather straps hooking them together. He just threw the entire get-up over his head and one piece of bronze sat on the front of his chest and one sat on his back. It was slightly contoured so it wouldn’t be too clunky, and it had side straps to stop it from shifting around, but those seemed extraneous since the weight would keep it still on most people. Then again, since Otto probably didn’t even feel the weight, they would come in handy for him. The front piece of bronze had a giant V of raised metal on it around the neck area, which Rauli said was to stop arrows from glancing towards your face after they hit the armor.

  On top of that he grabbed a giant wooden armor piece that sat across the shoulder, reminiscent of football shoulder pads except it was all wood with bronze rings here and there holding the different sections together. He also grabbed an extremely large wooden bucket-type helmet with a ‘T’ shape cut out of the front of it for vision. The inside was lined with soft cloth and it fit him well. It dipped down into his wooden shoulder armor, providing complete protection for his neck.

  He also took a pair of bronze scale mail shorts. They had straps that went up and over his shoulders so he had to put them on first before the rest of his armor. The bottom of the scale mail shorts had two pieces of upside down triangle-shaped bronze chain mail connected on each leg. The extra protection went down the front of the shins and the back of his calves.

  For a weapon he grabbed a massive six-foot-long wooden club with a spike on the tip. He swung it around a bit with ease and then jogged in circles. He could do jumping jacks in the whole get-up like it weighed nothing and again I had to admit to myself that I was a little jealous of his power. Captain Rauli threw him some complicated-looking bronze pieces that could be strapped over his boots to armor his feet too, and he seemed content with them.

  “Hey look, the last of your presents are here,” said Captain Rauli as an Areva runner approached carrying a small crate. Inside were two small crossbows and two ropes with giant cloth-wrapped multi-pronged hooks on the end of them.

  “The cloth stops the hooks from making noise. Try them, leave the armor on,” she said while pointing at the fort wall. I’d used something similar to this in the military for checking if fields were mined. We had a long spiky weight we used on the end of a rope that we threw out over fields, and then we dragged it back to us. The contraption set off any mines that might have been i
n our path. I’d never had to throw upwards like this before, though.

  Otto, of course like the asshole he was, got it on his first try and pulled himself up with ease. Meanwhile, it took me three tries before I finally got the hook to land at the top of the wall. True to Rauli’s word, the hook landed silently, and then I struggled for ten minutes to make it to the top, red faced and out of breath.

  “You are going to have to speed that up,” yelled Rauli from below, which pissed me off.

  “Fuck this,” I said as I noticed the cute wall guards staring at me, and the winky dame below who was still standing around watching the spectacle. I jumped off the top of the wall and blew a low amount of purple-colored force energy out of each of my hands to slow my descent. Then mostly through pure luck, I landed in a perfect crouch with one fist on the ground.

  “Fancy. Can you go the other way?” asked Rauli as she pointed back up at the wall.

  Again I caught myself staring at hot winking Areva dame and like almost every dumb thing men have done throughout history, I knew I was going to try something dangerous to impress her. My choice to try the maneuver was cemented the second I started thinking with my little head. I knew if I second guessed myself, I would never do it, so I immediately turned around, locked my arms, and blasted off with pure force.

  As I was flying upwards, I could tell the power was not enough so I let out one more powerful burst. Wind was screaming around me, I was scared out of my fucking mind, and yet I still landed perfectly on top of the wall by using smaller blasts to stabilize myself.