Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 3

// Author's Note: Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I've been struggling with a bit of writer's block for the last few months and haven't been able to write as much as I'd like to. Hopefully we'll get back into the swing of it and pick up the pace as we go further into book two. Fortunately, this chapter is pretty danged long. -Maari \\

Chapter 3

Time passed quickly during the winter months. As it grew colder, it became more and more difficult to wake up every morning, even under a pile of blankets to keep warm. My body instinctually wanted to sleep through these cold months, and I was only able to remain awake and productive through sheer force of will more than anything.

What I wouldn’t do for a good cup of coffee! I’d even settle for a cup of hot chocolate - the herb tea I’d been making just wasn’t cutting it for me.

It had been around a month now since Mudpuppy’s kids were born and a dusting of snow started settling over our lazy village. A layer of frost crusted over the various ponds and inland lakes that served as endless water sources on the myriad floating islands of Enzirus, freezing over the streams of water leading off the edge and ceasing the endless waterfalls. As a result, our home was quiet, tranquil, and cold.

Both Gwen and Luna’s eggs had hatched by now, adding four more little ones in total. Three of the four were Gwen’s, and when they had hatched she had immediately burst into tears, overwhelmed and overjoyed. Luna had one child and she was surprisingly clinical about the hatching.

In both cases, that bizarre golden aurora appeared right at the time of the hatching. Both times I tried carving an obsidian spearhead based on the strange mana in the air, and both times it failed, melting into useless slag.

The upside was that the failures gave a lot of Scrimshaw experience - way more than any other attempt at crafting I’d done. Between the two hatchings and daily practice over the last month, my scrimshaw skill had levelled up four more times, bringing me to skill level twenty in total. Crafting under the golden aurora these last few times hadn’t given me as many levels as the first time with Mudpuppy’s hatching, but it was still a significant boost. Skill level twenty hadn’t unlocked any bonus effects for scrimshaw unfortunately, but the better chance at crafting higher quality items was still worth it in my book.

Otherwise, things had been going slow recently. That wasn’t such a bad thing though; not when the alternative was pounding adrenaline and the threat of death. I’d take slow days over that any time, but I wasn’t so naive to think that these peaceful days would last forever. I needed to do my best to make them count.

I had decided to take some time today to study the markings on the walls in the hidden room of the Archmage’s Tomb, that high flying island where I went to practice my magic and look out at the landscape. This was the same room where I found the recall stone that had saved Gwen and me in the aftermath of the caravan assault. Smooth lines covered its walls in foreign markings drawn with dyes that reflected the pale blue light that my jar of glowing mushrooms gave off.

Rather than one full composition spanning the entire stone room, the markings had clear division between each set. They ranged widely in size, with the smallest illustrations measuring roughly the diameter of my palm and the largest ones taking up entire sections of wall. Each was composed of sets of interconnecting lines and they varied in design from the other sections - some curved gently while others featured sharp angles. Some were perfectly symmetrical; others an exercise in chaos.

My first thought was that the old Archmage Thaddius must have suffered a few too many days in boredom and started doodling on the walls. When I confronted the curmudgeonly old book about it, he matter-of-factly stated that the markings and the room itself had been there far before he had ever arrived. He also told me that I should be more diligent in my mana coalescence studies. Specifically, he called me a big lazy lizard.

In any event, the nature of this room came as a surprise to me. I had always assumed that the old archmage had been the one to carve out the stone room for me to find. Instead, he had never even stepped foot in the antechamber of this island as it required a water mage to open the doorway. With this place being entirely composed of stone, I wasn’t sure why an accomplished Earth mage such as my magic instructor wouldn’t be able to gain entry. Maybe there was even more about this stone chamber that I didn’t understand?

That left this place as something of a mystery. Who would build something like this, carved into an island that would be utterly unreachable by all but a narrow margin of people, and in a place so far from civilization?

Someone who didn’t want it to be found, I thought.

I held up a claw and traced one of the smaller sets of lines on the wall. If that was true, this was a chamber full of secrets. If it took a mage to open the door, then it stood to reason that they could be magical secrets. Idly tapping a claw against the stone wall, I reflected briefly on my error in judgement for having neglected investigating this place for so long.

Fortunately, I wasn’t entirely clueless to what these markings on the walls were for. The biggest clue had rested in the center of the antechamber, on the raised dais that held the magical item I had recovered from this place.

I fumbled through my transdimensional storage bag for the recall stone, considering for a moment how peculiar it was that I always found exactly the item I thought of whenever I reached in. It almost felt like some helpful creature on the other side was handing me whatever I wanted from the storage space. I tried not to think about that idea too often, though. I especially tried not to think about the time I had stored some fresh-caught fish in my bag only to later retrieve clean bones.

The recall stone was a remarkably simple magical item. It would otherwise be a plain gray stone if not for the lines carved into its surface. Those lines glowed faintly green with mana running freely along those carved channels, seen not only with my mana sense but also clearly visible to the naked eye. Evidently, the process of enchantment also had the side effect of making mana plainly visible on the enchanted item.

My working theory for this room was that it served as a sort of library - or rather, a collection of enchantment diagrams. With my scrimshaw skill serving as a form of enchantment, that would make this place directly relevant to my own crafting pursuits. If the recall stone was any indication, these diagrams could prove to be immensely useful. I was already imagining having a pile of recall stones, using them liberally to escape danger and to return from extended expeditions. Maybe I could even mana vault straight to the human realms to trade and barter, then use a stone to instantly return home when I was done shopping!

I was getting a little ahead of myself. First things first, I needed confirmation that this place actually was a library of enchantment diagrams. If I could match the pattern on the recall stone to one of the murals on the wall, it would all but prove it.

Settling down onto the cold stone floor and wrapping my tail in a circle around myself for support, I began the long process of comparing the stone to the numerous reflective murals on the wall.

Hours passed with little progress and I was starting to feel frustrated. I had already compared the stone sphere in my hand to each and every one of the murals several times over and still hadn’t found a match. It had to be there, otherwise what was the point of leaving the recall stone in the middle of the room?

Finally I let out an irritated groan, scratching at my head and thumping my tail against the floor. Nearby, someone politely cleared their throat, as if to inform me of their presence. My heart immediately jumped into my throat and I spun around in a panic.

Briham, standing in the open doorway leading into this antechamber, gave me a polite bow and a gentle smile. “Your grace, I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Briham? This room... How did you-” I remembered that I had left the doorway leading into this room open for the fresh air. “B-but this place is so high up!”

The gray haired gentleman just smiled calmly, folding his hands behind his back. “You are not the only one with skills, your highness, and I have been in this world a great deal longer than you have.”

“Are you a mage?” I extended my mana sense towards the horned man, but I didn’t find any noticeable potency about the mana in his body. He seemed to be the same as any of the other villagers, but I couldn’t help my suspicion.

“No, no, nothing quite like that.” Briham, still smiling, softly shook his head as the wind sent his long black-and-gray ponytail dancing and streaming around him. “There are some skills that may seem like magic to the uninformed observer, but true magic is something very different. I suspect I am in a poor position to lecture you on such things, however, my Queen.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about that. I actually thought this place would be completely unreachable to just about anyone in the village. Uh, not that I wanted to be left alone or anything,” I quickly added. “I’m interested to know just how you managed to get up here, though.”

Briham nodded once, face neutral, as though he had expected this question. “Of course. I am rather well practiced in the uncommon skill known as ‘Wind-running.’ As the name implies, it allows a person to run with the wind. It has its limitations, such as requiring considerable winds to be used effectively. Today happens to be rather windy, so I simply-”

“Ran up here,” I said, finishing his sentence.

“...Indeed.”

I shook my head and sighed, my earlier frustration trickling back in as I glanced down to the recall stone in my hand, then back to the markings on the walls. There was too much about this world that I still didn’t know. To further muddle the issue, it felt like every question I managed to find an answer to ended up unearthing two more questions along the way. It was an endless whirlpool of nescience, and I was caught in its wake.

Briham waited patiently for me to break the silence, the unspoken question hanging in the air. Closing my eyes and letting out a calming breath, I obliged. “Was there something you needed, Briham?”

“There is a minor issue in the village that I require your input on. My apprentice and I can resolve it ourselves, but we need to know the course of action you would prefer in order to do so.”

I gave him a quick nod in affirmation. “Sure, hit me.”

A shocked look crossed briefly over Briham’s face, followed by confusion. “My Queen?”

“It’s a figure of speech. What’s the problem?”

“...Ah, I see.” The stately administrator cleared his throat and spoke. “We have received complaints of a particularly offensive, rotten smell coming from one of the houses in the village. Three of the villagers who had been assigned to the house in question are now refusing to sleep there until the rancid smell has been dealt with. The perpetrator in this matter is one out of the four residents, though we’re unsure about the source of the stench in question.”

“You don’t know what’s causing it?” I felt like it should be fairly obvious after poking around a bit. Just find the stinkiest part of the house, right?

Briham shook his head. “We have had some difficulty in communicating with the villager causing the issue. It seems she is incapable of speech - or rather, at least not in any language I am familiar with.”

“Well, maybe I can help with that,” I said, considering the magical compendium of languages in my storage bag. I’d been wary of letting the villagers know about my collection of magical tomes after Thaddius’ warning, but maybe I could convince her to keep it quiet.

“Are you certain, your highness? I’m afraid this task may be below you, and I would be remiss to take you from your work.” He glanced towards the murals painted against the stone walls.

I dejectedly shook my head and let out another sigh. “No, I think a little break from this would be helpful. Better to have a little rest and come back with fresh ideas than to try and power through it on willpower alone.”

“...Hmm,” Briham said. I could tell from his tone of voice that he didn’t agree with my reasoning, but he didn’t say as much. That wasn’t terribly surprising considering his ruthlessly hardworking nature. I’d never seen him take a break, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure he even knew what the phrase meant.

Briham took a few steps forward, stopping by my side and looking out at the sprawling collection of reflective markings. “If you might satisfy my curiosity, what is it you’re trying to do?”

I briefly explained my theory regarding this place and my failed attempt at matching the recall stone with one of the diagrams on the wall. Briham simply observed the walls as I spoke and gave a small nod when I finished my explanation.

He stood in silence for a moment, his posture impeccable as he absently tapped a knuckle against his chin in thought. His voice was hesitant and unsure when he finally spoke. “I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that it was impossible to perfectly flatten the surface of a sphere. That said, it may be possible to come close…”

Briham paced around the room, examining the different layouts that were on display. He stopped at a series of markings that I had originally disregarded for their strange shape. The composition was like if you were to collect a small pile of leaves, drawing on the backs of them and arranging them side by side.

“I believe this sort of shape may be what you’re searching for,” Briham concluded, folding his hands behind his back and turning to face me. “If you were to connect this shape from end to end in a disc and bend the corners, I believe it would resemble a sphere such as that stone of yours.”

I looked between the markings on the walls and Briham in disbelief. I’d been banging my head against this problem for hours now and he just came along and solved it in five minutes flat. Feeling more than a little dumb for not figuring that out on my own, I tried and failed to keep the embarrassment from showing on my face. My skin was already pink; he wouldn’t be able to see a little blush, would he?

“Thanks, Briham. That helps a lot. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll jump down to help with the stinky house problem.”

Briham gave a polite chuckle at that and carried an affable smile on his face as he swept me a deep bow. “Of course, your highness. A pleasure to be of assistance.”

The gray-haired gentleman passed through the doorway and, arriving at the edge of the floating island, immediately pitched off the side without care or worry. He probably hadn’t even thought anything of it, but that unwavering show of confidence left me blinking in surprise.

I would need to keep an eye on him. There was no reason to doubt Briham’s sincerity in wanting to help us, but it startled me just how wrong my first impression of him had been. He was far from a common kind of person.

I turned back to face the writing on the wall. One question answered, two more uncovered.

~~~

“𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮 Stinky house, stinky house! Gonna check out the stinky house! 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮” Beaming in success, I sang as my levitating tail had me floating gently down towards my home island.

Narrowing down the search area was all it had taken for me to find a match for the recall stone. I’d been staring at the stupid thing for so long that it only took me about five minutes to match the enchantment on the stone with one of the diagrams on the wall. That all but proved my theory that we had a considerable library of enchantment patterns floating on high in the Archmage’s Tomb.

Now, whether or not those enchantment patterns were compatible with my scrimshaw skill was another matter, but I had plenty of time to experiment. The biggest drawback to scrimshaw had to do with just how random the results were, so hopefully this discovery would make it a little more consistent.

I caught sight of Briham standing near a house, one hand waving me down while the other pinched his nose shut, a disgusted look on his face. The other villagers gave that building a wide berth.

There was a crisply sweet, vaguely fruity smell in the air as I slowly floated down to the village. Truth be told it smelled delicious, and I had to wipe away a line of drool as I touched down next to Briham. “I thought you said this place smelled bad?”

He turned to give me a nauseous look and for a moment I thought he was about to lose his lunch. “Y-your grace, you don’t smell that? It’s atrocious! My eyes are watering! ...Eugh, I… Eugh!”

Pshh, what a drama queen, I thought to myself. Clearly there was an incongruity between my sense of smell and Briham’s, likely due to our difference in race. In other words, he couldn’t appreciate the smell of good cooking. “Alright, alright. I’ll take care of it. Try not to throw up there in the meantime.”

“Good. Yes, quite. I’ll- Eugh, I’ll be over there. Far over there. Good luck, your highness.” Briham beat a hasty retreat as I struggled to hold in my laughter. Nothing like a little schadenfreude to liven up an otherwise stinky situation.

This house was much like the rest of the newly constructed homes in the village; a somewhat austere wooden hovel thatched with green reeds, large enough to house four villagers in relative comfort.

These homes weren’t much to look at, but they were sturdy and well built - enough to get us through the winter, at any rate. The next step up would be constructing stone houses, but at the moment we were lacking the infrastructure to support more complex construction and didn’t yet have a source for large quantities of stone. We had plans in motion to address those issues, but it would take time. For now, houses like this one would have to do.

I held up a hand and rapped a knuckle against the door before taking a step back.

There was a sound of something squishing wetly on the other side, like the squelching of someone walking with their shoes full of water. A moment later the inviting aroma redoubled as the door slowly creaked open and a polished, bone-white canine skull peered out at me through the doorway.

My breath caught in alarm and I nearly shuddered a step back in retreat before regaining my composure. Caught off guard, it took me a moment longer before I weakly stuttered out a greeting. “H-hello there!”

Two lime green eyes studied me from inside the canine skull’s eye sockets. The creature made a kind of hissing, popping noise and opened the door the rest of the way.

It took me a moment to recognize her with the skull mask covering her face, but the green, translucent skin of her arms gave it away. This was the slug girl who I’d cut the shackles off of the day after the caravan assault. I hadn’t seen her since then and half expected that she had left the village to brave the woods.

She was clothed in the same roughspun garb as the rest of the villagers, though she wore a pair of thick leather gloves over her hands and similarly rugged-looking brown boots. The bare skin of her arms and neck glistened with green slime that occasionally dripped off onto the floor in slimy rivulets when she moved. Meeting my eyes from under the somewhat disturbing visage of her canine skull mask, the slug girl made a wet blurbling noise that carried a vaguely questioning tone to it.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” I said, struggling to keep from shuffling nervously under her unblinking scrutiny. “We’ve been getting a lot of complaints about the, uh, smell coming from this place.”

In my flustered and scatterbrained state, I had momentarily forgotten about Briham’s mention of the language barrier that had complicated his attempts at communicating with her. She probably couldn’t understand a word I said.

The slug girl, however, easily responded with a conversational low whistle followed by a series of popping sounds before slowly cocking her head to the side.

“...Wait, can you understand me?”

The canine skull that she wore over her head - most likely from a fallen shadowlurker, I decided - slowly bobbed up and down as she nodded an affirmation.

Okay, so she was able to understand the Elsian language, she just wasn’t physically capable of speaking it. I raised a hand up and absentmindedly chewed on one of my claws. That really threw a wrench into my original plan to teach her the language with the magical book. Maybe we could communicate through writing, but…

I popped my claw out of my mouth and stared at my hand, an alternate idea forming in my head. “Give me a second,” I told the skull-adorned molluscoid as I shoved a hand into my messenger bag and retrieved the magical compendium of languages.

What language? A man’s voice, clipped and proper, streamed into my mind after activating the book.

“Hi again, compendium. Do you have any sign languages in there?”

The book, dropping its professional facade, gave an irritable sigh. You again. The last time you used me, you left a layer of slime on my binding.

I narrowed my eyes. “It’s rude to talk about a girl’s-”

At the very least you could have wiped it off!

“Right, I’m, uh, really sorry about that and all, but-”

Sign languages? Fine. There is a sign counterpart to the Elsian language. Would you like to learn it now?

Although I considered myself to be generally even-tempered and patient, this guy really had a way of pushing my buttons, so my reply came with a little heat. “Yes, I would, thank you very much! And maybe you had best hop to it before I wipe my slimy hands all over your cover and between the pages too!” I jabbed a claw indignantly at the frustrating book. “When I’m through with you, you’ll look like a teenage boy’s girly magazine!”

You wouldn’t dare! The fastidious book tried to match my tone, but there was an unmistakable sliver of fear in his voice.

“Oh, but I would!” I declared, wiggling my fingers menacingly. “Didn’t I say to hop to it?”

The book immediately flew open, the pages rapidly flipping through the air in a blur of paper and arcane symbols. What would normally be a steady stream of information instead all rushed into me at once, hitting me like a hammer to the head. There was no physical component to the information transfer, but the impact of it nearly knocked me off my feet regardless.

Ears ringing, I blinked away the blurriness in my eyes, wobbling drunkenly on my feet. Although it felt like I had a white-hot nail in my head, I was now completely fluent in sign language.

The compendium left me with a few last words before latching its leather cover shut. Be sure to wipe off that fetid slime of yours!

Oh like hell I will, I thought.

“Here,” I said, holding out the book to the slug girl, “take this, activate it, and ask it for the Elsian sign language.”

The girl accepted the leather-bound tome and stared down at it for a long moment before looking back up at me warily. Or at least, that’s what I gathered from her expression - it was hard to tell with the skull covering all of her face save for her eyes.

“Don’t worry, it’s just me that he has it out for.” That might not have sounded very convincing while I was massaging my temples in an effort to alleviate my throbbing headache, but the slug girl seemed to have accepted it all the same.

She blurbled something in her own language and the book unlatched itself again, going much slower this time. A moment later and she handed the book back to me. If she found the process mentally taxing or painful, she didn’t show it.

“Hello,” She signed, her leather gloves creaking with the movement. Her green eyes flicked to her own hands for a moment before returning to stare unblinkingly at me.

I gave her the warmest smile I could muster against such a creepy countenance. “Hi! What’s your name?”

“I am Sib,” she slowly and deliberately signed, carefully studying her own hands as she spoke.

“Nice to meet you, Sib! Do you remember me from before?”

She slowly nodded. “You are the vertebrate Queen.”

“I- Uh, yeah, that’s me!” I stammered out in reply. “Not sure that you need the ‘vertebrate’ part, though. I mean, yeah, I do have a spine and all. A little busted up, sure, but I do have one.”

“I… see.” Sib looked down to her hands again, the polished shadowlurker skull adorning her head inclining with the movement. “This language is unwieldy and foreign to me. It will take time to grow accustomed to it. It was not my intention to insult you. You are a vertebrate, and I am not. For my people, this distinction is important.”

“No worries, I didn’t feel insulted!” Just a little creeped out, I neglected to mention. Speaking of feeling creeped out, I thought it might be time to address the elephant in the room. “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you wear a skull over your face? I didn’t recognize you at first because of it.”

Sib, after taking a moment to consider my question, began carefully signing her answer to me. “The men who captured me stole my original mask, and in a deliberate act of cruelty, crushed it into dust. In my culture, it’s a mark of terrible shame to be seen without a mask. Traditionally, it is the skulls of long dead vertebrates that are used in this way. I am no slave to tradition, but in this matter I am unyielding.”

Well, that explained why I hadn’t seen her since cutting her shackles - she was probably hiding until she could find a mask to hide her face. It was a shame that we hadn’t been able to communicate until now or I might have been able to find a way to accommodate her. “You won’t need to worry about anyone taking your mask while you’re in our village. I’m sorry they did that to you.”

Sib shook her head and fixed her steely gaze on me. “Don’t be sorry. My freedom was bought with your bravery, and my continued life is a product of your generosity. If there is anything I can do to repay this debt, do not hesitate to ask.”

I flashed a toothy grin at her praise and awkwardly scratched the back of my head. “Well, there might be a tiny little thing you could do for me. We need to talk about the smell coming from this house. I for one think it smells very pleasant, but it has my poor administrator looking a little green in the face over there.”

Sib cocked her skeletal head to the side. “Fascinating. I was aware that it had that effect on pureblooded human vertebrates, but the majority of this village’s residents are half-bloods. To hear that there is no shift in olfactory perception for half-monster hybrids… Curious. Very curious.”

“Um, what exactly is it that you’re making?” I peered past her into the house. There was a cauldron bubbling over a low flame in the center of the room. Next to it, among other less recognizable implements, was a mortar and pestle that seemed to have been recently used. Everything in the room was the same bone white as her mask, from the mortar and pestle to the cauldron itself.

“Come, I’ll show you.” She turned, walking to the simmering cauldron and gesturing me over.

A violently purple sludge frothed and boiled in the cast iron pot. Carefully, Sib ladled out a portion of the viscous concoction and poured it over a sheet of waxy parchment in a thin strip. It cooled quickly into something resembling a piece of taffy and an examine prompt popped into my vision.

[Item Name: Vicious Treat   Item Type: Food   Item Classification: Rare

Durability: 5 / 5

Effects:  High Nutrient Density: This food substance provides a significant amount of nutrients in a highly condensed form.

Delicious: This food substance gives a slight morale boost when eaten.

Strength (III): This food/drink buff provides +3 to your Strength statistic for 24 hours. Only one food/drink buff may be active at one time.

Description: The product of a pungent alchemical process, this food is occasionally prepared as a rare confectionary for sapient monsters. Due to its resistance to spoiling and its lightweight nature, it makes for highly efficient, if expensive, travel rations.]

It was monster candy! I couldn’t remember the last time I had something sweet. Month after month all I’d been eating was fish, and as good as bluescale were, even they got boring after months of eating them exclusively. My mouth was already watering.

Looking up, I thought I saw the faintest flicker of a smile in the corners of Sib’s eyes. She reached down and tore off a chunk of the purple treat with her leather-gloved hands and slipped it under her skeletal mask.

Sib gestured for me to help myself and I hesitantly tore off a little chunk of the purple substance - I didn’t want to be rude, after all. To be honest, given her unnerving appearance, I might have made up some excuse not to if I hadn’t seen her eat some herself. However, she had shown me trust by accepting the language teachings from the compendium and I wanted to return that same show of good faith. Just because someone was different from me didn’t mean I should distrust them on principle; that wasn’t the kind of mindset I wanted to cultivate here. Besides, I didn’t know of any skill or ability that could fool an examine prompt, though it was always possible that something like that could exist.

All of that flashed through my mind as I stuffed the congealed purple sludge into my mouth. I considered for a moment how this was a very Mudpuppy-esque thing to do and that clearly the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

That purple sludge blob was simultaneously one of the strangest and most delicious things I’d ever eaten. The flavor was like how I would imagine half-rotten garbage would taste, but somehow in a good way. I felt like a trash panda in its prime, rifling through a ripe dumpster and finding the holy grail of garbage-treats. It was sweet, savory, salty, and there was the unmistakable tang of fermented organ meat.

Before I knew it, I was reaching for seconds and chewing happily on the malodorous monster taffy. I’d been so absorbed in enjoying this delectable abomination of a treat that it took Sib leaning over and waving her gloved hand in my face to snap me out of it.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Sib signed as she studied me from the open eye sockets of her shadowlurker skull mask. “It’s a poor demonstration of my profession, but it was the best I could do with limited resources and inadequate facilities.”

With one of my claws, I picked at some of the sludge that had gotten lodged between my teeth. “You’re a professional candy maker?”

Sib made a series of wet pops from under her mask, and I wondered if that was her way of laughing. “No. I believe the best word to describe my talents would be that I am an ‘Alchemist.’ That description doesn’t entirely fit, however, as many associate the field of alchemy with witchcraft, rather than consider it a valid scientific pursuit. It may be better to describe myself as a scholar of alchemical transmutation.”

I nodded slowly, considering how it would be useful to have someone like that on our side. Doubly so if they can make such delicious treats. “So you could make things like potions and bombs and stuff?”

“Yes. However, given the lack of resources and a working laboratory, my current capabilities are significantly limited.”

“...And you need us to build a lab for you or else you can’t make any of the good stuff.” I rubbed the back of my head and sat on a nearby stool made of porcelain bone.

We already had a ton of construction projects that needed to be done, what with the town hall as our current project, then the smithy, workshops, storehouses, masons, better housing, defensive structures and so on and so on. All of them were important, and now we had one more to squeeze in.

“Actually, no,” Sib signed. I blinked and gave her a quizzical look as she pulled up another bone stool and sat across from me. “I am able to construct the laboratory myself. In fact, I would insist on doing so, as I am somewhat… particular about the layout and arrangement of any structure I work in. Instead, I’m in need of raw materials in order to facilitate the construction.”

Folding my arms, I glanced around at the various pieces of furniture seamlessly made of bone. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you don’t need wood and nails.”

“Correct. One of the skills unique to my race is ‘Shellshaping,’ which allows us to mold bones and shells into any shape or object we wish. In my homeland, far away and across the empty sea, there is a great continent made of piles on piles of ancient bones. We never lacked for resources there, but this continent is another matter. In order to construct even a small laboratory, I will need a significant amount of bones. Fish bones will do, but it will take a great many.”

All this time we had just been throwing our leftover bones off the edge of the island when Sib could have been making use of them. Maybe after she had made her lab, she could even help with constructing other kinds of buildings for us. If all it took was one person and a big pile of bones, it would be worth it. ”Alright. I’ll start setting aside all of the fish bones from cooking for you. Also, Mudpuppy has been going out hunting for larger monsters, so maybe we can use that as an additional source of bones too. I’ll talk to her about it.”

Sib slowly inclined her head in what I took as a gesture of gratitude. “I look forward to continuing my research.”

She really had a way of making everything seem ominous, I thought to myself.

Sib gave me a couple more pieces of vicious treat, both for myself to snack on and a couple to share with others. Mudpuppy in particular came to mind as she would likely benefit the most from the strength buff.

Lastly, I made her promise not to make any more stinky treats until she could control the pungent smell as it was too disruptive for the villagers.

Briham came up to meet me as I left the house, still pinching his nose and looking just as perturbed as before. “Your grace, were you able to identify the source of this foul stench?”

“Yup.” I took another bite of the purple sludge snack and chewed on it happily. “Disposing of it as we speak.”

The look on the fussy administrator’s face was priceless as he nearly shouted, “You’re eating it?!” and immediately began retching on the spot.