[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 239 – Home Field Advantage

Matt caught up to Raiko soon after she left. He didn’t much like the discussions going on, and didn’t feel he could contribute in any case.

His stance, even if it differed from Raiko’s, was to stand beside his Queen to present a united front. Sil’mara could not afford to appear split on such a pivotal issue.

The good thing was, it was stupidly easy to support her choice. Anybody who was stupid enough to not want to level was an idiot, in Matt’s opinion.

Sometimes you got them in even the brightest groups. Idiots who only harmed themselves were one thing, but soon enough, they tended to evolve into true fucking morons.

Those were the dangerous ones.

Morons, in Matt’s worldview, were the people who pressed their idiotic beliefs on other people. One person who prefers to drink their own piss because it’s somehow “sterile” or “safer” than the fluoridated water supply is gross but otherwise harmless.

People who lobby against safe drinking water standards, bomb water purification plants, and otherwise demand that everybody drink their own piss were the ones that you had to watch out for.

Worse, the transformation was often seamless and without fanfare.

He’d seen it happen a number of times as a manager.

“That must not have been easy.” Matt heard Raiko say to Haman. “Protecting those who weren’t able to protect themselves.”

The Queen’s scarf caught in the wind. It hissed and popped with virulent green poison shot through with breaking ice, then it shifted and raced with burning purple flames.

He wasn’t sure what combination that was. Or if it was even an element at all.

Matt came up alongside Raiko and fell into step on her left. “I appreciate the vote of confidence back there, Raiko. But you and I both know they only want to talk to the ‘highest authority’ when dealing with their problems. True Karen behavior. They always ‘want to see the manager’. However, their problems, as it turns out, are not quite so mundane.”

She looked over at him, seeming subdued. “At first, I thought you were being sarcastic. They’re going to have to get used to it. You, Matt, possessing authority.”

Kai, one of the only people missing from the impromptu town hall meeting, crossed their path dragging a freshly cut log. A pair of dullahans were helping him carry twice again as many logs as Kai managed himself.

Bal’daz chased after him, his robes fluttering as he tried to get Kai’s attention, spouting out supply figures of planks, beams, and sheets of wood he needed.

Matt watched them go, then turned back to her. “I don’t really want it, truth be told. Been there, done that, but I get that you don’t want it either. And I keep coming back to the same thing, y’know? It’s not that I think I’m deserving, but I start to think of all the terrible bosses and people who are probably still alive and I know they wouldn’t think twice about seizing whatever power they could get. I may not be the best, but I’m not them, is what I’m getting at.”

The silence stretched for several uncomfortable minutes as Raiko thought about what Matt had said. That, or she was thinking of how to put him into the hole in the ground again.

He never could read Raiko very well.

“Your reasoning is remarkably similar to mine,” she finally said.

Matt gave a relieved chortle. “Not so much the best people for the job, but we both know that the average person out there is far worse than us.”

“Eventually, we won’t be the frontrunners of civilization. The only bastion.”

“I kinda like that we are,” Matt said thoughtfully. “Getting in on the ‘ground floor’ as it were, seeing things built up from the start and knowing you’ll be alive to see it completed? It’s a fascinating feeling.”

“Well, we always will be of this kingdom. I just mean, there must be something more out there. In the deeper Layers of Shardrune Il’dran.”

“How many layers do you think there are? We’ve been in this one for quite a while already, but assuming we don’t get obliterated by the great Dust Buster in the sky, I imagine we’ll be able to find our way out before the year’s up.”

“I can only guess,” she admitted. “Maybe five, likely more. It’s possible an updated tome in the Aker Academy has a direct reference.”

Matt kicked a rock out of his path and watched it skip over the beaten-down grass. Even here, however, the grass was far stronger than anything on Earth.

Back on Earth, the whole of the settlement’s inner walls would be churned-up mud and dirt. Here, the grass was merely bent.

She turned away from Haman’s tiny isle floating above the Sacred Tree. Maybe she was intending on finally bringing it down and merging it with their Skyshard.

“I appreciate you, Matt.”

“I–what? No. Don’t do that.”

She smirked at his reaction.

“Hey! I’m not messing around, Raiko! Don’t do that. I mouth off, you stick me in the hole. It’s our dynamic. You don’t go around appreciating me.”

“Oh, I might still stick you in the hole. Don’t you worry.”

Matt gave a relieved sigh. “Good. I’ve found that with the whole…” He made a gesture he belatedly realized was reminiscent of jazz hands. “…immortality thing, that I really have become traditionalistic. Is that a word? Well, if it’s not, I’m coining it. And it means, before you ask, that I don’t like things to change.”

He frowned, realizing that they were heading toward dangerous territory.

“However, I’m trying to be better about it! A whole gaggle of people wandering around my home? Fine, I can adapt. They have a better home than me? Well, that’s fine too. Mine is the OG. But speaking of shitty homes…you think maybe you want to spruce up the dome a bit? Just my room, really. Don’t need to strain yourself. I’m just asking for a bathroom that isn’t a board over a hole.”

She stared at him.

Haman joined his stare to Raiko’s. Somehow, the otter was more intimidating than she was.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said, pointing at both of them. “That’s really not fair the way you can double up like that. We’ve long since established that you don’t make, but some of us have bodily processes that we’d prefer to keep on the D.L. Know what I mean?”

“No.”

Haman nodded.

“See, little dude knows what I mean. Dap it up.” Matt raised his fist toward Haman.

Unsure of what to do, Haman licked a knuckle gently and let out an inquisitive squeak.

“All right,” Matt said, a little unsettled. “You do you, little dude.”

Stop saying little dude! He screamed into his own head. It was like the longer that Sam was gone, the more he felt compelled to talk and act like him. As if he could somehow replace or soften the blow of his loss.

This was different from the other times Sam went up against an impossible foe. He had always been there. Wounded, sure. But the man was always around.

Matt didn’t know what to feel or think now that Sam was gone. He held out hope that he would return, but…he knew on some level that he could not wait around for him.

None of them could.

Raiko’s gaze softened. “I’ll improve our dome. After I’ve attended to some business. I’m not putting Haman second.” She looked away. “I wanted to leave Sam’s room untouched and hoped that perhaps Bal’daz could build something until the castle finished.”

“That’s fair,” Matt said, trying not to poke the wound too much. “I do recall Bal’daz talking about making proper homes. Cottages and townhomes, I think he said. Something to go in the city center.”

“That would be ideal. Once the wall is finished.”

“So where are we going?” he asked. “You said you weren’t putting Haman second, so I take it this has something to do with that sweet floating isle up there?”

She turned back to the isle. “I’m looking for a spot to bring it down. Somewhere he likes.” She looked down at Haman, then continued moving towards some of the bamboo that sheltered the Sacred Tree’s inner area.

There was probably a proper word for it. Matt sure didn’t know it.

Haman’s whiskers twitched as he sniffed the air. He wriggled and twisted in Raiko’s arms until she got the hint and set him down.

He took off like a little brown rocket. Matt didn’t know otters could run that fast. The pobul booked it, running this way and that. Through the bamboo, back out onto the grassy hillside, to the base of the tree, and back again faster than Matt could drop three f-bombs.

Raiko looked at him like a proud mama bear. “He’s fast, isn’t he?”

“No shit!”

Finally, Haman seemed to settle on a location somewhere over the hill and beyond the Sacred Tree’s area. The only way they could tell was because he kept chirping like a little bird.

Cresting the hill, they saw him on a flat ledge of a smaller hillside near the bamboo groves. He moved about in a quick circle and then sat down on his rump.

No, scratch that, Matt thought as they approached the pobul. He was sitting on his tail. Using it like a thick pillow.

They hurried to the pobul.

Haman looked up sweetly at Raiko, trilling affectionately at her.

Matt didn’t know what the sounds meant, but he could guess well enough because a moment later, she stooped down and picked him up like a baby. She even cradled him like one. Only Haman’s belly was facing her forearm instead of his back.

“Kinda close to the Tree, isn’t it?” Matt asked, slightly concerned.

He didn’t know how the Sacred Tree worked, but as one of their two settlement cores, it needed to be protected at all costs. If that was destroyed or damaged enough, their Skyshard might fall out of the sky.

And as curious as Matt was, he really didn’t want to find out what was at the bottom of the First Layer.

“That’s for the best, really. I’m not the only one connected to the Sacred Tree, after all.”

“It won’t…hurt it though?”

She looked over at him curiously. “Of course not. The Tree will be okay, Matt. Our home will be fine. Haman’s isle is a work of art. Its rich fields and tended crops will help the Tree flourish. Not to mention ourselves.”

The Skyshard of Sil’mara parted and grew out of the way, making room for the new tiny isle that then began to harmoniously meld with the landscape.

With one hand, Raiko held the [Sculptor’s Cube] with her Glyph marked arm. Its many carved lines pulsed with energy before it darted off, dancing across the verdant land as a medium for Raiko to focus Sculpting.

Haman raised a glowing paw, and the isle he cultivated and tended began to sink toward the waiting basin that Raiko was creating.

Somehow she moved the Tiles out of the way, creating a hollow just for Haman’s isle so that it looked like a highly cultivated but otherwise natural extension of the hillside.

Matt looked at Haman with newfound respect. He knew that the pobul’s isle was special, but he’d never seen it up close before like this.

It was, quite frankly, amazing.

Matt had to wonder just where he got all the seeds for the fields, but he quickly shoved that curiosity aside. “You have grapes! We could make wine, Raiko! And raisins. Oh man, I love oatmeal and raisin cookies, which of course you have wheat too! We could make bread.”

The possibilities were endless.

Raiko smiled warmly, which was a rarity, and gave Haman an affectionate pat. “Haman has created a slice of paradise.”

This lone isle could stock an entire grocery store based on what he saw here alone. And as the ex-manager of the largest retailer in America, Matt considered himself a good judge.

Thousands of people could be fed from these fields as they currently stood. And if they could expand the fields–perhaps with Tiles?–then they would have one of the most pivotal resources locked in before it ever became a concern.

He squinted at the dark-skinned figure staggering out of the wheat fields, eventually toppling onto the hillside in front of them.

Raiko took one look at him and jerked as if she’d been slapped. “Xero!? Is this where you’ve been hiding?”

The drow Samurai popped up onto his feet and gave them all a dazzling white smile. “G’day!”