Chapter 737 (1/2)

Allica frowned at Kurag. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that his Strength is too high. I did not see or hear him moving the rocks. Yet when I came to inspect his path, it was completely clear. No rubble was left. All was cleanly tossed into the chasm. And he had cleared almost twenty… no, closer to thirty times as much ground as Kejt. He has Strength enough to have been in the High King’s Court-”

“Do not say that title,” Allica hissed. “Not even here, just among us. But I still fail to see your point. He is capable; what else is there to know?”

“It is where his Strength comes from,” Norm said with a sigh. “Have you met his gaze? That boy’s hands are soaked in blood. We… we simply worry on what battlefield he has tempered himself. The Monster Race is constantly fractured, fighting itself in order to reveal young heroes every generation. If he were to have grown to power in such a garden, that is fine. Admirable, even. But…”

Allica’s blood ran cold. She had thought about this possibility, but his body seemed so scrawny and frail. With the way that he was so unused to the weather, Alicca had been convinced that he had never been to this Land before.

Or perhaps his previous trip had been entirely within a mech.

“If he fought in the last war,” Allica said, urging her racing heart to calm, “Would that truly be a crime? Even if it is through guilt, if it motivates him to help us now-”

“You would take their pity?” Kurag sneered.

Now Allica’s heart settled. That weight in her heart seemed to radiate out from herself, filling the whole room. “I would save the lives of thousands at the cost of my own pride, yes. That is why we all yet live, is it not? Because we made that choice.”

To that, no one in the room had an answer.

Finally, Kricsk scratched his neck and said. “Well, perhaps switching him to my unit would be best. If he is that strong, he could help clear out the main road. If we make progress there-”

“Out of the question,” Kurag said. But then the old man sighed. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps… borrowing his Strength is all we can do for now. But I must insist he remains under my supervision. It is clear to me… that none of you would be capable of even slowing him down, should he turn out to be a spy.”

Allica could only shake her head. This paranoia… it was clearly pointless. But in the face of Kurag’s stubbornness, there was nothing she could say. But before they parted for the night, she did turn to Kurag and ask, “Even if we couldn’t stop him, do you really think you could, Kurag?”

Kurag’s grin turned his face into a labyrinth of leather wrinkles. “Never underestimate an individual who has lived as long as I have, Allica.”

*****

Randidly’s second and third days proceeded much as the first two had gone. During the day, he wandered the strange meandering passages in the ground that connected this partially collapsed city. With his Grasp of the World Seed, he could feel the plant life within the surrounding area and feel the areas where the collapses were the worst. He went to those and cleared away the rubble.

Mostly, he simply reached out and touched the stones. Such was the instant heat he could produce that the stone was instantly vaporized. Scraps of burnt carbon floated away, carried away by the slight breeze that reached even down into this deep crevasse.

At night, Randidly ate with the other laborers and listened to them. They talked and joked and boasted, but it soon became clear to Randidly that they were struggling under the weight of too much stress and a deep sense of powerlessness. Yet also duty weighed importantly on their hearts.

Randidly’s emerald eyes watched, waiting for some sort of sign of what he should do for his own issues.

Answers didn’t come easily, but Randidly didn't’ really expect them to. This was complicated by the fact that the group didn’t really trust him. Not that he could blame them for that. Their people had recently lost a terrible war to what they assumed his people to be. Even now, their task was to excavate the corpse of their own fractured civilization.

To that endeavor, Randidly felt a deep sympathy. So he utilized some of the benefits of his office to increase the speed at which they worked. Besides his own paths that he cleared, Randidly also had begun secretly helping out others. Very soon, they would reach paths that were miraculously without damage after the brutal attack that came on this waypoint.

Randidly wanted them to value him, but not so much that they would be suspicious.