A deal worth making

I have overslept. Nightly visions and mass murder tend to mess up your sleep pattern. I should be having nightmares. Even disregarding headless monsters that want to turn me into a reverse porcupine.

I consider going back to sleep. Turning onto the other side and dozing for another 10 minutes would be so good. I turn on the other side. I feel too broad, as if my head should be much closer to the cushion. That is obviously nonsense. My shoulders haven’t grown dramatically over night.

I don’t want to be alone. I almost jump out of the bed, which makes me think of what Merental did to his concubine on that bed, get out of my night clothing and cast a full cleaning spell on myself.

The scrambled egg is delicious. That a wizard who routinely casts a general purpose healing spell on himself once a day doesn’t have to fear arterial plaques also helps. That raises a question. Can I get a vitamin deficiency? I am not going to get a set of rats for experimenting with scurvy. I file the question as academic.

The monster I got into a fight with last evening is not academic. Zewrepa identifies it as a mammutus, an animal living near the north coast of Asia as she puts it. Though apparently there are a number of related species and she is no biologists. She just kills them, should the need arise.

„Do they live in herds?“ I ask. „Some of their species. Others live usually alone but form bands for migrating with pathfinders and defenders for the calves.“ replies Zewrepa. „Are you seriously telling me that they can dig from Siberia, sorry, North Asia, all the way to the Adriatic Ocean?“ I cannot keep the scepticism out of my voice. „No. They can cover the distance with relative ease, but they use magic of the Earth, not the soil and rock of the actual Earth for long distance movement. They are not quite as good as the dwarves at that, but for animals they are still impressive. They beat a lot of other earth mages in that regard.“ she explains. „Are you saying that there may be magical tunnels that may lead to our cave without us knowing about them? Or worse, somebody could build them?“ I ask horrified. She produces a sequence of cords sounding as if played with a flute. „Not into this cave. The wards prevent that reliably. To this mountain, maybe.“. Melo adds „Certainly to this mountain. That is how Marental had the slave traders deliver sacrifices. He probably has resealed them.“ „Probably? We need to check that.“ I say with a voice a bit higher than usual.

Zewrepa is considering their command structure. Their commander is a worrier. Does she resent him for that? For now, no, she does not, as she is unsure how much of a worrier a commander needs to be. Given the end of her last mission her unconsidered response is not cautious enough.

She resolves to talk with Melo about the issue.

„This is one of the migratory species“ she tells him. „Did I get the pathfinder soon enough?“ Peregrinus asks quite reasonably. Unfortunately she has to reply „No. Or to be precise, it does not matter. This species uses multiple pathfinders. You got one of them in time. The others are gone.“ He starts walking in a pattern that returns him to his point of origin after walking only a few meters. Is he triangulating something? He goes on „Even if I arm you, well maybe except for you personally, Zewrepa, you’d still die in combat against these monsters. Maybe you’d take one with you, but that is unacceptable.“. To that she can reply only with more information „How did you kill it?“. He stops his movement to reply „With a combination of poison and lightning. I think the poison alone would have killed it eventually, but I have no evidence of that. I could not wait. Not knowing what it is, I could not let it escape to report.“. To that she only has a pragmatic reply „You will have to test this on further specimens if they decide to come here. If not, the issue is moot.“ His response is affirmative „Right. In the mean time I can improve my weapons anyway. You cannot have weapons that work too well. Is there anything more you can learn from the corpse?“. That is a statement she absolutely agrees with. She resolves to discuss with him the weapons to be built after she will have talked with Melo about his character, as weapons to be built may depend on the outcome of the discussion. For now, however, there is more to do, so she says „I cannot learn more from the corpse, but we can gain nourishment from it. I want to butcher it. Stored in those buildings the meat won’t spoil.“ She points at the partially destroyed cheese manufacture. He shudders „The blood it shed did not create the impresion that the creature is edible.“. She responds with a hooted tremolo „Indeed not for you. Leuma and I can eat it. That will stretch our supplies.“

I watch Zewrepa’s magical blades slicing a monster to pieces. To them it does not matter whether they are operating on a life or dead body. It would still amount to a waste. We are wasting quite a lot. Not just here. Vegetables are peeled. And we leave bodily wastes. Mammal wastes still have quite some nutrition left in them. Otherwise beetles gathering them would not have evolved. Europe has them, though they are not active in this weather. Fimbulwinter may exterinate them. The ecological damage the gods are doing with this war is not my most pressing concern. We won’t drown in frozen shit and if the winter ends at least fungi will still be ready to deal with wastes.

That gives me an idea. I tell Zewrepa that I’ll enter the manufacture to look for overlooked resources. The chime I get in return signals approval and assent.

I am standing in front of a pile of manure. It is frozen at least on the outside, so the stink isn’t that bad. I thought about using Marental’s sword to cut pieces off, but it is my sword now. You don’t mistreat a weapon that keeps you alive, with or without cleaning magic. I have taken a pickaxe and a shovel from the work room of this site.

I have loosened enough pieces for an experiment. But frankly, I don’t want to use the bare shit. I could conjure a wooden box. That would work fine for transport and also for doing what I want with the manure. But it would be no good for the harvest. I want something porous to let air and the product through but keep dirt back.

My final design is a wooden box with a layer of straw on the bottom and on the sides. The manure is placed in the middle and the whole assembly is covered in a thin sheet of fluffy silk. For me silk, if it just the substance, not woven into a cloth, is cheap to make.

Zewrepa is quietly watching me. I let my magic flow through the shit. Yes, it holds the correct kind of spores. I use a heat effect to thaw the stuff, kill the other spores and pump the right kind full of life energy. The beginning of a fungal mycellium is spread through the manure.

„What are you doing that for?“ she asks. I grin. Using life magic is for some reason fun. I let her know. „If everything goes right, we’ll be harvesting delicious mushrooms in a few days. Help me carry this into a cellar that is warm enough to prevent freezing. I’ll establish a heat field there that will keep it warm for good fungal growth at least for a good part of the day.“