Callie's Heroes

PART III - MORNING MEAL

“Is the Little One injured?” someone asked breathlessly as they ran closer.

“No, I’m fine,” Callie said, sitting up. “Just my damn worm doing its thing.” She looked up to see the beat cop Dwarf from earlier in the morning. “I felt it coming and quickly sat down,” she added. The look of genuine concern on his face quickly resolved into relief.

“I am glad. Today will be a busy day for all of us, as recruits will be falling throughout at least the morning. We always have a few that bump, bruise or break something. All of you, please be prepared to stop what you’re doing to get safe. If you are injured, anyone on patrol will be carrying healing potions of varying strength. Don’t be afraid to ask.”

Across the yard, Koda could be seen walking from his bunkhouse towards the big-doored Ogre house. With a sudden jolt, he stopped walking and quickly dropped to one knee.

“Excuse me,” the Dwarf said, and started jogging towards the Bearkin.

Koda shook his head several times, as if to clear it. He tried to stand, but was woozy and dropped back to kneeling to collect himself.

“Bet he got a reveal,” Callie said.

“The effects for him were much more minor compared to you,” Lena said. “I think there’s something to size being a factor to what happens.”

“Great,” Callie said sarcastically.

Beatcop arrived at Koda, and Callie could barely hear that they were talking if she concentrated, but it was still too soft to make out any words.

“What did you get?” Xin asked, interrupting the eavesdropping attempt.

“A racial trait called Tinker,” Callie responded. “Not sure what it’s for, though,” she added, not daring to ask her mind for details in the middle of a conversation.

“Gnomes are very good engineers and inventors. Many become Artificers as a profession, or go into civil engineering. Maybe this trait is involved in some way?” Lena suggested.

Callie shrugged, really having no reference for Gnomish culture. “Maybe?”

In the distance, there came the clear call of a ringing bell.

“That must be the warning for breakfast,” Lena said. “We can wait for the boys and head over.”

Around the garden, others began to emerge from their bunkhouses, some rushing out to avoid getting sick inside. Callie saw three Goblins streaming out together in a panic, only to fall to the ground on their hands and knees. Callie began to run towards them to help, but three camp personnel swooped in from out of nowhere. Unfortunately, two of the Goblins hadn’t fully made it, and their robes were soaked much as Callie’s was earlier. They were provided towels to wipe their faces with and then gestured towards their new clothes. Staff assisted retrieving a set of clothing from each of their baskets, before leading the three to the showers to clean up.

“Poor guys,” Callie said in obvious sympathy. “Small people definitely have it worse.”

As they watched, people continued to emerge from their bunkhouses. They received directions from a staff member and headed off in small groups. Some still wore their white robes, while a few others took time to change into their new clothing. There were a lot of people admiring each other’s new digs, as everything fit as well as it had for Callie’s group.

Xin gave off another groan, and worked through a double-wammy of new reveals; a skill called Cleanse Poison/Disease, and then an obvious racial trait called Chameleon Skin. “All that for something that is incredibly obvious,” Xin snarled, pointing at the scales on the back of her hand. “Why would I need to know that I have scaled skin?”

“No kidding. Next thing you know we’ll get a reveal for Eyeball Blinking,” Callie said, wary of whatever could be coming next from her Symbiote.

The rest of the group finally emerged from the bunkhouse, with Tazrok carrying the soup pot, loaded with the empty bowls and used spoons, which he set on the porch. Vanis, seeing the package the Brownie had delivered earlier for the first time, looked in the basket, and even with the distance you could see his smile. He brought it inside, emerging quickly without it. All three looked smart in their new clothes. Even Tazrok looked great, looking like a huge enforcer from some crime movie, but with a warm, happy look on his face.

“Took you long enough,” Xin snarled.

“This was my fault,” Koda said in his baritone bear voice. “I saw the pictures you drew of your Totem and was very impressed. I am looking forward to seeing you summon it for real.”

“Thanks,” Xin said, slightly irritated at the intrusion into her privacy, while at the same time appreciative of the comment. She hadn’t shared her drawings with anyone, and in fact didn’t even remember doing most of the drawing last night. When she emerged from her Worm trance, she remembered dutifully moving to the table and picking up the charcoal to start drawing, but then little else until Lena woke everyone this morning worrying about Callie. Xin really wasn’t sure what she had drawn, and was doubtful of the compliments as she had almost no artistic talent. This made her slightly suspect of the Bearkin.

With a simple declaration, Tazrok informed everyone that he was now hungry, and none dared to argue. The seven set off in the direction everyone else was being herded, looking like an odd assortment of heroes slow-walking in an action movie. Callie smiled at that image, and imagined what her father would have thought of the spectacle.

Breakfast was being served in a large area covered with a high, canvas tent roof and a hard, flagstone floor. The sides had all been tied open or up, revealing several long, heavy wood tables with benches for seating, and a cafeteria-style serving area. There was a fairly long queue, but it was moving fast. Moving fast, that is, until a Beastkin, some kind of Catkin, dropped her tray and grabbed her head. She had obviously just taken a hit from a reveal. Thankfully, she had not yet loaded her tray, so outside of the spectacle and noise, there was no harm done. The others close by assisted getting her to a vacant spot on a bench.

“Might I make a suggestion,” Vanis said. “We all go through together, but only half of us carry a tray. If one of us gets a reveal, we can quickly hand that tray off to someone with empty hands before the effects hit.” The idea was sound and they did so, with Callie carrying a single tray for both her and Pixyl's food.

The food itself was self-service, and consisted of a huge pan of scrambled eggs, another with some kind of meat that looked like slices of pan-fried sausage, and loaves of a grain bread still steaming with heat from the oven. Two types of fruit were available, one that looked apple-ish and another resembling a pear. Callie asked Vanis to serve her as the counter was too high, asking for a tiny bit of everything and the apple-fruit, while Pixyl skipped the sausage, saying it was too greasy for her stomach today.

The drink was water, but there were several varieties of a sticky syrup you would add for flavor. Only a tiny amount was needed, and not knowing what the various fruit-looking pictures were, Callie picked the apple-ish one again, while Pixyl had some kind of a round, blue-greenish berry, saying it was her favorite.

Vanis’s plan of having a backup for catching the tray paid off when Lena was hit. Koda deftly took the tray of food in a single hand, while catching her falling body gracefully with his other arm. Vanis stepped in quickly to take over and led Lena to a bench to recover. They talked a minute, before both smiled and Vanis put his hand on her shoulder.

“Any issues?” Callie asked.

“The usual. She’ll rest a moment while we finish here and then join us when we sit. She did get the skill Instinctive Parry, however. She was quite pleased with that.”

Behind them, the line had grown as more recruits arrived. Most were still in their robes, coming straight to the chow line rather than changing first. The wisdom of Vanis had spread after Lena’s dizzy spell, and the every-other method was being practiced by most everyone. Things moved quickly from drinks to metal three-tined forks and table knives.

The six converged on a table, and Lena quickly joined them. Tazrok had to sit on the flagstone floor at the end, as it was both questionable that the bench would hold him, and he wouldn’t have fit anyway. Callie and Pixyl both had the opposite problem. Callie was just tall enough to see the top of the table while sitting, but Pixyl was forced to stand. Even that was barely enough and the Pixie was probably about to climb onto the table when a Goblin wearing an apron walked up with blocks of wood to use as booster seats. Callie was now fine sitting, but Pixyl still needed to stand.

The simple fare, obviously enhanced by Culinar magics, was just as divine as the soup from the night before. If it was true that an army marches on its stomach, then this army would be marching triple time. The seven were laughing it up, Koda telling some story about trouble that he and his sister got into as a young cub, when Callie got hit again.

OFF-CLASS PERK OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN: Plumbing

Callie groaned as she leaned into Lena on her left, the after-effects finally waning. The problem wasn’t that the effects were so bad. Not completely at least. The issue was they came on with almost no warning and could actually be dangerous if a person was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Around the table, heck, around the entire tent, people needing a moment to recover from receiving a new reveal had become so common among everyone, that the conversations just flowed around it. When someone was hit, they’d put their head on the table and whoever was next to that person would make sure they didn’t fall or hurt themselves. So far everyone in Callie’s group of seven, but Pixyl, had dealt with it, the Pixie being so far spared. Curious and having a moment before she was fully recovered, Callie made a quick query.

Tell me about Plumbing

PERK OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN: PLUMBING (IRON TIER)

MANA USAGE: SITUATIONAL AT HIGHER TIERS

DESCRIPTION: Basic knowledge of plumbing science, construction and regulations. Higher tiers of this perk allow the use of mana to assist project construction, as well as the crafting of magical plumbing components. This perk synergizes with the TINKER trait in the exploration of perk-related projects.

The new flood of information hit Callie, including plumbing concepts she didn’t know nor ever could have imagined appropriate for this world. Magic as part of the perk, though? The idea of somehow there being magical plumbing, like in the showers, was almost impossible for Callie to get her head around, but at least she could actually see the results. The perk also promised the ability to actually use magic as part of plumbing construction? How would that work? And there was the way it seemed to synergize with the Tinker trait in some way. That must have been that UNREVEALED part of the Bowyer/Fletcher perk. Callie vowed to get some time shortly to retrieve the information on all of her new skills to really try to put the pieces together.

“Anything g-g-good?” Pixyl asked as she nibbled on a piece of the wonderful bread.

“My Basic Plumbing perk,” Callie said. “But I knew that was coming eventually.” She was really eager to find out what her full repertoire of capabilities was going to look like, and hated how it was being doled out piecemeal like this. She imagined her emoji-talking Symbiote plugging away, trying to do all the things it was supposed to do to get the reveals done. Maybe sitting in some control room in her brain, punching buttons and pulling levers to get the synapses to fire in just the right way, or running wires to complete circuits.

“Plumbing?” Koda asked, confused.

“Something my dad taught me when I was a girl,” Callie responded, pinching a piece of the sausage between two pieces of bread before eating it.

The big bear rubbed his chin. “Fascinating. I had no idea that non-class perks would be revealed by our worms.”

“I got Carpentry earlier, too,” Callie said with a shrug.

Koda nodded sagely, absorbing the information, before shrugging himself and returning to his conversation with Xin. Koda was a Paladin, which was a hybrid of Warrior and Healer, so Xin took an immediate interest in chatting about the Healer side with him, quickly forgiving the intrusion into her drawings. They had been talking quietly to each other, one of them periodically laughing, for most of the morning meal.

“Are they flirting?” Callie whispered to Pixyl, who glanced over and seemed to notice for the first time.

“I w-w-wouldn’t think so,” Pixyl said.

“They look kinda like they’re flirting.”

Pixyl shrugged,

“Oh, well. If that’s what’s going on, then ‘Go Xin!’”

“It’s no…” Pixyl started to say, her eyes shooting wide. She gave Callie a pleading look before gulping, barely squeaking out, “Five of them!”