Chapter 5

Flames engulfed Samasan. He could feel them surging passed him. The roar became deafening. He saw himself encasing iron tools in clay, and throwing them into a blinding fire.

"Let your burning desires feed the flames of your passion." The mysterious voice commanded.

Samasan burst awake in a hot sweat. The world came into view. He was still alive.

"Jutwaso!"

"She's alive, brave idiot." Lira answered.

"That's not my name."

"Jutwaso told us the tale of the goblin attack."

"How did..."

"We found you on the path to water." Lira responds.

Samasan tries to flex the ankle of his broken leg.

"Ow" he grimaces.

"The blood of angels does not heal all wounds." She tells him.

"It's not blood."

"Then what is it."

"I don't know."

"No one knows where the blood of angels comes from."

"Not angels." Samasan struggles to sit up. He winces at the pain while standing. "How long was I out?"

"Seven-three cycles."

"Four days." Samasan groans.

"What?" Lira asks.

"Nothing."

He walks out of the house with a limp.

"Urujah!"

Jutwaso calls out to Samasan, who waves back at her. He's leaning heavily on his walking stick. She meets him in the square.

"You're finally awake. How are you feeling?"

"Like shit."

"Huh?" Jutwaso is confused by Samasan's native language.

"Bad."

"We've requested a healer come."

"What could they do at this point?"

"Much more." She answers.

"Did you tell them?"

"About the forge?" Jutwaso asks.

Samasan nods.

"No."

"Thank you."

"You should tell the village."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'll be forced to work the forge forever, and never get to make anything else."

Jutwaso sighs, and Samasan follows.

"There's always war and death." Samasan grumbles. "I don't want to be part of that. Can't someone else do it?"

"You know how to make weapons though."

"I know what weapons are used for." he retorts. "I could teach Lira to work metal."

"Lira helps Yar weave cloth."

"Then someone else!.. Anyone except me." Samasan laments.

Jutwaso walks to Yar's home, and Samasan chases after her. She knocks on the door.

"What are you doing?" Samasan asks.

"Yes?" Yar answers the door.

"Samasan needs Lira's help." Jutwaso says.

"Oh ah um..." Samasan stutters.

"Lira's needed for weaving." Yar says.

"The thing is... uh..." Samasan fumbles over his words. "I sort of built a forge, and have been practicing smithing metals, and now I need someone to do it for me, because the knight order never has enough weapons."

"Why can't you do it?" Yar asks

"I don't wa-uh... I have too much work to do as it is already."

Jutwaso gives Samasan a strange look.

"I see...well..." Yar thinks. "Why don't you ask Poh to aid you. He used to wind string."

"Poh? Errr.."

Samasan tries to think of an excuse. He doesn't really like Poh all that much. His attitude rubs Samasan the wrong way.

"Poh will be fine." Jutwaso interrupts Samasan searching for an excuse.

"Tell Poh, I said to help Samasan with his work." Yar tells them both.

"You just couldn't let this go." Samasan complains to Jutwaso as they walk to Poh.

"It will be good for our Lordship." Jutwaso says.

"What will be good?" Poh asks.

"Hello Poh."

"Hello Brave Idiot."

"That's not my name."

"Brave-" Jutwaso catches herself. "Samasan has gotten Yar's word that you're to work for him."

Poh starts shaving off his fingernails with a knife without talking.

"You can say 'no.'" Samasan tries to persuade him.

"I'll do it." Poh answers.

"Good. I knew you'd underst-"

"Then we're in agreement." Jutwaso talks over Samasan, before he can retrack his words.

"Why?" Samasan asks surprised.

"The things you make and do have helped the village. I've gotten to eat every day for the last month."

Samasan stretches his torso back, and looks at the sky. It's cloudy and dark. He winces at the pain in his leg.

"Ow."

"You'll need all the help you can get with that injury." Poh tells Samasan.

Samasan nods his head and groans.

Poh is tasked by Samasan to collect large rocks, around fist sized. Poh grinds a flat spot on both ends of the rocks, and Samasan grinds the rocks into dowels on the lathe with other rocks of the same hardness or greater. The rock-dowels are attached in line to wooden dowels, and tied together with splints and twine. While Samasan works on making drill bits from rocks, Poh is cutting down a pine tree for lumber.

Poh builds a three-poled pyramid tower with a base that is four and a half silver-rods tall when standing. A fourth pole of tree trunk is made two golden-rods long, and attached to the three-poled tower as a three to one ratio lever. Three centimeters of movement on one end, causes one centimeter of movement on the other. Samasan task is to bring a large boulder to the village, and is walking it a kilometer. It takes a week to move the eighteen-hundred kilogram.

The healer came to the village during the week. She was a druid named Thris. The druid treated Samasan's injured leg by wrapping it in exotic plants, and reciting a prayer. His leg instantly felt better as the plants on it desiccated into brown dust. Samasan was charged five gold, and small jar of one-hundred milliliters of chill-berries he had collected. He asked Thris about the uses for chill-berries, and was told by her that she can't reveal it's secrets to those who'll abuse nature.

Samasan took to moving his forge equipment out of the forest the last three days of the seven day week. Although, the village doesn't actually measure weeks, months, and years. From Yar's words, the season doesn't change much. There's no cylical events besides the daily cycle of the sun-ring to measure time against. The current days are called the five-three age of his lordship Halgar in the local kingdom. Ages a marked by periods of war.

A time of peace is called a resting age. The five-three age is the second warring period for the Halgar kingdom. They are fighting against Queen Irida of the Irida kingdom to the east. The cardinal directions are used in the local culture under different names. East is the direction the sun-ring always stays in. Samasan wants to calculate the size of the planet, but hasn't had time to travel far for taking multiple measurements at the same time of day.

"I brought the boulder you requested." Poh speaks with heavy breaths.

"Good. Now we must form it." Samasan assesses the large rock. "We'll need more iron. Poh collect these kinds of rocks. I will be making charcoal for the furnace."

Samasan builds a four meter by four meter by two meter tall pile of tightly packed wood, and covers it in soil. He cuts small fenestrations in the dirt for air to reach the wood, and lights the bottom of the wood pile on fire. The dirt covering the mound billows steam as it cooks. The air holes are stuffed with more dirt, and Samasan leaves the pile to slowly burn down to wood charcoal. Samasan builds a mud chimney furnace.

It is a five-three silver rods wide by seven-three-three golden rod tall standing pipe of mud. Forty centimeters wide by two and a half meters tall. The mud is made from inorganic dirt that was collected from below the top soil. The mud furnace dried for five cycles, while the charcoal cooled off. During that time, Samasan and Poh worked on the iron ore. The rocks were cooked red-hot in a forge, and dropped into a pit filled with water to heat shock them. The sudden change in temperature caused the ore to stress crack, and become easier to smash into smaller pieces.

"Is this necessary." Poh asked.

"Yes. I'm fairly sure." Samasan smashes a red oxidized rock into gravel. "We need to crush this into dust."

Poh groans at the size of the task.

"I have to make more arrows." Samasan slinks off.

The lathe, Izabelle, sings a high pitched song to Samasan as they work. He stops working to scribe drawings into the dirt floor with his pointy-stick. Samasan scribbles over the drawing in frustration. He remembers seeing a compound bow on earth that used pulleys, but he can't imagine the design, and trying to make a weapon that kills is unnerving Samasan.

"Why am I even trying to make this?" He questions himself.

Samasan checks on Poh.

"I'm almost done." Poh points to a pot filled with red dust.

"Hmmm..." Samasan strains to lift the pot. It exceeds fifty kilograms, "This is too much."

"Okay. Now what?" Poh asks.

"We uncover the charcoal."

Samasan and Poh collect large baskets full of charcoal. The dried-mud furnace is filled one third with charcoal, and alternating layers of iron oxide dust and charcoal are added on top. Poh lights the charcoal at the bottom of the furnace. They take turns working the bellow to feed air into the furnace. More charcoal is added on top as it burns down. The furnace is filled with blinding white hot coals in the middle.

It takes a full ten hours of sweaty work to keep the furnace going full blast. They each feed the furnace for a couple of hours at night. It's left to cool til morning. The next day the villagers are watching Poh break down the furnace. It crumbles to reveal a pile of unburnt charcoal. Samasan pokes a stick into the charcoal, and rolls out a heavy lump. It's around one-thousand cubic centimeters of iron weighing nearly eight kilograms. Samasan knocks of some pieces of charcoal stuck to the hardened metal blob.

The villagers get back to their own work as the iron lump is dragged to the forge. Poh heats the iron red-hot, and lifts it onto a large rock with iron tongs. Samasan uses a metal chisle and hammer to score the lump in half.

*Cling.* *Cling.*

They have lunar fibers stuffed in their ears to muffle the noise. The iron is slowly split in half. That half is hammered down, and cut in half again. It's worked into a long flat beam of iron that's cut into two by ten centimeters by five millimeters thick iron strips. Half of the strips are bent into an 'L' shape. Samasan makes an iron chisel for chiseling rock. Work starts on carving the stone the next day. Poh is chiseling a line down the boulder where Samasan marked with coal.

Samasan hammers an iron wedge down the line to cause a stress fracture. He closes his eyes each time he hits the wedge with the hammer. Samasan wishes he had safety glasses to wear. He puts glass making on his to-do list.

"This is..." Samasan scratches his head. "all wrong. Wait here."

Samasan goes into his house/shop and brings out a bundle of rock-drill-bits, and a couple bows, and extra rocks.

"What's all this?" Poh asks.

"We- I was trying to break the rock the wrong way. First we need to drill holes with these."

Samasan hands Poh a drill set. The bow string is looped around the wooden shaft of the rock-dowel tipped drill bit, and a rock with a dimple is held on top of the shaft.

"Do it like this."

Samasan pushes the bow back and forth to cause the string to spin the drill bit.

"Make sure to apply pressure to the shaft with the rock in this hand." He explains to Poh.

Samasan and Poh have to stop drilling every so often to blow away rock dust to improve friction between the two rubbing rocks.

"Ok let's do this again the right way now." Samasan claps his hands together. "Fuck!"

They go back to the forge to make more wedges. The next day the rock splits in half. They needed thicker wedges to insert into the drill holes. The 'L' wedges were still used to widen the wedge gap further, until the crack ran all the way through the rock and split it. Samasan stands on the boulder in victory.

"Now what?" Poh asks.

"We do it again." Samasan draws a black charcoal line on the rock. "Here!" and draws 'x's where to drill.

The rock falls over as it splits. A eight centimeter flat-slab of rock lays on the ground. Samasan draws an 'x' near the middle of the slab.

"Drill all the way through here." Samasan instructs.

Samasan makes more arrows, while Poh drills the rock.

"Oh shit I forgot." He runs back to Poh. "Use this square to hold the drill bit perfectly straight like this."

Samasan wipes the worry off his forehead, and goes back to Izabelle. He takes a break to walk around the fields. The villagers are sprinkling wood ash on the soil. The air smells very clean today, after the morning rain storm. Samasan sighs. He really wants to be focused on studying this world. Updating its technology does make Samasan feel good too. He just doesn't know if he's the first to build things in this world, or just Stoney-Brook Village.

"I finished."

Poh is standing behind Samasan when he speaks. Samasan walks back to the rock with him, and uses a compass to draw a circle on the side. He covers his face in frustration.

"What's wrong?" Poh Asks.

"We need to make smaller wedges, and drills. Unless..." Samasan thinks about how to cut the wheel out of the stone slab. "Do you know anything about cutting stone?"

Poh looks down at the slab in thought.

"Rock-Salamander. It's saliva softens rocks enough for it to eat them. Stone cutters use lots of it."

"That's perfect." Samasan exclaims. "But where do we get it from? No, wait. Why didn't you say anything about this stuff before?"

"Rock-Salamander saliva is very expensive, because of how dangerous it is to collect. Many people are killed by the monster trying to get at it. Their bodies turned to stone." Poh tells him.

"I don't want to be made into stone..." Samasan mumbles to himself in thought.

"Mah-dus-tah-ih?"

"She's a monster from my world. People turned to stone by looking at her." He tells Poh.

"How are we gonna get rock-spit?" Poh asks.

"We're gonna take a nature expedition back to the lagoon." Samasan says.

"The what?"

"I know where to find a rock-salamander. Tell Yar that we'll need Jutwaso and Lira as guards for this trip." He instructs Poh.

"Lira is a terrible guard. She can hardly fight." Poh complains.

"She isn't much of a fighter, but her sense of danger and alertness is the best in the village." Samasan praises Lira.

"Why Jutwaso?"

"Because I trust her." He tells Poh.

It takes two weeks to prepare for the trip. Samasan had a forehead slapping moment, when he realized that clay is just very tiny crushed rocks. Carrying a rock softening material in a container made out of rocks would be disastrous. Samasan makes wooden pots and lids on the Izabelle the lathe. There are four pots made. They are tall and narrow, and each can hold up to a liter of material. Samasan chars the inside of two of the pots with fire.

"Why are you burning that?" Yar asks.

"Samasan says it's to improve the chances of transporting rock-spit." Jutwaso answers her.

They take a wheel barrow made of wood along for the trip. It's filled with the wooden pots. One clay jar filled with moon-wheat grains for food, blankets, and a set of three bows with plenty of arrows. It started raining heavily the day of expedition, and delayed it another two while Samasan had Poh make an extra set of wood handles for the front side of the wheel barrow. Now it could be carried off of the ground by two people, and not get stuck in the mud.

Samasan, Jutwaso, Poh, and Lira are each wearing basic peasant clothes, and five golden-rods worth of rope wrapped around their waists. Four lengths of twelve-point-five meter rope. All of them carry a small knife in their belt. Samasan wears wooden sandals tied to his feet with twine. Jutwaso has leather footwear that looks like leather socks, a leather armor buckler vest over her peasant shirt, and a short sword sheathed in a leather scabbard at her hip. Poh and Lira both have sandles made of woven grass.

Poh and Jutwaso are carrying the wheel barrow first at the start of the trip. Samasan is leading the way, and Lira is in the middle of the group as lookout. They are walking by the river bank, travelling up stream.

"This creek wasn't here last time. Well have to cross it." Samasan begins to wade into the water.

"Wait!" Jutwaso yells.

Samasan freezes and looks back.

"Spear-clams." Lira says while pointing to the water.

"I don't see anything." Samasan responds.

Jutwaso takes Samasan's walking stick, and pokes it into the middle of the creek. As she is digging around, something pierces through the water. It looks like a spear standing in the creek bed. It shot two meters up in the blink of an eye.

"This is incredible. I've never seen a species of mollusk like these before." Samasan was enamored.

"We'll have to find a safe place to cross." Jutwaso tells the group.

Samasan takes over for Jutwaso with carrying the wheel barrow, while she stabs at the creek bed. They find a safe area, and cross.

"I need to come back here to collect one of those spear-clams for study." Samasan tells himself.

Lira has replaced Poh on carrying duty. Samasan and Lira are walking in the middle with the wheel barrow off the ground, while Jutwaso and Poh are in the front and back of the group.

"What an amazing specimen!" Samasan drops the wheel barrow, and runs over to a caterpillar eating leafs off a bush.

"Wah!" Lira screams in surprise as the wheel barrow suddenly drops behind her.

"Look at its body, its skin is bright blue with red and pink spots on its back. Is this to warn off predators? Is this plant poisonous? Ahh...!" Samasan falls on the ground.

Jutwaso decapitated the large blue caterpillar with her sword. She crushed it's body under her boot, and a blue soul-rock and one copper coin squished out with the guts.

"Why did you do that?" Samasan asks her.

"We're not here to play around." She tells him

"Poor little thing." Samasan mourns for the dead caterpillar.

Jutwaso takes the coin and soul-rock, and puts it into her pouch. They resume the same walking order, and make it to the lagoon by evening.

"We should make camp here."

Poh and Jutwaso cut bark strips off of fire-trees and make a perimeter of it around the camp. Samasan builds a fire out of dead wood he scrounged around the forest, and Lira stands guard. They take turns sleeping by the fire, and keeping guard. Poh and Samasan are keeping watch.

"How old are you?" Samasan asks.

"I don't know."

"What do you like to eat besides moon-wheat?"

"Bread."

"That's made from-"

"Shh.." Poh interrupts Samasan.

They listen, and hear glopping noises.

"Stay still." he whispers to Poh, "The track movement."

Neither of them can see the creature, but Samasan suspects it is slime-blobs. The sloppy noises get louder.

"Awesome." Samasan marvels at the clear slime-blob moving towards the camp.

It stops at the perimeter of the fire-bark ring. Samasan crawls closer to the blob slowly.

"What the hell are you doing." Poh asks in a hushed tone.

*Snap* The blob doesn't react to Samasan's noise.

"They don't care about sound."

"Ahh!!!" Lira screams as she sits up.

"Don't move!" Samasan yells.

He looks towards the slime-blob as it rolls towards him. As it crosses the line of bark, pieces of them absorb into its body. A foam builds inside the slime-blob and it pops into a clear soul-rock and two copper coins.

"This stuff is incredible." Samasan picks up a piece of fire-bark with his knife.

"What's going on?" Jutwaso asks.

"We were just attacked by a mound of water." Lira exclaims.

"It's just a slime-blob." Samasan tries to calm the group.

*Glorp* More sounds are approaching.

Jutwaso stands up, and starts cutting her sword into a pine tree.

"What are you doing?" Samasan is confused.

"Preparing to run." Jutwaso explains as she holds the sap covered sword into the fire.

The short-sword catches fire.

"Pack the stuff. We're leaving." She tells the group while holding the flaming sword behind herself to see into the darkness better.

"We should stay here." Samasan tries to counter her argument. "The blobs won't come here if we don't attract them with movement, and the ones that show up will be stopped by the fire-bark. Let's take a vote. All in favor of staying, raise your hand."

Only Samasan raises his hand. He shakes his head in disbelief. The group starts packing the blankets. Samasan walks over to a fire-tree, and starts cutting down branches.

"What are you doing?" Jutwaso asks.

"Leave the wheel barrow. Well use these branches made of fire-wood for protection."

Samasan cut down seven bushy fire-tree branches, and cut up seven pieces of his rope to make handles to safely hold the hot wood.

"Everyone take these for defense, and form a circle." Samasan instructs the others.

Jutwaso only takes one branch, because she has to hold the flaming short-sword for the group to see.

"I don't like this." Lira complains. "I want to go back to the village."

"Hush down." Jutwaso warns.

"We don't have to worry about being quiet."

An arrow flies passed Samasan as he talks. People come out of the darkness.

"Put down your weapons, and we won't kill you." The bandit warns them.

"Take what you want. Don't hurt us." Samasan pleads.

"They won't let us go." Jutwaso grits her teeth.

"You're a smart little one." The bandit jeers as more come out from the shadows.

Their weapons are drawn.

"What will they do to us?" Samasan whispers.

"Sell us to slavers." Lira whispers back.

Samasan thinks for a moment. "I have an idea, follow my lead."

"Stay back I'm warning you."

The group of bandits laugh at Samasan's warning.

"Are you gonna kill us with that little stick." The bandit mocks him.

"I'm warning you!" Samasan shakes the tree branch violently in the air.

"Shake the damn branches you guys." Samasan whispers to the group.

"We're gonna enjoy the lot of you. Then sell you for beer." The bandits laugh.

"Shake damnit."

Samasan's group starts shaking the fire-tree branches up and down. The group of bandits laugh uncontrollably. Then one of them screams.

"Shut up!" The bandit yells.

The screaming doesn't stop as more bandits start screaming for their lives.

*Glorp* *Glop* *Flop* *Flich*

The forest is filled with crystal clear slime-blobs. The tree branch shaking continues, while the bandits run around in fear.

"Stop shaking, and stay perfectly still." Samasan tells his group.

They obey, and watch the group of thirty-some bandits scatter around in the dark while screaming.

"You bastards!"

Some of the bandits try slashing and stabbing their swords into the blobs, while others shoot arrows at the moving masses. The swords and arrows get stuck in the crystal slime-blobs, but only the wooden arrows dissolve. Screaming is heard everywhere around them as the bandits are digested by piles of slime-blobs. A clink sound is heard every so often, and a ticking noise stops. Day light doesn't come soon enough, and they see themselves surrounded by thousands of slime-blobs.

The morning wind picks up, and all of the slime-blobs start to flop over themselves. They are all moving up wind. The blobs reach the fire-bark line, and stop. They slop towards the other blobs moving around the fire-bark. After an hour the forest is clear, and Samasan's group is safe.

"Such a magnificent spectacle of migration." Samasan gawks. "Ow!"

Jutwaso slaps Samasan's back. "Let's go get that rock-spit and get the hell out of here."

They walk passed the tree line, and spot the rock-salamander sleeping in the sun on the black sand beach. Jutwaso raises her bow.

"What are you doing?" Samasan grabs hold of the bow, and forces it to point down.

"We need to kill the beast to harvest the rock-spit." She answers.

"No we don't. Not yet at least. We should observe the animal. Haste makes waste." Samasan scolds the group.

"The only good rock-salamander is a dead one." Poh replies.

Samasan shakes his head in disbelief, and forces the group to camp out at the beach. Lira and Poh are soaking their swollen feet in the angels' blood lagoon. Jutwaso has built a campfire on the beach to keep warm, and Samasan is playing with the black sand.

"Why is there only black sand in this area?" Samasan asks himself.

It looks like sand covered in dirty oil. Samasan holds a pile of black sand in his palm, and lets it slide off. A strange liquid is left behind on his skin. He stares at his hand, then slowly dips it into the lagoon. The oily liquid on Samasan's hand sinks in the water, unlike oils he familiar with that float on water. He assumed angels' blood is water based because the lagoon is exposed to weather, including rain.

"How long are we going to be here." Lira complains.

"He's never satisfied." Poh responds.

"Give me the clay pot." Samasan tells Poh.

"What the hell are you doing."

Poh is shocked as Samasan dumps out the remaining moon-wheat. Samasan fills the clay pot full of black sand. He takes off his shirt, and ties it over the opening of the clay pot.

"He's gone crazy." Jutwaso says.

"I'm not crazy." Samasan speaks, and tosses the clay pot into the ruby-red waters.

Samasan looks like he is wrestling with the pot. He brings it out of the water, and drops it back in. Spins around with it, and rocks it like a tired baby. Samasan holds the pot upside-down and lets the water drain through the shirt.

"Behold." Samasan unties his shirt from the pot, and a pile of red sand falls out of it.

"He is a sorcerer." Poh exclaims.

"No," Samasan speaks, "I am a man of science."

"You turned sand red. Big deal." Jutwaso jeers.

"It was always red"

Samasan mixes a handful of red sand with black sand. The red becomes black sand again.

"What does this mean?" Lira asks.

"It means..."

Samasan takes out his knife and scrapes it on the inside of the clay pot. He holds up a black glob of material on the tip of the knife.

"It means we found our rock-spit." Samasan applauds himself.

Everyone else stares at him.

"We need to separate the spit from the rock." He tells everyone.

"What rock?" Poh asks.

"All of these." Samasan throws black sand over his head.

"He truly is crazy." Lira reacts.

Samasan fills the clay pot with a little water and sand. He takes his walking stick, and spins it around inside of the pot. Eventually the stick pokes through, and Samasan holds up the pot for everyone to see the hole.

"Truly a miracle." Jutwaso says sarcastically.

"Poh get the wood containers."

Samasan commands, while stuffing his shirt into the clay jar. He fills the jar with black sand.

"Jutwaso and Lira, hold this pot of sand off the ground." He tells them.

Samasan has Poh hold the wooden pot under the hole in the jar, while he pours water with another wooden pot over the jar of sand. Black liquid starts flowing out the bottom. They manage to fill three wooden pots full of purified rock-spit.

"Can we go now?" Poh says, while Samasan taps on the wooden lids.

"I guess it's time." Samasan sighs.

They travel back to the old camping spot, and stop to pick up the coins and soul-rocks dropped by the bandits on the way back. Samasan learned the value of a human life is one gold coin. They collected four ruby coins, and five gold coins from the bandits' deaths. The group traveled back to Stoney-Brook Village by evening.

"No!" Jutwaso screamed and dropped the wheel barrow.

Jutwaso, Poh, and Lira ran towards the village. Samasan walked. Five villagers were hanging from the gallows built at the fence. Yar, and the recently joined family of four were dead.