Episode 8.2 - Aftermath - Part 2/2

"My favourite villager lives here," I tell Eshu, looking at her face in hopes of some reaction.

"Pah, you're what," rumbles a voice inside. A giant of a man comes out to greet us. Bushy white beard and eyebrows, rippling muscles in a constant war with the wrinkles of old age. The retired blacksmith of a rural NPC town, the devs bequeathed him with perhaps the most default of names for his occupation - before us stands, the mighty Flint!

Although old, he was deemed more than fit enough to work, but the invading drones, thus making him the sole surviving man of any old age from the town. He'd handed the smithy over to his son, but I get the impression he still worked the forge on occasion. His son and every other blacksmith in the village died in the skirmish and were converted to thralls.

Flint volunteered to come out of retirement to help build the new town on the fort’s grounds. Man is a machine, churning out nails and hinges, rivets and window latches at an insane speed; we can barely keep up with the material demands!

The villagers also seem to hold him in regard as a bit of a legend; he's all they have left in terms of that generation with all the memories and knowledge that entails - but more then that, in those forced mines, where getting tired or injuried ran the risk of a drone shoving you alive into a bioconverter machine - Flint apprently did everything he could to cover for others, despite himself being the oldest one there.

 For my part, I've been liaising with him a lot. He's a godsend, given that we have no list of the living and the dead. Through him we've been able to coordinate alot of those details, usually accompanied by the cutlery he made for that family or such like - it’s not that he knew two-thousand people personally but rather, he remembers what he made, such detail for a pair of fire tongs here, or some pots there, painting this amazing tapestry of the town’s family lines via there silverware. I’ve got to say, he's pretty damn cool.

"Who's this then? Doesn't look like any I knows’," he grumbles.

"Ah, no, not a local. This is Eshu, my partner."
     He raises a bushy white eyebrow, " ‘Thought that Ko girl was your partner."

"She is, too, yes."

"How very modern," he rumbles, "and the Countess as well?"

"What? God no, I think I'm her dog more than anything."

"Hmph."
      The villagers all call Lila the 'Countess'. Building the fort marked her as the local regional lord in the game world’s systems, so despite never having met her, the villagers sort of hazily knew of her, or something like that. I think it might also just be a show of respect for saving them and healing their wounds.

Eshu steps toward timidly and bows her head, "Nice to meet you, mister."

"Ho? At least she has manners befitting her station. Nice to meet you, too, miss," Flint replies in an altogether lighter tone of voice, "Come in, come in. Bring your dog if you must."

"Hey, don't call me that! I thought we were mates already," I prattle back.

"Pah! Not on ye're life!"

"Eheh," a small voice giggles between us.
     In that moment me and the aged blacksmith lock eyes, and more is communicated than two men can ever speak in words: I will happily play the fool with you if it grants this girl even an ounce of happiness, our gaze seems to say. I told you Flint was cool, didn't I?

He ushers us inside, and we banter all the way, Eshu's little chuckles filling me with a renewed hope she might yet be cheered up by this little trip. We sit at a fairly rudimentary kitchen table. Flint's place is a bit of a mix; on the one hand, he's the sole occupant, which is unique as the other villagers are all making do as we work on gathering and building enough houses for everyone.            Conversely, its rather basic inside, simplistic furnishing, stuff thrown together by himself in between his forging duties. His kettle is a sorry affair hung over little more than an open fire pit. We have collected some belongings from the town's ruins and distributed them, but Flint always passes up any such offers, resulting in a very spartan abode.

To my surprise, after pouring us tea, he actually appears with a tin box and offers us biscuits - rather simple ones but all the same.
    "You never offered me treats before," I mutter.

"And I never will, they’re for the lady." He says that, but still gives me one. Seriously, does this guy have a soft spot for young women? Pervert! Well, probably more innocent than that, I saw him doting on his granddaughter once, and Eshu's only a bit older.

"Tea might not be to your liking, miss. Should be the lad’s job, or 'is wife's, but he's dead and she can't stand to be reminded of him by my face, gone to stay with her folks. Elis comes over to make dinner, but I can't have the girl stuck here all day."
Eshu shakes her head gently, thanking him for the hospitality.

He turns to me once he's taken a seat, "I been thinking this place 'ought to have a mansion or a wall."
     I blink dumbly, feeling a bit lost, "That's a very specific duo of things you have there."

"Pah!"

"Pah yourself. Come on, give me a hint old man."

He furrows those white bushes for eyebrows of his again, "A Countess like her 'ought to have a mansion on the hill, or be in the keep of a castle town. Not just some big ugly fort for a home."

I consider this, "Alright, I see the logic, her ladyship would probably onboard with the idea too. Perhaps it can be a future project. Oh, is that it actually? Trying to line yourself up for future work on candeliers and drawbridge portcullises, eh? Crafty old badger."
      He grins at me, this massive toothy smile framed by moustache above and beard below, "I been in business since before you were born, boy - I learnt a trick or two!"

Eshu laughs at us again, but then her face darkens slightly as she stares down at the table, "You mentioned your son died?"

Flint closes his eyes and crosses his arms, "Aye, lass."

"To those drone things?" Eshu continues.

He sighs, "Aye... I never knew metal to be so cold and terrible. I forged my fair share of weapons over the years, but metal men with metal hearts, I never thought to see such a day."

 His words honestly underlie a deeper truth. Flint is, if anything, the exception; his daughter-in-law, who should be living here but can't bear to look at his face, for example, is a more average example of the state of the villagers. One day, though obscured by the mountain range, they saw missiles fly through the sky far north, and all communications and travel suddenly ceased. A week later, their most fit men all died fighting an invasion of metallic monsters that then culled the young and old in the most horrific manner possible. The part where they were forced into excruciating and dangerous labour for however many hours straight barely compares to all that.

  I think part of their acceptance of Lila and the Estolpfo is that demons that at least speak and breathe and seem alive aren’t nearly so alarming anymore. Many of them are deeply traumatised, in ways no lite-fantasy game villager is probably capable of processing. Perhaps their minds will never fully heal...

It doesn't exactly bear bringing up in the current conversation, but it’s notable that these villagers are from settlements on the very edge of the world map. Ko has a theory that could be making it even harder on them - that they are from a nameless place the developers just added to fill up space.
     There is a ‘defaultness’ to them, a rushed quality. Tired developers trying to make deadlines, and you get a sort of cut corner quality that probably isn't helping them. There are no useful fantasy-jargon equivalents for doctors or physiologists among them, just the bare bones set of NPCs for a rural town, the completionist-minded player might visit.


"To take his corpse and brutalise it like that... To cut his throat open for no reason, what an insult to the dead," the old man rumbles.

"Huh," I utter.
     He's never said this much about it to me. Is it because Eshu is here... No, that's not what caught me, is it? No, it’s...it’s that!

"Wha?" Eshu gasps. She tries to stand in a hurry, the chair behind her falls, and she follows it.

"Whoa, whoa, miss, I'm sorry. Such a grizzly detail as that ain't for a young lady, my bad," Flint says, immediately going to help her up.
      Eshu moves to take his hand, but then her eyes fix on her own. That hand that she holds her weapon with. The one that, in a terribly panicked, tense situation, she stabbed one of the thralls in the throat with.

 She bolts from the room, scrambling up off the floor and out the door.

"Eshu, wait!"

It doesn't take me long to leave the house and scamper after her. Looking around, I find her just a short way down the street, standing still, hands raised halfway to her face.

Her head flits side to side, looking at what? The dirt track that runs between the wooden houses we've been constructing is fairly busy: Someone carrying a bucket of water home from one of the wells we dug, a person with a basket of luandrey and so on, but all very normal activities for villagers getting on with their day.

"Eshu?" I call softly, stepping up behind her and laying a hand on her shoulder.
She staggers away from me, turning to face me, "It, it, I, it--"

"Hey, hey, come on now," I try to cut in softly, but her face, a picture of terror; she just shakes her head, "I didn't, it wasn't, I can't, she’s not me!"
     Without another moment's notice, breathing heavily, hyperventilating even, Eshu's eyes roll back and she collapses forward. I just barely catch her in time as her body goes limp.
"E-Eshu?"

The people on the street have stopped their daily goings-on now to stare at us. Whispers of concern are broken by a booming voice behind me: "Don't just stand there, boy! Get her to the Countess," Flint bellows, and I'm grateful to be snapped out of my own panic. Scoping her up and realising just how light she is, I set off back to the fort.