her than you are. You know this to be true. You know you are too unskilled and too fake. You must know that you are not a slayer. If you are, then how can I be alive still? Now, why not do the right thing and leave her to me?”
The crack into the factory is right behind me. “I would rather kill her myself.”
The dragon raises his eyebrows. “Really? I think she should know that. Don’t worry. I will tell her.”
Then he’s gone, only visible as a green, metallic blur among the trees in the distance.
I slip through the crack and immediately spot Dolly down at another platform, busy with her pots. There’s nobody else here. Nor do I think any dragon has been here. She might be right that the dragons avoid this place.
Still, the dragon has unsettled me. Me, a fake slayer? Unskilled?
Before the event where I failed both Mia and Eleanor, I would have laughed at any such suggestion. I am a Swordmaster, never afraid to enter a necessary fight.
But the fact is that I lost them both. At the same time. Because there were dragons near. They did confuse me. And I never got close to any of them.
Isualic has a point. If I’m a slayer, why have I not killed him?
Certainly, what’s holding me back is that it would mean attacking him in cold blood, trying to kill someone who is only an annoyance, not a danger. But would a real slayer think like that? Or would it be in his nature to kill any dragon he came across? I have now come across six of them. I have slain none.
I slink back out the crack and make my way down the hill again. I pick up the piece of wood and quickly harvest a good amount of various herbs before I walk back inside. Then I spend some time cutting down enough trees to make a thick door for the crack, one that is too heavy for Dolly to open. If we are going to stay here for a long time, it should be secure. And while the dragons may hesitate to come in here because of who built this place, it might not be entirely impossible for them.
I sit down on the upper platform, take my sword out, and start sharpening it after all the woodcutting. It feels like I might need it to have a keen edge soon.
I sigh. This day started so well.
And now the jungle feels more hostile than ever.
23
- Dolly -
Back in the village I was able to make some progress about how to refine the sulfur and the saltpeter. It’s easy enough when I know how, but almost each stage needs the whole batch to dry before I can go on. I can’t make that happen any faster, so it will be a while before the finished product is ready for testing. If I get the proportions right.
I also have to do a lot of boiling, but that’s no problem – the cavemen built a simple oven for me in twenty minutes. It’s placed on top of a thick layer of clay and dry pot shards so that the heat won’t be transferred down into the alien material of the platform it’s on.
Climbing the rough stairs up to the top level, I smile at Brank’ox, who is busy preparing lunch.
I go right up and kiss him. “You’re hungry, too, huh?”
He stirs a small pot that’s hanging over the fire next to the main cooking pot. “The working man and woman must keep well sated, or the work suffers.”
I sit down beside him. “Did you find the new stream?”
“Not yet. The terrain is difficult. I can hear nothing in the daytime. But I found the wood you needed.” He hands me a block of hardwood, dark and fine-grained.
I turn it over in my hands and knock on it. I have no idea what to listen for. “This should do fine,” I make a wild guess. “The grain is dense.”
“Dense and heavy. It won’t burn well, but it can have other uses.”
I sniff the air. “Something smells really good. Is it lunch?”
“Hopefully, the lunch both smells and tastes good. But I suspect that the thing you smell is not our lunch.” He taps the side of the small pot with the stirring stick. “I think it’s this.”
The contents of the pot are dark and almost slimy. A white, spicy-smelling steam keeps rising from it. The only thing that could be