33 Leave and stay

Emp did not remember when he fell asleep, where he was, why he was missing his boots or why he felt so bad.

Apparently, he had slept in his armor and now he was hurting everywhere. He also had a headache and his stomach was upset. He sat up and almost rubbed his eyes with his gauntlets because he was too sleepy to figure out that since he was wearing the armor, he would also be wearing the gauntlets.

Should he remove his armor now? This seemed like a waste of time since he would have to put it back on right after for his travel. He chose to keep it and looked around himself.

He was in a room with a bed on which he sat, a closed window and a closed door leading to somewhere unknown. It was small and empty, Emp wondered how he had ended up here.

He got out of the bed, walked to the door and opened it to look at what was hidden behind it. The next room was much larger, it had a table, some chairs, a fireplace, a couple of storage chests, some shelves and a woman sat on one of the chairs. Emp remembered her, it was Marcellia, she was wearing loose leather pants and a thick leather vest over a tunic instead of the armor.

When she saw him, she smiled, waved at him and pushed a chair with her feet to tell him to sit down. Emp stumbled his way to it and left his whole weight in its care. Marcellia gave him a wry smile.

"Ya aren't used to drinking are ya? I shouldn't have given you that fifth pint."

"I drank more than one?" Emp really could not remember the four others.

Marcelia chuckled.

"My poor thing, ya look so bad, here, take some water."

She gave him a new mug but he only took a small sip because he felt it would jump back out of him if he drank any more.

"Where is this?" He asked.

"My house." She said. "The forge is just outside. After you fell asleep on the table last night, I dragged you to my guest room."

Emp nodded and took another sip. He remembered the meat, the feast and the fun.

"Where are my boot?"

"Ya left them to Jenna so she could fix it."

"Who is Jenna?"

Marcellia laughed some more.

"Drink more water and take your time, ya just got drunk, everything will come back to ya in a minute."

Emp half closed his eyes and slowly drank the mug, sip by sip. This is what alcohol did? Why were people drinking this? Did they love to feel terrible? This reminded him that everyone thought that the Muraciers did not drink alcohol. He had no idea if this was true or not but at this moment, he felt it was an agreeable decision.

"Do ya remember what ya told me last night?" She asked him once it seemed like he felt a little bit better.

"I remember agreeing to be your apprentice." He said feeling like this was what she was probably talking about. "But I would like to add another condition."

"I already agreed about helping ya learn the language." She said, thinking he had forgotten.

"I remember that. I was about to say, I will not drink any more cider."

She almost laughed again and reassured him with a dismissive gesture.

"Bah! Don't ya worry about it, ya'll get used to it."

Emp couldn't help but feel like that answer was untrustworthy.

"Are ya ready for breakfast now?"

"I think I will skip it."

He didn't feel well enough to eat anything. Marcellia seemed to understand what he meant as she moved on to the next thing immediately.

"Then, let's start, the village will be busy for a couple of days, they will need my help a lot and ya," she said pointing at him. "will help me do it all since ya're now my apprentice. I won't go easy on ya, I'll beat the answers into your head if I have to but ya will learn."

She could not be as bad as Chinui could she? In any case, he wasn't afraid and couldn't wait to learn it all. There was still something he needed to do beforehand though.

"Wait, one of me need to go to Bêtéclair, I need a pair of boots."

"I already got the pair Paul promised ya, They're over there by the front door."

Emp looked behind him and saw that there was indeed a pair of boots fitting him over there.

"How did he know they would fit me?"

"He had your other boots already."

That was right, that made sense. Emp got up from the chair, fought the dizziness for a short moment and went over to the boots. He leaned on the wall to pick them up and almost fell over head first. Marcellia laughed once more at his misery.

"Maybe you're right, that drink really seems to disagree with ya."

Emp put on the boots and summoned the second him before he explained it to Marcellia.

"So that me will stay with you, as long as I do not touch him, even if I make him disappear, he will reappear where he was instead of with me."

"Really? Show me."

Emp touched the other him, made him disappear, walked slowly to the other side of the room, made him reappear at his side, went back to the door and made him disappear and reappear again from over there. This was the best he could do to prove it.

"I will believe ya for now but if ya lied to me and that one disappear for too long, I will go all the way to the city and beat ya for lying to your master."

Emp didn't mind since he wasn't lying.

"Then I will go now, I do not want to be late."

He wondered if he needed to say goodbye since he would be there with her at the same time he was gone. In the end, he chose not to and opened the door.

"Farewell then." Said Marcellia.

As Emp exited the room, he heard the other him say what he was thinking.

"I do not think you really need to tell me farewell since I am staying as well."

"That's going to be confusing." She said.

Emp left the town of Dark-glint from the east gate, opposite to the one he had entered from and resumed his journey.

Hours after he left, he felt much better and his walking speed improved. He saw some more cats from a distance but aside from looking at him as he passed by, they completely ignored him and napped in the trees.

After that, the rest of his journey to Bêtéclair took him another ten days in which nothing happened to him at all. This part of the travel could not have been any better. It rained a couple of times but that was it.

He also passed through some sort of swamp housing another village he didn't know the name of. He didn't stop in it and continued to walk eastward instead.

He also took the habit of recalling his double every night before he went to sleep to share their respective experiences. Marcellia's side was many times more lively than the side of his walking self.

From the moment he left, Marcellia did not waste any time before putting Emp to work. For the entire first week, all he did was carry things around for people. Bring over wood and lumber for the walls and houses, help to move and bury the corpses into the woods, remove all the dead blood-spitters from inside the village and all those kinds of thing.

Some tasks assigned to him were much harder than others. Moving things around in large quantities should have been very easy for him due to the bag but he had been forbidden to use it. The first time they asked him to get some wood from the lumber mill, he brought back everything so he wouldn't have to go multiple times over. Everyone had been pleased by this, everyone but Marcellia.

She hit the back of his head and told him to use his arms instead, it was good for training his body. He told her about the overburdening hammer but she would have none of it. More training was better than less, she would say, don't he dare cheat his way through his tasks.

After that first great haul, he had to move everything like any normal person would do. To him, it was unusual and it took longer than it should but it wasn't that hard, at least, not as hard as when they asked him to help with the dead.

Since he had brought almost all the building material by himself already and had no idea on how to help out the actual construction of the walls or how to repair the damaged houses, they sent him over to help plant the dead.

In larger towns and cities, they had professional gravediggers for this but in small villages, there was simply not enough death to warrant the need of such a profession. The dead usually all came in waves like this one and everyone with free time had to help.

With those that didn't survive their injuries, they ended up with thirty three dead and five missing. For each one, they had to dig a grave in the woods. First they had to choose a place where there was enough space to grow a tree, then they had to remove anything in the way including old stumps and rocks before digging the actual grave. Emp dug six of them by himself with a shovel Marcellia entrusted to him.

Because of the huge amount of roots, rocks and random obstacles in the way, it took him a lot of effort and time for each of them. This was many times more difficult and tiring than just moving supplies through the small village but it still wasn't the hardest part.

The hardest part was to watch the family of the dead one bring his or her corpse to the grave he had dug. He had to watch them cry as they placed it in the hole and entrusted either a seedling or a very small sapling to it. Then, he had to fill back the hole while being carefully watched by the grieving family. A tree would grow from their corpses and absorb their soul. One day, the dead would watch over their relatives from the forest but for now, they were well and truly dead.

Emp thought it wasn't that bad since their spirit would live on in the tree. It was like giving them a second life, the five missing had a much more terrible fate awaiting them. Unable to find a host tree, would they come back as angry ghosts to haunt them? The safekeeping of the spirits he buried however, did not seem to stop the families from crying and feel sadness.

It was many times harder for Emp to feel all this sadness around him than to actually bury the corpse. Emp didn't like to see other people cry, it just didn't seem right. He couldn't help but cry as well even though he didn't think it was sad and even though he didn't know either the dead or the living.

When he told her he felt bad when he saw other people cry, Marcellia told him it was because of empathy. Emp wasn't sure who exactly was Empathy but he would really have liked her to stop whatever she, or he, was doing to him.

A few of the dead villagers had no family, or at least none in the village. In those cases, the village head had to lower the corpse in the grave and entrust the seedling to it himself. Families usually stayed a while after he finished putting back all the dirt over the dead but not the village head, he had many more things to do. He didn't cry as much too so it was easier on Emp.

Fortunately, his first week wasn't just hard work and sadness. A lot of interesting things also happened to him. First, he saw when the guards brought back what they told him was the leader of the blood-spitter. It was three times as large as an ordinary one and was far less ugly. It was just lean instead of skeletal, its face and neck hadn't half melted under the effect of its acid blood, its skin had a much more healthy tone and a large patch of long and delicate white fur grew on its back.

It was it that had led the blood-spitters into the village and kept them all together in a cohesive group. The moment the guards had killed it was the moment the rest of the felines ran away. They would then scatter and return to living alone until a new leader was born to unite them into a new sizzle.

In the meantime, the village was safe, at least from them. The soldiers would have that leader dismantled for its materials and sold to the next caravan coming through. Emp wished he had killed it himself. The reason was because the village head used the hunting cards of everyone to determine how many dead cats belonged to everyone. Most villagers didn't have many use for those corpses so they usually ended up giving them back to the soldiers in exchange for a small bit of money.

Since he had not killed that leader, all he had was a bunch of scrawny disgusting cats. After he asked the book about them, he learned that aside from their heart and blood, nothing in them had any value. Of course, the entire corpse had its uses, bones and skin included but, they weren't anything special so it wasn't worth it to go out of his way to keep them for future crafting endeavors. Their meat could be eaten but there was almost none of it, they were all just skin and bones. He didn't really need the money either but there was really nothing he could do with sixty dead blood-spitters so he just left them to village head.

Then, because he went around the village so much to help out, he had many occasion to learn the names of everyone but since he didn't really understand them, he just knew their name instead of the people themselves. It was a really strange feeling, by the time Emp got to Bêtéclair, he recognized almost all of their names but none of their faces.

To really know them, he had to be able to communicate with them and in order to do that, he had to learn their language. His days were spent trying to decipher what was told to him as he helped out and then going around Marcellia's house and forge to do all the small task she asked of him. She would tell him to fetch a tool or another, to go draw water from the stream, go fetch some wood for the fire or even just to cook something for supper. Because of all the work that needed to be done around the village and all the equipment that needed fixing after the battle, she was extremely busy and so, he was treated like a servant.

Emp didn't mind it. Chinui did the same and he, had plenty of time to spare to do all those things. Poor Marcellia was just swamped in work. She still found the time to help him out with his language problems though. When she had nothing to make him do, she would just talk to him and answer his many questions on the subject. Of course, he could have used the book instead for most of them but he felt it was many times more pleasant to ask a real person instead.

Every day, by the time the sun set, he was exhausted and after a quick use of the overburdening hammer, he would collapse in the guestroom bed before getting summoned back to share his tiredness and experience with the other him.

Like that, Emp reached a place one evening where he could see, in the distance, the shinning city of Bêtéclair like a beacon in the night. The next morning, he would have reached his destination. It had been just over a month since he had left Chinui. He had said it would take him around forty days of travel and he had been incredibly accurate. (1)

The city was so bright with all its hundreds of small lights that it easily overwhelmed the stars. Thinking about the stars, he had never asked the book again about how many there were. Curious, he got it out of the bag and placed it on his knees.

Looking at the night sky, he asked the book. "How many stars are in the sky right now?"

This time for sure, the answer would be an incredible number. he opened the book and was both surprised and disappointed to see an empty page. This meant that he already knew the answer. Even if the book said he already knew the answer, he had no idea what it could be. When could he possibly have learned the answer to that?

After a lot of thinking, he came up with a couple of reasons that could possibly explain that answer. The first was that maybe the book thought he knew since he did see the stars after all. Even if he didn't know the precise number in his head, he could still clearly picture them all, he just had to count them.

Another possible reason could be that someone in dark-glint told him in the common tongue for a reason unknown to him. Even if he did not understand the words, maybe the book decided that he knew anyway.

Both of these possibilities were annoying if true but a third one was even more frustrating. Maybe he really did know the answer but he just couldn't remember it. Maybe it was part of the knowledge that was gifted him at his creation or maybe he asked the book once and he forgot it immediately because of an underwhelming answer.

Maybe it was worth a shot to ask the book about this?

"Is one of the three possibilities I came up with true and if yes, which one."

He wasn't convinced it would work, but he tried anyway. He flipped the pages to somewhere else and the book gave an answer. 'Yes, the third one.'

Emp let out a small sigh and pushed the book back into the bag. At least now he knew that he really knew. Like the first time he asked, he felt that the answer wasn't that important anyway so he decided to sleep instead of racking his brain about it. After all, he didn't know what to expect in Bêtéclair and he couldn't wait to find out.

***

Praised be the woods for they sustain us.

Praised be the woods for they house our dead.

Praised be the woods for it will be your last home too.

Praised be the woods for they can take back what they gave.

The woods claim a lot,

they take our dead,

they take our braves,

they take our husbands,

they take our young,

they take our hopes and our dreams,

they take our fear and pain.

But our woods are magnificent and give just as much.

They give us life,

they give us courage,

they give us love,

they give us care,

they give us hopes and dreams,

they give us fear and pain.

When a life is born in our woods, it is under the gaze of our protectors.

When we give our dead to the woods, their souls live on, a new protectors.

When we marry, it is with the support and approval of our ancestors.

When darkness tarry and the trees take one of us, their bodies feed our ancestors.

Some is lost and some is gained.

Do not fear the roots and decay,

for a sacrifice is never in vain.

For every life that we pay,

ten more sons and daughters it sustain.

For protection and food our blood is paid.

An ancient covenant the trees uphold.

They house our dead, watchers from yonder.

They look from overhead, benevolent and old.

Are they sentient or only wood and mold?

We take their flesh to build. We are their blood and sprouts.

From bellow they sleep, from above they see.

So entrust yourself, entrust your dead.

They see and ear, ancestors and benefactors of every one.

You know their noble aim, they are your protector trees.

Reborn form soil and wood, do not cry when life goes out.

They know and feel, you are their own from sand to sea.

Rejoice for the cycle goes, monsters can kill but calm your head.

Rejoice for you are safe, rejoice for one day, you too will be one.

Your children will proudly claim, you are their protector tree.

You too one day will protect from your wooden grave.

You too one day will see, will feed, will take our braves.

-- Protector Trees, Woes and heroes of our woods.

(1) Chinui said 40 days but after Emp gained the blessing of Space, he should have traveled a lot quicker. The huge time it took him to get there is mainly because of his tendency to stop in random places and be lazy for hours on end and because he sleeps way too much. Conclusion, without that blessing it would have taken him around three months to get there. He just doesn't realize it.