All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 228: Save the Children

Susan sighed and corrected herself. "You realize you should still be a child, right?"

Bee shrugged, thinking of her few friends back at home that she hadn't talked to in years. What were they doing right now? Probably gossiping about boys and whatever people her age normally did. She didn't really know at this point. She sighed. "I suppose so. But I had to grow up fast."

"Bee. I understand it was hard, believe me. No one can even imagine what you went through. But just because you had to grow up fast doesn't mean anyone else should.” Susan leaned back against the spire. “Arthur looks at you and sees someone he's proud to work with. But he also sees his own children. They’re your age, you know. He sees what you should be, how carefree and happy you should be. Not the ball of stress you've been ever since we've known you.

“You've done things that no 13 or 14-year-old should ever be able to do. And it's impressive as hell, not to mention terrifying. But you should never have needed to do this in the first place. And just because you can do it doesn't mean that Nighty Knights should as well.”

Bee mulled over the words in silence for a moment before Susan continued. “Unlike Arthur, I was there when Void first started training them. And do you remember how he started? Void played with them. It was a game, a way to work off their extra energy. Eventually, they learned actual technique and started playing soldiers. But that's all they really are doing. They're playing soldiers. They're imitating their parents and the people they look up to. All children do that. But just because they're good at acting doesn't mean that we should listen to them, or treat them like they actually are soldiers. When a child finds a stick and pretends it's a sword, and they march around the house, we don't then give them an actual sword and tell them to go kill people."

Bee clenched her jaw, "They still had every right to protect their home. Especially after everything they’ve been through. I will not deny them the ability to defend what they love."

Susan let out a long breath before starting to explain in a measured tone. "You're right when it comes down to it, and there's no other choice. If things get serious, they may need to grow up fast, and at that point they can make a difference. Well, some of them can. Some of them are just simply too young. But not like this. Not unless it’s a last resort.

“The army that’s coming at us? We don’t know their numbers, but there is no way they're prepared for our level advantage. With our preparations, our sabotage will hit them so hard in this forest that we will probably outnumber them by the time they reach the wall. By that point, they’ll be destroyed, and there will be no retreat. Overall, this is a minor battle that will probably be the first of many. And it’s one we will win. We will crush them utterly, and the king will have no choice but to despair. And that's even before we consider Void returning." Susan gave Bee an even look. “This is not a situation where they need to grow up. Where they will be standing between their families and destruction.”

Bee sighed, slowly letting her anger go and seriously considering her friend’s words. Maybe she had been wrong.She had gotten so used to everything being a life and death struggle that she had forgotten what it was like to exercise moderation. This conflict? Susan was right. Even if there was an army at their doorstep, they had prepared for this and seen it was coming. She had people around to help her now. People who knew what they were doing. Compared to a Lieutenant destroying the world, a city’s destruction, or her imminent death by demon, this was a situation they were actually prepared for. At the very least, it had a ways to go before getting out of hand completely.

She breathed out a long breath and finally looked down from the stars to meet Susan's eyes. "I suppose you're right. I probably need to apologize to Arthur. And a lot of other people.” A slight smile quirked the corner of her lips. “Perhaps he'd take a horse as an apology gift."

Susan gave her a soft smile. "I think he’d accept a more general apology. And a promise to protect the kids. But I don't suppose he'd say no to a horse.”

Bee sighed, stood up, and offered a hand to Susan. "Well, however it goes, I hope Void comes back soon. Even if this isn't really as desperate as some of us may think, I wouldn't want to have to fight without its guidance."

—

I spent my time cleaning the village and its surroundings as the two dragons caught up for a little while. I considered seeking them out when night fell, but before I could I was interrupted. The same hunched chieftain who had welcomed us in and shown us the cave with the art approached me. It stood in my way as I trundled over to the center of the village to begin my search.

She bowed deep and made a strange rhythmic sound in a language I didn't understand. I had been doing my best to run language models all day. Still, as far as I can tell, there was no common ancestor between the language she spoke and any I knew. I had to completely recreate the entire thing from scratch. I estimated it would take me another several hours of hearing constant chatter before I understood it reasonably well. But even now I was able to understand a general gist of her words.

Apparently, she was warning me about something and asking for help. And something else that I didn't quite get. I wasn't sure how to react. So I just sat there and waited. She seemed satisfied with that somehow and asked some questions, only one of which I understood. It shared some similarities with a scene I had observed earlier, where one of the mothers was indicating that their troublesome small child should stay in one place. Instead of telling me to stay here though, it seemed to be phrased as a question. She was asking if I was staying here.

I thought about it. I wasn't sure about the larger context, but for now, I'd be willing to stay a little longer while Daedalus and his brother catch up. I answered with an affirmative beep.

The old crone cocked her head, reached up with her gnarled fingers, and scratched behind her ear as if trying to decipher the meaning of the simple note. Eventually, she let out a very human-looking shrug with a harrumph. She turned and hobbled away, leaving me in the center of the village. Then, I started to notice a very odd set of behaviors.

All the children were being ushered away for bedtime. But instead of going to the individual huts I had just spent the day cleaning, they all gathered in one large place, a defensible cave in the mountain. The adults huddled in after them, some of the larger ones standing by the cave mouth. The odd hunch in their shoulders started making a little more sense now. Perhaps that wasn't just their posture, but exhaustion showing through amongst the adults.

But why were all huddling in the caves when they had these small huts? Especially when I just cleaned them? Why, it didn't make any sense to me. There were clearly beds in them, but why were they not using them for their intended purpose? Did I also need to teach them the proper use of those?

When the last light of the setting sun faded, I started to get my answer. A grinding sound echoed through the foothills of the mountains, and strange shapes began to move in the shadows. I focused my advanced sensors on one of them and saw that it was just a pile of rocks.

Hm. That was interesting. My processors usually didn't play tricks on me. False positives when it came to movement for my sensors were extraordinarily low, and there's no way this sensor would be triggering all at once just because of some light-based phenomenon. It only took me a 2.1 more seconds to confirm the fact that I had actually seen something. The pile of rocks shifted again, slowly, as if I were watching a child's block tower collapse in reverse. The stone pile reached up and up, stones stacking until it was a towering 12ft tall. At that point, it stopped growing, and the base split into two pillars.

Rocks continued to gather to either side of the tower as they started to extend into two long arms. It took nearly two minutes and 42 seconds before the transformation was complete. Then, once it was fully formed, it took a thundering step forward.

That was odd. Looking around, I saw that several other rock piles had done something similar in the few minutes I had been watching. Around the village, nearly two dozen of these stone monstrosities slowly made their way forward. I looked over to the cave all the snowmen were hiding in and realized I couldn’t easily detect its entrance anymore. They had stacked several huge boulders inside the cave mouth, blocking the way.

Suddenly, the old crone’s question made a lot more sense. She was asking if I wanted to stay with them in the cave where it was safe. That was rather kind of them to offer me shelter. After all, I was a complete stranger they'd only met earlier today. Perhaps they did appreciate my cleaning. Maybe I should have taken them up on their offer.

I sat in the center of the village and watched as the stone piles slowly made their way toward me. Judging based on the trajectories of all two dozen, they were headed directly for me, not just the village in general. Thinking about the mess each one of their steps would leave in the newly leveled streets made my bristles curl. And what would happen if they stomped through one of these fragile huts?

I decided I was going to do something about this. Activating my Thrusters, I lifted off gently and shot towards the edge of the village.

The trajectories of the rocks shifted to follow me. However, the ones on the other side of the village were still passing directly through it as if they didn't even register the huts as obstacles. This was going to be tricky to make sure that the village wasn't damaged. I moved far away from the village in an attempt to lose the rock monsters. But even from a long distance away, I could feel all their trajectories shifting to follow me. How were they tracking me?

I had a few ideas. They had latched on to me even before there was motion. So clearly, they must be able to see me or sense me in some other way besides sight. Perhaps it was due to the concentration of energy in my batteries. But how could they tell?

The other questions was how they hadn’t detected the villagers. If these rock monsters were actually tracking me by some method other than sight, then they must have also locked on to other things besides my energy signature. Perhaps my energy signature was just their primary target for now, and they would move on to something else later. But that was something I would have to figure out after I had saved the village.

I navigated back toward the clusters of rocks. Once I got close enough, I started to move in an arc around the village, gathering the golems with me and pulling them around the outskirts of the village. I carefully planned my flight path to pull them together and away from any huts or roads. It was tricky to get the balance right, requiring a lot of minute speed and angle adjustments. If the village hadn’t been up against a mountainside, I don't think I would have been able to manage it. But after a decent amount of effort, I had the crowd of rock monsters following along behind me out of the village.