Bookworld Online: Marsh Man

Bokuboy

I worked for half the day and stopped when a plate of food was delivered... by Laura.

“My lo... David.” Laura said and wouldn't look at me. “I heard what happened this morning.”

I ignored her for several minutes while I cleaned up and set some things aside into the stasis area to keep them. Nothing was critical; but, I also couldn't leave it sit without recording the results.

“Do you all know the whole story or just that several women left my rooms crying and telling everyone how unreasonable I am?”

Laura looked down instead of away. “David, you were quite cruel to them to send them away.”

“That's where you're wrong.” I said and she stiffened slightly. “You see, I had always planned for them do to this and had the options in place for when it happened... at some time in the future.”

Laura lifted her head to look at my sad face.

“I have been training them all to rely on themselves and to be strong. Gella had been the most successful and took to my teachings quickly. She really was devoted to me and wanted to learn everything I could teach her. The problem, as you know, is she failed to protect me as she swore. Her view that my body could be used by anyone she doesn't see as a physical threat, was wrong.”

Laura looked shocked by this, probably because of how we had already had sex several times and only been on one date.

“I tried to correct her thinking by asking her why she would allow me to be assaulted in such a way and ask herself if her vow to me didn't mean fully protecting me.” I said. “She immediately started to avoid me and acted differently with me instead of doing as I asked. It isn't difficult to go over a vow made in earnest. The wording wasn't very difficult.”

“My lord...” Laura whispered.

“I only wanted her to fully protect me. That's all. She eventually refused to do even her basic job for the last three days and left me completely alone and unprotected, so I had no choice to give her the promotion she was going to earn on her own.”

“Farra?” Laura asked.

“My apprentice also avoided me, even though I told her that we would be spending much more time together when my exams were over. She knew I wanted to give her the time she deserved to have after we arrived back at the capital and I was too busy until now to do so. She also avoided me, despite her excessive cuddle needs, and left me alone. Since she didn't want to spend time with me, I dismissed her.”

“And Hanna?” Laura prompted.

“She had been asserting her own independence and fighting her slave training. She was starting to take control of her life and I was proud of her. I even told her so. Unfortunately, because of what I told Gella, she immediately went into a subservient role to Gella, Farra, and Jill. Since I could no longer help her, I dismissed her to become her own woman much earlier than she was prepared for.”

“I... I don't want to know about Jill.” Laura whispered.

“I warned them and then ordered them to stop their behavior, to go back to the way they were, and they were too fixated on what Gella was going through to bother listening to me or consider how they were hurting me. I sent them back here to think over what they've done and all that accomplished was to make Jill decide she didn't want to be here with us anymore.”

“But... I thought...”

“She's not my maid and never was. She was a friend that decided on what should have been a happy day for me, where I passed the mage academy exams, to abandon me and by extension, her other friends. I gave her more money than she would ever need and she ran off crying, because I told her how much she hurt me by leaving. It was her choice to leave, not mine.”

Laura looked stunned by all of that.

“You make sure that everyone knows the truth. The real reasons my previous retainers are all in new positions that they would have eventually earned anyway.” I said and started to eat.

I didn't bother sitting down or even speaking again until I was done with the food. Laura was still there.

“Are you still available for our date this evening?” I asked her as I handed her the plate.

Laura looked quite sad. “I don't feel like having another date so soon, my lor... David.”

I looked into her eyes and knew she was telling the truth. “Very well. Thank you for the meal.” I said and walked back over to my workbench and pulled out the things I had placed in stasis and continued to write down my observations.

Laura stood there for several minutes more before she sighed and left.

I worked through the afternoon and the same server from my first date showed up at suppertime. I had planned for it, so I nodded to her and followed her down to eat. She didn't mention anything about my situation and I didn't, either. When we entered the cafeteria, conversations died down and heads seemed to swivel across the room.

My vigilance technique told me that they were looking from me to Farra and Hanna, who still had tear-streaked faces. Gella was not in the room and I didn't ask where she was. I ignored them all and sat down to eat a meal, which the server brought to me promptly.

Halfway through the dish of food, a guard entered the cafeteria and looked around. He saw me and walked right over. I knew what was coming and let him approach without stopping him. Everyone would need to hear this, anyway.

“My lord.” The man said and pulled out a scabbard and a sword from off his back. “I was ordered to deliver this to you.”

I stood up and gave him a blank look. “Why?”

“Excuse me?” The man asked.

“Why were you ordered to bring it to me?” I asked.

“The Captain of the Guard ordered it.”

“Where is she now?” I asked, even if I didn't need to know.

The man started to sweat a little, because he still held the sword out and it was heavy. “She... left.”

A ripple of surprise went through everyone around us.

“So, not only did she abandon me, she abandoned her assigned post, broke her vows to always protect us, and then was stupid enough to leave behind her bound sword and leave herself unprotected.” I said, loudly.

The man looked embarrassed and tired. His arms looked sore as he struggled to hold the weapon up.

I took it from him and popped it out, then slid the large sword out. “You all know the importance of keeping your bound weapon with you at all times. It decides if you live or die.”

Nearly everyone in the cafeteria nodded.

“Are you going after her?” Someone asked.

“Why would I?” I asked back and silence met my question. “Gella chose to leave this behind, even though she knows that no one else can use it. She seems to have chosen to let fate kill her if she gave up her only defense against it.”

Everyone watched as I held the sword by the hilt and the tip, then I used a bit of magic to cancel the enchantment and snapped the blade in half. Everyone gasped, especially Farra and Hanna.

“I want these mounted over the front doors of the Sanctuary.” I said and handed the two pieces of the sword back to the guard. “If she ever returns, assuming some noble doesn't snatch her up as his personal sex slave, she will see that her fate has always been with the family she left behind.”

The guard nodded and hugged the broken blades to his chest and quickly retreated.

I sat back down and continued to eat. I didn't listen to the conversations around us and ignored Farra standing up and leaving Hanna alone at their table. I knew what she was going to do, look for Gella, and it was as pointless as Gella leaving her sword behind because Gella was trying to make a statement that she was leaving everything behind. What she actually said was that she was looking for a way to die.

I finished eating and returned to work. I had a lot of time this evening to get to it, now that I didn't have a date or worried about being in bed for someone later. It was a little freeing to have my time back to myself and I dove into my experiments with enthusiasm. I had almost fallen into the same trap that I had warned Laura about. I was starting to think that this was a chore to get done, when it was supposed to be a passion.

I wanted my skin color back. Me. My skin. I needed it to look normal and I would do it. That others would benefit would only be a bonus. Once I realized that, a few of the web-like cracks on the dam inside me seemed to fade. I let a small smile appear on my face and worked on through the night. I sipped a general health potion and kept my energy up, because to lag now wouldn't be good.

I went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast without bothering to bathe or change my clothes first. A few people commented about it and I simply said I worked all night and ate. They saw my slight smile and no one told me to take a break or to get some rest. That suited me fine, because I was fine. I had pulled several all night working sessions before I was so pampered and I only needed a few hours or so to sleep a night.

I arranged food delivery for lunch and supper, because I had a very time consuming experiment to perform, then I went back to work. The same server brought me my meals and I thanked her as I ate absently and continued to brew and prepare ingredients and potions to be combined and refined for use in the restoration creme.

Days flowed into a week, then another and another. Time and sleep seemed to combine into an odd configuration as I pretty much stayed in the potions lab as I worked constantly. It reminded me of my last few weeks in the army and brewing up the regeneration potion. I chuckled at that thought, because my work ethic during that time had been truly tested.

Sixteen hour days brewing for the army, four hours brewing for myself, and four hours of sleep. It was a trying time and I had made it. I completed an impossible task... two impossible tasks... and then I was restored and free.

I was soon going have that feeling again.

I looked down at the tiny pot of creme that I had finally managed to create. Blood, sweat, and tears went into it. Literally. As well as a lot of my magic. Like the restoration potion, it was a masterpiece.

I stepped back from the workbench and closed my eyes, the cracks in the dam inside of me were still prominent. I didn't question why it hadn't let go yet, even without Laura's dates to keep my magic under control.

I opened my eyes and smiled at the creme, then I dug my fingers into it and started lathering it on. It needed a thick layer to seep in and penetrate as deeply as the liquid potion had as slaves were soaked in it. I did my forehead, ears, face, neck, chest and on down, farther and farther. I even used a stick and a sponge to get it on my back and the places I couldn't really reach.

My hair was in a ponytail and had been treated with waterproofing potion, so even if I touched it by mistake, it wouldn't be ruined. Thanks to my vigilance technique, I knew I had covered everything, except the bottom of my feet. That would have to wait until the rest was done. I remained standing for the next six hours as the creme did its work.

I didn't need a mirror to tell me that it had worked. I could feel it as my skin absorbed all of the creme in the precisely measured dose that it had been in. One jar of creme for one person. I had left nothing to chance and ensured my success.

When it was done, I sat down and applied the last of the creme to the soles of my feet. I had been tempted to leave them completely white, as a joke and a reminder, then remembered that was what my hair was for. White hair was a distinctive mark of a slave and I was going to show it off wherever I went.

By the next morning, I looked mostly like my old self. I walked into the cafeteria and about fifteen dishes of various kinds were dropped and smashed on the floor. A lot of startled screams, shouts of disbelief, and creative curses came from all around.

I sat down at a table and waited. And waited. And waited a little more as I smelled something burning. I stood up and saw that everyone was still staring at me, so I walked over to the cafeteria's serving window and glared at the cooks.

“Breakfast. Now.” I said. My command voice shocked them enough that they started tending to the food that they were starting to burn from inattention. Some of it was abandoned and discarded into the troughs for the animals and more food was prepared. I sat back down to wait and wasn't surprised when I was served first.

I nodded to the woman, who wasn't the same server as before, and started eating. It was hot and good, so I finished it off quickly and left the cafeteria. I went down to the ground floor and the guard station there.

“Send word to Linette at the main medical building. I need either her or a trusted colleague to tend to me for the next ten days, starting tomorrow.” I said and one of them wrote it out. “They will be paid in either coin or potions, whichever they prefer.”

The man nodded and I walked back up the stairs. I had a new recipe to practice with and since I had Farra and the old man prepare a lot of the steps that I didn't have to experiment with to get to work, I had a ton of ready-made components that only needed to be added when the time was right.

I commandeered an entire section of cooking pots to create what I needed. No one objected when they showed up to work that day. They knew that whatever I was working on needed to be done as soon as possible. They also hoped that it was whatever I had done to myself to fix my skin. When I told them that it was and it would be ready tomorrow, they cheered and left to tell everyone.

I worked for the rest of the day and prepared enough cooking pots to fill enough of the creme jars for every slave that was there in the Sanctuary, and about fifty extra. I wasn't sure why I did so many extras, only that I had a feeling that there were people like Eludora that would need one and a half jars for complete coverage.

I loaded my bandoleer with a couple of them, just because I could, and a knock came from the door to the potions area. I walked over and opened it, only to see Linette as she stood there with her daughter Jinelle.

“I only called for a doctor and not a potions mage.” I said and Jinelle blushed.

“David, don't be cruel.” Linette said.

“I distinctly remember someone promising to spend several meals with me at the academy during exams and then said person not showing up or sending word about it.” I said and Jinelle's blush intensified.

“She had a good reason...” Linette started to say.

“I didn't ask what it was, because it doesn't matter.” I interrupted and she looked slightly angry. “The courtesy of letting me know at the time and not having me worry about the new Lady being kidnapped, killed, and robbed, is what's important.”

Both women were now blushing with embarrassment.

“At least you're alive.” I said to Jinelle. “What are you doing here?”

“I... I came to explain.” Jinelle whispered.

“Why? It's been about four weeks since then. After nearly a month and I haven't heard or seen you, why bother coming now?”

“I... well, I... I heard about...”

“Stop!” I commanded and she looked shocked. “That is none of your business and I would thank you to never speak of it to me or to anyone else.”

“David! You can't just...” Linette started to say.

“Shut. Up.” I commanded and my magic swirled around me and lashed out at them. They screamed as they jumped back as if burned. I looked at their bare arms and saw red marks start to form on them.

“What was that?!?” Linette asked as she looked down at her sore arms that were turning red.

“Magic burn.” I said with a flat voice. “It appears that I won't be requiring your services, Healer Marks.”

“David, you can't just...”

“If you cannot keep your nose out of my private affairs, I doubt you can be near me if you react like that to my magic protecting me.” I said and she looked surprised. “Will you spare another qualified healer for my use?”

Linette didn't respond and looked angry.

“Then your medical facility will no longer benefit from the Sanctuary's special services.”

“No!” Linette gasped. “We need those...”

“You will buy them like a normal customer, when said potions and cremes are available.” I said. “I will look for and hire someone here to monitor me for the time I require.”

Both Linette and her daughter looked shocked.

“Is there anything else?” I asked and they didn't say anything. “Then have yourselves a good evening. You can see yourselves out.”

“W-wait.” Jinelle whispered. “We... we need to talk...” She looked at her mother. “...about things.”

“That won't be necessary.” I said and gathered magic at my fingertip, then tapped her belly. “Problem solved.”

“NO!” Both women gasped.

“You never said that you wanted to be pregnant. You just wanted out of the situation you were in and I did that. It was the fastest way. You're welcome.” I said and closed the door on their shocked faces. I had cremes to finish crating up for the other slaves.