All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 181: Busy Bees

Bee stood in the upstairs alchemy room, surveying the changes as Maranda explained what she had been up to. Unfortunately, it was hard to focus much after the revelation of how strong the Nighty Knights had become. Her head was so wrapped up in thoughts of the children all the implications that brought that she missed Maranda's question. "I'm sorry, what?"

Luckily, Maranda was also distracted and didn't seem to mind repeating herself. "I said, what do you think I should learn next?"

Running the last bit of conversation through her head, Bee realized Maranda had reached the end of what she could learn with the most basic materials. Really, the girl had been busy in the last few weeks Bee was away.

Maranda had managed to build and keep an impressive supply of basic healing materials. She hadn’t completely exhausted the stocks of their components, but really Bee doubted that she was learning anything from working with the lesser materials at this point. At the same time, Maranda had not taken it upon herself to move on to the more expensive materials, as she would have definitely wasted more than necessary trying to learn by herself. Why do that when Bee would soon be available to teach her?

At least, that was the reasoning Miranda had given. Bee thought it might have been a bit more to do with fear or not being able to convince her mother or Susan to give her access to the more expensive stores. Either way, it worked out. But still, Bee felt much better seeing the massive stockpile of healing potions that Miranda had accrued. It would be very useful when they had a large influx of people, especially after so long on the road.

Her only concern was the expiration of the potions versus their ability to make new ingredients. She supposed she would have to start talking to Tony or Mary about getting some people on that. Harvesting some of these ingredients was difficult and not necessarily something that they could do without the manpower they were now getting. Focusing efforts there would drastically help with the necessity of finding work for the many idle hands that they were about to have. If everyone was making alchemy ingredients, or enough of them were, perhaps everyone would benefit more than she had even thought.

Bee snapped back to herself, realizing that she had gotten lost in thought yet again. "Sorry. Yeah. Let's move on to maybe some bigger items. Strength potions are more complicated. I think those we have plenty of materials in stock for, and we’ll always have a use for them as long as we need to do repairs or work in the field."

Miranda nodded at Bee's suggestion. Together, they wordlessly left the lab and walked over to the library, winding their way down the servant stairs. Along the way they came across a bunch of people scurrying around, attempting to get the castle ready for visitors.

Bee was glad that people were polishing the floor. Not that the castle wasn't kept clean by any stretch of the imagination, but she was sure Void would approve.

Once they reached the library, they talked to the self-appointed librarian and found the few books that Miranda would need for the next step in her education. She checked them out with little fanfare.

Returning to the lab, Bee and Miranda settled off into their own niches as they began working. Miranda was carefully following her recipe and moving at a quarter of the pace that Bee thought she could manage. But the girl seemed determined not to make a mistake or to waste any ingredients.

Bee was moving quickly, tossing together a few quick brews. She was focused on making the newcomers comfortable. As such, she had picked out recipes that might help alleviate a few of the ailments that had troubled some of her charges on the way back. Now that she was back at the castle, she had access to the ingredients she needed.

Luckily, none of the things she was making were super complicated. That meant she could actually spare attention for Maranda’s questions. The younger girl would occasionally come over and ask some very detailed and pointed questions that Bee had trouble answering quickly. They often required a lot of real thought, and more than once she had to even admit that she didn't know something. For those, they ended up just jotting down some notes on a piece of paper for a trip to the library. After they were finished.

Time passed quickly, and before Bee knew it, another day was over. They only had a little more time to prepare. Then, their guests would be here.

—-

So far, I had really been enjoying my time traveling with the army. I sure missed being in the castle. It was a second home, especially with all the other people and the Nighty Knights and everything. But this adventure had been quite fruitful. There was lots of cleaning to be done and many good things that I could accomplish. However, today was the first day that I regretted coming along.

We found the first town, and I was starting to really worry about how dirty all the human towns were. It wasn't so much that the towns were dirty so much as destroyed. To be honest, I wasn’t impressed. So far, I'd only ever seen three human settlements outside of the castle and small farms. Of the three, the first one was completely abandoned and little more than rubble covered in dirt. The second one was in the process of becoming that, though Bee and I had put a stop to it. This third one was mirroring the first one.

I followed Arthur closely as we entered the ruins of the city, not wanting to stray too far and perhaps disturb something that he needed to see. It was something that he had explained to me the night before. To some extent, I understood his reasoning. But to some extent, I felt it was kind of weird.

Because of the fact that there were no people left to tell him what happened, he needed to entirely figure that out from context clues. I could understand that. That made a lot of sense, and I had many times figured things out from very little evidence myself. I was quite proud of my detective skills. But at the same time, though, how could he leave an entire city in this state?

It was quite reprehensible in many ways. I felt that it was only fair to give justice to the people who had lived here, to restore their town to optimal condition. Yet he had insisted that we wait to do that until after we had found everything out. Reluctantly, I had agreed to not do any cleaning in the town, no matter how much that hurt my circuitry to write.

But in order to learn more about the whole investigation process, I decided if I had to not clean, I would keep my processors away from anything related to it. For now. And so I followed Arthur around, trying to understand what he was actually looking for. Perhaps once I figured out what was important, I would have a better understanding of why I shouldn’t clean right now. Because otherwise, I might start malfunctioning.

So far, we hadn't found a single human or even a sign of another human, but we did find many tracks leading out of the town in different directions.

It was also interesting watching Arthur work. He wasn't just wandering around the city by himself, looking at the ground. He had people come and tell him about other interesting things, and then he would go to look at the interesting stuff himself. We went to each one of the exits, where we found a mess in the dirt leading away toward other cities. But we also looked at their town hall, where it appeared to have been the site of a last stand. There we located many charred remains of what must have been undead, along with weapons and piles of weapons. That seemed to be what was left of the defenders.

Eventually, we all left. No one seemed comfortable in the city, despite some of it still being intact. We returned to the camp a half mile outside the walls. I first had wanted to stay behind and work on the cleanup effort, but Arthur had convinced me that we needed to talk about what would happen next. I had agreed with the caveat that, if I still wanted to, I could come back tomorrow. Perhaps it was for the better. I supposed there was nothing that would likely change about the town over such a short time. It just felt wrong to leave something so disordered and destroyed behind.

We retreated into the command tent without additional interruption. There, many of the command staff were already waiting for Arthur. I mostly stayed out of the way as they talked, though people didn't really give me much notice at this point. I was sort of a silent presence which people tended to avoid looking at. So I just rolled under the table and listened to their conversations while scanning the map above me.

It was a detailed picture of the surrounding areas, complete with terrain, landmarks, and cities. A circle of red string outlined how far the undead could have gotten by our best estimates. They seemed to be still several days ahead of us, but they could only have gotten so far.

The general staff were all participating in a grand debate about what the undead's next target would be. Arthur, for the most part, watched and listened as he usually did, letting people say their piece when necessary. But I could tell that he wasn't entirely paying attention. His lips moved and fingers danced across the map, indicating where we were and the possible enemy target locations. Eventually, he cleared his throat and raised his hand, completely cutting through the clamor of the tent.

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