LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 3: ch3
The food could have been worse.
That was not high praise given that I could scarcely taste anything due to my over-engineered tongue feeding me a series of ingredients to the point of pleasure or distaste vanishing in the process.
I suspected that it would take some time to beat back the flow of data on that front.
At present? I could only really process that my meal was some sort of stew with something similar to venison and buckwheat as the principal components. After that came a thicket of nutritional and compositional data that made anything resembling proper taste a distant impression.
"It is good," I said while practicing a warm smile on the small cook from where I sat on the ground next to their small table. The 'house' only contained a single room and was not especially large, so I hugged against one of the walls while the child sat on the bed and Morygen sat across from me on their storage chest.
Pale green eyes blinked in confusion at my words while Morygen laughed from her own bowl of the yellow-brown stew, "You are a brave one."
The girl gave him a hesitant smile and nodded with a skeptical brow.
"You will have to forgive her," Morygen laughed as she pushed her sister's red bangs back behind her ears and petted her head. "I assure you that she appreciates the sentiment."
It did not seem polite to point out that I had known from the second I saw her that the girl was mute for some reason or another.
And I tried very hard to ignore that my brain allocated the probable cause to some sort of trauma, despite my own curiosity it was not my business to delve into the affairs of those who were being so charitable towards me.
"I have no doubt," I kept my attempt at a smile on while I raised another spoonful to my mouth. I was distantly grateful to my hosts for not laughing at the silliness of the proportionally tiny spoon clutched between two massive fingers to deliver a tiny portion into my mouth. "Does she cook often?"
"Since she had two years," Morygen explained while a self-conscious finger scratched at her cheek. "Never been much of a cook, I'm afraid. Would not bet that you would consider my attempts edible at all."
I might have asked why a child would have to cook but I had enough common sense to understand why and enough empathy left to not ask further. By some means or another, they did not have a mother or a father in all probability.
It was a natural enough course of events, their world did not have the tools to fight off every assortment of disease and there was always a possibility that their progenitors shared their eldest daughter's dangerous trade.
"Your experience shows well," I said to the girl instead. My enhanced eyed noted the minute change in the temperature of her cheek at the compliment but then again, everyone liked to be praised, even shy and wary children.
"Now you are just teasing her," Morygen said between mouthfuls, the elder sister ate with a fast and ferocious pace as if she was practiced at avoiding actually having to taste the meal.
"I mean what I say," I shrugged my great shoulders, careful not to knock something over.
There were worse things than flattering one's hosts, moreso when they were one's only ties to the world.
The meal was occupied by a few other such comments while I used the chance to catch my reflection in the stew. It was interesting that my senses saw the reflection of my face as if it was a clean and freshly polished mirror.
What I saw banished the last doubts about what I was.
The books I had read had always made so much about 'transhuman dread' the phenomena that made the features of an Astarte's strange and overwhelming to 'mortals.' Instead no one I had yet met was terribly bothered by my appearance, no more than the general surprise that my size had garnered from the villagers and professional curiosity of the Seeker-scavengers.
Yet for all that size, my features were not disproportionate. Which marked me as not being from that breed.
More troublesome was what lay in the remainder of my features.
All Primarchs had looked alike in the pictures of the old faux-leather books I vaguely recalled glancing over in some sort of sick-bed. Their features had all been alike at a core level, each a different iteration of the same fundamental schema which would have made all of them something like near-identical brothers.
And it seemed that I was no different.
As a whole, the face was roughly the right shape, if a touch narrow. The mouth seemed right if unusually wide and thin-lipped. The eyes were large under a somewhat large forehead and narrow brow, grey with pupils so light that they almost seemed absent. My rosewood-esque skin was palid to the point of being somewhat ghoulish. An effect which the somewhat wild mane of dirty grey did not help with, less so as it obscured my chin and general skull enough to make the shape a touch difficult to discern, but it did seemed fair to judge that I had the right chin (if not quite as broad and strong as those of the others).
Were it not for the bizarre upward tilts at the edges of my lips, I would have observed that my features were cast with what I could only describe as 'studiously disinterested'.
So after a long life in the business of diplomacy, I had come into my new life with resting fox-face. Lovely.
Even my eyes and hair were not terribly distinct by a Primarch's standards.
Nor were the colors pleasing. Both were grey, not at all the color of steel or iron or some other flattering comparison, instead I had a mottled and frankly dull tone which was more like water one used to clean brushes.
Not only had I been reborn with the expression of a mildly-amused bureaucrat, I looked like an old one at that (if one ignored the lack of wrinkles).
As the meal neared its end I shared my observation, "I do not recall having the hair of an old man."
"Maybe you are one," Morygen noted wryly. "An old man out for his last seeking and found the Treasure to restore his youth! Romantic sounding, isn't it?"
I snorted, somewhat surprised at how genuine the reaction was.
"It does sound nice doesn't it?" She chuckled while the little girl collected the empty bowls and took them to the counter. "It does seem a little void-like I will admit."
I stopped for a moment as I mauled the implication while recalling one of the stories that I so frequently read in another life. "I do not think that I am possessed."
"Possessed?" Morygen frowned before shaking her head and holding her arms out in apology. "I'm sorry, that was rude. No, if it had to do with the void of souls we would not have found you."
I almost blinked in surprise, "Why?"
Morygen seemed to match my own surprise before chuckling awkwardly, "Sorry for that. I should stop assuming that you know these things. Voidspawn and what they touch cannot leave the cities of the Fallen Ones. Actually, you'd be surprised how often they sneak into Treasures."
"How?" I asked. Despite myself I was actually happy after a fashion, the curiosity was not a bad emotion and more to the point it was an emotion that I could enjoy without any dampening.
It also drew my interest that there was anything that could actually keep the grimdark-powered cheating that was chaos omnipotence.
But Morygen shrugged helplessly, humor at my sudden outburst evident. "Can't rightly say about that. Seekers, priests and scholars have more ideas about that than I think are really important. As far as I can tell, well..."
She leaned back in her chair as in thought.
"I think a good story should come after a meal together, don't you think?" Her smile had some mischief in it.
Given her profession, I suspected that she was used to attempting to rapidly build rapport with the bands that she agreed to work with. Mercenary or not, it was worth it to have some ties to those whose hands your life would be in.
"I like to hear stories," I encouraged the willing font of knowledge. I wished that I knew how to force the amusement forward beyond attempting to broaden my best smile.
"Well if you insist," she laughed. "I once saw a man, well more a boy but so was I back then. Anyway, he found this sword. It was a pretty sword lacquered in all sorts of fancy patterns and the others were insistent that it was real pretty. Void-stuff always has pretty colors for other people, perversions on the true colors."
She shrugged, "It is all as grey as your hair to me. Anyway, he picks up this sword, next thing you know he is cutting through the voidborn like a scythe through wheat. And the next thing you know we were at the edge of the ruins. And then."
Her smile turned to a frown, "He could not leave. We did not think it was corrupted at first, we did not know what it was. You never think that it will happen to you, you hear the stories but you ignore them when you are young and unblooded."
I rested my chin between my hands as she continued to reminisce while the little one scrubbed at the bowls in a bucket.
"He started getting erratic, insisting that he would get out. It seemed like nerves but before you know it, he was on about wanting to conquer the whole of the world. He said that he would not sell it like we do with the better things," She shook her head. "That is generally a hard to miss sign. A Treasure is a Treasure but that sort of talk is madness, more so when he started talking about rivers of blood and mountains of skulls."
"And what did you do?" I asked when she paused.
The look in her eyes was a sad one.
"He tried to get them to kill me," She sighed. "Blamed me for his inability to leave, some nonsense about me being a monster. That was all the sign we needed. They don't like Void-banes and it always gives them away."
"You killed him," It was not a question.
"Yes," she nodded. "Tossed the ugly grey thing back into the ruins and left his body where it was, it was as tainted as the sword. Bad business, I turned down the pay, we ended up without Treasures to sell and it left a bad taste to be paid for killing their friend."
Her expression seemed a touch pained for a moment at the last before vanishing under her smile as she raised her shoulders and spread her arms, "So no, you do not have that sort of void-stuff."
I offered another forced smile, "I hope that is not too disappointing."
"I will live," she said with an easy smirk. "But the point is that I would not worry too much about the hair."
"I suppose that being dull is better than being trapped in some ruin," I agreed.
"I tend to agree there," She said with a broad smile. "We will need to cut it though, can't have people think you are upjumped."
That drew my attention, one of the points of note I had yet to conclude was the uniformly short-shorn hair among the village adults. Especially in contrast to the varying lengths of the Seekers in the tavern.
"Is there some problem with it?" I asked.
"Well…" Morygen scratched her cheek thoughtfully. "You don't seem Gancean or like you are from Gwyar, but it's best not to tempt these things. Odd you would forget but commonborn should not grow their hair long after their fourth, that sort of thing is for those of higher birth."
Huh, I mused. "So I am making something of a rebellious statement at the moment?"
"More than you are going to have a time getting it clean," She snorted. "Takes a higher class to afford cleanliness like that, but yes it does present a less than ideal image."
"It would not be a problem," I shrugged. I did not think that long hair had ever been a preference of mine before and I had no interest in presenting the wrong idea.
The younger girl tapped my shoulder and I turned to see her offering me a smoking cup. The source of the herbal smell.
"Her tea is actually good," Morygen suggested as I took the cup in hand while the little one darted back to the small kitchen and back with a cup for her sister with a maternal smile.
I sipped and tried to force back the rush of nutritional information with mixed results. It was not too sweet but there was a bit of a tang to it that my brain immediately identified as originating from a distant descendant of an orange. The flavor was still far removed, but I settled for enjoying the question of how something like an orange could grow in what seemed like a colder climate.
"Good," I smiled at the little girl again, opting to keep up my practice. Her blushing retreat was amusing in its own way but I forced the emotion forward into a shake of my head.
I wondered how strong the impulses of the others had to be for them to be able to produce such great reactions? I would need to work on that if I want to be the least bit personable.
"So," the elder blank asked as she sipped along happily. "All else aside, I plan to show you around the village tomorrow, if it is all the same to you."
"You did not today?" I asked.
"Well I guess I did at that," she admitted sheepishly. "But it is important to get to know some of the folk."
I wondered at that. By rights I should be busy trying to conquer the world while attracting more followers than possible despite being all sorts of abrasive.
Then again, I was not a Primarch in truth.
"I would like that," That time the smile was more genuine.