Chapter 746: Loose Ends [Bonus - ]

Chapter 746: Loose Ends [Bonus Chapter]

Silas nearly recoiled.

"A what now?"

"A promise-and-failure!" Thora declared loudly, jabbing a callused finger at his chest. "You love flapping those pretty lips about rewards! Remember the mining expedition? You stood up in front of the whole crew and declared that whoever mined the most would get a special reward directly from their Lord! And what happened? We came back and hauled tons of ore into the warehouse, and you still haven’t given out what you promised! You haven’t even decided the winners yet!"

Silas stood frozen as his mind ground to a screeching halt.

’Oh, shit...’ he thought as a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. ’The mining contest... The special reward...’

To be completely honest, with everything that had happened since, he had forgotten about it completely.

Between the World Council, Khemet, the World Vault and the whole business in Central City, the mining tally had slipped right out of his head.

Thora leaned in close with her thick arms crossed over her vest and her chin tipped up in defiance.

"If you want to go around making new promises about cannons and fancy machines," she huffed in a stern lecturing growl, "you need to settle the ones already sitting on the ground first! Hmph!"

She jerked her face away with an exaggerated toss of her chin yet from under her bangs her amber eyes slid sideways toward him and watched his face carefully.

’Heh,’ Thora thought, her ears twitching as she waited. ’Let’s see how he takes that... Lords usually get their pride all ruffled when a smith talks back to them... Is he going to get offended? Pout a little?’

Instead Silas let out a dry embarrassed laugh and rubbed the messy dark hair at the back of his head.

"Ehehe~" he laughed sheepishly, a faint blush on his cheeks. "I’ll finish what I want to do before making an announcement."

Thora’s stern face cracked, and her amber eyes lit up with wicked teasing amusement.

"You better," she snickered.

Before Silas could step back, the dwarf darted forward with terrifying speed, ducked low and pressed her face right against the front of his trousers.

SMOOCH!

She planted a loud wet kiss directly on his crotch through the fabric.

"Ehehehe~!"

Thora let out an unhinged perverted giggle, scrambled back to her feet and bolted for the towering double gates of the new forge like a thief in the night, her boots clattering wildly over the stone!

"Thora, you menace!" Silas barked, his face going a bit red as he hurriedly smoothed down the front of his trousers, though a laugh caught in his throat anyway.

Over by the fence the dwarves cheered and howled with laughter, thoroughly entertained by their foundry master.

Borna stepped forward and gave Silas a firm respectful nod.

"Thank you for the new hearths, Lord Silas. You gave us a real forge today... The Greyrock Clan promises we’ll work our hardest under Thora!"

"Aye! We’ll show you what dwarven hands can do with a high ceiling!" Dagna added, and her apprentices echoed her with enthusiastic shouts as they started marching toward the warm glowing entrance.

"Thank you, girls," Silas called warmly, waving as they passed.

They streamed through the huge new gates in twos and threes, and every few steps one of them stopped dead to stare up at the cranes or run a hand along the black veined stone of the archway before the girl behind her shoved her along.

The yard slowly emptied until only Solenne was left by the fence with Cogsworth, who was polishing his kettle.

The silver-haired fox walked over with her boots clicking on the cobbles.

She stopped a few feet away with her hands clutching her satchel to her chest.

Her nine silver tails swished behind her in slow hesitant arcs with their fluffy tips brushing the stones.

"U-Um..." she stammered, her cheeks flushed a soft pink as she looked up at him through her silver bangs. "Lord Silas... I think I’m going to stay here with Miss Thora for a while. I want to look at the new assembly bay and the crane mounts... But I’ll come back! I promise!"

Silas smiled, and his face softened into easy warmth.

He stepped forward and laid his hand on top of her head, right between her soft pointed silver ears, and gave her an affectionate reassuring pat.

"Do your best, okay?"

Solenne’s eyes went wide and shimmered with bright happy relief.

The touch on her ears sent a pleasant tingle all the way down her spine.

All nine of her silver tails fanned out at once and began spinning behind her like an oversized fluffy pinwheel, whipping up a soft breeze.

’He patted my head...’ Solenne thought, her heart fluttering like a startled bird as her cheeks turned crimson. ’He’s so gentle with his hands...’

Silas took two long strides past her toward the stone lane that led out of the industrial quarter.

"Come back in time for dinner," he called over his shoulder.

Solenne stood frozen as his footsteps drew level with her side, her ears twitching.

’Wait...’ she thought, her golden eyes darting sideways at his hand swinging loosely by his hip. ’Won’t Lord Silas grab my tai—’

SQUEEZE!

Silas’s hand swept out with effortless casual precision and sank deep into the thick impossibly soft silver fur of her middle tail, giving it a firm fond squeeze as he strolled on by.

"Eeeeeeek!"

Solenne let out a high mortified yelp and jumped six inches off the ground with her back arching and her ears flattening against her hair.

Silas chuckled and let go of the fur without breaking stride, glancing back at her with a wry teasing grin.

"You shouldn’t be waving them in my face like that, Solenne."

"L-Lord Silas!" Solenne squeaked, her face glowing so bright it could have lit a mine shaft.

She clamped all nine tails tight against her shins, spun on her heel and bolted for the open gates of the Titan’s Anvil Forgeworks with Cogsworth whirring along right behind her.

"A delightful display, Mistress," Cogsworth’s polite voice drifted back from the doorway, and then the huge gates swung shut behind them.

Silas watched them disappear inside and chuckled quietly to himself.

He walked down the sloping industrial avenue and left the rhythmic clang of hammers and the hiss of steam behind him.

Already the new forge was waking up... The three smokestacks had begun to breathe out thin gray plumes, and a hum came through the stone of the street immediately.

The lane grew quieter as the stone pavers gave way to a packed dirt path that wound along the eastern edge of the settlement, bordered by low split-rail fences and patches of damp green moss.

Lantern light glowed in the windows of the residential buildings as somewhere else a group of girls was laughing over something, and the sound carried a long way in the cold still air.

Up on the walls he could make out the shapes of the Shieldmaidens on their evening rounds, dark figures against the fog with their spears on their shoulders.

In a few days there would be cannons up there too, two over the main gate and two along the sides, and anything that wanted to climb those walls would have to come through four Tier 2 barrels first.

The thought should have made him feel good, however the easy amused smile slowly faded from his face.

He slowed his pace, his dark blue eyes following the mist gathering in the low hollows between the buildings.

"Fuck..." he muttered under his breath, and let out a long heavy sigh that clouded faintly in the chilly evening air.

He kicked a loose pebble off the trail and watched it skitter into the tall weeds.

’Thora wasn’t wrong,’ he thought, his brow furrowing as a dull weight of guilt settled into his chest. ’Not even a little.’

He remembered that morning clearly now that she had dragged it back up.

The girls lined up at the gates with their picks and their carts... The golems loaded and ready and him, standing in front of all of them, declaring that whoever mined the most would get a special reward directly from their Lord.

They had taken it seriously... Of course they had...

Tasmin had tracked a whole hidden nest through the seams and nearly gotten herself killed proving herself.

Brida had pretended to give Tasmin the win and then laughed in her face about it.

Lyra and the younger girls had swung their picks until their arms shook, counting every load out loud.

Eluned had marched her entire detachment through cavern after cavern so that every single woman under her could fill her ledger to overflowing.

They had hauled back so much ore that the Distribution Nexus had needed its compression shelving just to hold it and then he had come home, and the next thing he knew it was the World Council and Khemet and the World Vault and Central City, now the mining tally had slipped clean out of his head...

’It isn’t that the girls would ever hate me over something like this,’ he thought. ’They’re loyal to a fault... They work their asses off day in and day out because they believe in what we’re building here but that just makes it worse.’

He ran his fingers back through his hair.

’A Lord’s only as good as his word. If I stand up in front of everyone and promise a reward and then let it drift off because I was busy, it makes their extra sweat look like it didn’t mean anything... I have to make good on my promises. All of them.’

The wind picked up and rustled the bare tangled branches of an old gnarled mountain oak that leaned heavily over the path.

Silas took three more steps and stopped right under the overhanging boughs.

The leaves rustled softly in the cold draft.

He didn’t turn around, Silas just rested his hands on his hips and glanced up at the dark shadowed canopy over his head.

"You can stop stalking me, you know..." he said, his voice flat and quiet and perfectly conversational.

High in the thick shadowy canopy the tangled branches gave a sharp sudden shiver.

Gulp!

The swallow was loud enough to carry down through the damp breeze, and it was followed by the scratch of leather against rough bark and the frantic rustle of dry leaves.

Silas didn’t move.

He stayed planted in the middle of the dirt path with his eyes still angled up at the thick fork where the trunk split into heavy boughs.

’She’s been on me since I left the Keep,’ he thought. ’Past the barrack, down the avenue, into the Foundry yard... Honestly, she’s good. I almost didn’t notice.’

"Drop down before you snap that branch," he said with a soft dry chuckle in his voice. "The wood’s brittle from the frost."

Rustle, rustle...

"A-Ah..."

A small embarrassed squeak drifted down out of the leaves, followed by the scrambling of boots looking for a foothold.

THUMP!

A lithe athletic figure dropped from the twelve-foot bough and landed lightly on the balls of her feet in the damp weeds beside the path.

She absorbed the impact with a smooth bend of her knees with her hands brushing the dirt for a moment before she popped upright.

It was Lupina.

The wolf-girl stood there brushing twigs and bits of moss off the thighs of her snug frayed denim shorts.

Her thick bushy silver tail whipped back and forth behind her in rapid nervous half circles that kicked up a little flurry of pine needles as her triangular wolf ears were pinned flat back against her silver bangs in pure mortification.

Her eyes darted everywhere except his face and finally fixed hard on the toe of his boot, and her cheeks glowed a faint petal pink.

Silas looked at her, and his expression softened as a complicated mix of affection and self-reproach tightened in his chest.

’Lupina...’ he thought, watching the nervous flick of her ears.

’She’s one of the two Heroes I got from the Lord War with Evelyn,’ he reflected. ’When it was over and they came over to my side, I promised myself I’d treat them right... They’re Heroes with their own wills and their own pride and look at how things have actually gone. This is another loose end I’ve left dangling.’

He shifted his weight as the cool mountain wind drifted between them.