At noon, the bridge came alive. Brown wooden posts, rotted and blackened, stood in the rushing river, squeaking in pain. It wasn’t the bridge’s fault; horse carts, ox wagons, and line-cutters jammed it solid. Every so often, a few unlucky souls screamed and splashed into the icy water.
An Elven officer, longsword at his hip and a glass-glazed breastplate, stared with dead fish eyes, checking passes with impatience. A farmer with torn pants exposing his shins knelt before him. “Please, this pass cost me everything.”
“Fake! Move along!” he barked in stiff Nofia.
Two Elven guards, spears in hand, crossed their bright points at the man’s neck with practiced ease. This happened too often. The Elven conquest had come too fast—even the wise Elven Queen hadn’t expected the Nofia armies to collapse so quickly. So the Elves could only barely keep basic order in the conquered lands, while proclaiming they belonged to the Elven Queen.
The human farmer saw the spear tips at his throat. His face went white, yet he still tried his luck. The officer’s kindness had long worn away, and his patience too. He didn’t even bother tearing the pass. He just flicked it into the churning river. “My pass!” The farmer sprang up, snatching for it midair. The Elven guards were rather merciful; they didn’t stab his neck. They lifted a boot and kicked him into the freezing water.
“Lowly Nofia.”
The next human stepped up with his pass at once to fill the gap. It happened so often that even the kind turned cold.
Aelina paused and watched the farmer fall into the river, playing the bystander. She’d already braced herself for the apes’ moral level, so she felt nothing. She never expected apes to hold high morals. With their productivity so low, any moral demand felt like unfair nitpicking.
“Apes, cheer for me.” Aelina pushed a half-full cart. The suspended cart rattled over the uneven dirt, and a big sack of copper coins clinked beautifully. “I’m Prometheus. I bring you the fire of tech. You’ll have no war, no hunger, no disease. All you need is to offer your wives and daughters to serve as my maids.”
Sadly, the four men tailing her had no respect for this lady Prometheus. They carried crude clubs, leering, and followed Aelina across withered grass and over a small mound, into an empty patch of land with only dead grass. They picked up speed.
Aelina suddenly stopped. She swept her Molecular Reconstructor over the cart, grabbed out a crossbow, turned, and raised it at the four men.
“Scram.”
A burly man with a pitch-black beard covering half his chest grinned. “Boss lady, we brothers are just out for a stroll. Why so tense?”
“Yeah.” A young red-beard added, “What are you scared of? Women shouldn’t mess with crossbows. Put it down.”
In a primitive civilization, woman equals weak. And weak in chaos is sheep. A cart full of food and copper is fat. She was a fat sheep in their eyes.
Aelina understood their motives. She felt obliged to correct one idea. Not every fat sheep is there to be eaten.
Whoosh.
The bolt stuck five meters in front of the burly man. “Anyone who crosses that line, I’ll kill.”
The burly man let out a heh, bent over, and pointed at Aelina, bundled so tightly only her eyes showed. He told his pals, “Women are dumb. She shot her bolt and still pretends.”
The other three laughed. Red-beard stared at those damn potatoes in the cart, eyes full of greed.
They were forty meters from Aelina. Everyone knows crossbows reload slow. To these greedy almost-bandits, Aelina’s empty crossbow made her a hornless fat sheep.
“Brothers, let’s spice up our picnic.” The burly man’s beard trembled with excitement. “Hey, woman, I heard you’re pretty. Later we’ll play horse. You’ll be the horse, and I’ll spank you hard.”
Aelina had had enough of male apes harassing her these past few days. She swept the Molecular Reconstructor over the crossbow.
Whoosh.
The burly man’s smile froze. His eyes flew wide at the bolt buried in his brow, unreal like a dream. His body wobbled, then fell backward.
His buddies stared at their dead boss. His kicking legs flung up dust. Red-beard’s mouth opened so wide you could stuff in a potato. So Aelina stuffed a bolt into it.
The remaining two apes jolted awake and bolted. One yelled, “Sorcery! Sorcery! Help! Help!”
Aelina shifted aim from the yelling runner to the other, silent one. “Sorry, I need a publicist. You don’t qualify.” She squeezed the trigger. In her eyes, the bolt drifted lazily, traced an elegant arc, and drilled into the back of his head. He hit the ground, rolled once, his neck limp, eyes staring blankly at the sky, his calf twitching.
“Humane execution.”
Aelina pushed her clatter-clatter cart and raised the Molecular Reconstructor to collect the spoils. Light stripped the clothes off the corpses. Then, kindly, she “buried” the naked bodies—simple enough: decompose the soil beneath, then heap it over them. This doesn’t work on the living. The Reconstructor can’t act on clothing on a sentient being, and it’s invalid within a certain radius around a hostile living target. In short, she can’t “decompose” the air around an enemy’s mouth and nose, nor wrap an enemy in iron or stone. Unless the target willingly accepts her—like a certain Golden Ape.
Thinking of that Golden Ape, Aelina’s mood soured at once. She kicked a fresh grave.
“So annoying.” She muttered as she pushed the cart. “My Golden Fur ran off, then hooked up with some chick to watch me get beaten. So annoying.”
Word was, that Golden Ape had fled. Where to, she didn’t know.
Aelina spotted a plant she hadn’t seen before. She crouched, pushed aside a stone, and plucked the tiny sprout. “I’m recruiting her as Maid No. 1! A zero-to-one breakthrough for my harem.”
No one answered. So boring.
The target was great, Aelina planned as the cart rattled on, her thoughts as jumpy as the cart. Her mind held knowledge that could drown a planet if printed as books, but 74% of the surface was an ocean of sex techniques. Of the remaining 26% land, 8% highlands and 12% plains and deserts were all about indirect or direct sex—fetish lingerie, foreplay guides, and so on. The final 6% had only one tiny dot about love between men and women.
That dot was about the total area of streams on the continent. And 87% of that dot didn’t apply to primitive courtship. People had long shed the body’s limits.
“And it’s all men conquering women’s hearts. There’s no manual on how a woman conquers a woman.” Aelina sighed again. “Better grow stronger and use absolute power to conquer, straight up.”
“No! Citizen X, what are you scared of?” Aelina pep-talked herself. “There’s a first time for everything. Try more, learn more. When I infiltrate Elven society, I can’t just stare at a bunch of beauties and do nothing.”
Business first, though.
By evening, Aelina hauled her full cart back to the refugee camp. One dead grass rabbit, twenty-three herbs, thirty-six kilograms of weeds, three garments, and two belts. She picked a spot at the bridgehead, beside the swift river, and raised a stone house. Elves with bows watched, curious and wary, as a square stone house sprang up by the water.
It had two floors and a basement. On the second floor, a slide led straight to the basement for quick escapes. The first floor was a shop. A smooth stone counter displayed goods. No windows on either floor. Close the door, flip the counter, and it became a sealed cube. Aelina circled the house, felt it lacked something, lifted the Molecular Reconstructor, and aimed at the door frame. Silver mist swirled around her, then gathered on the wall. A protruding iron sign swung in the wind, reading “General Store.”
Thirty-five pairs of straw sandals, one fuzzy rabbit-fur shoe, and six wooden bottles of salve sat on the platform.
The miracle the apes had just seen drew a crowd. They clustered in twos and threes around the strange building. An old man with a white beard, leaning on a broken stick, kept ranting, “Devil’s sorcery! A man-eating house! Don’t touch that woman’s goods.” Two mercenaries with metal weapons and ragged leather whispered about robbing the place. More people couldn’t wait; before Aelina even hawked, they rushed the counter, noisy and pushy.
“Pay first, then you get the goods! You! Yeah, you! Control your hands!”
Aelina stood inside, stick in hand, and whacked an arm that tried to snatch. If someone paid, she tossed the goods straight at him. Six copper per pair of straw sandals. Dirt-cheap.
A round-faced traveling merchant with nose spectacles squeezed through with two guards. Aelina was grumbling, “I should build a restricted lane so they don’t all crowd my storefront.”
“Esteemed lady.” The round-face stroked the smooth counter, quietly stunned. He’d once followed a noble to a palace banquet in Nophia City. This stone was smoother than the finest marble there. “I want to buy all remaining sandals.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.” He led with momentum, pulled out a small pouch, and poured coins onto the counter. Silver and gold piled into a small heap. “Two gold and thirteen silver. My deposit. I want two hundred pairs, five copper per pair. How’s that?”
Aelina glanced at the heap and pointed at the wooden sign above. It read: “Limit Two Pairs Per Person.”
“I can read.” The round-face frowned. “Madam, I respect those with mysterious power. If you feel the price is low, or coin is worthless, I can trade food. Potatoes, wheat, oats.”
Behind the crowd, Aelina saw an ox cart stacked with sacks. The two guards were tapping back refugees with their spears.
“Two pairs per person,” Aelina said.
“If the price is too high, we can negotiate.”
“Two pairs per person.”
The round-face decided this aunt was tricky. He’d heard mages had quirks beyond common sense. “Can you tell me why?”
“My output won’t rise just because you ordered,” Aelina said. “You’ll jack up the price and sell to others for more. I want more people wearing my shoes.”
“Hahaha.” The merchant’s fingers tapped the counter in rhythm. He laughed. “No offense, but your thinking is naive, not what I’d expect from someone your age. If you want to help people, why not give the shoes for free?”
“Your logic has a major flaw. Must only extreme good deeds count as good?” Aelina calmly pointed out the error.
