Chapter 10: Chapter 10 – Stale Air Underground

 

"Light. Lamps real good." Gei said with a grin. That grin soon fell as she now had to figure out how to proceed.

"Make bricks? Make room, no bricks?" She pursed her lips a bit with her finger on her chin.

Gei could use this effort to make bricks, and learn how to fine tune the use of her ability. If she made bricks out of the stone, she could use them to make walls down in the area she wanted to put her bathtub.

She could even make a small shed on top as the place to enter instead of an open set of stairs. She didn't want rain to get in.

Gei smiled, and started to do what she set out to do. She ran her finger along the stone and made bricks one at a time. It took a few hours before she was too tired to continue, but she was pleased with the results.

"Most ugly." She wasn't unhappy with the amount, but she did hope for more. "Hm? Focus, make tired. Weird." She said. "No room yet. Need more time." She groaned and let her head tilt back.

Gei closed her eyes, then straightened up. A smile slid onto her lips, and it grew wider with each passing second.

"This home. This mine." Gei stood up, and carried the few bricks up the stairwell. She looked at her tent, and smiled.

"Sleep there tomorrow." She would have a roof over her head, and no one would be able to take it from her.

It was a good night.

 

* * *

 

Gei woke up as the sun rose in the sky. The dark elements that continued to flow into her body had changed to light elements. Flame would mix in later as the sunlight grew stronger.

She quickly made a sack of salt, and ran it into town. She exchanged some of the silver for grain, cheese, and potatoes, and ran back to the wasteland.

She spent most of the morning cutting bricks and making her main room larger. When it was tripled in size, with enough room to walk around, she realized that she had only hollowed out an entry room when compared to the old clan. Also, this plateau was hundreds of feet wide and thousands of feet long. She could easily make a place the size of the clan's manor, and still not undermine the surface.

"Can have big home." She said as a smile slowly spread on her face. "Better home." She grew excited, and slowly calmed herself.

"What look like?" Gei sat down, and thought about how she wanted it to look.

Did she want multiple floors? There was plenty of stone in the plateau for that.

Did she want it to be long and sprawling? Plenty of room for that. What exactly did she want? Gei looked around the small room, and thought about how the clan home had been set up. She didn't want a reminder. She wanted something better.

"Boot room." She looked at her feet with the cloth wraps. "Need boots." She pursed her lips. "Hall there." She pointed to the east, which was along the length of the plateau. She decided on a few things. To the left, a storage room. On the right, bathing. Further on, bedroom, main room, kitchen. She could make each room and grow into it over time. Gei giggled.

"Big home! Need furs, bed, stove, pot, lot things!"

 

* * *

 

Gei continued to cut stone blocks out of the plateau, now that she had experience and could make them square, and carried them up her ramp. Once she had her entrance properly expanded, she added an alcove as temporary storage, and hollowed out a hall.

"Storage." She decided to change the bathing room into the kitchen. She wanted to make it close to the storage, which would make it easier to get cheese and food to cook. She could sleep in the main room until she had everything else hollowed out.

Gei was not a machine. She was a child. Ten years old, and extremely malnourished, her body could not do all this work for long periods, even if she had an elementalist's constitution to strengthen her.

"Beast balls." Gei walked up the stairs and sat outside. Within a few minutes, she began to perk up. After a short rest, she walked down the stairs again, but could immediately tell the difference between the air inside, and the air outside.

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"Black energy? Not night. Uglier. Oh. Air hole." She rolled her eyes. "How not think? Closets had grates." At the bottom of each closet she's ever hid in, where she could sleep in warmth, had grates for air flow. It was to move heat, and keep things from getting stale. It would also help the transfer of heat to save silver on fuel.

Gei immediately thought about how to add a way to get air inside her home. She cut out a small 'Gei' sized hole in the wall, and pointed up. The rock above her head dissolved until it reached the surface.

"Now to go up." Gei rushed upstairs, and with her senses, she found the area that had no elemental essence in it. She took a stone block, bored a hole halfway in from the side at one end, about the thickness of her wrist. She bored a hole from the other end until it met the first hole. She enlarged it to be as thick as her upper arm when she realized it wouldn't allow air to move.

She frowned slightly. Why wasn't air moving yet? She rolled her eyes again.

"Grate high, grate low. Ask Ern."

 

* * *

 

Gei looked at her empty hands, and dashed into the forest. After a short search, she found her prey.

A small pack of flame wolves, only three with a rank two alpha to lead, were soon beaten until their heads were deformed. When the pack saw her, they were disappointed as she had little flesh on her. She dashed to the first, and smashed its head with her small fist. The skull was shattered easily. The second and third already detected the massive amount of elements, but it was too late. She slammed the second into a tree, and the Alpha couldn't run.

When she left with her kills, another small pack came to sniff the area, but left when they felt the presence of multiple elements blended into a chaotic mix.

Five minutes later, she walked into the town, seemingly oblivious to the looks she received.

"Do you think she knows?" Venn asked his friend. Drom rolled his eyes.

"Does it look like she knows? Damn, if I didn't see it from the outside, I wouldn't believe it. A ten year old girl carrying six hundred pounds of dead wild animals over her shoulder like it's nothing." He shivered. "So glad I've never angered her." Venn laughed.

"The Griels must feel real sick right about now."

 

* * *

 

"Damn it, girl! Don't you know it's not normal to bring in flame wolves like they are kittens!" Ern asked as Gei carried in the last rank one flame wolf by the scruff of the neck. She put it on his counter, and jabbed in two fingers to pull out the flame core.

"Easy kill." Gei said. Ern shook his head.

"Freaks me out every time you do that, and this is the third time today!" Ern ran his fingers through his hair. "I'll take care of the entire wolf for you." He put fifteen large silver on the counter.

"Need stove door. Grill. Question. Air bad underground?" She asked.

"Underground? You mean, like a cave?" He asked. She nodded. "A cave with only one entrance could have bad air. Usually air goes in one direction. So one is a way in, and it needs another way to get out." Gei frowned slightly.

"Air holes. Surface close." She said.

"Oh, if the surface is close, you need sort of a pipe, or channel. See over here?" He pointed to a ditch near the side of his smithy. She nodded. "There is a narrow tunnel under the floor. Heat flows under. Air comes in from outside in a low pipe." He pointed to a grate. "The stale air goes out up there. There is enough heat produced here that I don't get cold. Waste heat from the forge."

"Oh. Air hole ceiling."

"Well, if you can connect it to an alcove in the wall, you can board up the part up high and let it push air out low, and another alcove will let air out up high. As long as it has two different ways in and out, should be fine." Ern watched her eyes, and saw how she understood.

Gei took the remaining seven large silver, and let Ern get back to work. She had her own work to do.

 

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