“What the hell?” Tom muttered, craning his neck to peer out the window. Tom might have thought it was one of his newfangled ‘actual’ dreams, if he hadn’t just been dreaming about the night before.

Just in case, he pinched himself a bit, finding the sensation crisp and realistic.

So where the hell did all these tents and shit come from? Tom asked, until elder Gunn appeared, having noticed he was awake. Oh god, it’s the same village. Why won’t these people leave me alone?

Tom rolled the window down and stuck his elbow out casually as Nema slowly regained consciousness.

“Is there a reason you decided to build a camp around my truck?” Tom asked.

Better be a damn good one.

“The creatures further to the south will eat you and your truck,” Gunn said.

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

“How big?”

“Three to five men standing on each other’s shoulders.” Gunn responded.

Fifteen to twenty-five feet tall. Okay, that could be a problem.

Tom didn’t want to be ungracious. He was the one who’d flown off the handle and stormed off after throwing a fit.

He had psyched himself up to kill someone last night, and the rug had been torn out from under him. It was no wonder he lost it, but running off without finding out what the forest contained was his own fault.

Tom poked Nema in the hip. “Why didn’t you tell me about giant predators to the south?”

“Oh.” Her plump lips formed a round ‘o’ shape. “I assumed you knew and had a way to avoid them.”

“More important question,” Tom said, redirecting his attention to Gunn. “Why are you et al here at all?”

“To stop you from getting eaten by giant monsters?”

“Yes, but why save me from giant monsters? Tom asked. “I distinctly recall forfeiting the match and giving everyone the finger.”

Gun frowned, seemingly considering his words carefully. “The leadership role in a village is more…fluid than you might expect. After Harrak’s last display, I gathered the support of the other villagers, and we walked out on Vol and Harrak.”

“Yeah, but why come all the way out here? Don’t you have a perfectly good village?”

“We’re taking back the Dinamore stretch.”

Nema gasped.

“What?” Tom asked, frowning.

“The Dinamore stretch has the lushest land on both continents. The Jeraka swarm the coasts to spawn and die in the jungle, creating a land of such bounty that it defies imagining. It was taken from us by foreign Alia over six years ago.”

“Okay…Why now?” Tom asked.

“Because of you, of course.” Gunn replied.

You are the chosen one. PFFFT.

“What did I do?” Please don’t tell me I’m the chosen one.

“You told me the last scion of the Alia who took the stretch from us, died on your home world no less than four months ago, according to this ‘Carol’ demon, even if you didn’t realize it.”

Tom’s eyes widened. That’s right, Carol told me how the Ku’leth family conquered the Dinamore Stretch for the Empire, shortly before they were killed. The Vith. Tom hadn’t put the global picture into context until just now. He was currently sitting just outside the border of the ‘empire’ Carol and Grant had described, among the ‘Vith’ that they regularly went to war with.

The Ku’leth who had unleashed a ‘limitless stream of demons’ were gone, and that meant the Vith had an opportunity to attack.

“You’re going to go to war based on hearsay?” even if the Ku’leth were gone, this seemed premature.

Gunn waved him off. “Not entirely. Southerner resistance has been growing gradually weaker the last three years. Recently there haven’t been any attacks at all. They’ve grown weak, and now we know why. Like a bowl full of kulth worms, they turned on each other.”

Gunn gave a gaptoothed grin. “I sent messengers to every village in a thousand miles. They will send more. The Vith will regain their home.”

Tom processed that for a moment. A huge war was not high on his list of places to be.

Anybody with two brain cells to rub together who watched Saving Private Ryan should realize that the chances were they would be one of the butchered extras, not Matt Damon

Tom had to compare the risk of death via getting stabbed to death against being eaten by monsters or sailing a boat he had no knowledge of how to make or operate, on a sea with wildlife completely alien to Earth’s.

Hmmm..

Tom decided to shed some light on the situation.

“The dinamore stretch. The waters around them, is it possible to…” Tom couldn’t find the Vith word for ‘sail’ and ‘boat’ in his lexicon. “Float across them on large piece of crafted wood?”

“The southerners do it sometimes to launch raids on the villages who choose to live closer to the shore, but we’re not sure how: Any ships we make are torn apart by territorial Jeraka.”

Well, shit.

Tom would have to build a ship capable of travelling across the ocean and figure out how to avoid getting torn apart by sea monsters. Chance of death: High. Time expenditure: High. It could take years to build a big enough ship, even with summoned labor, then if he decided to be cautious and figure out how to avoid Jeraka, it could take a few more years.

Or he could participate in a holy war. Chance of death: High. Time expenditure: Variable.

It could be fast, or it could never happen at all.

“Wark.” Suzie croaked, attracting Tom’s attention.

Souls. Profit. She slid the thoughts across their connection.

Tom’s brows rose as the realization slowly dawned on him. A soulmonger…can only profit from a war.

He rewound Carol’s description of the taking of the Dinamore stretch. There was nothing specific, but if Tom had to guess, he would bet that the patriarch of the Ku’leth family found a way to make sure any casualty of the war would be fed through a soul engine. Then, the resulting soul-pulses would be used to buy the services of an Outsider, which would then go on to make more casualties.

The war paid for itself.

A tingle went down the back of Tom’s spine as he realized he was considering something truly cold-blooded.

Grampa, where is a place where a bunch of people die, but it’s safe to go?

Remove the ‘safe to go’ caviat, and your profits increase a thousand-fold.

Tom tapped the steering wheel, his guts twisting as he worked through the problem. People were going to die, one way or the other. With Tom’s help, it could be people on the other side of the line.

I need a better soul engine. I need more gold. I need a forge to melt the gold. I need, I need I need….

Despite the veritable mountain of things he needed to properly profit from the upcoming war, it still seemed more likely than creating a ship from scratch in the middle of a jungle, then successfully sailing it south.

Let’s take the thought experiment further. Say I succeed at sailing to the south, separating myself from the Vith and putting myself behind ‘enemy’ lines. Then I would just be a sub-par soulmonger with his hat in his hand, asking for his kidnapped daughter back from presumably some of the most powerful people in the empire.

Compare to crossing the Dinamore Stretch with an army of friendlies behind me. There would be stiffer military resistance, but my bargaining position would be infinitely better. I could also retreat behind friendly lines if I had to. How badly would they have to be losing to give me my daughter back?

Tom couldn’t imagine himself integrating into the Empire, learning the language without arousing suspicion, stealthing into the Kinzena House castle where they were presumably holding Ellie, then successfully getting away with her without some teleporting jackhole chasing him down in a heartbeat.

Then its decided, Tom thought, his heart cold.

“Suddenly I find myself inspired to help you take back the Dinamore Stretch,” Tom said, glancing back at Gunn.”

“That’s good,” Gunn said. “As it just so happens, our little village has a job opening for the village chief.”

“Are you serious?” Tom asked, his hearth thumping at the complete absurdity of it. Why in the name of all that was holy would they –

“And it’s going to be me!” Gunn said, thumbing his chest.

“Sun-bleached asshole,” Tom muttered, shaking his head.

“And you are going to be my shaman.” Gunn said, pointing at him.

“What? Why?”

“Oh, a handful of reasons,” Gunn said, holding up three fingers and curling them as he counted down with his one hand.

“First, anybody with eyes could tell that you won Kla’desh. Second, we choose shamans as a counterpoint to the chief. Someone with a wildly different point of view. Generally we want someone who thinks differently, or is foreign, or has an unusual ability when they draw on their well. When the chief is old, we want a young shaman, when the chief is young, we want an old one. You match every single one of these criteria, so the entire village feels like you’re a perfect match.”

“Oh.” It all actually made sense. The shaman was similar to the jester, advisor, medicine man, and seer. By definition, they had to be weird, and if they were young when the chief was old, they could learn the ropes from him, then hold the village together when the old chief passed, until the new chief got his sea legs. And visa versa.

“And last, if you betray me in any major way, I’ll reveal your origins to the rest of the village and watch while they tear you apart with their bare hands.”

“There’s the cold-blooded bastard who taught me how to fight,” Tom said with a scowl.

“Eh.” Gunn shrugged. “As long as we have the same goals, there should be no problems.”

“Can you guarantee Vol or the old chief isn’t gonna sneak into my tent in the middle of the night and throttle me?”

“Eh, no, but when you anger an entire village so much that they all leave you at once, it would be incredibly stupid to seek them out. I mean, I know they’re stupid, but not that stupid. Odds are the two sought another village that doesn’t know them.”

Tom thought about it for a moment.

“Alright, I’ll be your shaman for now. What exactly does the job entail?”

Gunn gave him a brief description of the duties of the shaman. The shaman acted as a tie-breaker between the elders and the chief, so they were responsible for understanding the current situation and voting to the best of their ability.

In their day-to-day life, they leaned into their unique strengths, so it was different for every shaman. Some healed, some taught, others assisted the hunters, while still others took on the role of architect, guiding the growth of the village to be as smooth as possible.

Basically, other than acting as the tiebreaker, the rule of thumb was to leverage what made you different than the common villager, and use it to the best of your ability to improve life in the village.

That’s simple.

So basically, Tom had already kinda been acting as the shaman by using his healing crypt to heal the wounded kid, and his repair ratchet to fix people’s busted stuff.

Which was why Vol was so threatened by him.

Basically Gunn was keeping him on because with the threat of exposing him, he could be sure that the tiebreaker was in his own pocket, guaranteeing that Gunn could make unilateral decisions at a moment’s notice.

In a small community this could be a good thing, but if Gunn abused that power, would Tom be able to contradict him?

I’ve been a shaman for fifteen seconds and I’ve already got a headache. Politics is a nightmare.

Tom shook it off, then met Gunn’s gaze. “If you do something that I consider ultimately stupid, I’ll stop you.”

“Fair enough.” Gunn agreed.

“Now that that’s settled, do you know where I can get a…” Tom didn’t know the Vith word for ‘forge’.

“Fire hot enough to melt metal?”

Gunn cocked his head to the side.

“You know, the kind you use to make iron knives, like the one Vol had?”

Gunn shook his head. “That knife was a prize taken from a company of southerners. We don’t have the methods nor the resources to make them.”

“If you don’t have iron, how do you compete with the empire – wait, stupid question.” Tom had literally seen a civilian Vith shrug off a bullet the night before. A warrior was probably even more dangerous. What would they need armor for? They might benefit from better weapons, though, and Tom needed to forge a larger chunk of gold so it could store more than fifty soul pulses at a time.

“My first decree as the shaman: I demand large quantities of charcoal, scrap iron, and fat of any kind.”

Gunn popped some chew into his mouth, regarding Tom with a contemplative look.

“Yeah…it doesn’t work like that.”

“Shoot.”