The Brow Of Truth

“I beg your pardon?”
“There is. The kind you drink and the strength comes surging up out of you! Hand them round and tell everyone to drink one each. Oh! And! Gather the empty cans up in one place and leave them in the box. We have to sort the recycling.”

Builder plainly had no idea what she meant, so Dong-hui picked up one of the energy drinks and popped the lid open right in front of him. His eyes went wide at his lord punching a hole clean through solid-looking metal in a single motion. What astonished him more was that a drink came out of the metal at all.

Dong-hui tipped her own can back and drank it down in gulps, by way of demonstration. It had not been long out of the Inventory, and the cold of it went straight into her bones.

“You drink it like this, and then tell them to gather the empty containers back up and put them in this box.”
“Yes. Understood.”

Builder answered, dazed. He had not managed to take his eyes off the energy drink once, and Dong-hui, thoroughly pleased about it, held an opened can out to him.

“Will you have the first drink of it yourself?”
“M-may I really?”

He wore the look of a man overwhelmed by the honor.

“But of course. You are the one in charge here, so you have every right to drink first.”
“Ah—! Thank you, my lady.”

Builder took the can Chloe held out with both hands, respectfully. The cold that came through his palms made him start, and his eyes flew open; he had never in his life touched anything that cold but snow or ice.

He drank down what Chloe had given him in deep gulps, and his brow crumpled hard as he did.

“What? Not to your taste? Is it too sour?”

The flavor might well be an unfamiliar one for the people here, and Dong-hui felt a small twist of worry.

Builder shook his head hard, without a word. He would not take his mouth from the can, and his eyes had gone wet and brimming.

“Why are you crying? Does it taste strange?”

Only then did Builder stop drinking and speak again, as though overcome.

“No. It is only that in all my life I have never tasted anything like this… That we should be allowed to have something so precious…”

Nothing about it was like the liquor he drank now and then, or like the stuff they brewed from wild strawberries. The first mouthful was strange enough to tip his head to one side, but the more he drank the more the taste clung to every corner of his mouth. Tart, and sweet in exactly the right measure, it was something a man could drink and drink and never tire of.

Ah — so that was the brow of truth.¹

At last a fat tear dropped from Builder’s brimming eyes. A great big man weeping over a single energy drink was more than Dong-hui could handle, and she flapped her hands about in a fluster.

“Don’t cry! Don’t cry! I’ll see to it you eat far better things than this, and plenty of them. So don’t cry. Hush now! I can’t stand a man who cries.”
“Hic—! Thank you. My lady, I shall serve you loyally with all my dying strength.”
“No — come now — there’s no need to go as far as dying.”

The oath of loyalty landed far heavier than she had bargained for, and Dong-hui went red to the ears.

— Ding!

A blue status window shot up out of nowhere, along with a sound only Dong-hui could hear.

Ugh, you startled me.
Would it kill you to make some sort of sound before you turn up.

Dong-hui grumbled it all inwardly, knowing perfectly well it would get her nowhere, and glared at the status window bobbing in the air.

Inside the blue window, beside the word Totaling, a yellow arrow spun round and round like a pinwheel. A moment later the window went still, and the totaled points flashed up.

A whole thirty points of favorability off one can?

Being able to trade favorability for something else was interesting, and more than a little tempting. But she had a feeling favorability itself would turn out to be badly needed somewhere down the line. And with the monstrous minus favorability waiting for her the moment she opened another village, converting any of it in a hurry made her uneasy.

A moment later the status window came bobbing up again, the favorability Builder had produced folded into the total.

The favorability itself was a settled figure now. The parenthesis beside it was the problem. Just as the status window had warned last time, the number would drop into the minus without fail the moment the next village opened, and before that happened she had to raise it high enough here to cushion the fall as far as she possibly could.

But the other villages would be every bit as wretched as Morta had been, and thinking of that, she wondered whether dawdling like this was the right thing to do at all. Dong-hui’s head was in a tangle.

For a while she stood and watched Builder handing the energy drinks out to the laborers. Then, curious how the Dural harvest was coming along, she set off for the Dural hill with Delma. Carrying harvested Dural along when she opened the next village seemed likely to be a help.

She had half expected to find them standing about doing nothing, muttering about demonic energy and the rest of it; to her relief, the servants were busily harvesting Dural instead.

Twenty-five had come out, and about half of them were working with a will. The rest, perhaps, had not managed to shake their fear off entirely. They hovered at the edge of the Dural field, pulled one up, shuddered from head to foot, and then crept their way back in again.

That much she could overlook. In their own way they were getting over the fear, and once they knew for certain that eating Dural and touching Dural did them no harm at all, sights like that would disappear soon enough.

“Butler!”

Scrooge, trailing along behind, came scurrying up at the call and planted himself at her side. He moved nothing like he had in the early days, and the change startled a snort of laughter out of Dong-hui.

“Who is in charge here?”

The butler pointed out a woman who had waded right into the field and was pulling Dural for all she was worth. She had only just straightened her back, and even at that distance she was plainly a woman of considerable size. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the towel around her neck, caught Dong-hui and Scrooge looking her way, started in surprise, and came running over to where the two of them stood.

Up close she was taller than she had looked from across the field, somewhere around 180cm. Her shoulders were as broad as any grown man’s, and the muscle along her forearms stood out firm and solid.

“My lady, the one charged with the harvest of the Dural field is—”

That was when it happened. A blue status window came bobbing up in front of Dong-hui.

Ooh, a naming!

She was used to this quest by now. Dong-hui looked up at the woman, who was smiling down at her, easy and open, and sank into hard thought.

A name that would suit this person, then.

The woman looked the very picture of health.

I can hardly name her Health, though — shall I adapt it a bit?

“Helsa?”

And there goes the snowman song.²
No. No, not that.

Dong-hui scrubbed the music out of her head in a hurry and waited to see how the status window would react.

She’s pleased with it, so why only a measly 60p?

This isn’t plagiarism, it’s an adaptation.

Dong-hui flared up, but the status window only scrawled out, one more time, the words of the song she had been muttering inside her head, then floated up a single sentence, small and quick, and vanished.

Why, that little—!

The status window was already gone, though, and Helsa was giving Chloe an earnest smile.

“Helsa. You are not afraid of Dural, then?”
“No, my lady. There is nothing more frightening than hunger. Everyone is delighted, saying that thanks to you we shall have no more going hungry.”

Helsa said it with a broad smile. Her teeth were white and even, and they stood out strikingly against skin that looked faintly darkened by the sun.

Something about her was as endlessly likable as Delma, so Dong-hui looked her over closely before going on. Brown hair, near enough the color of ink, lay damp with sweat across her forehead.

“That is good to hear.”

Chloe smiled broadly back, and Helsa’s smile spread wider still as she wiped the sweat running down the side of her face with her towel.

“Half of the Dural harvested today will be shared out among the servants. You, Helsa, are to take charge of dividing it in two and then distributing it evenly among all the servants. Those with large families may be given a little more, I should think?”
“Thank you truly, my lady!”

Helsa folded her great body in half and thanked her with all her heart.

A little later Helsa ran into the Dural field and shouted the news, and a cheer went up and spread among the servants. After that, even the ones who had not been able to bring themselves to set foot in the field began to move with a will.

The dinging went on wildly, and with it the announcements that favorability had risen, one after another without a break.

A thoroughly satisfying result.