Chương 25: Chapter 21: I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Throk stopped near the central fire and raised his voice.

"Chief." Dravak looked up from his seat as the call cut through the cavern's low murmur. Heads turned in a ripple. Warriors paused mid-sharpen. A Hunter stopped tying a strip of hide around a spear haft. Even the children quieted, eyes tracking the swollen bags being carried into the cavern. Throk jerked his chin toward Gideon and the slaves.

"He found his tree scraps," he said dismissively.

"Bark, needles, resin. Some other plants too." One of the Warriors laughed softly.

"More leaves." Gideon stepped forward and set his bundle down where Dravak could see it, the herbs separated and wrapped carefully in cloth. Dravak's gaze moved over the bundles, then settled on Gideon.

"You found what you wanted?"

"I found two plants that might help," Gideon said.

"I won't know for certain until I test them." Throk's lip curled.

"So you don't know what they do."

"I know enough to think they're worth trying. I don't know how strong they are, how much to use, or whether chewing them or boiling them works better." A cough carried from the sick alcove, rough and wet, before fading into the cavern. Dravak glanced toward the sound.

"Could they make things worse?"

"Anything could if I'm careless," Gideon admitted.

"I'll start with weak doses and see what's changed by morning. If the fever rises or the coughing gets worse, I stop." Throk folded his arms.

"And if nothing happens?"

"Then I've wasted a little time and part of a plant." Dravak studied him for another moment.

"It's late."

"The sick don't care what time it is," Gideon said. He kept his voice respectful, but didn't lower his eyes.

"Tomorrow I'll teach the others how to make the treatments I already know work. Tonight, I can find out whether these are worth teaching too." Throk looked ready to object again, but Dravak lifted one hand.

"Test them," he said.

"Carefully." Gideon nodded.

"I will."

"If they harm anyone, you stop."

"Understood." That was all the permission Gideon needed. He gathered the four others with a gesture and moved to the drier stretch of cavern wall under the natural stone overhang he had claimed before. A few goblins drifted closer, arms folded, pretending disinterest. The five of them unloaded the bags and quickly sorted bark, needles, and resin into neat piles. Gideon directed them to wrap the resin chunks, fill bags with the bark and needles, and tuck everything away in a cool crevice.

There would be time in the morning to turn it into usable stores. Tonight was for the herbs. He crouched near the coals and unwrapped the first bundle of Frostvein. First, he decided to test if it could be eaten or chewed. He crushed a small handful of the leaves between two stones, grinding them into a damp green paste. The scent rose into the air, harsh and almost clean. He dipped a finger into the mash and touched it to his tongue. The bitterness was overpowering.

He grimaced openly, forcing the swallow down as it clung to the back of his throat. A nearby watching Warrior barked a laugh.

"Tree scrap on his tongue now. Next he'll chew bark like an old doe." Gideon ignored him and waited. Nothing. No ill effect besides the horrible taste. Safe to eat, at least in small amounts. He tried the second herb the same way. The taste was different but no better, grassy and harsh. One of the others leaned closer, his curiosity winning out, and dipped a finger into the pulp as well. He tasted it, gagged instantly, and wiped his tongue on his sleeve.

"The sick will spit that right back at you," he rasped, voice hoarse with disgust.

"Yeah," Gideon said quietly.

"Tastes like shit." The slave laughed at that. Gideon frowned as he looked down at the paste, before setting it aside. Paste wouldn't work. Maybe inhaling the smoke would? He dropped a few leaves onto a flat stone and pushed it closer to the coals. The edges blackened slowly, curling as a faintly sweet smell drifted upward. He leaned closer and inhaled cautiously. The smoke carried that same sweetness. For a brief moment his head felt light, a faint buzz behind the eyes, as if he'd stood up too quickly.

It faded almost immediately, leaving nothing but the scent hanging in the air. A nearby Warrior gave a dry chuckle.

"If smoke fixed fever, the whole cave would be immortal." Another added, "Careful, you'll turn into a tree." Gideon blinked once to clear the fading haze. Nothing useful. No easing in his chest. No clarity. Just smoke and scent. Burning it did nothing beyond that brief lightheadedness. He scraped the charred leaves aside. Time to test it as a tea. It was the same principle as the bark wash. Boil them, steep the leaves, and extract what mattered into water. He filled a pot and set it near the coals.

When steam began to rise, he added the Frostvein first, letting the water darken slightly as the scent shifted. A Warrior nearby snorted.

"The mad slave is cooking leaves now." Gideon strained it carefully through cloth into a bowl and covered it at once. Then he repeated the process with the Mistbloom. When they were cool enough not to burn mouths, he tasted each with cautious sips. Both were still bitter, but far more manageable than the raw paste had been. Drinkable. That was good enough.

Satisfied, he rose and carried the pots and a few bowls toward the alcove where the sick waited, aware of the watching eyes behind him and the low murmur that followed. He knelt beside the worst of them first, the one whose cough came deep and wet, whose eyes were glassy with fever and exhaustion.

"Drink," Gideon said, lifting the bowl to his lips. The goblin swallowed a few careful sips. His lip curled weakly.

"Bitter."

"Yes," Gideon replied.

"But it should help." The goblin drank again, slower this time, grimacing as the tea went down. Gideon moved down the line, giving the fever tea to those burning the hottest and the cough tea to those whose chests rattled and spasmed. He split the bowls carefully so none went without. Grumbles followed each swallow. One goblin spat and wiped his tongue on his forearm before taking another reluctant sip. Another gagged, then drank again anyway, eyes squeezed shut.

They didn't trust him or know exactly what he was giving them, but they had been under his care long enough to know that he was trying to help, and they knew he had Dravak's approval. So, they drank. When Gideon returned to the first goblin, the worst of them, a trembling hand lifted and closed around his wrist. Gideon stilled. The grip was weak, but deliberate. The goblin's eyes found his.

"Thank you, Grub," he rasped, voice barely more than air. For a moment, the cavern faded. The watching Warriors. The smoke. The smell of sickness. All he saw was that look. Not fear or resentment, but gratitude. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Something tightened in his chest and held there. He nodded once, because anything more felt dangerous. Then he carefully peeled the goblin's fingers from his wrist and laid the hand back down on the hide.

"Rest," he said quietly.

"I'll check on you again in the morning." As he stood and walked out of the alcove, the words echoed in his mind.

"Thank you, Grub." His new name, the same as before, yet different. Not spat at him like an insult. Spoken simply as a name. It was who the tribe knew him as. The System had stripped Gideon away from him the day he had arrived in this cavern, and he had sworn, in anger and stubborn pride, that if he was going to be forced to wear the name Grub, he would make it mean something. Perhaps he was already beginning to.

When he stepped back into the main cavern, the other slaves were still waiting near the crevice where they had stored the bags. They straightened as he approached. Gideon bent and retrieved the small pouch of dark Blackthorn berries, weighing it in his hand. One of the slaves hesitated.

"What are those for?" he whispered.

"Later," Gideon said, giving a small shake of his head. He could feel eyes on him again as he stood there holding the pouch. He loosened the drawstring and let a few berries roll into his palm, examining them in the firelight. A Warrior near the central fire pointed and laughed.

"Look at him. He holds the bitter berries like treasure."

"Maybe he plans to poison us slowly," another said, smirking.

"Or make us hack and spit all night," a third added, and a few goblins chuckled. Gideon kept his face neutral and his hands steady. Let them laugh. The less interesting he made it seem, the better. He tied the pouch closed and slid it back into the crevice with the other stored materials. Then he motioned to the slaves, and together they returned to the cage. The guards let them in without comment and slammed the door shut. Gideon lay down on his thin bedfur after they had finished his stretch routine.

Exhaustion dragged at his eyes, but his thoughts refused to settle. The teas. The bark wash. The resin cloths waiting to be made. Even the berries.

None of it was a cure. None of it was certainty. It was only margin. A slightly better chance. He stared up at the dark curve of the cavern ceiling and wondered, not for the first time, who he was becoming. Could he hold on to his humanity here, in smoke and stone and blood? Or would it simply be easier, cleaner, to accept that he was Grub now? The goblin who boiled leaves. Who forced medicine down burning throats. The one that cared for those the tribe left behind.

The name didn't feel like an insult to him anymore, and that thought unsettled him. He rolled onto his side, listening to the slow breathing of the other slaves, and eventually sleep dragged him under, even as his mind continued to turn over questions he didn't yet have the answers to. The next morning, Gideon rose early again, before the fire was fully stirred, and pulled the four slaves to their feet with a quiet hiss. Their eyes were still heavy with sleep, but their hands moved when he moved.

Today was for teaching. He took them to the overhang and laid out the piles they had sorted the night before. Bark curls. Needles. Resin chunks. A small pile of charcoal scraped from the fire pit's edge. He pointed to the bark and needles first.

"Wash is made fresh," he said.

"Always. Boil it when its needed. If we make a pot and let it sit, dirt and bugs will find it, and then all we are doing is pouring filth into wounds." The slaves nodded, listening attentively. He showed them how much bark to use, how many needle clumps, how long to keep it near the coals until the water darkened and the scent rose. He made them repeat it, each of them stirring, each of them straining, each of them covering the bowl immediately after. Then he moved on to the resin.

"This we can store," he said.

"Resin on cloth. Spread it thick. Let it harden. When we need it, we warm it near fire until it turns sticky again." He warmed a flat stone near the coals and softened a few chunks of resin slowly, showing them how to avoid burning it, how to keep it tacky without turning it acrid. He had them smear it onto strips, stack them with bark layers between them so they didn't fuse, and seal them inside a hide bag wrapped in cloth so dust couldn't cling to the resin.

Finally, he pointed to the charcoal and the remaining resin.

"And this," he said, "we can't store either." He took a small portion of resin, softened it, crushed charcoal into powder, and mixed it into a dark paste.

"It sets fast," he explained.

"If we make too much and let it sit, it becomes hard as stone. So we make it only when needed for binding. Small amounts. Use it to seal the edges and keep wraps from shifting." They practiced until Gideon could see the motions settle into muscle memory, until their hands stopped shaking when the resin stuck to their fingers, until their eyes stopped darting toward the Warriors and stayed on the work. Only then did Gideon reach for the berry pouch. The moment he set it on the stone, a Warrior nearby laughed again.

"There he is. The berry slave."

"Better than being the shit slave," Gideon said with a shrug, eliciting another round of laughter. A second Warrior snorted.

"He'll poison himself for sure this time."

"Only one way to find out." Gideon grinned at the other slaves and gathered four stone bowls. He carried them down to the stream with the rounded stone he planned to use for crushing and scrubbed everything with sand and water until his fingers ached. Cleaner than before. Still not clean. He stared down at the bowl in his hands.

"That might be a problem." Nothing in the cavern was truly clean. Dirt got everywhere. Goblins handled food with filthy hands. Water came from a stream running through a forest full of animals, insects, mud, and probably more varieties of shit than Gideon wanted to think about. He knew heat killed bacteria. Or, at least, enough heat killed enough of it to make a difference. That was considerably more knowledge than he had about fermentation.

Gideon carried everything back toward the fire, filled a stone pot with stream water, and pushed it among the coals. The tall slave watched him.

"What are you doing?"

"An experiment."

"With berries?"

"Yes." The goblin waited. Gideon looked at him.

"I'll tell you if it works." That apparently satisfied him enough to stop asking. When the water began boiling, Gideon carefully pulled the pot away from the hottest coals and used the steaming water to scald each bowl in turn. He did the same with the crushing stone and the pieces of cloth he intended to use later. Then he set everything aside to cool.

"Clean the tools." That part made sense. The berries were more complicated. Gideon picked one from the pouch and rolled it between his fingers. Herbal Insight had told him what Blackthorn Berries could become if they were left to ferment. It hadn't told him how fermentation actually worked. He knew yeast was involved. He knew yeast was alive. He knew, when it was simplified down to the bare basics, that yeast ate sugar and made alcohol.

Beyond that, his understanding rapidly became a collection of things he vaguely remembered hearing somewhere.

"Wild yeast lives on fruit skins." Gideon frowned at the berry.

"I think." That was why he had brought four bowls instead of one. If he was wrong, dumping every berry into a single batch would tell him nothing except that he had failed. Four smaller batches meant he could change a few things and see which ones mattered. He looked over the bowls as they cooled.

"Alright. What am I actually testing?" The skins were the obvious place to start. One batch with them. One without. Then water. The berries already held plenty of juice, but that didn't mean adding more wouldn't change anything. Maybe it would help. Maybe it would dilute whatever the yeast needed too much. That gave him a third batch. His attention settled on the fourth bowl. Heat killed bacteria. Heat also killed yeast.

"If the yeast really is on the skins, heating the berries should matter." Maybe it would stop the fermentation entirely. Maybe it wouldn't. Either result would tell him something. Gideon scratched one line into the rim of the first bowl. Two into the second. Three into the third. Four into the last. The tall slave noticed.

"What are those for?"

"So I know which is which."

"Which what?" Gideon sighed.

"Experiments." The goblin stared at him. Gideon began dividing the berries. He tried to make each portion as even as he could, counting the berries rather than trusting his eyes. Once he was satisfied, he started with the first batch. The rounded stone pressed gently against the berries until their skins split and dark juice spread across the bottom of the bowl. A sour smell rose almost immediately.

Gideon worked slowly, crushing rather than grinding, until he had a wet mixture of juice, pulp, seeds, and torn skins. Then he strained it through one of the scalded cloths. Dark liquid dripped into the first bowl while most of the skins and pulp remained behind.

"No skins." He moved to the second. Same number of berries. Same method, except this time, everything stayed in the bowl. Juice, pulp, and skins.

"If whatever starts this is on the outside of the berries, this one should do better." Probably. That word was doing a lot of work. For the third bowl, Gideon crushed another portion and left the skins in again. Then he added a small amount of the water he had boiled earlier and allowed to cool. The dark mixture thinned slightly. Gideon studied it.

"Maybe water helps." He frowned.

"Maybe it ruins everything." There was only one useful way to answer that. He moved to the fourth bowl. This one received the same crushed berries and skins as the second and third bowls. Then Gideon stopped. If his half-remembered theory was right, warming the berries enough should interfere with whatever lived on their skins and started the change Herbal Insight had described. Which made it worth testing. He filled the stone pot again and set more water near the coals.

Once it grew hot, he carefully lowered the fourth bowl into it, keeping the water outside while the crushed berries warmed within. There was no thermometer, no numbers, no useful way to know exactly how hot the juice had become. So Gideon watched. When the berry mash grew warm enough that the faintest wisps of steam began curling from its surface, he pulled the bowl free and set it aside. He stared at it.

"Too hot?" Maybe.

"Not hot enough?" Also maybe. Once the fourth bowl had cooled, Gideon lined all four up beside one another. For all the effort he'd put into making them different, they looked irritatingly similar.

"Helpful." The Warrior who had mocked him earlier wandered past again and stopped. His eyes moved along the row, and he scoffed.

"He makes berry soups now." Gideon nodded solemnly.

"Progress." The Warrior laughed, shook his head, and kept walking. Gideon covered each bowl with a piece of the scalded cloth and tied them down as tightly as he could. It wouldn't keep out everything, but it should stop most of the dust, ash, and wandering insects from falling into whatever was about to happen. Then he carried the bowls one at a time toward the back of the cavern. He chose a narrow space behind a broad slab of stone where few goblins ever wandered.

It stayed cooler there than near the fires without receiving the constant draft that swept through the entrance. All four bowls went into the same crevice. Gideon crouched in front of the four bowls and adjusted the last until it sat level with the others. Same place. Same temperature. As close to the same conditions as he could manage with stone bowls in a goblin cavern.

"Now I wait." That part, at least, he understood. Time would tell him which bowls changed, which didn't, and whether any of the foul-looking berry mush became something worth drinking. Maybe all four would fail. Maybe one would start growing something that tried to kill him. Maybe he had misunderstood the entire process and would spend the next week carefully observing four bowls of rotting fruit. Gideon looked along the row and shrugged to himself.

"Still better than guessing." A failed batch could tell him what not to do. Two different failures might tell him even more. And if one of them actually worked... His attention settled on the second bowl.

"Then I figure out why." A grin slowly pulled at his mouth. Science had been considerably easier on Earth. Glassware would have been nice. A thermometer. Sterilized equipment. Measured containers. Anything that could tell him exactly how much liquid he had poured instead of forcing him to squint at two uneven stone bowls and decide they looked close enough.

"God, I miss laboratories." He looked at the four experiments again. The grin remained. Still, crude stone bowls or not, he had four different batches sitting in front of him because he had asked a question and found a way to test it. He didn't know which one would work. He didn't know if any of them would. For the first time since waking in this world, that uncertainty felt less frightening than exciting. There was something here he didn't know. And he was going to learn it.

Herbal Insight had told him what Blackthorn Berries could become. It had given him the destination. Apparently, finding the road there was his problem. Gideon pushed himself to his feet and gave the four covered bowls one last look.

"Fine." His grin widened.

"Lets see what happens."