Chapter 31 - It Was Your Idea

The world didn’t suddenly end in the aftermath of everything that had happened.
A few days after… the incident… a hawk flew into town, its magical nature honing in on Darla’s house where Gwendoline was still staying. After she’d read the delivered message, she brought it to Daniel… who then brought it to me.
Apparently, in my rush to fill him in on what had happened, I’d forgotten to explain to Daniel that I’d cast magical disguises over us. So when the wanted poster for “Noble Assault” was delivered with renderings that looked nothing like us—nor did they list Willow’s name—it was almost enough to make me feel genuine relief… Almost.
While the renderings were clearly based on descriptions that Gryphon had provided, one single note on the poster made it clear that relief would be premature.
“May have been using false names, been magically disguised, and/or Activated.”
That still left a lot of wiggle room to work with, but I accepted that no matter what I did… that was just always going to be the case. With that just… out there until something happened… life just continued to go on.
There wasn’t a sudden influx of investigators only days after the wanted poster, Gwendoline didn’t suddenly point at me and scream accusations, and–though Willow was keeping her distance–my life next to Danwood didn’t suddenly implode.
Then a month went by, with little changing except the structure of the inn nearly finishing several weeks behind schedule. This was largely my fault since I kept shrugging it off when the workers took several days here or there in order to get new homes for themselves built, which I really just couldn’t complain that much about unless I wanted them to keep camping in tents on my land. Unsurprisingly, Bram actually followed through on starting his own business—alongside his brother of course—and the town just kept growing. I had almost hoped that everything else would have mostly returned to normal.
Unfortunately, while Willow still showed up and continued hovering over Yurick’s shoulder to direct the construction of Quiet’s Hearth, she had noticeably been keeping her distance from me, even as the weeks continued to tick forward. Maybe some people would have been happy about that… she was far pushier and intrusive than most anyone I’d dealt with in the past… but it made me feel off. But I didn’t press her… or ask her why she’d been quiet. Because I knew.
Instead, I threw myself into my work. With the delivery of seeds Dartigan had fully accounted for prior to departing with the rest of the caravan, I was finally ready to actually get my fields started.
I spent the first few days of quiet on the last bit of infrastructure I was going to need, water.
While Danwood did have access to a small bit of water–a mild stream that briefly moved through the northern edge of Danwood’s open plains– it really wasn’t enough to easily water all the land I had to work with. Not without far more labor than I was willing to do or pay for. And why would I bother using the stream when I had a handy magical item that the system very stupidly miscategorized.
I mean really, how anyone could think a gourd capable of producing tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute was only uncommon was beyond senseless to me but I sure as dusk was about to exploit it to death.
“Bram, glad I could catch you.”
“Hey Corbin! You got that look in your eye, what are we building today?”
I smiled a bit at his enthusiasm, and was actually glad he’d stepped away from Daniel’s crew. The kid was happy to be paid for his work and was really quite the natural. I’d seen plenty of Stonemasons that cut blocks and did their jobs well, but he took an infectious amount of pride in every single thing he did and was eager for work that wasn’t just laying foundations. And that was absolutely something I could use and appreciate.
“What do you know about irrigation?”
“Irri-what?”
Just as I was about to reply, I noticed Willow looking over at us and gave her an uncertain wave. After a second, she returned it before turning back to Yurick and pointing at a section of the constructed frame where I knew the stairs were supposed to go.
“Walk with me and I’ll explain. We’re gonna need to start this from the top of the hill by my cabin,” I said finally, turning to head back. He seemed to have followed my gaze for a second before he chuckled and followed.
“You two get into a fight or something?”
“Or something,” I said without elaborating.
My fields still had the various random stumps and stone outcroppings on the opposite side of the road from my cabin. That wasn’t a problem though since most everything on the southern side of the road had been cleared out and the fields were clearly marked for anyone I’d given project access to. Sure, I’d need to clear the north fields eventually to further expand my ability to grow stuff, but until I knew how everything was going to turn out… Well, I was trying to take things a step at a time.
“Okay, so irrigation. It’s essentially controlled water distribution. It’ll let me keep my fields watered without having to lug dozens if not hundreds of buckets of water from the stream every day,” I explained, thankful that Bram didn’t seem to care enough about the odd rift between Willow and me to press it any further.
“I kinda had been wondering how you were going to water everything. You’ve got a lot of fields you’re putting in. Where are you even going to get that much water? The stream is nice and all, but it’s not like we’re sitting on the coast of Dawn’s End.”
“I’ve got something for that,” I said, then sorted through my bag and pulled out the large, misshapen container. I’d thankfully thought about this ahead of time and while Willow and Daniel wouldn’t buy it now, it should be enough for most everyone else in town… as long as Gwendoline left soon. “Back when I was still in Manaway, one of our earliest tests was making our own magical item using the Repository facility. This was what I managed after a bit of experimenting and not wanting to make the same boring arcane wands that everyone else put together.”
It wasn’t completely a lie. It had been something I made while experimenting with magical item creation… actually I wasn’t quite sure which life I had really gotten into that particular hobby, but I had, and this had been one of the results. While flooding a battlefield had its uses, the tool just never ended up swinging the tide in my favor, pun unintended.
“Wow, that’s really cool… and you made it?” Bram said after examining it. Since he was Activated, he could pull open its tooltip and read everything about it without me having to explain every little detail. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you came here, but why would you want to farm when you could make magical items?!”
“More people need booze than they need another bit of magic,” I shrugged and he shook his head almost in disbelief.
“Okay sure I guess… also… why’s it called The Gourd of Drowning… that’s, uh… kinda a dark name, don’t you think?”
“A bit. We had a dumb naming contest, surprisingly I still lost,” I lied, my mind trying to race to think of something dumber. Mostly because… well honestly I knew what Bram was going to ask.
“Lost to what? Cause that is really dumb…”
“The Blade of Super Shiny and Cutting Light.”
Bram stopped in his tracks, staring after me for a second before he burst out laughing.
“Okay, yeah that’s worse,” he said, taking a few quick steps to catch up. “So, the irrigation thing. You’re gonna use the gourd to water your land? Isn’t that just like carrying a bunch of buckets around, just without having to refill it?”
“You’re not thinking lazily enough. First we need to build a large cistern here at the top of the hill,” I explained pointing at a spot next to my house. When I noticed a bit of confusion on his face, I backed up a bit. “Think of it as a building sized bowl. The gourd will fill it up, then it will overflow down into a series of channels and trenches that I’ll dig out with my spell that you’ll line with stone to help direct where the water can escape into the plots. That will feed the water into the soil around it, which will greedily take as much water as it needs, and I can keep the entire farm going without much effort. This thing produces so much water, I’ll probably need to create some overflow systems… maybe a new pond or something. Quiet would probably like one in her paddock behind the stable.”
“Hmmm…” Bram rubbed his chin, the confusion now replaced with a look I recognized well, because it was one I often wore. He was trying to optimize. “If we’re going to line the trenches with stone… could we raise them up a bit? You’ll need to feed the other side of the road too, right? We’d need to make sure wagons could pass under it.”
“Sort of like an aqueduct,” I nodded, smiling at the idea. It was a good one after all… even if it was painfully visible. Still, I wasn’t going to dampen his spirits. “That’s not a bad idea at all, a bit more intensive in terms of work and stone requirements, but if we break the rest of the outcroppings I think we’ll have more than enough to work with.”
“Enough that we could add a branch down the main road? I bet everyone would love a quicker source of freshwater… if the gourd could sustain that alongside the fields that is… Maybe set up some basins with gates to control the flow…”
This made me stop in my tracks this time and I looked at Bram again, reappraising him.
“That’s… not terrible thinking… but you generally wouldn’t want to have water meant for irrigation mixing with possible drinking water… soil, insects, fertilizer runoff… it’s a quick way to make people sick and that last thing I need is for people to think I gave them the plague.”
Again… I made sure not to say that part though. It wasn’t even true the half dozen times I was accused of it in the past either.
“But if we branch off the town access from the initial, uh… cistern I think you called it… could that work?”
“Ummm… I mean… technically. You’d still want to cover the flow into town… make sure no debris can get in, possibly use some sort of charcoal or mineral filtration… Those wear out so you’d have to create a maintenance schedule… not to mention you’d probably need to convince Daniel to set a vote on it. Apparently you can’t just go and improve people’s lives without asking around here…”
I said, the last bit maybe coming out a bit more annoyed than I should have let it. Thankfully, Bram wasn’t fully paying attention to me.
“So… yes? I’d waive my work fee to do the main channels in your fields if you provide the material and water access for the public use. If I have a solid plan, I could bring it to Daniel for a vote if he thinks it’s necessary. Though, I feel like that’s something a Steward could just approve,” he said hopefully.
“That’s… probably not the best idea,” I said with a slight frown.
While I really had no problem doing it since my Gourd was more than capable, there were just too many things that made it a bad idea. Just the amount of questions that could be brought up from it, especially if the kingdom as a whole discovered it, wasn’t a good thing. Not to mention how it would look if the “weird, rich farmer” controlled the town’s water supply. Explaining all of that to a bright-eyed kid who was barely an adult was probably a bit much and I could already see the disappointment growing in his eyes.
But… Bram had gotten so hyper-fixated on using my magical item as the well, he’d overlooked that they did have a water source. I liked the kid, so I didn’t mind pointing him in the right direction.
“Sorry, I just mean… it’s probably not the best idea for me to be the one supplying you guys with water… trust me, I’ve seen enough that people would make it weird if I did that,” I explained with an awkward laugh. “But… you don’t need my gourd. The stream does provide more than enough water, although you might need to follow it back to where it branches off and widen the channel a bit. With some engineering and filtering, that could be the source you use. It’s the same concept, just might take a bit more planning to make it fully functional.”
“Hmmm,” Bram said, his eyes narrowing as he looked toward the small branch of water he could see in the distance. “Some sort of retention basin… we’d need to make it store enough for the drier months… but…”
He looked over at me, his brow furrowed a bit.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just connect through your gourd though? I’m sure Daniel and the others wouldn’t care that much if you were offering to let us use it.”
“Trust me Bram, someone would, and that’s all that matters,” I said with a sigh. “But… I don’t mind if you maybe plan a channel and add a few sluice gates into the main network… tell Daniel you negotiated some sort of ‘emergency’ supply line from my farm that only kicks in if there’s a drought or something. I’m gonna need to make sure the inn is connected into my network so you can just make the connection there. Just… maybe make it sound like it was an idea you came up with after you worked on my stuff here… okay?”
“Why wouldn’t you want credit for this? People are going to go nuts over ready access to water… laundry, cooking… everything’s gonna get so much easier…” Bram said, slightly confused.
“Better they celebrate you than me for it… it was your idea.”