When he walked out everyone else had gone into the palace, so at least there wouldn’t be a scene. He took it as a sign that everyone kind of approved of his plan. Well, at least they weren’t going to insist on his ruining Connie’s good name. Better he die alone and forgotten than that, right?
The only real problem was that it was starting to get dark and he didn’t have anywhere planned to stay yet. Really, even though there were supposed to be some good inns around the Capital, he had no clue where they were at all, or even what such a thing might look like from the outside. He’d never stayed at such a place, even while traveling to school.
Debbie might have been willing to put him up in the little back room for the night, but tracking trouble to her door would be poor repayment for her previous kindness. Maybe he could camp outside the city for the night and then figure things out in the morning? He used the Not-flyer to get to the main gate, but the guards wouldn’t let him out. They claimed he wasn’t a prisoner, just that he hadn’t been given permission to leave.
Right. Permission? To leave? He needed permission to leave now? Who needed permission to leave? Oh, right. Prisoners.
This whole situation was just getting ridiculous. It took Tor about thirty seconds to set everything up, moving slowly, pretending to just check the luggage, and acting like he was about to go back to the guest house. Then, guards watching as if they expected him to explode at any moment, or try and fight his way out, Tor simply rose into the air and left.
Permission indeed. Did the morons not realize he could fly?
He got about an hour north before he had to land because he was losing the light. Landing in the dark was just too dangerous, even in the flat wasteland he found himself. He set up a little camp, really wishing he’d thought to buy a blanket or bedroll while he’d been in town. His shield would protect him from attack, not all, as he’d just learned, but most. His skin still felt burned and sore, but that wasn’t anything to major. He’d had worse sunburns. Still, it had hurt enough to distract him, which had been the plan he guessed.
The temperature wouldn’t be a problem, warm enough still for sleeping even if he didn’t have a device that made that a moot point. He even had lights for safety and comfort in his case. But nothing he had would keep him off the ground at all. Or, and this was a real enough consideration as the day wore on, hide him while he relieved himself. All the camping out he’d ever done before was in the woods. This area was wide open, dry and scrubby looking, with a lot of exposed rock, some of it red and very flat on top. On the good side, no one seemed to live out here either, and even if anyone flew over they wouldn’t be able to see him in the middle of the night.
The idea hit him all at once. He had equipment that would let him make a sturdy little shelter and lights that would let him see well enough to work. All he had to do was find the little stream he’d though he saw before he landed and he’d have almost everything he needed. Then again, working in the dark would be hard, even if he used his artificial lights. Instead he decided to just wait until morning. Then he could see about building a proper shelter.
If anyone owned this land, they obviously didn’t care a lot about it, and really, how long would he be there anyway? He didn’t even have food or anything and doubted he could find any out here. Of course as far as Tor knew he wasn’t kicked out of the Capital or anything, so maybe he could go there for supplies? It might work, for a while at least. He curled up and tried to use his arm as a pillow. It didn’t work very well, being too hard and bony for comfort. Sleep didn’t come for a long time, but it did arrive, finally, after several hours of pitch blackness.
When morning came and Tor sat up he had a horrible crick in his neck, it hurt just to try and look to the right, as if someone had kicked him in the neck as he slept. It might have been damage from the fight the day before. If him running around being hit with weapons like that was to be considered such, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be counted as fun. He got up and walked towards where he thought the stream might be, feeling tempted to just fly the distance, but realizing that getting too lazy wouldn’t help his health long term, he needed to walk, and even, if he could manage it, run, as much as possible to recover what he’d lost, especially if he was going to have to fight commando squads now. Flying was better than nothing, but he couldn’t just float around all over the place if he wanted to keep himself from falling apart.
The water wasn’t that far away, and as he lay on the bank scooping it into his mouth, tasted clean and pure. First he needed to get some kind of shelter, a roof and four walls would do, it didn’t have to be fancy, or even large. There was just one of him after all. How much did he really need? He paced out a square that was twenty by twenty paces or so and marked the corners with some rocks he’d found. There were no trees, which felt wrong and a little off-putting to him, but he wasn’t here permanently anyway, so worrying about it would be a waste of time.
The soil was a red brown dirt that was dry, except for right by the water. The lack of trees at least meant that he didn’t have to deal with roots in the soil, so he used one of the excavation rigs to spray the dirt out of the square he’d marked off and then used the compressor to turn the floor and the inner walls into a hard red black “tile” about a foot thick. Actually he couldn’t decide if it was red-black or a deep brown black. It was kind of pretty either way. Shiny and a little like glass. This made a solid and not too ugly pit about six feet deep. Laughing he realized that he hadn’t put in any stairs, so he had to fly out of it and use dirt from about fifty feet away to add the needed steps near where he wanted to put his door. Tor could have used the dirt he’d piled up from the inside of the hole, but he wanted to save it all for the walls and roof, didn’t he?
Then he used that dirt to make the walls, which went up about eight feet, so that it would look like a proper house from the outside, if little. Not that tiny really, since it was about a fifty foot square at the base, big for one fairly small person.
Tor had just been comparing the size to the palace of all things. Because that made sense. A hastily constructed mud hut was exactly like that.
Tor snorted, but kept working.
The walls went up easily enough. He made them extra stout; because the compressor was preset to make sheets of solid earth about a foot thick. Hard as stone and waterproof, it turned dirt into a good working material, which looked more like fine, shiny stone than mud at least. The door was a bit of a problem, because he didn’t have any wood, or way of making hinges, so Tor formed a hallway that shifted back and forth three times instead. That way no one would just walk in by accident, or see him changing clothes, but it didn’t take any other materials like wood or metal, to make. It would also let air in and out, which was important. The structure was tight at the seams and that could foul things fast if people were breathing inside.
The roof turned out to be the biggest issue of the day.
He was able to make thick roof plates easily enough, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that using a cargo float would work to get it up into place. He had to fly to do it, but only to roof height, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. His still shaky hands were a problem, but by going slow he balanced the huge thing on the top of the slanted roof after only a half dozen or so tries.
When he turned the float off, tied in place with a pieces of string to the stone, the whole slab slid right off the roof and hit the ground with a huge thud. The impact was so hard that Tor could feel the ground move, even from his position about four feet up in the air. Of course the string broke, letting the plate fall to the ground where it ended up with the whole thing laying on top of it.