Kristal

*Grunt*

One more load of stone, her back ached from the effort as she lifted the huge bolder she’d picked up. This had not been a pleasant night for Krystal as she and her fellow slaves labored to the bidding of their fuck-stupid mistress and her god dammed retarded whims. Limbs ached and burned with exertion even as she made the next step, then the next in burning need to complete the task given.

Stone from the mountain, that was her job at least, as one of the strongest of those who served Ruby Redd, she could hardly refuse the job allotted to her. She’d started with taking easy, manageable loads at first, only to realize as she continued her work that that had been a sucker’s path. The distance between her makeshift quarry and the actual building site was just too much, and her feet burned hot from the efforts of walking back and forth repeatedly thus far. So she’d begun to take on the job with a different approach, less walking, more stone.

This was the fourth such bolder she’d moved on with on her own, practically her own size, balanced precariously over her shoulders. There’d be more work once she got it back over to the forge of course, breaking it up into manageable sections for Fryda to chisel out into specific shapes, despite the lack of proper tools to make it more than simply rough approximations, before smoothing over the stone’s imperfections with mild heat and baked on the clay layer over it into a careful ceramic as per the dwarf-maiden’s instructions.

And unlike the others doing their own separate jobs, the only actual help she’d had was from the dim flesh golem construct, whom she needed to direct almost every step of the way, and the haphazard bumbling of the dumb looking hungry ghost… flesh… thing… that had come back from the forest alongside of that Sabre Cat turned woman Ruby’d fucked into compliance dragging… well she assumed it was a deer, or something like that, behind her. Bronze had been quick to claim that he needed to ‘take immediate care of the carcasses’ and skip out on the grunt work once he and his merry little bunch had returned from their fruitless hunt, only to find their quarry had literally walk in the front door of the house. Kunzite at the least seemed to have had a productive time of it, returning home with enough items of ‘soon to be food’ that alongside of Amber’s hunt there would be a guarantee of a good dinner and breakfast despite the quite notable absence of Quartz.

Gold at least was helping with dragging manageable pieces of rock between the breakup site and the actual building, while powdered rock, clay, and ash was mixed together to create a strong cement for the building’s foundation. Amusingly enough it had been Tanya who’d straight up taken charge of digging out the needed depth of dirt to be filled for the foundation layer, commandeering Sky, Iolite, the new elf, and the Halfling for her purposes, military experience in trench digging and other low scale engineering projects now being applied with a practical fervor.

Karnilske and Mercury on the other hand were busy dredging the bottom of the lake for good soft clay to use, to the Slimegirl’s delight as she sucked up all that she could then lumbered onto land to deposit it into a bucket. The Argonian silversmith simply rolled with it, enduring the poking and prodding of her companion in work in order to provide the extra materials needed faster. There would probably be more than enough clay left over to utilize in casting molds for actual projects in the forge too once the forge itself was done.

Krystal grunted with the effort of heaving the bolder down from her shoulders, looking on to the progress made thus far as the foundation digging and stone grinding had ended, the layer of cement laid and the first stones were already being assembled for the forge itself.

“Fucking stupid…” She panted, exhausted and hurting all over… the rough night of work having finally taken its toll upon her. An envious glance was thrown out towards the hungry ghost who was cheerfully beside her, its stupid face painted in a big dumb grin as it all but skipped beside her with two boulders held aloft into its prehensile hair. “God dammit… I hate that bitch so much…”

Ruby Redd… if she ever got free of this god dammed rune on her ass, Redd was the first person on her list of people to punch. But right now even the thought of punching her shit in was a bit more than her weary body could handle, sprawled out upon what seemed to be surprisingly comfortable picnic grass with the morning sun in her eyes.

“You know, the new meat’s right. You sure do bitch a bunch for a girl your size.” Over her stood the current bane of her existence. Ruby Redd. Kristal couldn’t help but moan in dejected disdain... who else would it be but the bane of her existence?

“Fuck off…” She spoke up halfheartedly, the clenching aches of her muscles having caught up to her in the resting position. Fucking sucked is what it did. She could barely even protest as the young woman reached down and felt at her spasming biceps, then over to her sore calves.

“Nay.” The bitch responded almost absentmindedly in her examination. “Looks like you’ve been doing some shit to yourself idiot. You weren’t lifting right, putting your back into it properly. And worse, it looks like you went and sprained something too. No wonder you’ve been so miserable about this shit. Do I really have to tell you how to do everything right? Look just got to correct your posture like this, from your core not your back, and you’ll get a bunch more out of every lift… hell fucking consider this strength training, get some of that edge back in your core… it’ll help get you back in shape as a fighter. Now come on… get back up. Still more work to do, and I really don’t trust Hood and Cuddles to keep this job up on their own.”

“… fuck you…” She groaned again, looking up this time to see a woman… spider… thing… looming above her. A light shone from the pale woman hands of the creature as a wave of relief washed over her, burning away the aches though doing little for the tiredness.