Totrium

Chapter Seven: Building Trust

"Get up, Jacques."

Something like a guttural growl rang out followed by a moan of pain. "Ugh! No."

Adrian opened his eyes, a headache at once seizing him as he looked two bunks over to see Andre trying to lift the pillow from Jacques's head.

"Come on."

"Andre, it's fine," Jacques groaned. "We can just leave later. I don't care."

"Look who's dragging whose ass out of bed," Zuri teased. "It's your fault you both drank so much."

Adrian and Jacques had stayed up most of the night talking in the bar, ordering up another few rounds together, neither going to bed until early morning. He'd been surprised to find the normally disagreeable leader easy and actually enjoyable to talk to. Obviously, that was not the case this morning.

"Just leave me alone and stop talking so loud—woah, hey!"

Andre seized him around the middle and lifted him off the bed. Jacques's legs kicked out in complaint as he did. "Sorry," the large man said, though he didn't sound in any way apologetic, "but we need to get water before our trip and it's always better to go early." He set him feet first on the ground.

As soon as he was standing, Jacques hit his brother roughly on the shoulder. "I was going to get up in a second, you bitch."

Andre folded his arms. "Uh huh. Sure, you were."

Adrian sat up, not wanting to get the same treatment but immediately leaned forward, holding his head in his hands and groaning.

"Oh, Ian!" Zuri called, and he winced at the sound. "I wanted to show you the thing I was working on last night."

"Oh, uh, I thought we had to leave." His voice was hoarse.

"I was thinking I could show you real quick during breakfast, yeah?"

He didn't look up while he nodded. "Sure. Sounds good."

After getting dressed, Adrian walked with Zuri down to breakfast. Filling his stomach, Adrian felt much better, intently listening to the inventor as they showed him the little device they'd been tinkering with the night before.

"It's another drill?" Adrian asked, taking it from them to examine it.

"That's right! But this one can tap into underground aquifers. I just have to connect a hose to it and have something to catch the water in and boom, we can get free water during our journey."

"How do you know where to find underground water?"

They grinned, pulling out a large, folded sheet of paper. "I've been mapping them out throughout our journeys here and there, and there's a few I've marked that we can always tap into." The sheet contained a complex set of what looked like squiggly pathways over a rough sketch of Venwick.

"Woah, really?" He beamed at it. "Zuri, this is amazing!"

They rubbed the back of their head. "Thanks. We'll be stopping by two locations where we can tap into it on our way to Mermortiva. It'll save us some money."

"How clever." He looked back down at the drill device. "This little thing is so small. How do you get it to reach all the way down to an aquifer?"

"It extends. It's really compact so I can carry it around more easily. I'd show you what that looks like extended, but I don't want to accidentally drill a hole in the tavern floor." They laughed sheepishly. "I've been kicked out of more bars than I care to admit in similar ways."

"Yeah, please don't," Jacques cut in, still holding his head as he ate. He was obviously still suffering considerably from his hangover. "We have a good thing going with Alphy."