One Inch Tall, One Power a Day - The Iron Pail and the Deep Bath
The problem was storage.
Because a single millimeter of water formed a surface-tension bubble as thick as gelatin, storing liquid required sealed, heavy-gauge containers. Up until now, she’d been using her wooden bathing tub as a primary holding tank, dumping liter after liter into the tub until it was half-full. That meant whenever she wanted to wash off the black blood and kerosene soot after a raid, she had to scoop three gallons of ice water out with a paper cup, store it in plastic bags, and refill the tub with warm water.
“Stupid way to live,” Wren grumbled, resting her hands on her hips.
She opened her workshop menu, dumped thirty raw structural iron ingots and ten polymer rubber seals into her workstation intake hopper, and wrote: SYNTHESIZE: HEAVY WATER STORAGE PAILS (500ML CAPACITY).
CLANG-CRUNCH.
The machine ground for ten seconds, spitting out five massive, cylindrical iron pails fitted with rubber-gasketed screw lids and heavy wire bail handles. Each pail stood eight inches tall—to her ninety-five-millimeter stature, a row of heavy iron oil drums that sat securely along the dark slate walls of her lavatory.
Wren spent twenty minutes transferring the cold reservoir water from her wooden bathing tub into the iron pails using a paper pitcher, screwing the rubber-gasketed lids tight.
The wooden tub was finally empty.
She scrubbed the pine interior with a stiff brush and lemon soap, rinsed the drain line, and set up her new desktop culinary stove beside the bathroom threshold.
She filled her three-gallon cast-iron camp pot with fresh water from the condenser tap, set it over the stove’s brass burner head, and struck a match.
While the water heated to a rolling boil, Wren pulled on her Softscale boots, grabbed her five [Small Pitfall Traps]—the concealed anti-personnel snares she’d synthesized earlier with iron caltrops, sharpened stakes, and dirt covers—and unlatched her Iron-Burl main door.
She stepped out into her enclosed front yard.
The arctic wind was still howling through the high crabgrass outside her perimeter fence, but inside her black Iron-Burl pickets, the ice-covered clay path was sheltered.
Wren knelt in the snow, using her entrenching tool to dig five small, four-inch-deep pits along the inside path between her black iron gate and her stone porch steps.
She set the iron caltrops and sharpened stakes at the bottom of each hole, rigged the springloaded release plates, and covered the openings with thin, pre-formed plaster covers disguised with a layer of loose snow and red clay dust.
To anyone dropping over her fence in the dark, the path looked like smooth, untouched snow.
The moment an eighty-millimeter boot stepped on the plaster plate, the cover would collapse, driving four sharp iron spikes through the foot and locking the intruder in place for an easy crossbow shot from her second-floor window.
“Try hopping the gate now, you green bastards,” Wren murmured, dusting the snow off her gloves as she locked the black iron gate from the inside.
She went back inside the fortress, locked both the deadbolt and the heavy bracing bar, and carried the steaming pot of boiling water into the lavatory.
She dumped three pots of scalding water into the wooden tub, added two pots of cold spring water from her condenser, and stirred the bath with a clean timber stake until the temperature stabilized at a deep, steaming hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit.
She dropped in a handful of lemon-scented bath salts she’d unboxed from a trial crate.
The hot, citrus-scented steam rose into the slate-tiled room, clouding the small glass mirror above the vanity.
Wren unbuckled her Softscale combat suit, stripped off her Fire-Feather thermal under-layers, and hung her weapons securely on the copper wall hooks beside the tub.
She stepped over the high wooden rim and lowered her body into the steaming water.
“ahhhhh… damn,” she wheezed, her back pressing against the smooth pine backrest as the scalding heat enveloped her shoulders, hips, and calves.
The sensation was absolute, unadulterated luxury.
The hot, lemon-scented water penetrated deep into her long muscle chains, washing away the
lingering stiffness from her morning sprint across the ice, the residual soreness in her knuckles, and the mental tension of managing twelve gold coins on a public trade board. Her skin turned a healthy, rosy pink under the steam.
Outside the thick Iron-Burl walls, the arctic blizzard was howling at thirty-five below zero, burying the dead goblins under three feet of glass-hard sleet.
Inside her Level-2 fortress, Wren Hanlon was floating in a deep, hot bath, a paper cup of cold rose hip tea balanced on the wooden rim beside her shoulder, her 38.0 points of structural armor holding the freezing world at bay.
She closed her eyes, rested her head against the smooth pine rim, and drew a long, quiet sigh that melted into the steam.
For ten unbroken minutes, she wasn’t a survivor in a micro-realm. She was just a twenty-four-yearold girl from West Virginia taking a long, hot soak after a hard day’s work.
Then, the world tore open.
A deafening, synthesized air-horn siren shrieked directly through the auditory cortex of her neural interface, vibrating through her skull with a violent, electric feedback whine that made the water in the wooden tub ripple in sharp, concentric circles.
Wren’s eyes snapped open. Her right hand shot sideways out of the water on pure reflex, her wet fingers locking around the polished Iron-Burl hilt of her Skystone Cleaver hanging on the wall hook before the siren even finished its first blast.
A wall of glowing crimson system text unrolled across her visual field, flashing with a frantic, pulsing emergency border:
Attention, Survivors of Earth.
Mandatory Regional Dungeon Incident Announced: [The Vertical Pinnacle / The Climbing Spire].
Operational Schedule: Tomorrow, 08:00:00 to 12:00:00 (Four Hours).
Execution Parameter: The bottom 10 lowest climbers on the district altitude leaderboard at the 12:00:00 cutoff WILL BE EXECUTED AUTOMATICALLY BY SYSTEM PROTOCOL.
Global Reward Incentive: The Top 10 fastest climbers reaching the spire summit will receive specialized Three-Star Coffer Bounties, S-Tier Mobility Relics, and exclusive Titles.
Registration: Automatic for all active District 6699 survivors. No exemptions permitted.
Climb or die.
The siren cut off with the dry, brutal snap of a severed high-voltage line.
Wren sat motionless in the steaming wooden tub, her wet right hand clamped to her cleaver grip, water droplets evaporating on her flushed shoulders, her chest rising and falling in short, sharp hitches.
A cold, heavy knot of pure, instinctive dread settled into the pit of her stomach, instantly chasing away the soothing warmth of the bath.
“Bottom ten executed,” she whispered, her voice rough and dry in the quiet room.
She looked at her wet hands, then out toward the cedar-beamed bedroom where her new FireFeather Greatcoat and her masterwork blades rested under the LED light.
The system wasn’t letting anyone get comfortable. It didn’t matter if you had twelve gold coins, a Level-2 fortress, or an eight-inch soldier ant. Tomorrow at eight in the morning, everyone was getting thrown onto the face of a vertical spire, and the ones who couldn’t climb were going to be erased.
Wren stepped out of the tub, wrapped a clean cotton towel around her chest, and began wiping the water off her skin with fast, cold, deliberate movements.
The bath was over.
Tomorrow was the spire, and she had twelve hours to figure out how to climb a wall of glass.