Laboratory

Blake left Dean, Meha, and Sagara behind, he had already given the orders, and as it was late he walked to his hut.

At night there were never any tribesmen outside their huts, as the cold was frightful and to last long outside without a campfire could mean a death sentence.

As he walked he thought, that as he grew older, he should also take a wife from the tribe, as among the Free folk it was of utmost importance for the men to keep women and bear children. The problem with this was that Blake could not maintain contact with other people, when he touched them with any part of his body he would generate cold burns, and with a little more time the skin would stain black, never recovering its color.

Having a wife without solving this problem could cost the poor woman her life, but it was clear to him that he needed to solve it before crossing the wall, since his true intention was to seek an alliance through marriage with some penniless noble family.

He would expand his tribe's influence on the other side of the great wall, be it with their furs, crafts, or anything else he could think of, to amass enough wealth to tempt even the nobles. Besides, as a trusted merchant, he would leave behind a bit of the stigma of being savage, and his tribe would have better status.

He was the eldest son of the Magnar, and who would be better than him to carry out this plan, besides he would never offer his sister Ygritte for some benefits, less in this backward age full of ignorance where she would be treated badly because of her origin as a savage.

Blake had thought of two possible ways to remove his curse, the first was to go to the three-eyed raven, who had been calling him all these years, sending visions in his dreams and being a pain in the ass in general. The second was to meet with the red priests of Essos and hope they had a cure for his curse.

In turn, the problem with finding the three-eyed raven was that he didn't know its location, he only knew it was in the Haunted Forest, east of the Fist of the First Men in a cave under a Weirwood tree. The problem with this was that the Haunted Forest had Weirwood trees in several places, old and young trees that didn't even have faces carved into them, and getting to the cave was very complicated.

As for the red priests, they were fanatical priests, and they might burn him alive if he went to meet them.

Blake shook his head and went inside his hut, he would think about this and keep looking for the three-eyed raven's cave for now, while he had time.

Ygritte was sleeping, wrapped in furs, Blake curled her face with his finger, and when she turned her face away in response to the cold sensation, Blake turned away and walked out of the hut again.

He was not sleepy, so he walked to what had once been his stables.

All the livestock had been placed in the new stables, guarded and cared for by members of the tribe, so Blake, after moving the livestock, transformed his stable into a range, which he later transformed into his laboratory.

Blake had forged his image within the tribe as a scholar, a teacher, a sage, and someone who could even see the future. That was why the tribesmen had so much fear and respect for him, not just because he was the Magnar's son.

But if Blake wanted to continue to maintain that image he couldn't make any mistakes, which led Blake to create this laboratory where he tested and created the things he taught the tribesmen.

Upon entering, Blake saw on one side of the lab one of his latest prototypes, which was a large pile of sheets of paper, rustic, scratchy, and brownish. Blake had attempted to make paper from the leaves and stems of the Haunted Forest, and although he had been relatively successful, he quickly put that experiment aside, as the paper was not an immediate need within the tribe, and he needed to attend to more pressing matters, although he could later make a business out of selling it.

Blake walked to the back of the lab, the place where he had poured his last efforts.

Blake opened a skin and took a swig of the reddish liquid inside, nodding. It was vinegar, which had fermented from the wine his father brought from Shadow Tower.

Vinegar was a much more expensive commodity than wine, at least in the seven kingdoms. So it was much more practical to buy wine, and from it create vinegar.

Blake had many uses for vinegar within the tribe, too many to say the least.

He needed it to kill the fleas on most of the furs, as they became infested and lowered their value. He also wanted it to kill ticks and ticks on the tribesmen, which constantly itched and annoyed them, it was an unbearable pest he wanted to get rid of, vinegar being one solution.

Although he would use vinegar for many things from now on, the most important was to disinfect burns, and thus avoid using hands when he needed to treat a wound.

But the use Blake was most looking to put the vinegar he was made to was to make fruit and vegetable preserves. This would be an excellent business, whether for sailors, travelers, or anyone who wanted to keep food fresh for a long time, something incredibly important in this backward age.

So Blake was trying to make crops, which, although they had been unsuccessful for now, he was sure he would find a way to grow them when he could devote more of his time to it.

Blake left the lab after checking on the state of the vinegar and went to his hut sitting down in front of the campfire to carve a handmade sword he was halfway through making.

His time would be better spent in the workshop creating better works, but Ygritte would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and cry if he wasn't present. The next thing he would do would be to make a bigger house and place a workshop inside where he could work better.