Draith
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Chapter 116 - Hot Water
🕑 Added 2025-05-31 14:00:10 +0000 UTCThere was a lot to process in the books Keeper had given me. Even with the help of Memory Palace and suffering through headaches, it took me a week to process it all.
Part of that was because Tamrie refused to allow me to spend my days in intense pain simply to speed up the process a little. Well, more accurately, after the first time I'd blinded myself by pushing the limits of Memory Palace, she'd said, "If you do that to yourself again, I'll leave you to sort everything all on your lonesome. You can find yourself a new assistant. Ain't nothing worse than someone you care ‘bout twisted up in pain and unable to do nothing for it."
I'd acknowledged her point with little argument. It wasn't like I enjoyed subjecting myself to those levels of pain. It'd just seemed like a good idea at the time. Turned out that I couldn't even cast Restore Form or Minor Heal to sooth the pain when it was that bad. The attempt had cost me an entire day in bed.
Only after I recovered had I started dealing with the traps in Balthum's hidden chamber. The first two were easy enough. With Bevel assisting, I set up a simple mana-siphon, causing them to slowly lose strength. It’d take a while but they’d be disarmed safely.
Given the nature of the third, I had the mana-siphons from the other traps feed into a secondary enchantment storage enchantment. Using a design similar to my Shield spell, with modifications to make it impermeable to pretty much everything, I set it up to run off the storage enchantment. Then we'd drained the trap into the battery as well. As long as I checked it each day, the shield would stay active, even after all the traps had been drained.
The rest of my time had been spent improving the accommodations for both Tetherfall and Verdant Point. I started by creating underground hallways to connect Verdant Point together, effectively a set of buried halls they could use to get to the rest of the community without having to brave the storm. Of course, Vetrov had taken that as permission to start her own upgrades and had added a gathering space that was reminiscent of the greenhouses we'd built, including the transparent rock to give them access to the sky. And she had no intention of stopping there.
While she continued improving Verdant Point, I returned to Tetherfall, intent on reproducing the hidden hallways.
Which was when I discovered why the homes in Tetherfall were always warm. There was massive amount of geothermal energy pushing through the surrounding rock, which had been connected to a well hidden hot spring.
A hot spring the Tethered had known about and simply avoided. Or so Tanis had told me after he’d shown up, at the behest of the sentry I’d sent for him. A sentry who’d apparently told everyone they’d seen along the way that their Magus was investigating the springs.
At least, that was the only reason I could imagine for the crowd that’d sprung up behind him.
"That's exactly what this town needs," Soap Bottle said, having been among the crowd who'd gathered.
"More stinky water?" Tanis asked, glancing over at Soap Bottle. "We've got lots of stinky water outside, Esbee."
Ah, right. I'd forgotten about her name change.
"This is more relaxing. Let's you soak all the stress of the day out," Soap Bottle explained with more patience than I was expecting, even as she sank a hand into the hot springs. She smiled, then dipped her leg into the scalding water. "Oh, that's nice."
"Looks kinda burny to me," Tanis said, stepping closer, reaching down as if he wanted to check. “Like putting your hand on a hot rock after its been in the sun all day.”
"It is," I said before he could put his hand in. "Very burny."
"This section might be a little too hot for you normies," Esbee admitted, slipping fully into the pool, not seeming to care about getting her clothes soaked. "Sure feels good on this bod though."
"Gonna make things complicated," I said, looking at the pools of scalding water. She was right that it was a good thing. It'd been keeping the residents of Tetherfall warm for decades. Also explained why Balthum had chosen to put the village where he did, and why the rooms were all seemingly random sizes. They’d been built around the natural vents. All of which had been bled off to let out their off-gases in the hidden spring. Looking up, I noted that there was a great deal of enchantment in the ceiling, where the gases should’ve pooled.
"Oh, right," Esbee said, opening her eyes and leaning on the edge of the pool as she looked up at me. "The pools are great, but they reminded me what this place really needs. Some sort of central inn and bar. You have two towns and not a single watering hole between them."
"That's not…" I trailed off as I considered her words. "I'll put it on the list."
"Adding it," Tamrie said, emerging from the crowd behind me. "You wanna bump it up above the tunnels, since its gonna take a while to map out this mess?" She waved her pencil at the bubbling hot springs.
"Draw up some plans," I said to Esbee.
"Me?" she asked, blinking slowly.
"It's your idea. I know less than nothing about running an inn or bar or whatever you want to call it. Don’t want to know either. If you figure it out, we'll get it built," I said, nodding to Tamrie. "When you've got an idea, let Tamrie know. Probably take a few passes, but we'll get it done."
"You're serious?" Esbee asked, standing up from the pool with a splash.
I took a step back, holding my nose. I wasn't the only one. Using an air Shield on me and Tamrie, I waved the last of the stench away, using a Gust to dry her out before nodding. "Yeah. I'm serious. If you want to run it, then we'll hash out some sort of deal for that. Building itself will still belong to Tetherfall, but the business will be yours."
"I… okay," Esbee said, her gaze distant. Then she turned to Tanis. "Okay, I can do this. Can I borrow you big guy?"
"Maybe?" Tanis replied, shrugging. "Think you need to ask the boss."
"You can help her," I said, waving him away. Esbee got Tanis to start holding things as she moved excitedly about the hot spring cavern. It was good to see, but there was a lot of other stuff to get done.
"So… tunnels are no good then?" Tamrie asked as we squeezed our way through the narrow tunnel that led from the main chasm down into the hot springs. Would probably need to widen that too.
"Need to be ready for accidentally opening a vent," I said, sighing. I'd already had that happen, which was what had led to the discovery of the hot springs. "Lucky no one got seriously hurt. Gonna need to design something."
The lady who's house I'd been about to connect to the halls had gotten scalded, but Restore Form had dealt with that quick enough I wasn’t counting it as a serious injury. Could’ve been, without Restore Form.
"We can get everyone to scamper off, easy enough," Tamrie said, her pencil already scratching away in her notebook. "Won't really affect your schedule much. I'll pull a couple weavers to spread the word."
"Weavers, not sentries?" I asked, stopping in a wider section of the tunnel to let a pair of Tethered who were going the other way squeeze past. They both nodded, and I returned the gesture.
"Sentries are for keeping a watch, sure enough, but sending word’s better done by the weavers," Tamrie said, not really clearing up why she wanted to use them.
Deciding it didn't really matter, I got back to work, though only after designing a Shield for heat and water. Keeper did have a second Order Shield spell, Aegis of the Undying, which I’d bought. But the cost to keep it running meant I'd decided to mostly stick with first Order variants for the moment. Even with all the Storm mana in the air, I preferred keeping my mana for the work rather than spend it on excess protection I didn’t need.
The project ended up evolving a bit, with the discovery of the geothermal heat. Thankfully, I was able to re-route most of it, so it only meant the project took three times as long as I'd initially been planning.
I figured I had a day's worth of work left when the last of Balthum's traps had the mana drained out of it.
Bevel had wanted to come with me but I wasn’t willing to risk her getting hurt by the traps. Instead, I'd brought Banya to help with the disposal. She'd been as interested as Bevel in learning more about enchanting, though she'd been doing most of her studying either on her own or with Xoth. At the moment it was a mostly academic interest, since it wasn't like she could channel mana.
Still, her interest meant I'd recruited her, since her body was likely resistant, if not outright immune, to whatever Balthum had kept in the third trap.
If it was, it would make it much easier to get rid of the contents. The Shield enchantment I'd built to contain it was still holding, but it was effectively a big pillar in the center of the room no one could pass through. More importantly, I didn't want it failing if people were going to be moving through the room to get to Mount Aeternia's peak.
Hadn't forgotten why I'd been digging around the mountain in the first place.
"You're sure this will work?" Banya asked, holding a set of enchanted bellows that'd been repurposed from Inertia's workshop.
"Am I sure? No," I replied honestly from several steps down the stairs, Aegis of the Undying running. "If I was sure, I'd be standing in there with you."
"Right, just… just checking," Banya said, holding the bellows against the weak spot in the enchantment. Much like bypassing the runes to make changes to the mountain, the bellows had an enchantment that, in theory, when touching the other enchantments around the base of the shield, should let the nozzle slide through.
The math checked out, now Banya just needed to test it. Kneeling down, she carefully aligned the enchanted bellows with the markings on the floor. It only took her a minute before she pulled the bellows open.
They were using a filter, so that every time she pushed down, only a regular mix of air would pass through, but every time she lifted up, everything inside the Shield chamber would be drawn in.
To my surprise, everything worked exactly as I'd hoped it would. We'd still need to get the contents out of the enchanted bellows, but I'd already written them off as disposable, so that wasn't too important. While Banya took the bellows down to the Waygate by the bluff to dump their contents, I looked around the room.
Balthum's secret sanctum.
I'd been tempted to take all the books before disarming the traps. I hadn't, just in case there'd been another set of traps I'd somehow missed, or even a secret trigger to the ones that were there. Nothing had happened.
And nothing continued to happen as I let the room sit for another hour, waiting for Banya to finish with her disposal. Only after she returned did we poke our head inside the room.
"So, this is where he slunk off to when he wasn't having us service his needs," Banya said, a hint of disgust in her voice.
"Pretty sure he had a lot more secret rooms than just this one," I replied, even as I started walking my fingers along the books on the shelves, using Review Scroll on them as I went.
I stopped when I spotted a row of personal journals. Those had been the most useful so far. They also seemed like the most likely to have a secret trap. Other than his grimoire, which I still hadn't found.
Was starting to suspect he'd had it with him when he died.
Kneeling down, I activated Reveal Magic, watching for any sort of distortion. Then I switched over to Eagle Eyes, and just in case, I even swapped in Detect Magic.
Nothing.
Still, I didn't pull the books from the shelves, simply walking my fingers along their spines as I sent them into Memory Palace with the rest. It took me a couple hours to add everything, and only once that was done did I give Banya permission to start checking through the desk.
"Just paper and an enchanted pen," Banya said as she riffled through the desk. Then she moved to a basket in the corner, which had dozens of scrunched up pieces of paper. "Looks like he was drafting a letter to someone… no name though."
I nodded, waiting patiently in the doorway as she continued her sweep. Nothing else of interest was found. Inspection of the enchantment on the pen revealed it wouldn't run out of ink while writing, which was simple but useful. I let Banya have it as thanks for her help.
Might've been tempted to keep it for Tamrie if she hadn't told me how much she prefers her pencils. And there was no way I was giving Bevel a pen with unlimited ink and letting her loose on Tetherfall.
With that decided, Banya started pulling the books off the walls, until the entire room had been emptied. Only then did I join her, stashing the books in the rings to be taken elsewhere. It was when we pulled the desk away from the wall that we found the real prize.
In a recessed cubby, protected by another layer of magical traps, was a dimensional safe.
