Draith
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Chapter 93 - Hot Water
🕑 Added 2025-05-05 03:18:32 +0000 UTCAuthor's note:
Sorry about the late chapter. Was my dad's 70th birthday this weekend. Tried to have chapters ready ahead of time, but didn't quite get them all done. Tomorrow's chapter will be on time.
...Mage Lord Isekai...
Tarnibus was understandably flustered when I explained what I wanted her to do. It was akin to asking a professor with a… I wasn't sure of the word. Doctorate or masters or something. Anyway, one of those super high end math guys. It was like asking one of them to teach something nearly as basic as ten plus ten.
Which was why Tarnibus had instantly refused. “One of my pupils can handle such a simple matter. I shall have them here in a week. His tolerance for such tasks is far superior to mine.”
In exchange I gave her the tools to teach herself English. At least its written form. The basics at least. I produced a set of pre-kindergarten books I’d originally summoned from my memories for Tresla, after she’d taken over the task of translating the books I’d given Inertia. Figured I’d already started spreading English around, might as well keep it consistent. I also figured if she wasn't willing to dedicate her personal time to help us, no reason for me to give her mine.
“This is…” Tarnibus said, opening the book with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Then she grinned a smile that had far too many teeth as she looked at a page that simple had the word Apple printed along its top with a picture of the red fruit beneath it. “This is perfect. An original learning supplement, if I’m not mistaken. Who knows what forgotten corner of the world this came from. The letters share some similarities with pre-Altean Esqaire, though they’re…”
She continued in that vein for over a minute before Tamrie coughed into her sleeve.
At the reminder, Tarnibus looked up, almost seeming surprised we were still there. Her gaze flicked to Tamrie for a second before returning to me. “Ah. This is quite the find. If you change your mind about me tutoring your pupil, I can broaden her horizons a great deal. The least I can do, after such a gift.”
That she'd offered to assist with Bevel's training once more, free of charge, kinda keyed me into her interest in Bevel.
“Tell you what, I’ll pass it on to Bevel,” I replied.
Tarnibus gave me a nod, her attention already slipping back to the book in her hands. As she watched away, I turned to Tamrie. “What do you think the odds are she’ll forget to contact her pupil?”
“Got a note to check in on her once she’s settled some,” Tamrie said, tapping her journal with the pencil.
With that out of the way, I returned to Tetherfall, where I immediately encountered Bevel, and passed on Tarnibus’s offer.
Only to receive a tilt of my young apprentice's head. A head that was upside down. "The raptor lady wants to teach me too?" Bevel asked, her unruly curls bobbing to the side as she demonstrated a remarkable disregard for gravity, easily keeping pace along the net as I climbed up to visit Tresla and Inertia.
"That's what she said," I replied before hoisting myself up with a grunt.
Bevel leapt past me, riding a gust of invisible air that send my own hair flapping into my face. Settling into her new spot, still mostly upside down, she asked, "What about uncle Calbern?"
"I mean, we can work out some sort of schedule, if you're interested. You know uncle Calbern has other duties." Reaching the top, I found Tresla and Inertia just outside the workshop. Tresla was sitting in a chair, still recovering from whatever she’d done to empower Inertia. Beside her, Inertia was working on one of her own wings. It was a little disconcerting seeing it detached from her body. The sight left my hand clenching in half-remembered pain, the memory of what I'd had to go through to restore her Forgeheart brought back to mind.
"Like being a go go zoom rider," Bevel said, nodding seriously and drawing my attention back to our conversation.
"Yeah, like that," I agreed, tussling her hair with my hand, forcing it open.
One of the Tethered that Tamrie had arranged as an apprentice approached Inertia. She'd agreed to teach them blacksmithing, though not any true secrets of Forge Theory. They'd both had experience back in Spellford, but apparently her expertise was far beyond anything they'd been exposed to.
The apprentice had to wait as Inertia picked up her wing, her body shifting to accomodate it as she held it in place. Only after she was done, did she turn towards her new apprentice. A young man who looked to be torn between curiosity and fear.
To my surprise, Tresla barely had to translate Inertia's critiques before the apprentice returned to his work. We hadn't had much metal for them to practice with, but given our new embarrassment of riches, it hadn't cost much to purchase several ingots worth of materials that had been scattered amongst the refugee ships. Even without a proper forge, they'd been kept busy. And the forge, several tons of materials and a lot of other equipment on Inertia's wishlist were on their way.
Much as it pained me to admit it, I was, in a way, glad for the unrest in Terra Vista. Otherwise I never would've established trade so quickly.
Unfortunately, food was something I couldn't acquire as easily. The volumes we needed weren't available for sale. Not in Spellford anyway. Apparently the High Shaper controlled anything bigger than a personal herb garden, including exports.
Not that I intended to be that different, at least not any time soon. Food was kinda the backbone of society. Still, people needed to feel like they benefited from their labor, if I expected to get maximum production. That'd been something I'd stumbled across in Memory Palace when looking through design documents for improved farming methods. It was theorized that the detachment of reward and effort was a major part of the failure of communism. Well, that and no one ever actually following the principles as they were laid out.
At least, that was what the opinion piece in the farming magazine I'd picked up for my customers had said.
Knew better than to trust such an opinion piece, though it did seem believable. Didn’t much matter. Even if I knew what those principles were, on Roan there were literal mages who could do the work of a hundred unawakened, every single day.
Technically, if I was willing to waste my time casting Bloom non-stop, I could feed thousands of people. That's precisely what the Gardners did.
Thanks to the huge influx of meat, there were better uses of my time. Now that things were moving, I could return my attention to restoring Bevel’s sister and the other golem attendants. Especially if… "Inertia, would you be able to spare some time later today? I think I'm ready to make those repairs to the… bath we were talking about."
Inertia halted in the middle of raising her fist, which she'd been using as a hammer to reshape… I wasn't exactly sure what she was working on, though it resembled one of the feathers in her wings. Before answering me, she sent her fist crashing down, twisting the piece of metal. Then she picked it up in both hands, rolling it into a ball and tossing it to the side. Only after she was done did she turn to Tresla, whistle-hissing her response.
"Inertia was planning to shatter a few skulls, but supposes that your thing would be fun too," Tresla replied.
"Shatter skulls?" I asked, glancing towards where Inertia was straightening out, flexing both her hands and her wings.
"She hasn't visited the drakes in a few days," Tresla explained with a toss of her hood, red light glinting from inside. I couldn’t help but note how thin it remained.
"Ah, of course," I said, glancing south instead of staring. Then I shook my head, leading Inertia back inside the mountain. Not before I got Tamrie and Tresla to distract Bevel.
When we got to the sealed off bath chamber, it took me a little while to break down the seals, during which, Inertia and I discussed my plans once more. It wasn't the first time I’d talked to her about fixing the golems. While Inertia couldn't help with any of the enchanting work, she was a good sounding board. Plus her pure physical strength should be enough to keep the golems from hurting themselves. Or me.
With the last stone removed, I put away the staff, pushing open the door-like section I'd carved. Inside, the golem attendants lay where I'd left them, each still covered in the towels I'd used to grant them a modicum of decency. We moved into the chamber together, and I looked around at the overly fancy room again.
A bath the size of those pools or hot tubs I’d only ever seen in movies dominated the back of the chamber. The attendants had been lined up next to the bath when they'd first attacked, only to be left wherever they'd fallen. Mostly that meant across the tiles in front of the bath. I hadn’t noticed the gentle slope before, nor the patterns which each were inlaid with gold and some silverish metal that didn’t seem to rust.
Couldn’t help but once again wonder how he’d gotten the hot water for his bath, considering the lack of visible pipes and the apparent distaste of taking care of his own basic needs that the attendants implied.
There were some chips in the design from the fight, several cracks radiating out from where the golem with the bucket had struck the floor.
It was her I chose for my first attempt.
I pointed at her, and Inertia nodded, before kneeling down on either side of her head, securing her arms.
It was tempting to start with Bevel's sister, the attendant who even now still clutched a towel in her stone hands. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee I'd succeed in my attempts to repair them. Made me feel like a shit person to basically be experimenting on someone else just cause they didn't have any ties to me. Only the fact I felt there was a legitimate chance I could at least decrease any suffering she might be going through allowed me to start.
In large part, thanks to Keeper's records, I wasn't going in totally blind. The Golden Halls of Ascension were something it'd had reams of records about. Even the golem creation process.
Getting seven books hadn't even cost me a full shard worth of knowledge. Memory Palace had made sorting out the relevant bits convenient and had only cost me a single morning with a headache. Still hadn't found any spells that let me do more than reduce the pain slightly, though my tolerance seemed to be increasing the more I worked on my Astral Form.
Inertia let out a huff of steam as she settled her position, carefully recentering her grip on the attendant’s limbs.
Despite his meticulous record keeping, the runes Balthum had engraved in the attendant’s chest were crude things. Not in their design. I didn’t know enough about their function to say that. But the actual engraving was... I didn't know if Balthum just had no skill, or if his condition had made it hard to keep his lines smooth.
Didn't matter. Point was, the control runes being such a mess actually made it harder for me to remove them without causing damage to the attendant’s golem body I was working on.
Balthum had tied the control runes into several of the critical functions of the golem itself. Which is why they'd been so easy to disrupt. Once I finished removing those runes, if what I'd read was accurate, the golem body would repair the damage itself.
Honestly, the underlying design of the golem body was a lot of very complicated and impressive work.
The process of removing the runes was a near total inverse to scribing in the first place. Instead of sending my mana in, I had to use a focused version of mana-draw to remove all the mana from each of the runes. It was a spell I'd designed based on the principles I'd read in the books.
Starting on the left of her chest, I realized it was going to take me a lot longer than I'd been hoping. The mess Balthum had left meant none of the runes were easily cut away. Maybe it was why he'd done such a seemingly poor job. I cursed softly to myself, but then refocused on the work.
After I got going, it wasn't too bad. It was a bit like sanding the rough spots off before preparing a surface for a weld. The process even left black dust behind, much like you'd get with sanding, that I had to brush away occasionally. Instead of doing the welding myself, I got to watch with Detect Mana as the buried runes repaired themselves.
The rate of repair was such that it sometimes made it trickier to remove the control runes. If I only managed to remove part of the rune in direct contact, then I basically had to start over from the beginning.
Still, after an hour, I'd managed to remove half of the control runes connecting to the deeper set. The next few were easier than the rest, the self repair almost seeming to have figured out what I was doing, and not activating at all until I finished with a section.
Tried not to worry too much about the implications of a self-repair system that was capable of learning. Was hoping it just meant that whoever was trapped inside had regained enough awareness to help out.
There were still about a quarter of the connections left when the golem attendant moved. Thankfully, it had chosen a rare moment when I wasn't removing a rune from its chest.
It blinked up at me, then attempted to move its arms. I scrambled back out of immediate striking range. "Let her go," I called out even as the golem attendant opened her mouth.
Inertia's eyes audibly clicked once before she did as I asked, leaning backward as she released the attendant's arms.
This seemed to shock the attendant, as their entire body went stiff again.
The room remained silent for several seconds, before the attendant sat up. It looked down at the bucket still clenched in its hand. Then, with a look of almost childlike wonder, it held the bucket out to the side and dropped it.
"Ha!" a voice came out, reaching down to grab the bucket before dropping it again. Bubbling laughter filled the room as the attendant did this several times. The laughter seemed to reach an almost madden pitch as the attendant tilted her head back and let loose.
Was really hoping I hadn’t just repaired her body only to break her mind.
Comments
Jason Hardman
TYFTC! Some typos or potential errors: We moved into the chamber together, and I took around at the overly fancy room again. -> and I looked around at Now they lay on the intricate patterns that led up from the it towards the entrance. -> led up from it (I'd consider redoing the entire sentence, as it feels to me like there may be a piece missing?)
Jason Hardman
Yeah, any breaking of minds happened long before his involvement. It's clear he's giving them release from torture.
Munirah Hutchinson
Oh no! Were they conscious the whole time?? Oh, that bastard. Happy belated birthday to your dad!
