Draith
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Chapter 91 - Mirror, Mirror
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 14:00:16 +0000 UTCAscending the cliff after our lunch was more work but went much faster. Already, I was thinking of the potential of the ocean Waygate's location. The waves were much calmer in the area than I'd been expecting. I suspected some sort of wall or ridge beneath the waves. After all, the area had been safe from the waves at some point in the past. Heck, hadn't Balthum scavenged most of Tetherfall from a wrecked harbor? Maybe it'd been here.
We checked each other's straps, Bevel asking me to double check Mr Kandle too.
Then we started back, Bevel convincing me to let her look for Calbern along the way. He was still close to the rougher terrain close to the wyvern peaks when she saw him. If it had been anyone other than Calbern, I doubt they would've seen her waving.
Of course, by the time I spotted him, he was already waving back.
Chuckling to myself, I herded her on to Tetherfall. As we flew, I tried to count the ruins below. I lost track at a hundred. Most of my domain looked like it'd had residents at some point. The current weather had clearly made that unpalatable. Which made me wonder if it had been nicer before or if there’d been enchantments everywhere.
Just because Mount Aeternia was on ancient maps, that didn't mean the rest of my domain had always been so high. I was only Astral-souled, and a couple days efforts could move literal tons of stone. Heck, I remembered a documentary about a mine back on Earth. They'd literally moved an entire mountain over thirty years as they took all the coal out. No magic involved. Just a crew of a few hundred and some very big trucks.
We really needed better material for wheels. There was so much that could be done with good tires. Especially when combined with the energy of a Forgeheart. Fang was great for what it was, which was something designed to navigate broken terrain with good speed. It wasn't meant for work.
And even it needed better tires.
For the moment, the Tethered were ignoring the issues we’d normally have with rough terrain by using their ropeways and the Waygates.
But if we had proper roads, or even better, rails… Rails didn't need rubber. And I'd seen more than one rusty red rock in the hills. How hard would it be to reproduce steel? I needed to visit Memory Palace.
My thoughts were distant as I followed Bevel in a slow spiral down towards Inertia's workshop.
Tamrie found me before I'd even finished unstrapping.
"Good trip?" Tresla asked before my assistant had a chance to ambush me, emerging from the depths of Inertia's workshop. Tamrie squinted, but whatever had her tapping her journal so rapidly didn't seem to be urgent enough to interrupt.
"Yeah. Pretty good. Bevel and I raced to the bluff," I said while working at the straps. Tamrie stepped up to help remove them, but still didn't say anything.
"I won," Bevel said, nodding, a small frown on her too serious face. "And we went to visit the drowning portal."
"Oh, did you?" Tresla asked, kneeling down next to Bevel. "That sounds like quite the adventure."
"We had fresh fish and jerky," Bevel said, nodding. "And saw uncle Calbern."
I glanced at Tresla, mouthing the word 'uncle'. If it surprised her, it didn't show. Not so much as a twinkle of light. "Oh really, Perry took you that far?"
"Mhm. Now we're going to study magic," Bevel said, removing her last strap.
"Ah, before that, Magus Perth," Tamrie said, tapping her pencil on the book again now that I was free of both my harness and conversation.
"Go ahead," I said as Bevel turned to remove Mr Kandle.
"Word from the Shapers guild. Asking for an extra twenty percent over the right numbers they are. Jawing on about danger pay, like Spellford isn't twice the hassle these days," Tamrie said, puffing out her cheeks.
"How did we hear back from them already? Didn't we just send a message with one of the captains yesterday?"
"That Vetrov lady. Demanded to know why we hadn't hired any Shapers. Said she could contact them direct like. Then spent half an hour screaming at her mirror," Tamrie said, relaying it with a roll of her eyes. "Can't say whether the extra's on account of her, but wouldn't surprise me none."
"Right. Think she'd be willing to lend me that mirror?"
Tamrie squinted, tilting her head to the side while tapping the pencil against her chin. Finally, she nodded. "Aye. She'd do that, most like. Though might be wise to give her a day."
"Spending most of today with Bevel anyway," I reminded her.
"Didn't say otherwise," Tamrie said, directing her gaze at me.
"Right," I said, stepping towards Bevel who'd been waiting quietly, watching our conversation. "Anyway, what do you say we get to those lessons?"
"Bye miss Perry," Bevel said as she grabbed my hand.
"Her name is Tamrie. She's my assistant, not miss Perry," I said, not sure why Bevel called her miss Perry.
"Oh," Bevel said, letting out a heavy sigh. "Why are grown ups so complicated?"
"Tell you when I figure it out," I said, shaking my head.
…Mage Lord Isekai…
The lessons with Bevel were interspersed with a ridiculous number of questions about relationships. To the point I was half-worried I'd need to give Bevel the birds and the bees talk. Which I was probably even less equipped to deal with than the average man.
Thankfully, she never broached the topic, though it did leave me thinking about who could have that conversation with her. I knew Calbern had that sort of talk with Perth, but I wasn't sure if that'd go over as well with Bevel.
Honestly, it’d be best if I could just get her sister back.
After I put her to bed, I ended up slipping away myself. It was weird not having Calbern around, but I had to admit Tamrie was doing a good job.
The morning came and getting up on my own was even weirder. I'd grown accustomed to Calbern helping me before my day. For a second, I considered asking Tamrie to help before I considered how that could be interpreted.
"Did it yourself for thirty years," I muttered as I dressed myself properly. Well, mostly properly. Even after spending ten minutes on the attempt, I still couldn't get my robes to hang in the way Calbern preferred. "The man has some secret spell, that's the only reasonable explanation,” I muttered to myself in the otherwise empty room.
Then I stepped out into the main chamber, where Tamrie was waiting with her journal. She took one look at me, stepped forward and with a quick tug, fixed my robe. "Vetrov is waiting for you."
"Got it," I said, looking around and realizing there wasn't any breakfast waiting. "Food first."
Tamrie nodded, following behind me. I halted when I realized Tresla wasn't cooking anything in Tetherfall's cooking cradle. When we got to Verdant Point, she wasn't there either.
Since there weren't any vendors I could go to, I decided to go without. I could've eaten some jerky from my inventory, but I wasn't quite hungry enough to eat jerky for breakfast. So I made my way to Vetrov's little campsite. She'd managed to set up a stone building the size of a shed. It was tiny, but seemed very well built. She'd even carved some decorative floral motifs into it.
The door stood open, revealing a single cot and a desk across from it, which Vetrov was sitting at, writing on some blue paper with a yellow crystal. I was going to wait until she was done, but Tamrie cleared her throat the second we arrived.
Vetrov glanced up, her eyes narrowing. "Just a second," she said, turning her attention back to the paper for another minute. Finally, she held it up, squinting at it. Then she yelled a name I didn't recognize. One of the young men she'd strong-armed into helping her the day before appeared from behind the shed, and she sent him off with the blue paper. I caught what looked like a bunch of rough rectangles on the page before he was gone.
"Magus Dominus," Vetrov said, brushing off her hands as she pushed to her feet. "Your assistant says you'd like to take a shot at trying to get those apes to pull their heads out of their trees."
"Never said nothing about no apes or trees," Tamrie mumbled, crossing her arms. I got the impression that whatever Tamrie had said had been far less polite.
"Worth a try, at the least," I said, looking at the mirror. "How's it work?"
"You channel mana into the handle there," Vetrov said, gesturing to an inlaid handle that looks like an engraved piano key, with black and white striations. "If you decide to get your own, I can teach you how to use it. Very useful."
"How much?" I asked. With all the dust I was producing, I might just be able to afford one. And having something like this would be invaluable. It'd be especially nice if Nexxa and I both had one.
"The boards cost about three thousand Waves, if you can find a Shaper with the skills willing to do the work. Second hand, they're about five stacks. The cheaper scryers start around one, and can cost anywhere up to fifty thousand. I got this beauty at a steal, only ten stacks," Vetrov said, running her hand over the embossed frame. It took me a moment to figure out that a stack likely meant a thousand Waves. "Heard the big guy has a full immersion display that ran him roughly a hundred stacks in materials. What I wouldn't give to spin that up for a few minutes."
"The big guy?"
"High Shaper Thozgar, Spellford's very own Djinn-souled. Bit touched in the head, but what Djinn-souled isn't?" Vetrov replied. "Now, don't touch any of these," she said, gesturing to the sigils set inside the embossed frame. "Don't need you orbing someone you shouldn't."
I nodded, taking the handle and channeling mana into it. The drain was pretty minor, as the center of the mirror started rippling from the center outward. It took almost half a minute before the ripples resolved into the image of a young man. The moment it did, the mana usage jumped upward. I still had enough to talk for probably ten minutes or so, but it was a lot more draining than I'd been expecting.
"What is it this time, Vetrov?" the man asked even as his features gained clarity, the surface of the mirror seeming to push out to make room for his face. "Wait, you're not Vetrov. By Thozgar, did you kill that harpyspawn? Well done!"
"Your concern is as touching as always, Bannen," Vetrov said from beside me. "This is the new Magus Dominus I was telling you about. I’m lending him my mirror."
"Damn. Guess it was too much to hope your attitude finally caught up to you," the young man, Bannen, replied, shaking his head. While his features were clear, everything was rendered with a silver finish, which made it feel like the mirror had simply reshaped itself. "Hello Magus Dominus Perth. I hope Vetrov hasn't poisoned the falls with her lies."
"Uh, nothing's been poisoned," I said, glancing to the side where Vetrov was smiling surprisingly widely. "She actually didn't say anything about you."
"Seriously? Nothing? What the Edge, Vetrov? After all I've done for you?"
"Weren't you just warning the Magus about me, Bannen?"
"That's just good sense," Bannen replied, a flicker of a hand appearing near the edge of the mirror for a second. "So, Magus, what can the Shaper's Guild help you with today?"
With their banter out of the way, I told him what I needed from them. And how much dust we were prepared to spend.
"Unfortunately, dust just isn't in demand at the moment. A lot of enchantments got canceled with the recent attacks. And a lot of Shapers got targeted. So we have more dust than we know what to do with and not enough Shapers to do the work. Which I tried to tell Vetrov," Bannen said, glaring over my shoulder. Which I noted, wasn't where Vetrov was standing. I guessed he couldn't see much more of my surroundings than I could see of his. Which… was nothing. "Honestly, the twenty percent markup on normal pricing is only because we've got so many Shapers who want out of Spellford for a while. Otherwise I'd need to charge double. It'd be easier if you were paying in Waves."
"What about other materials? Are there any particular affinities you're looking for?"
"I did hear that you had some tier three heartwood with a strong nature affinity. We could probably trade services for that," Bannen said, leaning back and tapping his chin. "Lengths such as the ones you provided typically go for around a hundred stacks a piece. One of those would be enough for about a month's worth of work, depending on the team."
I blinked as I stared at the silvery reflection, utterly failing to hide my shock. That was at least ten times the value I'd ascribed to them. It seemed like way, way too much money.
But… I was used to being in the Aranor family compound. Where everything had a strong Nature affinity.
No wonder Kallum had been happy with the trade.
It was also no wonder he'd tried to take everything. I’d been a damn fool to let people wander around with so much wealth just sitting out in the open. I was glad the majority of the heartwood had been stacked in Mistvale. Otherwise I'd probably be dealing with folk trying to steal it non-stop. At least Kallum had left us the tools to refine it, even if someone had sabotaged them during the attack. The faster I got the heartwood into buildings, the harder it'd be for people to walk off with it. Plus it'd help us expand our agricultural production rapidly. That said it was a limited resource. The Tethered had attempted to fell a fully grown tree and we discovered that they couldn't. Not with the tools at our disposal. Nor were we removing the stumps any time soon.
Finally recovered, I returned my attention to Bannen, I scratched my chin. "It… might be possible, though most of the material is spoken for. How much of our proposed work could be done for ten such lengths?"
It was Bannen's turn to be shocked. He was much more collected than I'd been, only having his eyes go wide and mouth parting slightly. But it was enough for me to realize I'd overplayed my hand. "That would be… look, if you're able to provide us with that much tier-3 material, we'll have your projects done in a few months. However, and it pains me to admit this after my previous statement, we wouldn't have enough dust to do the work to pay it off."
I wanted to shake my head, but instead, managed to say, "Then it seems we'll be able to work things out. If we're providing the dust, that just means I'll be able to get more done, won't it?"
Bannen squinted at me, his face receding backwards slightly in the reflective surface. "Just a reminder. Our Shapers are not combatants. You'll be responsible for their safety. And we’ll need deposits in case of injury or worse."
Vetrov snorted. "Then why would we bother accepting a danger pay upcharge?"
"You're well aware these are standard terms, Vetrov," Bannen shot back.
"Do you have a list of these terms?" I asked before they could start sniping at each other again.
"Vetrov should have a copy of the standard rates. All guild certified Shapers are required to keep the latest compendium," Bannen said, his eyes once more shifting to the side, as if attempting to glare at Vetrov.
I wondered if that meant Kallum had left a spare copy rattling around in his ring. Or if Xoth also had one. It certainly explained why everyone seemed to know the appropriate prices for enchanting.
With a promise to send an official representative with their own team for proper negotiations, Bannen and I said goodbye. Wasn't looking forward to the negotiations but the results would be worth it.
Only thing was, with an actual team of Shapers on their way, I needed proper plans more than anything.
Was really hoping Tamrie was right about Calbern helping me build a council, cause I needed one.
Comments
Jason Hardman
Guys really getting shafted by everyone who gets a chance with him at the moment. He needs to be at least a bit greedy when negotiating. Doesn't make much sense when he was just told he'd get a month's work for one heartwood, for him to be shocked at the response for him offering ten.
