Draith
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Chapter 59 - Dragon Sized Storm
🕑 Added 2025-03-29 14:00:11 +0000 UTCWhile a surplus of mana was an upside, the storm wasn't all good news, the torrential downpour basically forcing us to retreat indoors.
After changing into a dry set of clothes, I slid Memory Palace to sift through Balthum's research.
When I accessed my toolbox, I was reminded that Memory Palace didn’t sort things automatically. Once more, I drove the thermometer halfway to the red as I absorbed the most promising material.
And I found clues that might just point me to the Golden Halls of Ascension. It seemed that ocean portal Bevel had gone through wasn't so out of the way after all.
Since I was already inside, I summoned a copy of said portal door, as well as the intact one leading to Mistvale. Neither of them did anything inside Memory Palace, but it was much easier to study their enchantments. After nearly an hour, I glanced over at the thermometer, grateful to see it’d only risen by another degree.
I couldn’t be certain, but I thought that I might just be able to make repairs, once I had figured out how to refine some tier two materials. Something I hoped Inertia might be able to help with.
So I left Memory Palace to consult Inertia, wincing at the headache that followed me.
Tresla was stationed at the door, looking out into the rain. When I asked where Inertia was, she tilted her head to the side, her musical laugh filling the room. “Where else? She’s working on Fang.”
“Oh,” I said, staring at the literal sheets of water washing over the canyon walls. Considering the late hour, I decided to sleep first.
When I rose in the morning, I discovered Inertia was still out in the storm. As I felt the mana seeping in, I realized something. The portal doors would undoubtedly be useful but there was an important opportunity at my fingertips.
I was highly attuned to Storm mana. And I had a lot of infrastructure I wanted to build.
So, I retrieved the all-weather gear from where Calbern had packed it away. I’d intended to suit myself up, but he’d shown up as soon as I pulled out the boots, aiding me in my efforts. It was only as I finished that it occured to me that Nexxa had a spell specifically for going around in the storm in her grimoire, Storm Walker. The second Order spell would let me ignore most of the effects of the storm for several minutes.
But… that would be a waste of mana I had other plans for.
It did make me consider another spell that could prove useful though.
As soon as I stepped outside, the rain whipped across my face, blinding me. Alongside the headache, I almost chose to retreat back inside. Instead, I gritted my teeth and ascended the nets, keeping Eagle Eyes and Water Breathing running. I hadn't been sure, but it turned out that Water Breathing helped with the overly humid air.
The combination let me reach the upper edge, where a pile of debris waited for me. The scaffolding we'd erected for the nets hadn't been brought in, and a lot of it had been destroyed by the sudden storm.
It took me a moment to confirm the mats themselves were still mostly intact, though they hadn't gotten off scot free either. There'd be a couple days of labor for the villagers to restore what'd been lost. Assuming nothing got worse. Considering how early into the storm we were, that was a pretty big assumption.
I could barely make out Inertia where she was thunking around by Fang, though I could hear her just fine. She was almost as loud as the storm. Like a diesel engine with a mistimed camshaft. Lots of shaking and rattling and the occasional roar.
Leaving her to it, I moved to one of the storehouses that'd been emptied. The old building had seen better days, the roof sagging like the lining of a 70’s Pontiac, and the doorway partially collapsed. I'd intended to re-purpose it for a workshop after repairing the roof, but the sudden deluge had given me a better idea.
Water was scarce here. I hadn't been able to have a shower since I'd arrived. There was the stream at the bottom of the chasm, where the villagers drew their water from, but that was… lacking. Not only did they draw the majority of their water by hand, they didn't have many places to store it.
I could solve one of those issues fairly easily.
The first step had been slotting in Mana Draw, to take advantage of the Storm's plentiful mana. As the familiar crackling of mana seeped into me, I felt a small ache in my chest. The last time I'd drawn Storm mana in this sort of volume, Nexxa'd been the one supplying it.
I blinked away the moisture in my eyes, unsure if it'd been the rain.
Didn't matter.
My attention returned to my task. The first step was using the staff's Sculpt Stone spell to seal the floor. With the plentiful amounts of mana, it was a relatively quick process, only taking me a couple hours before the water started pooling. Then I moved onto the walls. They took me twice as long, as well as another half hour to seal over the door using broken rubble from the slate roof, but eventually I was finished.
Only for a leak to spring up the moment the door was in placed. It took me another hour to track down all the spots I’d missed, wading through ever rising water the entire time.
With the water up to my neck, I finally pulled myself out, practically slipping to the ground. I leaned my back against the warehouse I’d turned into a half-covered cistern, ignoring the roaring thunder for a minute.
A temporary solution, I hoped. One that should make watering the mats easier, if nothing else. A gust of wind pulling at me, nearly dragging me to my feet, reminding me that the storm was still raging around me.
And that meant I still had work to do.
Head down, I continued working on the warehouses. My next target was the main warehouse, where I only had to do some minor patching to ensure that it kept the water on the outside.
Next I risked interrupting Inertia.
She let loose one of her whistle-steam laughs when she saw me. And another when I explained what I wanted, but she followed me anyway.
A tree had fallen across the gap where Tetherfall met the larger canyon, and I had asked her to hold it for me. Inertia let out a loud 'Brave' as I moved onto it. I used Sculpt Stone to lock each end in place, then as she returned to her work, I slowly built a walkway over the end of the chasm near where it split into the wider canyon. The storm pulled and pushed at me, but with Tie Rope to hold me in place as I continued to reinforce the tree with Sculpt Stone, the tree transformed into something more. It was draining, doing my work so exposed. When I'd been in the warehouses, the walls had sheltered me from the worst of it, but now every minute was exhausting.
I'd intended the tree to serve as a temporary support, but it had ended up being easier to encase it. Plus, it added a nice bit of aesthetic to what had become a stone arch. An arch I intended to use for a lot more than just walking.
Nasty as the wind was, the arch held firm as I stepped back into the shelter of the nearby storehouse. Despite the cold weather gear, my teeth were chattering. There was still an overabundance of mana in the air, but I wasn't prepared to continue outside.
What I really wanted was a nice hot shower. With the cistern, I was one step closer to that. Unfortunately, converting Water Purification to an enchantment would be a waste of my silver dust.
Though only if I was using it just so I could have a shower.
The entire village could benefit from clean water.
With that thought in mind, I started descending the nets.
Getting to the dust was more of a struggle than actually scribing the enchantment. Of all the spells I had, Water Purification was the most common to be made into a permanent enchantment, which meant I didn’t even have to modify it. My practice with repairing the wards had been harder than scribing it. The biggest challenge with the enchantment was encasing it in stone without ruining the effect. Sculpt Stone was able to do the detail work easily enough, but if I actively channeled mana through near the enchantment, I could easily disrupt my work.
So, I had to create a mold to go around the enchantment, which I then used to Sculpt Stone to weld together around the edges.
The actual working of the enchantment was barely bigger than my hand, but the block I'd encased it in was four feet to a side, and nearly two tall. I'd included several handholds along each side of it, but it was so heavy I ended up needing to get Inertia to help. And even she hissed at the weight.
Would've been easy if Fang had been intact enough to tow it.
I didn't mention that out loud of course. Not while Inertia was sliding my hard work the ten feet from the warehouse I’d built it to the edge of the cistern.
Right as she set the filtration block into place, the wind slowed down, and the lightning stopped crashing overhead. We both looked up at the clearing sky.
The storm hadn't passed. Instead, we were in the eye of the hurricane.
It reminded me of that one line from a musical I'd heard a customer listening to while they waited.
"In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet," I whispered.
The line had stuck with me then, and as I listened now, I realized how true it was. It wasn't just the absence of the storm, though that was part of it. Everything else was quiet too. There were no birds, no cracks of thunder or thudding Forgeborn. Even the nets themselves lay still, the normally insane occupants having moved inside. The only sound was the soft dripping of the water sloughing off our bodies and the soft rustle of the grass in the gentle breeze.
Inertia and I looked at each other for a moment.
Then Inertia shook herself, sending water flying everywhere with a loud series of clangs.
"Hey!" I protested with a laugh, even as she whistle-hissed her way back towards Fang, steam rolling off her in waves.
With the wind died down, and the Storm mana still in abundance, I hurried back over to the arch. Eyeing the far side of the eye, I tried to estimate how much time I'd have. A couple hours at most.
I set to work, the crackling mana flowing through me once more before being converted. It felt appropriate to be using Storm to do welding, even if I was working with stone instead of metal. For over an hour, I simply let myself get lost in the familiar rhythm as I made adjustments to the arch I hadn’t wanted to do when I couldn’t see it.
A strike of lightning alerted me to the fact the eye had nearly passed over us. It seemed the storm had been traveling at an angle, and we'd only hit the edge of the eye. I gauged that the nasty weather would be on me in minutes. The lightning made me look at my arch again. Unsure if it could take a direct lightning strike, I decided that I should add a grounding rod on each end, just in case.
That would have to wait until I had metal to spare for the task. Which I imagined might be a while. While we had plenty of rope and wood, and even a fair amount of bone as strong as steel, metal was something that was in short supply. We definitely didn't have enough for me to spare for lightning rods.
So, with the arch mostly completed to my satisfaction, I retreated from the storm to the nearby storehouse once more. Wanting a break from the storm, I took the opportunity to check my affinities. They'd somewhat fallen to the side as everything else took precedent, but they should've been progressing just from my daily spell use.
Which I figured I could confirm by slotting Assess Self into place.
It took nearly twenty minutes, but compared to the hours I used to need, that was nothing.
Soul: Tier 2 (Astral)
Progress: 2/5 Second Order Impressions, 8 Point Foundational Structure, 51% Astral Form.
Affinities: 38 Worlds, 44 Nature, 48 Storm, 51 Arcane, 16 Fire, 17 Water, 23 Earth, Air 19.
The spell slots and progress on my Astral form I'd already figured. Was pretty hard not to know those ones intimately. Worlds being so low didn't surprise me either. Access Storage wasn't enough to work it very hard, and I barely ever kept Dimension Step prepared, nevermind actually casting it. I shouldn't have been surprised by Arcane being so high, but I was. I guessed that using Memory Palace so often had really pushed it.
Still, looking at my affinities, I knew that I'd have to put in more work once I was near the peak of Astral soul.
That was a long way off though.
At least once I reached three slots, I could consider keeping Dimension Step slotted. Even if I didn't need to balance my affinities for a while, getting my Worlds up would most likely help with the repairs for the door-portals.
With that in mind, I removed Assess Self before loading up Eagle Eyes and Water Breathing again.
There were a multitude of smaller projects I could undertake with the surplus of mana, though most of them were only components of bigger ideas Inertia and I had discussed on the long trek along the high road. The first thing I did was to re-purpose one of the warehouses into a workshop. Carving doors large enough we could fit Fang through took longer than installing rough stone workbenches, thanks to Inertia's help with the latter.
Even with those doors, Inertia continued to work on Fang out in the storm.
"You sure you don't want to come in?" I yelled at her over the howling wind.
"Bracing!" Inertia screeched back, the word barely recognizable. It could also have been breaking.
As a bolt of lightning hit her, I took a step back. When my vision cleared, she was holding a fist towards the sky, whistling angrily. But a few seconds later, she returned to her work as though nothing had happened.
Following her gaze upwards, I was surprised to find a great shape moving in the storm cloud. If not for Eagle Eyes, I would’ve doubted what I was seeing.
A great dragon swam through the sky.
It had to be a mile long, its scales glistening a soft blue and gold as it swam along with the winds, lightning dancing over its form.
I chuckled nervously as I moved away from the doors, though I left them open, watching the great wyrm as it moved past Tetherfall without so much as glancing in our direction.
Thankfully, the rest of the storm was uneventful, though I did end up falling asleep in the workshop, having skipped over dinner without meaning to. It was only in the morning, after most of the storm had passed that Calbern found me.
As I drew myself up, going out to see the dregs of the storm moving into the west, I discovered the storm had one final surprise in store. With the last of the wind dying down, from a cloudless sky, a final strike of lightning hit the ground at the peak of my recently completed arch.
Cursing myself for not building at least some sort of temporary lightning rod, I blinked my eyes clear as I turned to inspect it for damage.
Except I didn't find damage.
Instead, I found Nexxa, standing there with one hand on her hip, a giant smile stretched across her face.
"Hey, Per Per. Miss me?"
Then, before I could respond, her stance wavered, collapsing on the stone arch.
Comments
EmmaLeia
There were only 7 affinities listed. 💜 the story so far.
Jason Hardman
Have lightning, will travel. TYFTC!
