Draith
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Chapter 7 - Better Than A Used Car
🕑 Added 2025-02-23 19:40:25 +0000 UTCSosa stood there, the afternoon sun illuminating his cruel grin in all its glory, his goons gathering around us, and all I could think was…
What a waste of time.
As far as I was concerned, I didn’t owe this clown anything. And Perth certainly hadn’t. If anything, Sosa owed Perth. Perth had done everything Sosa had ever asked from him, all in a bid to get even the faintest hint of recognition from the main family.
It did surprise me he’d cornered me when I was with Nexxa and Calbern, but maybe that could be because I hadn’t left him much choice in the matter. I never wandered the grounds alone, not since I’d taken my oath as a Magus Dominus.
With a heavy sigh, I went to open my mouth, but Nexxa beat me to it. “Piss off Sosa. Perry doesn’t owe you a single discharged remnant.”
It took a moment for Sosa to register that Nexxa had spoken, then another for his gaze to shift to her, his brows furrowing. “Stay out of it, Nexxa. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Like Front it doesn’t,” Nexxa said, crossing her arms and tapping fingers that glowed with electric sparks. “You’re keeping us from meeting with father. Who asked for both us, didn’t he Calbern?”
“That is correct, Lady Nexxa,” Calbern said, inclining his head towards her. His hand rested lightly on his sword.
Sosa was opening his mouth to speak once again when I beat him to it. “Nexxa is right, Sosa. I owe you nothing.”
Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as Sosa stared at me. I ignored him, and his Green Goons, stepping past them. Sosa wouldn’t dare kill me, not when their father was sending me away. And everything else could be healed, so long as I was on the family estate.
It was only as we were leaving his sight that Sosa seemed to remember himself. However, by the time he caught up, we were climbing the stairs to their father’s main hall. Arriving outside the Cante's study once more, I took a moment to straighten my robes. Spending every waking hour in the library meant I'd neglected my appearance somewhat, despite Calbern's best efforts.
Nexxa also took a moment, shaking her arms as if getting ready to start fighting. Maybe she was. Perth hadn't ever seen her interact with their father before.
Calbern went in first, as was their way, and a moment later led us inside.
Their father was staring out a massive window I somehow hadn't noticed the first time I'd been in the office. A rather glaring oversight considering it took up an entire wall.
"Ah, you're both here. Excellent," their father said, turning from where he'd been gazing out. As he did so, a bookcase unfurled from above, as though it was merely a curtain, to cover the window.
I was left blinking for several seconds before I realized he'd continued talking.
"-some effort, but I was able to secure both of you tier two spatial rings."
I was unable to help but glance over at Nexxa. Had she copied my request?
"It was a good idea," Nexxa said, answering my unanswered question and not bothering to lower her voice.
"Agreed. Given the remote location Althon is likely to assign you, a spatial ring will be a vital resource for each of you. However, you must use them with caution. Even tier one spatial rings are precious in the outer lands," their father said while placing a pair of black boxes with white trim on his desk.
When he motioned us forward, I traded another glance with Nexxa, whose smile was so wide I was worried she'd gone a mite feral, before taking that step. When I opened the box, I was surprised to find the ring didn't have the family's personal crest on it. Instead there was a symbol carved in silver, depicting a wolf howling at the moon, atop a pair of circles, which symbolized wheels.
Nexxa's had an entirely different symbol, a golden bird in flight with sparks trailing behind it.
"Your personal magecrests," their father said, his lip turned up ever so slightly.
Staring at the emblem, I vaguely remembered when Calbern had asked me what I’d wanted my magecrest design to be. I'd been focused on Memory Palace at the time, and hadn't thought too much about it, simply re-using the same logo I'd put up at the shop after I took over.
A smile twitched on my lips as I realized Howling Engines had followed me into the new world, even if only in such a small way.
"Now, I'm afraid I have other matters to attend to. I will see you both on your departure," their father said, dismissing us with a nod.
Neither of us dawdled, withdrawing from the room with our rings still tucked inside their cases. Not that I left it there for long. The moment we were outside, I slid it onto my finger, holding it up to the light, Sosa be damned.
I'd never been much of one for jewelry before. It was dangerous for a mechanic to wear bling. Too easy to take a finger if a wrench slipped and caught it wrong.
"Not bad. Didn't really see you as a warg sort of guy," Nexxa said, admiring my ring.
"It's a wolf," I said automatically, despite not remembering if wolves were a thing in this world. I assumed so, since they had the word for them, but Perth hadn't known what they were.
"Like the winter blessed wolves of the Frigid Peaks? Really going local, huh?"
I hadn't considered that there might be wolves where we were headed. Actually, hadn’t Calbern mentioned as much? Either way, I didn’t feel the need to correct Nexxa. Instead, I held up the ring contemplating the storage aspect. A tier two ring was… well, it wasn't actually that much space. The standard was a little over a cubic yard. Compared to a tier one, it was gigantic, but those held nine cubic inches at most. "What're you gonna store in yours?"
"On the way there? Seeds, mostly. A couple tier-3 Magits that'd decay if exposed to the raw manasphere. You?"
Magits. Magical items. And tier-3, meaning they were sufficiently complex most skilled mages couldn't make them, not unless they had access to the original designs. And Nexxa not only had access to some, she was bring two with her.
"Seeds is good," I said, humming thoughtfully to myself while dismissing my questions about her Magits. "I don't have any artifacts, so… I guess it depends. Wasn't expecting a tier-2 ring."
Nexxa held up her ring beside mine, her fist clenched. "He really came through, didn't he? You know, I heard that Sosa only got a tier one protection ring for his boon?"
"No way," I said, shaking my head. Sosa was… well, Sosa. Still, while he hadn't been a prodigy like Nexxa, as one of their father’s first wife's children, Sosa actually spent time with their old man.
Getting a tier one protection ring was like getting a used Honda for your sweet sixteen.
A big deal if you had an old man like mine. Enough to give you a heart attack in surprise. But with a father like Perth's, you'd be expecting a Tesla or Mercedes. Course, Perth never heard Sosa complaining, so maybe there was more to it.
There usually was.
"Yep. Anyway, I should get testing. Tier 2's sometimes have stasis effects. If these do, I'm totally loading up on street food," Nexxa said before waving goodbye.
As I followed Calbern back to my room, I found myself wanting to perform tests of my own. But unlike Nexxa, I'd have to be a little more cautious. I didn't have the strength to hold onto such a prize, so I was glad it was disguised as our magecrest. If Sosa knew I was walking around with spatial storage, he’d do his best to take it from me.
Not that I thought he could, but it was better to be cautious.
The next few hours were both wondrous and tedious. The storage space was exactly as glorious as Nexxa had hoped, holding a steaming cup of tea's temperature for hours.
But accessing it required me to channel mana for nearly an hour. Good for long term storage, but not super convenient. Not yet.
The first time I accessed it, I discovered the rings weren’t the entirety of our gifts. Inside, were five thousand golden coins with intricate thorns carved into one side, with their father’s face on the other.
"A princely gift, master Perth. And the Thorns should help us procure what we can't bring through the gate," Calbern replied after I'd told him about the hoard I'd discovered. "Will the stasis effect work on a living creature?"
"That… is worth testing," I said, looking out into the nearby garden. There were several songbirds outside, but more importantly, Perth remembered pigeons nesting near the stables.
No one would be upset over a sky-rat if it got hurt during my experiments, least of all, me.
I had Calbern lead the way to the stables. Once we were there, I spread some of the crackers Calbern had brought with the tea as bait and threw a sheet overtop of it. I was rather proud of my success until I saw Calbern shaking his head at me.
"What? I caught it, didn't I?"
"Did you have to use one of the good sheets, master Perth?" Calbern replied.
I just waved him off. "You saw me take it."
"It is not my place to stop the young master from doing something foolish." Considering the small smirk he was sporting, I knew better than to respond.
Channeling my mana into the glyph while keeping the pigeon from escaping was a test of both mine and the pigeon's patience. I didn't hear Calbern chuckle, but I swore I could feel it.
Thankfully, my struggles weren't in vain, as the pigeon, along with its blanket-turned-net, vanished into my ring.
While I started charging my spell to retrieve it, we returned to Perth's room. Which wasn't my wisest decision.
It turned out that living creatures and my ring didn't mix well. At all.
"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, master Perth. You killed it." Calbern was standing with the sheet held in front of him, running a hand along the torn fabric, ignoring the dead bird lying at the foot of Perth's bed. Shaking the sheet out one more time, he shook his head. "I'll see what the tailor can salvage."
"You do that," I replied as I picked up the pigeon by a single foot and plopped it on my used lunch tray.
With the limits of the ring understood, Calbern and I resumed our planning, only for me to realize Nexxa hasn't told me the results of Memory Palace.
So, we went out to track her down. A helpful servant, a woman with a green vine growing along her forehead, informed us she'd gone into Belten.
Nexxa hadn't wasted any time going out to fill her ring.
When we arrived, it only took Calbern a few minutes to find her. She'd gone straight to a short street crammed full of food stalls. The plethora of spiced and grilling food practically felt like a wall, it hit so rapidly.
Nexxa was easy to spot, her gold and purple combat robe standing out amongst the greens and browns surrounding a stand selling meat skewers.
"Hmm. Decided to follow my advice?" Nexxa asked while pulling free a piece of meat.
"I suppose you could say your advice is why we came, Lady Nexxa," Calbern noted with a slight incline of his head.
"What he means is you forgot to tell us about Memory Palace," I added while eying the stand. "Though those do look pretty tempting."
"Right? You have to tried the fried dumplings two stands down. They have the best sweet sauce," Nexxa proclaimed while gesturing vaguely towards said stand.
After loading up on far too many street foods, we returned to Perth’s wing in the family complex. Pulling a pastry from her ring, Nexxa finally gave us a breakdown on Memory Palace.
"It's a lot more literal than I was expecting. It takes you into a literal mindspace. And you have to be careful when accessing memories. I ended up browsing through a couple months worth and I got a major migraine after I came out. On the plus side, the mental strain only seems to trigger once," Nexxa explained, taking a seat on the foot of Perth's bed. Her eyes drifted towards the spots of blood left behind by the pigeon, but she didn't comment on them, simply continuing. "Anyway, since I already inflicted a migraine on myself, figured I might as well test your Review Scroll idea. And doing one book at a time meant no migraine. When I tried doing two, I got a bit of a headache. Not sure how it'll work for you though. I'm guessing you're gonna want to be Astral-soul at least before you even try."
"Thanks, Nexxa," I replied, jotting down her comments. "Anything else you noticed?"
"It's expensive for a second order spell. I could cast three Lightning Storms for the same amount of mana, and that's a tier three spell," Nexxa replied with a shrug.
"It is possible the Lady is simply used to casting spells for which she has a high affinity. Unless I'm mistaken, you do not have any Arcane affinity," Calbern said still standing next to the door.
"Could be. Haven't needed much utility till now," Nexxa agreed while grabbing one of my journals and cracking it open. Her eyes went wide as she started paging through it.
I found myself strangely conflicted watching her go through my notes. On one hand, it felt like a violation of my privacy, even if most of the notes were about spells or possible issues we might encounter. On the other, it felt like such a sibling thing to do, I felt a constriction in my chest. A feeling I wasn't particularly familiar with.
"Huh. You think we're gonna need to set up irrigation?" Nexxa asked, stopping near the back of the journal and holding it out towards me.
It took me a moment to respond, and I coughed to clear my throat before checking my notes. I'd drawn a simple trench with a note to look into more advanced methods in case water was an issue. "I don't know. We don't know anything about what we're going into. And I'm pretty sure irrigation is important, if we end up needing food."
"Hmm." Nexxa didn't offer more than that, though once she was done going through the journal, she quickly opened the next.
Sharing a glance with Calbern, I shrugged before tapping her on the shoulder. "I'm going to head to the library. We've still got a week left, and there are a lot of books I want to hit with Review Scroll."
"Good idea," Nexxa said, standing up and tossing my journal back at me, causing me to scramble to catch it. It slipped, hitting the floor, and I was bending over to pick it up when she paused at the door, looking back. "Well, are you coming or not?"
As my eye twitched, I couldn't help but debate whether I found myself more amused or irritated.
Either way, I put it to the side as I marched with her towards the library.
