PftA Book 5 - Chapter 15 - Finally Over

It didn’t seem like much time had passed when I received the notification everyone was waiting for. Attention! The open war between the ‘the

It didn’t seem like much time had passed when I received the notification everyone was waiting for. Attention! The open war between the ‘the

It didn’t seem like much time had passed when I received the notification everyone was waiting for.

Attention! The open war between the ‘the Alliance’ and ‘the Collective’ is now over.

The war exception to Article 2 of the Accords is no longer applicable to engagements between Collective and Alliance forces.

It was finally over.

“I’m going to go help my family get back to their homes,” I told Kai. “Do you want me to drop you off somewhere, or are you going to stay here?”

“I’ll stay,” my mentor replied. “Do you plan to return anytime soon?”

“Not for a while,” I answered. “I’ll probably spend some time with my family while they get settled back into their homes. I’m not sure how all of that’s going to work, though. I imagine it’s going to be a logistical nightmare sorting everything out. Once everyone is taken care of, I think I’ll go back to looking for the Arcane well Anya told me about.”

“Well, I appreciate you bringing me here first,” Kai said before closing his eyes. “I’ll send you a message if I decide to leave before you return.”

After saying goodbye, I climbed the mana-crystal stairs and exited the formations hiding the space. It was fairly close to the former Sovereignty Sect’s headquarters, and I was a little surprised that another sect had not taken over the compound.

‘Can you look into who owns the property now that the Sovereignty Sect is gone?’ I silently asked Lisa before entering my demesne. I planned to start with Dad and Caesi since they were the only ones in my immediate family with young children.

“It looks like it’s being managed by a Council subsidiary while the restitution claims period is open,” Lisa said, materializing her avatar upon my arrival. “It’s pretty standard practice when a sect is disbanded for misconduct.”

“So you’re saying I should make a claim against it?”

“You can,” Lisa said. “I don’t think anyone would deny that you’ve been wronged by the former sect. I suspect the claims period is for anyone other than you, but making your interest in the property known would not be remiss.”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

“Of course,” Lisa replied. “What Time Mage wouldn’t want access to a Time well? I assume you want to facilitate a new Epikairos branch being opened since I doubt you want that massive compound as a personal estate.”

Lisa wasn’t wrong. I had no use for the space aside from guaranteed access to the Time well, and even that was an extravagance given how high my affinity for Time magic already was. However, I did like the idea of using the resource to strengthen future generations of Epikairos Time Mages.

“Please reach out to the organization in charge of the property and let them know that I’m interested in acquiring the former Sovereignty Sect’s holdings. I’ll talk to the new Patriarch after I get my family resituated.”

“Would you like me to send Kai a quick message informing him of your intentions?” Lisa asked.

“Sure. That’s probably a good idea.”

It was also probably a good idea to message my dad and Caesi before just popping in. With that thought in mind, I sent out messages to everyone I planned to help relocate.

Zavira surprisingly declined, opting to travel with the rest of her sect members who would be returning to the Hephaistos Sect Headquarters over the next several weeks.

Bell was next to respond, though she asked that I wait a couple of days to pick her up since she was in the middle of working on a project.

Dad and Caesi were the next to reach out. They were ready and eager to reunite with their children – a process I was sure would be headache-inducing for everyone involved. I didn’t even want to imagine what the logistics of working all of that out would be like, though I was sure I’d be seeing it for myself soon enough.

“Thanks for coming so soon,” Caesi said with a hug.

It was dark outside where they were, but not so late that everyone would have been asleep. I could sense several others in nearby residences packing up and readying themselves to return to their true homes.

“No problem,” I replied. “I know you both are eager to see the kids.”

Caesi nodded rapidly. “We are. We’ve already gotten instructions on how to pick them up.”

I briefly wondered how many of the children held in stasis would find themselves orphans when everything was said and done. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be many.

I teleported Dad and Caesi to their home on Hadier first, and it was a good thing I did since finding their residence in pieces was a bit of a surprise.

“The neighbor said there was damage, but I didn’t expect it would be this bad,” Dad said with a frown. “I guess it’s a good thing we took everything important with us.”  

“Yeah. It’s also a good thing that Emie gave us that Tier Eight chariot when we were hunting on Agirock,” Caesi said with a grateful look in my direction. “Thanks again for that.”

“You are very welcome,” I replied. “I also have a few things that I picked up for you guys. I can give them to you now or wait for the kids. I have presents for them, too.”

“You really didn’t have to get us anything,” Dad said with a sigh. “I already feel like we owe you too much.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I assured him. “You’re my family. I want to do nice things for you.”

I’d realized that giving gifts was my method of letting people know I cared about them. Since my time with them was so limited, it just made sense to give the people I cared about little things to let them know they were important to me.

Caesi cleared her throat and said, “We should probably figure out where to set that up before we pick up the kids.”

Looking around, I asked, “Do you want me to clear out a space here or find somewhere else to put it?”

“Are you sure you have time for that?” Dad asked a little uncomfortably.

“I’m sure,” I replied with a smile. “Nobody else has asked for a lift yet. They’re probably still sleeping or something.”

I spent the next hour helping them set up the pod in what used to be their backyard, then picking up the kids from the underground bunker where they’d been held in stasis.

The process was surprisingly easy since the city had kept meticulous records regarding each child.

As far as the kids were concerned, no time had passed. I was curious how their age would be affected by the year-long stasis. Would they now be a year older, or would they still be considered the age they were when the war started?

Probably the latter, though it would undoubtedly cause issues with record keeping.

I could almost feel the relief rolling off of the Dad and Caesi as they held their young children. I couldn’t help but feel like a bit of an outsider witnessing the reunion.

The toddler, Brianna, was the only one who noticed the state of their original home. She seemed upset by the damage, but seeing how calm her parents were, she didn’t make much of a fuss.

When we got inside, I handed out the gifts I’d purchased after finishing my last mission.

Dad got a mobile smithy – a more basic version of the one Zavira had used during our time in the dungeon. He’d gotten really into Smithing back before the reintegration but had lost his home smithy when he was forced to move after rifts started appearing.

I was pretty sure he still smithed as a hobby, though he had to use public facilities or rent a forge when he wanted to make something. With his new gift, I hoped he’d be able to dedicate more time to his hobby.

He’d actually been pretty good, especially after training through Atlas Online.

I gave Caesi a bracelet that let her track the health, location, and general well-being of the kids. I figured after spending a little over a year apart, she’d probably want to keep a closer eye on them for a while.

It wasn’t to the same level as the bracelet I’d gotten for Amie when she was little, but it would still grow with them for years.

The small bracelets served as the primary gifts for the kids, but I also picked up a small toy for each of them since I doubted they’d care about a piece of jewelry. The toys were nothing extravagant or expensive, but they were enchanted to make them extra appealing for babies and toddlers.

“You really didn’t need to get us anything,” Dad said before adding, “But thank you. I’ve been feeling the urge to get back into Smithing for a while now. It’ll be good to have my own equipment again.”

“And thank you for these,” Caesi said, holding up the bracelets. “Having the ability to check on them any time will help soothe my heart after being away for so long.”

I was glad they liked the gifts. I only hoped the rest of them went over as well.

Mom reached out a couple of hours later, so I said my goodbyes and made my way to the temporary apartment she shared with Daniel.

From there, we teleported to Mom’s apartment on Earth. Eve and Kaylee had been staying there as part of their conscription, so there was no worry about returning to find the apartment destroyed or taken over by squatters.

I waited to hand out gifts until the excitement from our reunion lessened. Mom’s gift was by far the most expensive since I’d purchased her a medical augment to assist her in using Direct Healing on patients.

Since I suspected more non-humans would settle on Earth after spending more than a year there, I figured it would be good to get her something to make treating them easier.

Mom had a lot of training and experience healing human patients, but she lacked when it came to non-humans. The augment I purchased for her covered all races within the Alliance, and I felt it would come in helpful as her patients grew more varied.

Kaylee got something similar, though hers was more general and dealt with commonly tamed beasts. I wanted to get her something more in-depth, but the cost of such a valuable augment was too much for me to manage after purchasing Mom’s medical augment.

I picked an Advanced runic lexicon for Daniel since I figured it would be helpful even after he reached Advanced Enchanting.

Eve received an augment recommended by the clerk for mid-tier Glassers. Since I wasn’t a Glasser, nor did I know much about how they crafted, I took the clerk at their word, hoping Eve found the augment useful.

I only found out after giving her the gift that she didn’t have an upgraded interface, which meant she couldn’t fuse the augment directly with her interface. She could still connect it to a sufficiently powerful tablet or other manatech ‘interface device,’ but she wouldn’t be able to use all of the functions.

“It’s fine,” Eve told me. “I have a tablet that it can integrate with. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of use out of it, even without the upgrade.”

“Or I can take you hunting on Agirock again to cover the cost of the upgrade,” I offered.

Eve just shook her head. “I’ve gone this long without the upgrade, and honestly, I don’t see the point in getting it after so long without one. Maybe if I was still Tier One or Tier Two, but the cost is just too high at Tier Three. Also, I can do almost everything the upgrade can do with a tablet. It’s really okay.”

I could see her point, so I didn’t press the matter. It had been hard enough to convince my family to set aside the needed experience points to pay for the upgrade when they were just starting out. I just wished such efforts weren’t necessary.

As far as I was concerned, the upgraded interface should come standard for everyone.

Once the gifts were distributed, everyone’s attention shifted to where they were going from there. After a bit of discussion, Kaylee opted to stay at the apartment with Mom for a while. She wanted to give things a little more time to settle down before deciding whether to return to her life on Morkin.

I didn’t blame her. There were still a lot of mixed feelings about demis after so many of them had betrayed the Alliance.

There weren’t nearly as many traitors as there seemed, but with the media reporting about how enemy demis had infiltrated the Alliance in the years preceding the war, tensions were still pretty high.

Daniel and Eve were a bit up in the air about where they were going to settle since their lives had been uprooted for so long. They’d opted to end the lease on their old apartment when they were conscripted, so they didn’t really have anywhere in particular to go home to.

“Where is Mom?” Daniel asked, referring to Bell.

“She’s busy with some project. She said she’d send a message when she was ready to be picked up,” I told him.

Daniel and Eve stepped away to discuss their options for a few minutes while Mom and Kaylee absorbed their augments. It didn’t take them long.

“Would you be willing to take us to my parents’ place?” Eve asked before pausing. “Actually, if you could just get us to Argoth City, we can handle the rest of the trip.”

“That’s on Hadier?” I asked, and Eve nodded. With a quick search, Lisa had the location displayed on a map visible only to me. “Sure. I can take you there.”

After saying goodbye to Mom and Kaylee, I teleported us to the teleportation platform of Argoth City’s unusually busy portal hub. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, but even with the early hour, the portal hub was packed with travelers.

I waited until the couple hailed a taxi and got inside before heading back to my demesne. I was glad the war was officially over, but I knew that didn’t mean the work was over.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the one who’d need to do most of the work. I’d done my part, and I was ready to take a well-deserved break.