World Sphere - 81 - Who is Convincing Who?

New Chapter in progress as well. 500 words into chapter 226

Chapter 81: Who is Convincing Who?

As the skyship lifted off, I moved to stand next to Gareth. He spoke first, “Thanks for sending everyone to my apartment, Stormy. I asked the dishwashers to clean it this morning after the party. Don’t worry, and I tipped them for the extra work.” He was all smiles.

His congeniality had me alter my approach. “Gareth, why did you open the dungeon chest? Doesn’t the team leader decide who opens it?”

Gareth looked puzzled momentarily. “No one else seemed eager to open it.” He deflated a little, realizing his mistake. “I will defer to Gimble next time. I traded the dungeon coins for Skyholme coins at the Exchange and gave them to Remy. He handed me six gold coins for the week’s salary.”

That was good news, “And the boots?” I asked. “Did you give them to Remy as well?”  

Gareth’s face flushed, looking odd on his large body. “I was going to ask you to keep them. My 16th birthday is coming up,” he said hopefully. 

He had been wearing the boots last night and showing them off. “How about you can keep the boots if you tell Loriel you cannot escort her to the Sowing Festival.”

Gareth furrowed his brow. “I thought you were not interested in her? She asked me to go, Stormy. It is a Triumvirate party. The food should be great, and she is even paying me to escort her.” He quietly added, “I already took her coin.”

I groaned. “Gareth, she is using you. She is trying to tie you to her. We talked about this! How she needs friends to shield her from her powerful enemies.” I didn’t understand how Gareth could be so dense. Gareth seemed to lose common sense when a pretty woman was in front of him.

“That is what she told me. She said she needed me as her date to make sure Abaddon Bricio didn’t ask her to dance. I am going to be her Guardian Knight,” Gareth said with a weak and unsure smile.

I got the sense this was going nowhere. I could ask him with our oath as Blood Brothers, which would work, but that felt like I was manipulating Gareth as much as Loriel. “Fine, Gareth, but just know if you get yourself into trouble, I will probably get myself into trouble getting you out of it.”

Gareth nodded thoughtfully, a Gareth grin forming. “You should just come to the dance as well. That way, we can watch each other’s backs. Loriel said Tessa Torrent was going with her half-brother. Remember, the guy I defeated in the inter-academy tournament. I am sure she would prefer to take you instead, Loriel even said so.” 

I smelled a setup. I hadn’t been able to contain my visible attraction to Tessa, and I sensed Loriel casually dropping that Tessa didn’t have a date to Gareth was intentional. She was trying to rope me into her circle indirectly. “I will think about it,” I said indecisively.

Gareth reached into his pocket, pulled out a communication stone, and handed it to me. “Loriel gave me this communication stone. If you want her to ask Tessa for you, just use this. The dance is in two weeks, so you should probably ask her sooner rather than later, Stormy,” he said with a grin.

“And Stormy, can I borrow a few platinum to get something to wear? I mean, it is a fancy Triumvirate event, so I need to get something in current fashion.” He had a grin with a pleading look on his face.

I was still fuming but stayed calm on the outside. This was a setup by Loriel; I was sure of it. Loriel wanted me to contact her? Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I refused to play her games. I handed the stone back to Gareth. “If Tessa needs a date, then she can come to Hen’s Hollow and ask me herself.”

Since I doubted Tessa would lower herself to come to Hen’s Hollow and beg me to escort her, I determined the topic was closed. Gareth was at a loss for words as he slid the stone into his pocket and I walked away.

My relationship with Gareth felt strained as we started academy classes the next day. Loriel was succeeding in driving a wedge between me and my best friend—my brother.

I tried to repair things with Gareth. I told him he could keep the boots in exchange for four weeks of his delver pay. I also planned to take Gareth back to the capital island on the seventh day and buy him an outfit for the Sowing Festival. That would keep him away from Loriel on his day off and hopefully give us time to strengthen our bond before we were pulled too far apart.

When I was in class with Selina at the start of the week, I explained how I maintained a constant aetheric flow in my aether core. I needed to create a model to show her the shape. I made a donut around an hourglass to illustrate how the aether was flowing. When I explained the small gravity plane inside, she became extremely interested.

“Storme, that is ingenious. We need to experiment on your core. We need to see if it stays stable when you get knocked out, enter an aether dead zone, drain a large amount of aether when you add more fixed constructs, and if your growing aether core affects the structure and function.” I already knew draining my core didn’t impact my aether cycling, as I had recently made mithril, almost draining my aether reserves and it remained intact.

My face paled a little bit at the various possibilities of testing the others. “Are all those things really necessary?”

Selina had an incredulous expression. “Storme, if you are engaged in combat, do you really want your aether core to become unstable?”  

Selina’s hard gaze subdued me. The next few days, we tested the stability of my aether core. Selina knocked me out with electricity, a blow to the head, a mind blank spell, a sleeping potion, and a concussive blast. It was not a good few days.

The aetheric flow in my core was not disturbed, but Selina could attack my aether core directly and disrupt the flow with an aetheric drain spell. It caused an imbalance because the drain originated from a single point on my aether sphere. This caused massive heartburn for me, and I had to fight through the pain with my focus exercises to remain functional.

Selina made me an offer. “If you want, I could loan you my spellbook for Aetheric Fortress. It is a tier 3 spell that prevents others from manipulating and draining your aether core. Usually, mages learn the spell, so mage shackles cannot be used to subdue them and contain their aether core.”

“That would be most generous of you. I have never heard of the spell,” I asked, interested.

“I got the spell in the lowlands a few decades ago. It was in the halfling city of Fareth. They had a strong opposition to slavery, and there were a few spells available in their Mage University to counter it. This was the most powerful one,” Selina explained.

A thought occurred to me. “Would this spell break Aelyn’s indentured mark?” I waited for Selina’s response anxiously.

She considered the question and then said, “No. It might have prevented someone from casting a binding spell on them, but it won’t cancel a spell already cast.” My face fell. Selin pushed past my disappointment. “The spell can only be cast on yourself. It also requires an anchor point in your aether core. Each evolution enhances your defensive strength. Every five evolutions boost the spell’s tier effectiveness, which starts at tier 3. So, are you interested?”

“Absolutely. Even though it will occupy four slots on my spell matrix, it sounds like it’s more than worth it,” I said without needing to overthink it. Selina rummaged through her dimensional bag and handed me the well-worn, small book. I opened the spellbook, and the writing was tiny—she mentioned it was from a halfling community. Fortunately, the script was in the common tongue. The spell forms didn’t look too complicated, either.

“You can put that away. We are not done testing your innovation for circulating your aether core,” she said with a devious smile.

On the third day of testing, I added a second washer with an inverse gravity plate on the outside. This was Selina’s idea, and it had a weaker gravitational pull-push than the center planes. This allowed me to control the flow better. Selina ended up getting upset because she was circulating her aether in the disc method that she had instructed me to learn. My new method was much easier to learn, more efficient, and more stable.

Selina explained her frustration. “Circulating your aether along a predefined path for a long time is like a river carving into rock over time. At a certain point, you can no longer alter your flow. It usually cements itself after about five years of constant flow along a path. My core is fixed in its pathways.”

“Your method just sets the boundaries and I think it is only successful because you have so much aether. If a mage had a small core, they wouldn’t be able to maintain a consistent aether density around the construct.”

Selina continued. “The Sphere is vast, Storme. I have traveled about 20,000 miles from Skyholme, but have only seen a tiny amount of what the Sphere offers. I am certain your method has been discovered and used out there somewhere, but in the dozen magical academies I have visited, your method has not been detailed in any of them.”

I processed what Selina had said. “The method is valuable then?”

Selina grinned madly. “Very, but like I surmised, it is only useful to mages with large aether cores. If my guesses are correct, this method should expand your aether core slightly more than normal. Don’t ask me how much. That is something we will have to discover together.”

Near the end of the week, we discovered a weakness in my method. I needed to have at least fifty relative aether units in my core to keep the circulation running. When I completely emptied my aether, the flow became unstable and collapsed. My aether capacity was so high, and with the circulation replenished so quickly, that even after I emptied my aether core, it took less than ten minutes to draw in enough aether to stabilize again. Ten minutes was not enough time to destabilize my core, so even then I didn’t have to focus.

Selina asked, “Storme, do you want your name on this paper? I will need to reveal that I am Sana Velin if I want to publish it at the Magus Academy in the capital. That should be interesting, most people think I am dead,” she groaned.

I thought about it and finally said, “Use my alias, Stormy Skye. Gareth gave me the name.” Selina started laughing. I also started laughing at how absurd the name was. We agreed the paper wouldn't be submitted until the end of the school year. Selina was going to try to change her own aether flow in her core to imitate mine, but she didn’t sound optimistic.

I was in my room alone. Gareth had taken to getting some extra training in after dinner because of his failure in the dungeon. I knew this because he was wearing his helmet when I saw him training. I only went to Twin Rocks on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th days now so I could get more rest.

I was working on imprinting my tissue extraction spell. After I finished imprinting it, I planned to work on either the aether fortress spell, the invisibility spell, or the absolute time spell.

I was leaning toward the absolute time spell because it was only tier 1, and I knew I could learn it in about a week. Getting an easy win would be nice. My door alarm went off, and I assumed it was Gareth returning early from training, which turned out to be correct. A grinning Gareth entered the room, but the quick flash in my mind from the alarm also showed someone behind Gareth.

I dropped my privacy spell and stumbled to stand off my bed. Gareth entered the room with a huge grin, and Tessa Torrent walked behind him. I spammed my cleanliness spell a few times while putting on a smile. I was in my sleeping attire and flushed bright red. Gareth didn’t say anything and was just grinning while Tessa was looking around the room, curious, her eyes passing over me a few times.  

When no one spoke, Gareth heaved an exasperated sigh and said. “Storme, Tessa came to visit you and ask you something. Why don’t you take her for a walk along the southern stream. It is a nice walk in the twilight.” Tessa offered a weak smile that sent electric charges through me.

I spoke quickly with a note of nervousness. “Yes! Let’s go for a walk.” I hurriedly pulled my boots on while Tessa watched me, and Gareth collapsed onto his bed, relaxing. He looked like the cat that just got the cream, and I knew Tessa was here because of him and Loriel. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

Tying my boots, I got control of my excitement and emotions. I stood and moved close to Tessa to usher her out of the room. When we got outside of the building, Tessa said, “That has to be the cleanest room I have ever seen. Why is your side of the room so sparse? Do you keep all your things at the Shiny Platinum?”

“Something like that. I try to keep my important things in a place where they can be best utilized.” I was not going to tell her I had a dimensional storage. “I am surprised you are here.”

Tessa smiled as she walked next to me, following my steps as she didn’t know where we were going. “Loriel loaned me her skyship to visit you here. She said if I came here and asked you personally, you would agree to escort me to the Sowing Festival.” Of course, she did, I mused.

The aura of infatuation that Tessa exuded seemed to fade. She was here but maybe she was not going to pressure me. “Why do you need an escort to the Festival?” I asked and relaxing.

She paused in her stride to look at me. “There are four galas the Triumvirate hosts at Skyhold. The two over the New Year, and the Sowing Festival and the Harvest Festival. There are other minor ones, but these are the political gatherings. All twenty-three members in the line of succession are required to attend, and all important family members get invitations as well. When I received an invitation, I could not decline. If I did, I could be expelled from the family.”

I nodded, pretending to understand the deeper politics. “And why are you here, asking me to be your escort?”

I looked at her, and studied her silvery blonde platinum hair drawn back and weaved into a perfect ponytail. Her light blue eyes were difficult to see in the low light, but they had depth. She was also tall, just an inch or two shorter than me.

She turned to me and smiled confidently. Even though she was two years older, she still looked youthful. “These events are matchmaking events. When a Triumvirate member turns seventeen, their marriage can be arranged. This will be the second year I am eligible to be married.” She took a deep breath. “If I have an escort, then you can challenge any attempt to bind me to a marriage contract.”

I frowned, disappointed. “You need me to be your hired sword? I am assuming your escort needs to fight or something?”

Her eyes went wide and she grabbed my arm. “No, no. Combat rarely ever happens. Just having you at my side means I can dissent any match the Torrent high seat arranges. Loriel is the 23rd in succession line, so she cannot be forced into any marriage now. When I graduate from the academy, I am to be elevated to the 22nd seat, and my brother will be the 23rd,” Loriel stated. “Then I would be protected.”

“So you need me to attend, what, four galas every year with you for the next seven years?” I sounded a little testy at being used. I guess I had hoped Tessa was actually interested in me, not just my combat skills.

She spoke softly at the harshness of my words, saying, “No, only the Sowing Festival has marriage announcements. The sowing marks the start of the new planting season and is always followed by new marriage announcements. These days, things are so uncertain, and I am more than a little worried. There have been proclamations to encourage families to have more children. Immigration has been so reduced over the last century that there is actually a population decline in Skyholme. The Triumvirate wants the families to show the people the way. Anything can happen, and I am…I am desirable.” Her words trailed off and the strong warrior I fought was no longer there, just an uncertain and scared woman.

I would agree she was attractive, both physically and because of her high status. She had makeup on but clearly didn’t need it. When I said nothing and kept studying her, she added, “Loriel said I might have to pay you. What do you require for your services?” She wasn’t begging, but this, to my disappointment, sounded like a business transaction.

I tried to justify helping the woman. If I attended this gala, I could keep an eye on Gareth and make sure he didn’t do anything reckless. Gareth wasn’t stupid, but he was swimming in a pool he didn't know how to navigate. I sighed, trying not to sound too eager. “What can you offer? Just start with your best deal, and don’t try to haggle with me.”

Tessa was about to speak and then stopped and started thinking about what to say. I waited patiently until she spoke. “I will give you five large gold for an outfit for the event. And you can call on my favor once every year for as long as I reside in Skyholme.”

“What does a favor entail?” I asked with my mind going down a rabbit hole briefly.

“The Torrent family has connections. If you want a token to a specific dungeon, I can make it happen. If you get in trouble with the law, I can arrange to get you released. It is really open-ended,” she said smiling brightly.

I thought for a moment, then said, “Can you get my father transferred to Aegis City and promoted so he doesn’t have to ride guard on the skyship transports?” 

Tessa asked a few questions about my father’s job and then nodded. The Torrent Family technically controlled the Navy and city guards, but I knew the Bricios were manipulating them recently. “It can be done. The transfer can happen before the gala, but the promotion will take a few months because it requires a review.” I think I surprised her with my request, but it would make going to this event worth it to protect my family.

“Then we have a deal,” I said with a smile and held out my hand. She dug into her belt pouch and produced five large gold coins. I laughed, “I don’t need your coins, just the favor. I was offering my hand so we could shake on the agreement.”  

She blushed in embarrassment, “I forgot Callem Dregalla was your sponsor.”

We shook hands, and Tessa headed to the skyship platform while I went back to my room. Gareth’s huge, expectant grin was visible as he reclined on the bed. I simply looked at my friend and said, “We’ll leave tomorrow to buy clothes in the capital. We will stay overnight at the Gentle Tauren and then fly to Aegis City in the morning for the delve. Don’t say a word! I’m still upset about you dragging me into this.”

Gareth burst out laughing. “Mad at me! Thanks to me, you have a date with one of the prettiest women in all of Skyholme!”

I rolled onto my bed, still looking crossly at my friend, and put up my privacy screen. My cross look did transform into a secret grin as I picked up my spellbook and continued to study.

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