World Sphere - 76 - The Return of Gaston

Chapter 76: The Return Of Gaston

On the return trip to Hen’s Hollow, I didn’t see Gareth, Mera, or Fera on board, so I was slightly curious about where they had all gotten off to. Mera had made good progress with learning the brewer trade, and I hoped she would be able to start fermenting some mead soon.

Aelyn seemed happy to be traveling with me. We talked a little about the Frost Vault dungeon delve on the long trip. When the skyship landed, we made our way to Ennet’s house together. We found Wynna, Callem, and Ennet having some post-dinner wine.

Ennet saluted us. “Storme, you are about two hours late to make us all dinner!”

The food was still out, and Aelyn picked out a few things on a plate and sat. I remained standing and asked more seriously. “Callem, have you talked to Sebastian recently?”

Callem’s expression hardened. “No. His communication stone was confiscated, and I received a letter from him maybe three weeks ago. It didn’t say much.”

I told Callem about my conversation with Loriel Miaden, and he listened raptly. “You are flying in high circles at such a young age, Storme, but we are not surprised. What Loriel is saying makes sense. The last time I talked with Sebastian, he didn’t emanate a positive outlook for the rebuild.”

“Do you think if I traveled to the capital, I would be able to speak with Sebastian?” I asked after thinking for a while.

Callem nodded. “I don’t think anyone would stop you, but people would take note. What would be your purpose?” Callem didn’t seem concerned, but Wynna did.

I leaned against the counter. “I want to confirm what I have been told. I also want his advice on how to proceed with building my skyship. Should I purchase some communication stones as well to give him?”

Callem looked over at Wynna concerned. “I don’t think they would last too long. The navy has been tight on security since the Sadian attack. I don’t think they want the people to know just how bad things are.”

Wynna continued. “My friends in the capital are grumbling about higher taxes to rebuild the navy and the lack of luxury goods from our lowlands outposts.”

“You should take Gareth with you, Storme,” Callem started. “Sebastian has an apartment two blocks away from the navy yards. If I went, it might raise some eyebrows. I will give you a communication stone to give him from a pair I recently purchased. But as Wynna said, they would most likely confiscate it again.”

Aelyn interrupted. “I can go protect him. I am his indentured.”

I looked at Aelyn and shook my head. “I don’t want to risk you being in the capital with your mark.” I figured the less I had to worry about, the better. I wasn’t even sure about having Gareth with me. “Sorry, Aelyn. I just plan to make my way to Sebastian, have a quick talk, and then come back.” She looked devastated, but I wasn’t going to change my mind.

I put on a brighter countenance. “Your apartments at the Shiny Platinum are ready.” I produced a key for Ennet and a pair of keys for Callem and Wynna. “Ennet, when do you plan to move your business to Aegis City?”

They all took the keys, which were numbered to correspond to their apartment doors. Ennet said, “Around the time you finish your second term, Storme. I found a shop front in the upper district that I already purchased, and it is being remodeled as we speak.”

Wynna smiled, but worry still etched her face. “Yes, and I am coming out of retirement one day a week for the big customers.”

The conversation started to turn to other matters, so I left their company and went to the barracks to get some sleep. Gareth was not in the room, but Mera was across the hall. “We looked for you but couldn’t find you. Gareth, Lana, Sammie, Fera and I all went to see a play in Aegis City and returned to Solaris City earlier in the day. Fera and Gareth are somewhere about, but I don’t know where.” Her tone insinuated that Fera and Gareth were back together in some manner, and I just hoped my friend didn’t screw it up again.

I offered to make Mera dinner, and we went into the kitchen to find a number of other students doing the same. I kept it very quick and simple, making horseradish sauce for a corned beef sandwich. We talked over the meal about her lessons in becoming a brewer. She had been trying out her fermentation ability and had already made small batches of strong beer in the Shiny Platinum.

I was upset I hadn’t had the opportunity to try it. I hadn’t seen the large brewery setup I purchased, which Mera had taken to assembling with her sister during the week after her lessons with the brew master. I figured it was best to let Mera take ownership of it. After eating, I went into Mera’s room, and we discussed plans for making our mead and ale for the Shiny Platinum.

Her ability was powerful. She could ferment one hundred gallons of beer almost instantly, saving two weeks. She could single-handedly provide the establishment with a few different beverages and still have excess to sell on the market. I would get many-fold the value out of what I was paying her and her sister.

Fera returned with puffy lips and a happy countenance. I assumed Gareth had managed to patch things up with her and left the twins to talk about it amongst themselves.

In my room, I found Gareth in his bed, reading a dungeon book. “Good day?” I asked.

“Stormy, it couldn’t have gone any better,” he exclaimed with a Cheshire grin. As I set up privacy and alarm spells, I listened to Gareth regal me with tales of his time with Fera. Their relationship was patched and proceeding. I was a bit jealous, but hearing after hearing from Aelyn today about what Tessa thought of me, I was considering delving into a relationship myself.

“Gimble is going to try and recruit a new delve team member this week. He was recommended by Remy,” I said.

Gareth looked concerned. “Who is he going to replace?”

“No one. I am just adding some experience to the team. I am not sure how much longer Gimble or Aelyn will be with us.” Gareth nodded, as we had talked a number of times of freeing Aelyn from her mark and he knew Gimble was temporary. I think he saw himself replacing Gimble as the team’s leader. I wouldn’t have been opposed to that idea, but I feared for the women on the team.

“I am not going to Aegis City the next seventh day for the delve. I plan to meet Sebastian in the capital,” I revealed.

“Then I am not going either! You need me to watch your back, Stormy! The capital is a nest of drakes!” I hid a smirk and conceded the point because it seemed he was not going to take no for an answer. “I know the perfect place you can get some new clothes! You need a serious wardrobe upgrade if you want to walk around in the capital and be respected.”

Gareth started talking about going to the tailor shop run by Danlius. He also needed elegant clothes since he had outgrown his old ones. Maybe he is less concerned about my appearance and more concerned about his own. “Fine, we can stop at the tailor shop, but you would have to use his own coin.”

Gareth clutched his chest in mock injury. “But Stormy, you’re your loyal bodyguard to look his best.” Gareth might have had the face of a teen, but he was larger than grown men. “We should leave on the sixth day and stay at The Gentle Tauren. It was a great inn, and the innkeeper, Broderick, was very friendly. The waitress there, Nina, was very nice too.”

Apparently, Nina was a server/housekeeper at the inn. Gareth went into a long explanation on how he had misunderstood her advances the last time he stayed there, and now that he understood, he wished to correct his error.

“I thought you just patched things up with Fera,” I said after his long-winded explanation. He suddenly went silent in realization and looked at the door, afraid Fera had been listening.

I eventually closed myself off in a privacy bubble to study my spell. Tonight, with the finances of the Shiny Platinum secure and the dungeon team looking making a profit, I didn’t feel the need to make silver, gold, or platinum coins. Instead, I started making a stockpile of mithril to use in completing the enchantments on my future skyship.

The first day of the second term classes was different. I only had half as much time conditioning with Aelyn before heading to class with Selina for private lessons on spellcraft. Selina was working on more advanced studies with me. This included spell design, aether core stabilization, spell transcription, and aetheric theory.

Selina wanted me to be able to write out my own spellbooks eventually! It took mages decades to successfully transfer spells from their aether matrix to pages. First, the mage had to recognize the base spell and ignore all the evolutions. That was even if they could see the spell imprinted clearly on their aether matrix.

The aether core stabilization was extremely important for archmages who wanted to utilize their core for multiple anchored spells. Currently, I only have my dimensional closet spell was hovering in my aether core.

I was learning that there were two ways to stabilize my aether core. Since my aether core was still growing, the second method was required. This meant circulating the aether in the core in a steady whirlpool. It was much harder than cementing your aether flow and anchoring everything in place, but it had a lot of benefits.

The first and largest benefit was that it increased your aether pool recovery by adding a slight pull of aether from the environment. It meant you needed to fix your anchored spells in synchronous orbits around the core, so they didn’t interact with each other.

Simple on paper, but it took mages ages to master. If you had multiple spells anchored in your aether core, they could interact. If they were in the same sphere of magic, the interaction could be devastating. That was why mages couldn’t cast multiple dimensional storage spells. Even if the anchored spells were different spheres of magic, they could bounce off each other and create chaos in your aether core and do damage.

I wanted to learn a chronomancy spell that gave me an internal clock and allowed me to set timers. This clock/timer would be on my aether core. Unfortunately, the time and space affinities were closely linked, so I needed to master the aether core stabilization before I could learn the spell. I wasn’t going to risk losing my dimensional closet and its contents.

The whole process was made even more difficult since my core was still expanding. Mages usually didn’t learn how to do this until their core was fully formed. Selina didn’t care about my difficulties and just kept giving me more and more advanced aether core exercises.

Thankfully, my artificing class was just me. Mia was taking a leadership class with Callem instead. Instructor Aldon just asked what I wanted to focus on in every class, and we worked on that. He was not too familiar with enchanting skyships, but he brought dozens of books to help us learn together.

In enchanting, there are three primary conductors of aether: silver, platinum, and mithril. These carry the aetheric energy through the spell forms. In order to prevent the aether from interacting and bleeding out when you have high volumes of aether, you need an insulator. The three primary insulators are wood, gold, and adamantine.

When you have a large skyship like a Harbinger, they use platinum insulated with gold to write out the aetheric runes. Since the ship has such a high volume of aether running through the runes, the platinum and gold disintegrate over time.

The runes needed to be repaired every year, causing the maintenance of a skyship to be immense, and keeping the value of metals high! A heavily used Harbinger ship could cost thousands of gold to maintain yearly. If dungeons didn’t supply a constant source of fresh gold and platinum, then the entire Skyholme fleet would eventually be grounded.

Then there was mithril and adamantine. Neither material degraded with heavy use, but the problem was that it was so rare and found in such small quantities in dungeons. Since I could make my own mithril, I hoped to have enough to build my skyship and eventually learn how to create the adamantine. Until then, gold would suffice as an insulator, and gold would hide my mithril underneath.

After enchanting class, I had general spell practice with Mera, Fera, Aelyn, Byron, and Gemma. Since everyone now had learned at least one spell, we practiced spells in unique ways. The more creative the casting, the quicker the spell would level. This was a fun class for most of us. My focus was on the alarm and cleanliness spell. Since I had an absurd amount of aether, I didn’t have to hold back. I never cast more than forty spells in a class, though, pretending that was my limit.

Skyholme law and history still followed dinner. It was the only time I was going to be able to see Freya, and she usually sat with us for a while, catching us up on town gossip. Law was boring, but I tried to pay attention. After dinner, Gareth and I walked out to Twin Rocks for some extra combat instruction. I didn’t practice my lightning reflexes spell since I was currently saving most of my aether to make mithril, but my skill with the two-handed falchion was growing rapidly.

Every day was a massive drain, mentally and physically. The first week, I did see my cleanliness spell hit level 19. I evolved the spell to affect others. This allowed me to clean the clothes that they were still wearing. I didn’t reveal this to Gareth, though. Otherwise, he would be asking every few minutes. When the spell reached level 23, I could evolve the range again, and I would be able to clean others’ bodies as well, using the full range of the spell’s evolutions on them.

The only other spell that reached an evolution in the first week was lesser restoration. It reached level 6 since I was still responsible for healing the entire class. At level 5, I selected an evolution termed oxygenate blood. This was basically a very short-term aerobic boost.

It removed the lactic waste products and oxygenated the hemoglobin. It gave about a 15-second boost, erasing fatigue completely. Of course, I could chain it and continue until my aether ran out. It cost three units of aether to cast, so 12 aether units per minute to sustain. Not a very efficient use of aether unless it was to beat Gareth on a long-distance run or combat was extended against multiple opponents.

I had a lot of spells on the cusp of an evolution. At dinner, on the sixth day of second term my spells looked like this:

Imprinted Spell List     Tier      Slots    Affinity Level

Cleanliness      1          1          Aether 19

Mend Flesh     1          1          Healing            16

Obfuscate Abilities      1          1          Darkness         10

Dimensional Closet     3          4          Space  16

Alarm  1          1          Aetheric          15

Privacy             1          1          Aetheric          11

Neutralize Poison        2          1          Healing            7

Lightning Reflexes       4          2          Lightning/Healing       17

Arcane Lock    1          1          Aetheric          6

Aether Shield  2          1          Aetheric          12

Lesser Restoration      3          1          Healing            6

Gareth was impatient to leave after Elora had finished reciting six pages of Skyholme laws and explaining the text to everyone. Mia, Fera, Aelyn, and Mera were going to the Shiny Platinum tomorrow. Aelyn was going dungeon delving without us, and I think she was pretty angry with me for not taking her to the capital but she would get over it.

Gareth and I walked the road to the skyship docks in Solaris City since no Hen’s Hollow was too insignificant to have a transport going to the capital island. Gareth was wearing his best clothes and was extremely animated and eager.

He had even cut the large gold and standard platinum coin from the linings in his shoes, just in case I was serious about not buying him new clothes. I think it was time for Gareth to learn that coins don’t grow on trees, so I planned to keep my promise.

When we arrived at the skyship docks, we were told the skyship hadn’t sold enough tickets to make the trip today. It needed at least ten passengers to depart. So, I ended up buying ten tickets, much to the skyship owner's delight. I wouldn’t have to deal with this when I had my own skyship.

The flight included three other passengers, and I felt tricked because I only needed to buy five tickets, not eight that I purchased. Gareth and I usually flew on a skyship, but that didn’t stop us from going to the railing to watch like children. I was certain that if any of the passengers had been attractive women, Gareth would have been otherwise occupied.

We arrived in the lower city and took about a thirty-minute walk up to the upper city to get to Gareth’s preferred inn, The Gentle Tauren. Even in the lower city, everything was clean, and we passed by the Aethon artificer store. I noticed my ice cream makers and light globes were prominently displayed in the window.

The taverns we passed were loud, and Gareth paused to peek into each window. I guessed it was curiosity and once again thought Gareth would get himself into trouble when we moved to Aegis City next academy year.

We had to go through two city guard checkpoints on our route. We were never stopped or questioned, though. I guessed these were just choke points between different parts of the city. The number of people still out at this late hour surprised me. The Sphere never had complete darkness, so people didn’t need much artificial light outside of buildings.

Gareth pointed out the tailor shop as we passed by. It looked very luxurious. The inn was nearby and was not very busy when we arrived. A musician by the hearth was singing and strumming in a soft, crooning voice. About a quarter of the tables had patrons drinking or eating.

The barkeep looked us over critically. He was probably trying to figure out if he remembered Gareth. Gareth had grown a few inches, but his face still had that same youthful appearance. It wasn’t the barkeep who recognized him first. A server came out of the back room with a tray filled with bowls. She immediately chirped loudly. “Gaston! You're back!”

I looked over at Gareth with amusement on my face, “Who is Gaston?”

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