World Sphere - 206 -

Chapter 206:

I wanted to escape the Sapphire Passage as quickly as possible. I suspected that the young aristocrat I had outbid for the phantom cats was going to cause trouble. As Leda and I rushed out of the flight lanes, we reviewed the city maps I had purchased, and she informed me about the flight patterns she had studied in our time. “It doesn’t matter whether you're a dragon, skyship, or spaceship, you need to adhere to these approach and departure paths for the four cities. If you don’t, you'll be fired upon, and from what I observed, the Maelstrom wouldn’t stand a chance.”

I bristled at that but had seen the distant battle on our approach to the transit passage. Those ships had been much larger than anything in Skyholme and the damage they could dish out was incredible. The aether shields on the Maelstrom were powered by an incredible series of harmonized aether crystals, but we would be forced to flee those warships as it was clear they had been using magitech.

Magitech blended magic and technology and was much more powerful than spellcraft alone. I should have investigated some improvements to the Maelstrom during the visit. Maybe next time I came to the Sapphire passage. The city we visited, Elespolis, was more of a general trading goods city. There were three other cities that surrounded the Sapphire Passage and one of them dealt with the ships that transited the passage to the Outer Sphere.

As I examined the maps, I realized that city was Tempescrest. It was the place where spaceships would have docked and where magitech for skyships would have been accessible. I regretted not purchasing a few magitech items like a hand cannon or one of the belt shields I had read about. Magitech became rarer the farther you traveled from one of the transit passages because runic artifacts were much easier to find make.

“Dragon,” Leda said, drawing my attention to the viewport. It was a massive shade of blue like we had seen on our approach and might even be the same one. I relaxed as we passed its influence, and Leda accelerated the ship, quickly gaining elevation. One thing the Maelstrom didn’t lack was speed. I took over the captain’s chair and flipped the Maelstrom over while maintaining our vector. We watched the massive black hole shrink behind us.

My worries seemed unfounded as no one had stopped us or was pursuing us. Once we reached over a hundred miles away, I turned over the pilot’s chair to Leda. She could plot the course back to Skyholme while I rested. I wanted to see if the adamantine communication rings worked as well. Freya had the other one. As I left the bridge, Kiara hissed at the two kittens frozen in the stasis cubes and plodded after me. Adrial looked at me but decided the effort to follow me was not worth it and laid down again.

I activated the communication ring in my cabin, “Storme, calling Freya. Freya, you got your ears on?”

“What? Ears on? Who is…” A sleepy voice came back through the link. She suddenly got more excited, “Storme! What is the passage like?! It says it is ginormous in the books! Did you see any spaceships?! What did you get me? Wait, don’t tell me! I want it to be a surprise.”

I rolled my eyes at my sister even though she couldn’t see me. She would have to wait a long time before she got another gift from me after I purchased the darkness affinity dungeon essence for her. “I just wanted to make sure everything was fine. I will return in five days, and I got Lorae’s phantom cats.”

“She is going to be so excited! Everything is fine. Well, except Uncle Dominic is bothering mother again. He wants her to pay for Rufus and Alfie’s Academy.” Freya’s had a tone of annoyance at the last. My father’s brother was still trying to tie himself to me. If they were not blood relations, I would have dropped them ten thousand miles away in a lowland city.

“Mother isn’t capitulating, is she?” I asked. At first, my mother liked the attention, but she was smart enough to see through the overtures and rebuke my uncle. As the mother of one of Skyholme’s High Mages, she got plenty of business for her leather engraving shop. I had given her a few items to protect herself, and she lived at the Shiny Platinum, but she earned her own living.

“She told the guards not to let him upstairs into the apartments. She is…Storme, she is seeing someone. I am not supposed to tell you,” Freya said guiltily.

“I am not upset. Mother can make her own decisions, and if she needs my help, I am here.” It was a bit of a shock, but my father had been dead a year, and to be honest, my mother was a young and attractive woman. That wouldn’t stop me from having Bleiz follow her new lover and ensure he was of good character. I smirked as I added, “You, on the other hand, cannot start dating until you are twenty.”

“What! How is that fair?! Gwen already has a suiter and will be married at seventeen!” Freya voiced indignantly through the connection.

“Well, you are not Gwen. You are the sister of the High Mage of Skyholme.” I sounded a bit pompous, but in protecting my sister, there was no compromise.

“Gareth said he would protect me from undesirables as well. He has been training me after my delves,” Freya said happily.

“Has he now? How has his delves been going?” I asked suspiciously.

“He grumbles about the narrow amount of time he has on the first floor, but he says he is making his quota,” Freya responded. I was surprised he had been able to get any delve slots, maybe once my Dungeon Academy started classes, there would be less availability since I essentially controlled access to the Frost Vault. We talked a little longer before I cut the connection and rested.

After practice with the Wolfsguard the next day, I looked at all the communication stones I had crafted on the way to the Sapphire Passage. There were piles of echo stones that I had planned to distribute not only to my sky taxis but also to every town in Skyholme as a warning system in case an attack occurred. We had been fortunate that Hen’s Hollow was so close to a major city, but there were dozens of small towns that received information much more slowly.

I tossed the stone in the air, catching it over and over again. Maybe I could start a news service, delivering daily news about the state of affairs in the islands and beyond through the echo stones. Maybe we could also read stories or send music at certain times of the day. It was only one-way communication, but connecting the people of Skyholme couldn’t be a bad thing. We could even advertise the Dungeon Academy in Aegis City.

I contemplated the possibilities before deciding that it was a good idea. I could place the master stone at the Dungeon Academy and put Sana in charge of the daily programming. I paused as I knew Loriel would want to get in on this. She might even take credit or try to manipulate the islands' people to accept her policies.

I picked up one of the echo stones and formed a copper case around it, making sure the acoustics were not affected. I then imprinted my hydra symbol on the cover and wrote “Shiny Platinum Enterprises” below it. I didn’t have enough hubris to add my own name to the device.

I had made 117 echo stones on the trip there, and I thought I could triple that number by the time we returned to Skyholme. The more I thought it, the more I liked the idea. Maybe we could even offer classes through the stones. I had been lucky in my pre-academy education growing up, but I knew some children who couldn’t even read when they started the Academy. I would turn the headache over to Sana, who would probably take it on with relish.

By the time the outer islands came into view, I had created 562 echo stones. The master communication stone I encased in a block of metal and would encase that in stone to make it as difficult as possible to steal. Duplicating the master was impossible due to the nature of the runes—if I made a copy, then the two masters would be able to communicate with each other, and the echo stones wouldn’t function at all. Maybe I could make other master stones and echo stones in the future.

It was easy to know why this had not been done before as each echo stone cost me one hundred gold worth of mithril, gold, and the tier three aether stone to power it. I needed to use fine mithril runes to make sure the stones were powerful enough to reach all eight islands. Would people steal the stones to sell? Undoubtably. But hopefully the people would see the value for their community and do what they could to protect them. Maybe I can encase them as I did with the master stone.

I had talked to Freya twice more and was slightly concerned about all the time Gareth spent with her. Gareth saw her like his own sister, but he had also garnered a reputation since we started the Academy. I told Bleiz my concerns, and he assured me he would keep an eye on Freya. When we landed at the Shiny Platinum, I was not surprised to see Relik standing there with a grin on his face. Lorae was on his hip, bouncing excitedly.

Tibault and Neoma walked down the ramp behind me, each carrying on of the black kittens in their stasis cubes. Lorae couldn’t hold back and rushed to examine them in more detail. While she was studying her new companions, an irritated Kiara walked down the ramp, flicking her tail. Adrial darted down to search the crates in the hanger for rodents.

I noticed a row of polished small skyships along one wall. Rippon and Remy had completed the skiff-taxis in the twelve days I had been gone. I would inspect them after talking with Relik, “Are we good now, Relik?” I asked him as his daughter screamed in delight and asked how to terminate the stasis cube.

Relik patted me on the shoulder while watching his daughter’s excitement. “I think the scales may have shifted in your favor, Storme.”

After Relik and Lorae left, Remy was excited to show me the work Rippon and he had done. The mini-skyships were painted with a dark gray enamel and oval shape. They had a cap to protect them from the elements and had artificed glass-steel windows fore, port, and starboard. The forward compartment was only for the pilot and was sealed from the two rows of three wide seats directly behind him. The seats were cushioned with black suede. Behind the two rows of three seats with a single elevated seat for the guard that would accompany the taxi. In the back of the skill was a generous compartment for packages or luggage.

Remy was dying to get my opinion on the skiffs. “They look great, but you need to add the hydra and Shiny Platinum Enterprises. I want people to know that the skiffs belong to me.”

“So, are you going to artifice six of them?” Remy asked hopefully.

That had been the original plan. I shook my head in the negative, “No.” I enjoyed watching his face fall. “I will artifice all ten. You can start training pilots and see Mia for guards. I have the communication stones, and we will have to set up offices in the major cities to operate them.” Remy was practically jumping out of his shoes.

I then went to dinner with Freya and my mother. Freya couldn’t stop talking the entire time about everything she was learning about magic and how excited she was to start Academy. I eventually got my mother to reveal that her consort was one of the bakers who worked for me at the café in the Shiny Platinum. I knew Bleiz was listening nearby and would investigate him fully.

After the meal, I headed off to the Dungeon Academy. Classes would start in a few days, and I was expected to attend in disguise. This was mainly so I could work on my conditioning and sword practice with the instructors. I might take a class or two as well, but my schedule was pretty packed. Besides the skiffs, I had a number of artificing projects I wanted to work on and maybe some recreational dungeon delving with Bleiz, Adrial and Kiara.

I found Sana working in her office. She looked exhausted but happy. She didn’t look up, saying a little harshly, “Are you lost? Orientation starts in three days.” She looked up, a smile forming on her face. “Storme! You have returned. I told everyone I was not to be disturbed, yet new students keep feeling the need to come and introduce themselves to me.”

“I just came to make sure the Academy is ready and to give you more work.” I said brightly.

“I don’t need any more work!” She playfully cursed me until I explained the echo stones and my intentions with setting up a network across Skyholme. “That is brilliant! Skyholme is small and close enough that you should be able to reach every town! I am sure we can sell them to the nobles at a premium, maybe 200 gold. The prestige of owning one would require every noble to purchase one.”

“As for the news network and education—I think Mage Instructor Neelan would be the best to handle the task of programming.” She tapped her chin, “We will need people in the cities to gather the news and paired communication stones for them to get the current news out quickly.”

“I am sure you can handle it—or find someone to administer it.” I dumped the pile on copper-enclosed echo stones of her workbench, a number of them sliding off the pile to the floor. The master stone I placed on another table. “I also have a number of spellbooks for the Academy shop.”

I stacked the hundreds of spell books on the floor. Sana immediately began reading the covers of the spells and nodded contentedly, humming to herself. I had selected utility spells and offensive spells that would be useful in a dungeon. “I see that I taught you well,” she said after she finished.

We were soon sitting across from each other, sipping a strong tea that cleared our minds. “Things have gone remarkably well. The recruiters have been sent to the lowlands, and next year’s Academy class will have ten times the potential of this year's. And yes, the immigration problem has been sorted out. Loriel has given the Academy 100 free citizenship papers each year. I used the first batch on my instructors,” she smiled deviously. “We can purchase additional papers at 100 gold each.”

I choked on my tea—it suddenly tasted bitter. “One hundred gold!?” I was a bit angry that Loriel was taking advantage of us.

Sana ignored my outrage, saying, “It is fine, as that is what it costs a normal person to petition for Skyholme citizenship if they do not have a trade skill. Most people are only given temporary papers, not full citizenship, and I think we will be fine with an allocation of 100 a year. And what we do not use will carry over to be used in the future.” That made me relax and enjoy the tea.

Our conversation turned to the excitement of the upcoming Academy year and her future expansion plans. Remy had pointed out that I needed to raise an additional 350,000 gold to complete the renovation of the Dungeon Academy, but most of that funding was for satellite buildings and dormitories for students and instructors. I planned to expand the Academy’s magic shop downward with several sublevels as it grew. Even now, I had stocked it with so many spellbooks and dungeon essences that it had exceeded its capacity.

Sana’s primary concern was security. We had excellent wards and artificed runes in the structures, but if we got targeted by someone truly powerful, we would be relying on instructors to handle the thieves. Sana wanted to hire a few “specialists” to keep around. She had a few gold adventurers in mind who worked as detectives for the Adventurer’s Guild. When I asked if they would also serve as instructors, her response was curt. “The people I have in mind are not people you want teaching at your Academy—they lack patience.” I laughed away the comment and agreed to the request. Having strong adventurers in Skyholme was welcome, even if I had to pay them.

After the long afternoon with Sana, I returned to find the cats sunning themselves on the roof garden of the Shiny Platinum. I collected them and took the Maelstrom to the Black Spire. Aelyn and her delve team were there, and it was time to get reacquainted.

The Black Spire was a busy place once again now that the Shifter was dealt with. The Night Wraith was docked, and Wolfsguard, in my silvery uniform, guarded the grounds. My Spire attendants managed the landscaping and took care of the rooms in the Spire. I had ten estates elsewhere on the capital island that I would also need to look into developing. While I was considering what to do with those plots, a young man in a Skyholme Navy uniform greeted me before I went inside the Spire.

“High Mage Storme, Captain Liam Cloudhunter,” he bowed, and I recalled he was my liaison with the Citadel. “I have been asked…”

“Not the time, Captain Liam. I'm sure Admiral Sebastian sent you to request that I artifice a dozen skyships and refurbish another dozen. I just returned, and you can make your request in a week, or maybe two weeks' time.” I said, then made to move past him, the cats flanking me protectively. I heard him mumble behind me, “It is just two new skyships, and one refurbish…”

I found out Aelyn was in the Progenitor Dungeon, so I spent some time exercising with the cats before hitting myself with a cleanliness spell and lying down. After setting my alarms and privacy screens, my eyes closed, and I fell asleep.

A loud boom and angry Kiara growl instantly woke me. My alarm spell had not triggered, and my privacy screen was gone. Adrial had smashed through one of the walls of my apartment, and Kiara was hissing angrily at a pale figure standing at the foot of my bed. The figure looked youthful in dark blue robes with oiled-back blond hair. He was slightly transparent, and I guessed Adrial had attacked him and passed through his body.

“Excellent, you’re awake,” he said in a flat tone. “It took me some time to find the Master Artificer who shielded Myththorne. It was quite troublesome tracking you down. My Lord wanted me to pass a message to you: interfere with his plans again, and everything you hold dear will be obliterated. Well, I might be saying it slightly more diplomatically than he intended, but I’m sure you understand the meaning.” Then the man vanished.

Adrial stalked the room, looking for a trace of him, but I already knew it was a powerful projection. The fact his projection had been able to cancel my alarm and privacy spells without waking me was disconcerting.

“Father has new enemy,” Kiara’s voice said in my head.

“It appears, so.”

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