The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Larek bent down underneath the large wood and iron structure, having to crawl in order to fit under where it was suspended upon four large pillars. It was familiar to him from his experience building the ferry boat, though on a much smaller scale. Fortunately, his project had been roughly the same size as a decently sized wagon, so the Cartwright was able to adapt his setup in his workshop to accommodate Larek’s strange request.

Slipping the thin sheet of iron carefully into the central slot that had been created for it on his new vehicle’s undercarriage, he used a small mallet to bend the edges around the inserted iron plate until it was secure and relatively flush with the rest of the bottom. Crawling back out, he climbed up a stepladder that allowed him to see the other Fusion he had already installed along the rear wall of the vehicle, checking to make sure it hadn’t been dislodged from all his banging.

“I still don’t know why you would want such thin iron plates,” the Cartwright said, shaking his head with his hands on his hips. “I had to reforge them a few times when they bent far enough to crack. Frankly, and this isn’t a knock on my own skills, they’re flimsy and likely to shatter with a good blow of a large hammer, and they will offer absolutely very little protection if something were to try and pierce through it.”

“But its light, which is what is the most important feature,” Larek replied, looking at the completed Air Skimmer. At least, that was what he was starting to call it in his head; he’d wanted to call it something grand and impressive like “Sky Flyer”, but since it didn’t actually fly through the sky, but instead skimmed above the surface of the land he traveled over on a cushion of air, he settled on Air Skimmer.

Mentally triggering the Strengthen Area +8 Fusion he had placed along the inside back wall of the Air Skimmer, he felt and saw it activate as it drew in ambient Mana, before it took Effect. With a strange ringing sound like a bell being struck, the Cartwright took a step back in surprise as the very thin iron plates on the outer shell of the vehicle seemed to shrink the tiniest bit as it formed itself around the internal wooden frame. Not having made anything this large from all iron before, Larek was surprised at the reaction, but it seemed like it was a natural reaction to the iron becoming much stronger and durable. The wooden frame on the inside was also strengthened, but the effect was more noticeable on the metal for some reason.

“What just happened?”

Chuckling, Larek walked over and tapped on the outer shell of the Air Skimmer with his mallet a few times, and he could sense that the metal had, indeed, strengthened quite a bit. With a much harder smack with a little of his Strength stat applied to it, which caused the Cartwright to inhale sharply, he looked to see if he had damaged the iron sheet. When he looked close enough, he could see a tiny little divot, but that was about it.

“That should do,” the Combat Fusionist said, satisfied at what he saw.

“What? How?”

Patting the man on the back gently, all he said in response was, “Magic. Don’t worry about it.” Looking over at the pile of food supplies that had been dropped off a few days before by the price-gouging Merchant, he began to lift up and load the filled crates and bags into the Air Skimmer. As he was doing it, he looked over at the flabbergasted Cartwright and asked, “How much do I owe you, by the way?”

He really hoped it wasn’t more than a few platinum, because while he still had plenty of what he had earned in Swiftwater leftover, he knew that he was likely going to need some back in the Kingdom to resupply.

“Huh? Oh, uh, no charge.”

“What? Come on, you did all this work and—”

Before Larek could finish, the other man waved toward the giant pile of ore that was now sitting in the corner of his workshop. “I’m pretty sure you said you’re leaving this here and that it’s mine, so I’d say you pretty much paid for my help multiple times simply from that. Besides, helping you relieved some of my boredom and it was an interesting challenge. I should be thanking you… but I’m still keeping the ore.” The Cartwright grinned, shaking his head at the enormous pile of ore.

It was actually a bit more than Larek expected when he acquired it from the Merchant, but he was honestly just happy that it was more than enough to get his project completed. He didn’t need the ore and was fine with just leaving it for the Cartwright and the town of Day’s End to use – even if it cost more money than he’d ever thought he’d spend on a single thing. Still, what was money used for other than to purchase what one needed? He needed the ore, he had the money to pay for it, and that was the extent of the transaction; theoretically he could sell it to the Cartwright or the town for a fraction of what he paid for it, but he didn’t need more money right now, especially with the Cartwright charging nothing for his help.

“So, uh, what are you planning on doing with this? Transporting it out of here is going to be more difficult once you fill it up. It might have been relatively light before, but with all those supplies, it’s going to be heavy.”

Larek finished loading the last of the supplies inside the Air Skimmer before he looked at the entire thing one more time. At a total of 10 feet long and 6 feet wide, it essentially looked like a rectangular box with 4-foot-tall sides, though on the front end the wall was angled like a giant wedge to better cut through the air ahead. Extending from the corners of the walls was a sturdy wooden frame that extended 9 feet above the bottom, which supported a thin iron plate that extended out to the sides another 2 feet, designed to keep the hot sun from beating down on everything inside the Air Skimmer.

While Larek could handle direct sunlight – though it wouldn’t necessarily be pleasant – his supplies weren’t exactly meant to be in the sun for hours on end, day after day. It would still be hot, but they would likely survive that well enough; it was the extreme heat of direct sun that would cause them to spoil much, much faster.

Other than the wedge on top and the roof above his head, the only things other than the basic wood frame and the iron plates was the large wooden floor that covered all but the wedge portion of the Skimmer, along with a simple 4-foot-tall bar of iron that extended up from the center that had a second, smaller bar on top sitting perpendicular. It was essentially a handlebar that he could hold onto while in motion; it didn’t move or do anything else other than give him some stability, but he figured it would definitely be helpful based on his previous experiments.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got more of that ‘magic’ that’ll let me move it. You may want to step back in case this blows out a lot of dust,” he warned. After moving essentially out of the workshop, the Cartwright stared in confusion as a blast of air underneath the Skimmer kicked up a bunch of dirt and sawdust from the construction.

After most of it had settled, Larek looked to see that his new floating vessel wasn’t exactly floating yet. At Magnitude 1, the upward thrust produced by the gust of air wasn’t even enough to lift it off the pillars supporting it from underneath. A moment and an increase in Magnitude later, he finally saw it shift slightly, but it still wasn’t enough to lift it. Magnitude 3 finally had an effect… if just barely. He watched as it tried to lift up on one corner but immediately settled back down, and it appeared to be a bit unstable. Shutting off the gust of air, he thought he knew what the stabilization issue was, as he climbed back up the stepladder and shifted some of the supplies around, equalizing the load a little better. His next attempt at Mag 3 showed better stabilization, but it was still barely enough to move upwards.

Finally, at Magnitude 4 he saw the result he was hoping for as it rose a few inches off the 3-foot-high stone pillars, which was more than enough for him to work with. Moving behind it, he gently pushed it forward and it floated on the cushion of air he was hoping to see, until it was floating just over 3 feet above the surface of the workshop.

It was at that point that he realized he should’ve warned the Cartwright a little bit more of what to expect, because he was holding his hands over his ears and crouching down where he was located just outside the workshop. While the building was large, it was still an enclosed space and the sound of air rushing at such speeds and with it caught in the recycling cushion system, it was loud. His own hearing was even affected by it despite his Body stat, but he could ignore it fairly well without being debilitated.

Slowly lowering the Magnitude from 4 to 3, and then all the way down to 2 before deactivating the Fusion – since Mag 2 or 1 did absolutely nothing to lift the vessel – he moved over to apologize to the Cartwright, though he stopped when the man stood up and looked at the Skimmer with wonder.

“That’s amazing! Do you know what this means? We can have flying wagons moving all over the Empire, transporting goods and even people at high speeds! Actually, how fast can it go? Can you make more of these? Will it run out of power? If it does, how far will it go? Can this travel over the desert—wait. You’re planning on using this to traverse the desert, aren’t you? On top of the sands? I don’t think anyone’s done that before, but if it’s possible to get to the other side, then you’ve made something extraordinary! And to think, I helped create this!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Larek said, holding his hands out for the frantically excited Cartwright to stop talking. “This is the only one I can make, and it requires a special magic to produce and a special ability to control it. For now, this is a one-of-a-kind mode of transportation, but I’ll think about producing more in the future. For now, though, I’ve got to get going because I’m already behind.”

“B-but this is something that you should share with the world—”

“I’ve no time for the world right now. I have family and friends I have to find and ensure are safe. Please, if you wouldn’t mind, move out of the way. Thank you so much for your help, but I really must be going.” As the Cartwright had been talking excitedly, he had moved to the front of the Air Skimmer, but he quickly jumped out of the way as Larek activated the gusts of air once again. It was quickly loud enough in the workshop that while he saw the Cartwright speaking, he couldn’t make out the words. Well, he probably could if he really tried, but like he told the man, he’d already wasted enough time.

Instead of increasing it to Magnitude 4 again, he discovered that Magnitude 3 was strong enough once it was close enough to the ground to create a cushion of air that allowed the Skimmer to lift a full 2 inches. That was all that was required to get it moving, and he pushed it ahead of him while he was more than tall enough to look over the walls to see where he was going. The Cartwright appeared slightly furious at being ignored, but Larek didn’t really care by this point; he’d already concluded his business with the man supposedly to the satisfaction of both of them, and there was no reason to stick around and talk now that the man had seen what his Fusions could do.

He was tempted to climb aboard the Skimmer and control it from there, but he was still wary of doing such a thing inside the town. Lifting from the ground straight up was one thing, but trying to go forward while turning without any practice was something he’d rather have a lot of space around him to try – which the inside of Day’s End didn’t have in abundance. Fortunately, as he was forced to nudge the Cartwright out of the way with the front of his new vessel, Larek found that the town streets outside of the workshop were more than wide enough to accommodate what was essentially an 8-foot-wide contraption when he considered the roof overhang width.

To say that he drew a crowd was an understatement, as the blasts of air keeping the Skimmer floating wasn’t exactly silent. As he made his way toward the gate, a group of 5 Protectors arrived and followed along, but fortunately they didn’t try and stop him as he halfway expected. Fortunately for him – and them, since he didn’t want to have to answer any questions and wasn’t doing anything wrong – he made it to the gate and passed through without anyone barring his path. He could vaguely hear dozens of people trying to talk to him, likely to ask what this “thing” was that he was pushing and why it was making so much noise, but he didn’t concentrate on their voices with enough focus to actually hear them.

Approximately 100 feet from the town, he looked back at the gates and saw that everyone was still watching him as he deactivated the gusts of air, noticing that the Merchant he had bought the ore and supplies from was watching him with extreme curiosity and wonder marking his features. He could only assume that he was thinking the same thing as the Cartwright had, but he had no inclination to speak to the man any further than he had; buying what he needed and telling the Merchant about Serena while returning the strange chain to him was all the interaction he wanted or needed.

Quickly climbing aboard, he settled himself underneath the roof of the Air Skimmer and held onto the handlebars for stability as he activated the lifting gusts again. As he expected, Mag 1 and 2 did nothing except blow out some dust from below, and even Mag 3 with his additional weight barely got off the ground. Magnitude 4 brought him up a full 2 feet, less than what he’d seen in the workshop, but he supposed that made sense with it being less due to the greater load it was designed to push.

He was tempted to push it to Magnitude 5 to test how high he could go, but what he needed more was to get some distance from the town and to practice turning and stopping. With a quick mental phrase, “Forward 1”, he felt the gust of air impact the back of the Skimmer and start moving it. At first, he inched along, but after he slowly started to gain momentum, he was moving at a fast walk – much faster than he expected at such a low Magnitude.

He concluded that with more surface area to push, as well as what was essentially a frictionless cushion of air that it was floating upon, it was easier to gain and then maintain a certain speed with a vessel with some weight to it. It also felt relatively stable, so he increased the forward-thrusting gust of air to Mag 2, and with a temporary jerk of extra speed and a slight, momentary tilt forward, the Air Skimmer was moving at a decent run speed for a normal person. Magnitude 3 was even faster, as he moved what he estimated to be about twice the speed of Mag 2, but it was also right on the edge of being too much as he could feel under his feet that the cushion of air couldn’t maintain its structure if he were to go any faster. It was possible that he might be able to do it with a Magnitude 5 gust of air lifting him from below, but he wasn’t going to test that while he was already in motion.

Next came turning, which was much easier due to some modifications of the left and right gusts of air he had made. Now, every time he used the mental phrases, “Left Turn” and “Right Turn”, the gust of air would only activate for a half-second before deactivating. It required another new component that he hadn’t used before, but knew about from his learning of Advanced Fusions: Interval.  What the Interval did was connect an Activation Method, an Input/Variable set (such as a specific mental phrase), a Magnitude, and an Effect, causing the Effect to only be activated for a specific interval.

In this case, the Reactive Activation Method ran through an Interval set at .5 seconds to the mental phrase Input, “Left Turn” Variable, Magnitude 1 component, and the gust of air Effect that was aimed at the forward right side of the Air Skimmer. What it effectively did was only activate the gust of air for a half-second, and it gave just enough of a push that it allowed the vessel to turn without spinning out of control.

In reality, with the Skimmer moving on the cushion of air, it was almost like the equivalent of sliding on ice; as a result, the gust of air on the right side of the vessel simply rotated the entire thing slightly while still maintaining its original heading, and only when the push from the back caught up with the change would it begin moving in the new direction. That made turning in a certain direction to reach a specific destination difficult unless he planned out his turns far in advance. It was more of a curve than a sharp course correction, but it worked well enough that it would get him to where he was going.

Lastly, he needed to test stopping the Air Skimmer, which nearly ended up with him crashing the entire thing. With a fifth gust of air added to the front of the vessel, designed to help slow it down and stop it, he made a mistake by turning off the forward-thrusting gust of air from behind before turning on the Magnitude 1 gust that blew from the front with the phrase, “Stop 1”. Even though there was no active push from behind, the Skimmer still had momentum as it glided along its cushion of air – but it wasn’t much. However, upon activation of the stopping gust, it was almost as if the Skimmer had run into a wall, as it stopped so abruptly that the front dipped down and the back came up, nearly flipping the entire thing over. A few of the crates and bags shifted along with the abrupt change in equilibrium, but everything quickly settled back down as it partially stabilized and began to be pushed backwards.

Deactivating everything, he got everything put away back where it should be and tried again, this time slowly decreasing the forward gust of air in Magnitude and maintaining it at Mag 1 before activating the stopping on. It was a delicate balance that he had to maintain as it slowed to the point where he could deactivate the rear gust of air, and there was still a slight jolt when the stopping gust took effect, but it wasn’t nearly as bad.

With the success of his testing and practice, he eventually turned his new Air Skimmer toward to the east and started on his journey home over the long stretch of desert.