The First World Sphere

Chapter 76: 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. Mera had made good progress with the brewer, 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 Icy Vault dungeon. 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 said, “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, “Callem, have you talked to Sebastian recently?”

Callem got serious as he spoke, “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 his response was, “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.”

“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. What is your goal of meeting him?” 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, “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 lack of goods from our lowlands outposts.” Callem nodded at this as well.

“You should take Gareth with you if you do go to the capital 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 pipped up, “I can go with him.”

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 and have a quick talk and then come back.” She looked devastated, but I wasn’t going to change my mind.

I added, “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.”

Wynna added, “Yes, and I am coming out of retirement one day a week for the big customers,” she said with a smile even though her voice sounded annoyed.

The conversation started to turn to private 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. I learned Mera, Fera, Lana, Sammie, and Gareth went to see a play in Aegis City and returned to Solaris City earlier in the day. Fera and Gareth were somewhere about, but she didn’t know where.

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 at the Shiny Platinum.

I was upset I hadn’t had the opportunity to try it. I hadn’t been into the large brewery setup which Mera had taken to assembling with her sister during the week. I just wanted to approve the final products anyway. 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’ worth of time. So she could single-handedly provide the establishment with a few different beverages and still have excess to sell on the market. I planned to get my coin’s worth out of her.

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.

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

“Stormy, it couldn’t have gone any better,” he exclaimed. I set privacy and alarm spells while listening 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 other women thought of me, I wasn’t concerned.

I explained to Gareth about the new possible member of the delve team, Ullmark. I also told him I wasn’t going to Aegis City the next seventh day for the delve. He insisted on coming with me to the capital for my own protection. I conceded the point because it seemed he was not going to take no for an answer.

Gareth started talking about going to the tailor shop run by Danlius. He needed new elegant clothes since he outgrew his old ones. I hoped Gareth did grow too much more. I told him we could stop at the tailor shop, but he would have to use his own coin. He mocked being hurt by my refusal to play sugar daddy.

He also said 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. He let slip that he was anxious to see Nina again. Apparently, Nina was a server/housekeeper at the inn. Gareth was trying to tell how he had misunderstood her advances the last time he stayed there, and now that he understood, he wished to take her up on them. When I asked him how this would affect his relationship with Fera, he suddenly went silent.

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 to be 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 skyship.

The first day of classes for the second term was totally 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! 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 if they could even 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 spells.

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Currently, I only had my dimensional closet spell 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 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 benefit and largest benefit was it increased your aether pool recovery. It meant you needed to fix your spells in synchronous orbits around the core, so they didn’t interact with each other. Simple on paper, but it took mages years to master. If you had multiple spells 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. If they 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 magic spheres were closely linked, so I needed to master the aether core stabilization before I could learn the spell. I wasn’t going to risk my dimensional closet.

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 and just kept giving me more and more advanced aether core exercises to help.

Thankfully, my artificing class was just me. Mia was taking a leadership class 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 and gold to write out the aetheric runes. Since the ship has such a high volume of aether running through the lines the platinum and gold disintergrate over time. The runes needed to be rewritten every year causing the maintenance of a skyship to be immense and keep the value of metals high! A heavily used Harbinger ship could run through thousands of gold worth of material in a year. 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 it was so rare and found in such small quantities and only in dungeons. I hoped to have enough mithril to build my skyship and eventually learn how to create the adamantine. Until then, gold would suffice and would hide the mithril underneath.

After enchanting, 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 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.

Dinner was still followed the law and history of Skyholme. It was boring, but I tried to pay attention. After dinner, Gareth and I walked out to Twin Rocks for some extra instruction. I didn’t practice my lightning reflexes spell since I was currently saving most of my aether to make mithril, so 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 other’s bodies as well, using the full range of the spell’s capabilities 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 3 units of aether to cast, so 12 units per minute. Not a very efficient use of aether unless it was to beat Gareth on a long-distance run.

At dinner, on the sixth day 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	Divination	15
Privacy	1	1	Illusion	10
Neutralize Poison	2	1	Healing	7
Lightning Reflexes	4	2	Lightning/Healing	16
Arcane Lock	1	1	Aetheric	6
Aether Shield	2	1	Aetheric	12
Lesser Restoration	3	1	Healing	6

I had a lot of spells on the cusp of an evolution. 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 quite angry with me for not taking her to Skyhold.

Gareth and I walked the road to the skyship docks in Solaris. Gareth was wearing his best clothes and was extremely animated. He had even cut the large gold and regular platinum out of the linings in his shoes in case I was serious about not buying him new clothes. I think it was time for Gareth to learn that coins didn’t grow on trees, so I planned to keep my promise.

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

The flight ended up having three other passengers, and I steamed a little since I had only needed to buy seven tickets and not eight. No wonder the owner had been so happy. Gareth and I were accustomed to flying on a skyship, but that didn’t stop us from going to the railing and watching like kids. I was sure if any of the passengers had been attractive women, Gareth would have been otherwise indisposed.

We landed in the lower city and had a good thirty-minute walk to the upper city to reach Gareth’s inn of preference, The Gentle Tauren. Even the lower city 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 were loud, and Gareth took a moment to peek into each window. I guessed it was curiosity and once again figured Gareth would get himself into trouble when we moved to Aegis City next academy year.

We had to pass through four city guard checkpoints on our way. We were never stopped or questioned, though. I guessed these were just choke points between certain areas of the city. The number of people still out at this late hour amazed me. The Sphere never had total darkness, meaning people didn’t need much artificial light outside of buildings.

Gareth pointed out the tailor shop as we passed it. It did look extremely luxurious. The inn was a short distance away and was not too busy when we entered. A musician by the hearth was singing and strumming in a low crooning voice. About a quarter of the tables had patrons drinking or eating meals.

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 countenance. 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! Your back!”

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