Inertia was looking like a whole other Forgeborn when the Fores’thall’s Djinn-souled arrived.
Ari and I had dressed up for the occasion, but Inertia stood out like a beacon. Not only had she replaced her metalic feathers with a darker set, she’d had the entirety of her body shined and buffed. It was a bit like standing next to a pristine hot rod at an old car show. While my robes were impeccably fitted and pressed, thanks entirely to Calbern, I had nothing on my Forgeborn friend. The reds were nearly crimson, and the chrome sections were bright enough to blind a person. Most of the time Inertia was so covered in grime it was hard to tell she even had chrome.
No doubt of it at the moment.
It was just the three of us waiting atop the peak of Mount Aeternia.
After the ship had entered my domain, I’d picked out that the weakest person aboard was Pegasus-soul. Figured it might be best to keep anyone weaker away. Nexxa and Vaserra were busy making sure things didn’t fall down around our ears, as were most the rest of our people. As for Tresla, Inertia and Tresla had decided to deliberately snub House Fores’thall. If they wanted to understand her, they’d either need to know Forgespeak or use a spell.
And, much as I loved her, Bevel was as likely to blow them up or try to poison them as help convince them to leave peacefully. Fireball diplomacy at its finest, but not our first resort.
The peak had undergone a bit of an overhaul after we heard we had Djinn-souled coming. Even with only a week’s notice, the functional and practical scaffolding that had perpetually hung about the peak of Aeternia like an ugly crown had been removed. In its place we’d built a functional set of airdocks that looked as if they simply extended from the peak. Still a crown, but an elegant one. In addition to a much improved aesthetic, they docks included enchantments that shielded those boarding and disembarking from the high winds, cold and occasional vacuum.
Unfortunately, the extra effort turned out to be wasted. Not long after the three of us arrived at Mount Aeternia’s peak, Sidhe sent a new message. The visiting airship had stopped in Spellford, and was forced into one of the mid-tier docks. It wasn’t capable of going high enough to anchor at the peak.
With only an after their departure from Spellford, we scrambled to assemble a suitable docking berth directly at the new institute. Ari and I were personally putting the finishing touches on the pair of ‘wings’ we’d added to the ninth level to serve as docking platforms when I spotted the airship moving closer.
Where our Shield-class airships resembled a zeppelin, and the Dauntless was a great pair of wedges with a canyon down the middle, the approaching airship most closely resembled something straight from the age of sail. Even had sails of a sort, though instead of cloth were sheets of burning fire that flared outwards from three separate masts spaced about the hull.
That had to be horribly impractical. They’d need extra enchantments just to protect the crew and structure from the warping caused by the heat. Not to mention fire wasn’t an ideal source of thrust. Not compared to air or arcane.
“Well, it certainly looks impressive,” Ari said while tugging her sleeves down, having rolled them up while we worked to keep from snagging her arm while casting. Neither of were quite as pristine as we had been a few hours earlier.
“That’s about the only reason I can think to do it that way,” I said, fighting the urge to shake my head. “They’ve got to be burning at least ten times the mana they’d be using for an air enchantment that did the same.”
“Perhaps they have a strong Fire affinity. Not everyone has such efficient conversion spells or a mana-well as pure as we enjoy,” Ari reminded me while drawing her staff and setting the end to its active mode. Mana brushed over both of us, clothes tugged gently into position.
“Huh. Yeah, I guess if their fire affinity was high enough…” I trailed off as I did the math. It wouldn’t even need to be that high to be worth it, if they just didn’t have anyone with a half-decent air affinity. That’d be weird, considering according to Sidhe, they had at least five people at Pegasus or higher, but it was possible.
More likely one of the Djinn-souled was fire aligned and the mana for the airship was so negligible compared to their generation.
Soon the airship was moving to approach the eastern wing. It was smaller than I’d expected, barely fifty feet long. Even so, the ring of fire was hot enough it caused a bit of cracking in the granite we’d surfaced the dock with. We’d hardly had enough time to build the wings. Enchanting it too? Not a chance.
Still, the marble beneath the granite was thick and solid, reinforced by some of Inertia’s best steel. The cracking only affected the superficial surface. I easily repaired it as we waited, my fingers gesturing minutely as I channelled Sculpt Stone. Then we waited for the ramp to descend. A very traditional wooden ramp, set out by a pair of Pegasus-souled who looked to barely be adults. Prodigies?
It seemed a strange choice, to have a ramp when every person on the ship was at least Pegasus. Posturing of some sort, I figured, like the airship itself. There was no reason they couldn’t have prevented the enchantment that propelled the ship from damaging our structure.
They were simply trying to make a point.
Whatever point they were attempting was somewhat undercut by the fact they’d come to us after their failure with assassins. It was further undercut by the fact they’d been incapable of reaching our primary airship dock where Aeternia’s Shield was berthed. Might’ve been a bit petty, holding it so literally over their head, but I was feeling petty.
It was a shame the second airship was still a few days from being air worthy.
My thoughts were brought back to the moment as the figures that had been occluded by the heat haze (an effect that had to have been enhanced by an enchantment to block sight as well as it did) were revealed to us. According to Sidhe’s briefing, the first pair down the ramp were the Djinn-souled themselves. The Fores’thall’s official foreign indignitaries.
Assuming they weren’t glamored crew or simulacrums.
The two men were a quiet study of contrast. The elven man had a pair of elegant horns that swept back around his head like a diadem. To accentuate the look, his dark green hair hung in intricate braids off the horns. His robes were an offset green that paired tastefully with his hair. All of that was ruined by the awkward device that was strapped over one eye. It was as though a spider with a telescope mounted to its back had been crawling across his face then simply squatted in place.
Beside him was a man thick as he was tall, corded muscle rippling as his gaze fell on us. Next to the elf’s pale skin and green ensemble, his crimson skin seemed even brighter. Nearly as bright as Inertia. A pair of filed down stubs where a pair of horns had once been, sat just over the otherwise bald man’s thick eyebrows. Had they been intact, I suspect he would’ve had more than a passing resemblance for a devil. A devil wearing a well-fitted duster and leather trousers.
“Welcome to Cape Aeternia, High Djinn Katanel and Profound Warrior Starbreaker,” I said, giving them a short bow. While I wasn’t pleased to be hosting them, they technically represented Terra Vista, so a bit of politeness could be spared. When I’d first read their names and descriptions, I’d thought someone had made a mistake and paired them wrong. But no, the elf went by Profound Warrior Starbreaker, and the solid slab of muscle that was High Djinn Katanel apparently went by Kat, most of the time.
Djinn were powerful enough that unless there was a dragon-souled around to say otherwise, everyone tended to roll with their preferences.
The elf slapped a hand across Katanel’s chest, palm held open as he rubbed his fingers together. “Told you.”
“Alas, it seems you were correct.” Katanel said, pulling a glittering stone from inside his duster and placing it within Starbreaker’s outstretched hand. “Even here, we are known and addressed with too much pomp and circumstance.”
“I wouldn’t say too much,” Starbreaker said, having clearly collected on a wager of some sort. Despite his words, he tucked the stone inside his own robes and didn’t return it to his larger companion. “He didn’t include a single one of my many illustrious victories. Whenever we make port in Central, it takes them an hour to finish reciting the greeting.”
“Thus we avoided such unpleasantness. Perhaps though, we should greet our hosts in turn. While they may be mere Pegasi, they do rule this land.” Katanel gestured in our direction, his smoky gray eyes moving between us.
Despite them ignoring us prior to that point, it was still a more polite greeting than I’d expected from the Fores’thalls. Not a single poisoned dagger or hurricane force spells destroying everything we’d built.
I might’ve been nursing a bit of a grudge.
“As you know who we are, so too have I heard your names spoken,” Katanel said, folding his thick hands over each other and bowing slightly in my direction. “Magus Dominus Perth of Althon, ruler of Cape Aeternia and prodigy Pegasus-souled. Shaper Arizar of Spellford, daughter of High Shaper Thozgar. And… I must admit, I am unfamiliar with you, madame Forgelord?”
Inertia responded with her name and nothing more, the hisses and whistles carrying a lot more meaning now that I understood her language better. Inertia was such an abbreviation as to be almost wholy inaccurate.
“What does that even mean? Where’s your translator?” Starbreaker asked, flicking a hand in our direction. “What sort of Forgelord doesn’t have a translator.”
“The good Forgelord’s name is Inertia.” The red-skinned man, steepled his thick fingers as he considered her. “Though if I recall correctly, the Forgelord had another name once.”
A rattling hiss from Inertia cut him off before he could say what exactly that name was. Which was fine by me. If Inertia wanted to tell me more, she would.
“Fine. Not as if I care about some clanker,” Starbreaker said, waving his hand. “So, now that we’ve all been introduced, should we get down to the good stuff? I’m assuming you’ve arranged a feast to celebrate our arrival?”
Ari’d informed me ahead of time that I’d be expected to do exactly that. I’d wanted to refuse, but Ari had a couple suggestions that had changed my mind. I gave the man a nod. “Of course. It’ll be held at dusk this evening. I can personally escort you to your rooms, or you may explore the tower as you wait.”
“We’ll look around for ourselves, though you can show my apprentices to their rooms.” Starbreaker was already walking past me towards the access shaft, leaving three awkward younger elves standing at the top of the ramp, Katanek following.
While we’d had working lifts, none went to the upper levels. It was a low cost safety measure, to keep those who hadn’t reached Pegasus from wandering into dangerous areas. Which meant it was little more than an empty shaft at the moment.
Not that any of our guests had a problem with it, since everyone could fly. Well, one of them had a bit of trouble. The smaller male elf was struggling to levitate a single heavy trunk, neither of the young man’s companions helped.
Arizar and Inertia stayed and struck up a conversation with Katanel while I ignored Starbreaker’s supposed insult and guided the three Pegasus-souled apprentices to their rooms.
While listening in, I discovered they were barely adults. They’d all benefited from a similar tutelage to the one I’d received from Nexxa shortly before the trip. Despite being Pegasus-souled, the kids had even less experience as mages than I did.
To my surprise, Starbreaker found me while the apprentices were still putting things away. “I was expecting more of such a prodigy.”
I shrugged, not really caring what the man expected.
“Is this little fortress really the best your people have to offer? It barely has the most basic enchantments. Hardly an appropriate place to host dignitaries of our status,” Starbreaker said, arms crossed.
“Yep.” Best we were going to offer them, anyway.
While he was still staring at me blankly, I gave him a crooked smile before walking away and dropping down to the next level. Ari had been clear that since they were an official delegation from Terra Vista, I didn’t have to engage with them outside equally official meetings. In addition, Sidhe had advised me the less I said before we knew what they wanted, the better.
Just listening to the grumbling and conversations of their apprentices had revealed this hadn’t been a planned trip. Someone had pulled both these Djinn from their personal projects with no warning and basically thrown them at us. Also, somehow Sidhe had missed the fact Starbreaker was the matriarch’s brother. A fact revealed when they complained about their great-grandfather and great-grandaunt ignoring all their requests.
The next couple hours before the feast passed quickly as I spent my time working on some of the enchantments we were intending to add to the tower. It irked me that I was doing so after Starbreaker’s earlier comment, but I wasn’t about to avoid it. It might not have been the next thing on my to do list, but it’d been close. That it kept me busy enough that I didn’t have to talk to anyone was just a happy coincidence.
What I should’ve done was dipped into Memory Palace for a bit, review everything Ari and I had preparred, and maybe visit Sidhe again.
Instead, I installed an air circulation enchantment that ensured every non-closed loop room was kept at a pleasant temperature with fresh air. Something that was ridiculously easy in the shade of Mistvale’s new mana-rich atmosphere. Mostly, I was thankful the materials were common ones, even if we’d had to trade for them with Spellford.
Eventually, the time for the feast was upon us.
Everyone was there. I hadn’t planned it that way, but schedules had lined up in such a way that every one of my friends and allies was there. Even the serpent lord Vergel had shown up. Well, almost everyone… Tamrie wasn’t there. But it wasn’t like she could teleport from wherever she was swimming with the leviathans in the deep south.
My eyes narrowed as I spotted Bevel talking to the elf who’d been struggling with the trunks earlier, playing with her hair and laughing at something he said.
“You look as if someone slipped you an especially potent green slushy.” Ari slid in next to me, squeezing my hand. “Have the Fores’thall representatives offended you?”
“You mean other than the fact they exist? Or the fact they’re here, in our home, trying to intimidate us into… honestly, I’m not sure what their goals are yet.” I returned the squeeze even as I straightened and did the best to wipe the frown off my face. It was good Bevel was making friends. But why did it have to be with Fores’thall scum?
“They do represent Terra Vista. There is only so much they will do, while in such a position,” Ari reminded me even as she led me towards the head of the main table. Unfortunately, it’d just be the two of us to match the Djinn-souled dignitaries.
Even with the surprise we’d saved for later, I would’ve preferred something less pretentious. But sitting above everyone else would work better for when the main course was served.
Katanek remained polite, engaging Ari in a discussion over the collapse of the fashion scene with the advent of the civil war, which they were calling the Bladesinger conflict. If I didn’t know how much effort Ari put into taking care of our people, the discussion of angles, coverage and accents might’ve seemed a bit vapid. Seemed that no matter how much Calbern drilled into my skull that appearances mattered, I couldn’t find it engaging. In his defence, he had convinced me it was important. In addition, thanks to Sidhe, I understood that the collapse of the fashion industry and signs of it returning were indicators that a taste of normalcy was returning to Terra Vista.
I wondered how long that’d last. From what I’d learned, Terra Vista had always been less dependent on the Barrier Pillars. In a way, if not for the civil war, they might well have ended up benefiting from the Pillars’ fall.
Eventually, Starbreaker arrived. The first course was served, a specially prepared dish made from one of the local dinosaurs from Mistvale. Turned out some of the refugees were developing the skills to herd and raise some of the local fauna.
Once the first course was over, the first round of official discussion could finally start.
“As I’m sure you know, people aren’t happy with you.” Starbreaker was refreshingly straightforward, popping a crispy root-chip into his mouth. “My sister was rather insistent I remove your head and bring it back as a trophy.”
“Yep. Nothing like a Magus Protectus doing their job to upset people.” I met his gaze evenly. Compared to Perth’s father, his gaze didn’t have half the weight. Then again, he was also smiling as he ate yet another of the root-chips. He’d ate more of those than the rest of us combined.
“If it were only you upholding your duties, the Matriarch would not be so perturbed,” Katanek said, the large devil-like man dabbing at his chin with his napkin despite not having spilled a drop of the thick gravy. “It is your trade of nature materials at such low prices. Even in the middle of a war that should have shown most prodigious profits, Fores’thall has seen our poorest trading in a century.”
Starbreaker’s smile didn’t change as he leaned forward. “Yeah. If she didn’t have to keep the new bosses on the council happy, Sis probably would’ve charged up here to deal with you herself. You’re lucky you got us instead.”
“The matriarch of house Fores’thall is not known for fits of anger. Has our business truly been so ruinous?” Ari’s question was punctuated by an arched eyebrow, swirling the wine in her glass before taking a sip.
Felt weird to have wine at the table.
“Honestly, thought it’d be more fun to see the ice-queen lose her temper,” Starbreaker said, leaning back and putting his feet up on the table, earning a small frown from Ari. “Bit scary. Trust me, you don’t want to be on the receiving end. If you’re smart, you’ll find a way to make it up to her.”
“So, I’m supposed to appease your sister simply because we cost her some money?” Was feeling more and more like I needed to ascend to Hydra. If I could get the sacrifices, maybe I could push through to Djinn quickly. Assuming I didn’t have weird hangups like Nexxa did with the tail.
“It would be in your best interest, to at least admit you have caused harm to the lady’s holdings,” Katanek said, tilting his head forward.
“We are hardly responsible for the Fores’thall’s failure,” Ari countered immediately. “Nor is it your place as the representatives of Terra Vista to imply otherwise.”
Even if she’d told me they’d do exactly that.
At that moment, the doors at the far end of the room swung open. I fought down a smile as I saw the Abyss Emperor’s skull, used as a decoration for the meal spread around it. A reminder that even a Pegasus-souled could be a threat.
However, before it could reach us, an argument broke out at one of the other tables. Specifically, at the table with Nexxa and Bevel. “You’re all Fronting idiots.”
It was only for a fraction of a second, but everyone in the hall with even any mana sensitivity felt my sister’s lightning tinged aura fill the room. The outward representation of the same ‘muscle’ that allowed a Pegasus soul to fly. There was an edge to her aura that most didn’t have, the result of forging it in circumstances most couldn’t replicate.
While we’d wanted to demonstrate her strength, her getting in an argument with one of the apprentices hadn’t been part of the plan. Nor was interrupting before the main course.
Even so, the flinch on Starbreaker’s face was satisfying. I shared a glance with Ari even as I felt my mind speeding up, replaying the conversation from the apprentice’s table I’d subconsciously picked up on despite not actively listening. Mostly because I didn’t trust a single one of the Fores’thall.
While I hadn’t caught everything, it seemed… one of the apprentices had accused Nexxa of sitting around while they’d been struggling to fix the damage to their farms caused by the Bladesingers. That hadn’t been enough to set her off, but it’d definitely caused the conversation to get tense.
Then despite clearly sweating, the apprentice had doubled down, his teeth chattering even as he said, “You… you and your b-brother are… are cowards. If you weren’t, you’d have helped during the w-war.”
Even that hadn’t been enough to get Nexxa to explode, though it had caused Bevel to gasp.
Another apprentice chose that moment to comment, their voice dripping with sarcasm, “Everyone knows Magus Domini only look after themselves. Never help anyone else. Nope.”
This had earned a soft chuckle from Nexxa and Bevel, defusing some of the tension.
However, the third apprentice cleared his throat. “The Magus Dominus governing this territory’s a fool for letting us in. He’ll never get us out now.”
“And what makes you think that?” Nexxa asked, her amusement clear in her voice.
There was silence for several seconds before the third apprentice let out a loud sigh. “Because, they made us into traps. If you try to hurt or force us out, our souls will detonate, killing everyone below Pegasus within a hundred miles.”