It did not take Calbern a week to complete his ascension.
In fact, it barely took him twelve hours. He’d woken while I’d been on the call with Ari, then spent the next few hours getting used to his new speed. Even punched through one of the walls when testing the durability of his hands. That’d been when the rest of us found out he was awake.
Even with my high neural dynamics, it was hard to keep up with his movements. It was almost like when we’d first met. The thought made me smile as we circled the hole in the ground near where Calbern had fought his former mentor
Honestly, a hole in the ground was being generous. I couldn't help but think it was little more than a half-collapsed cave. The surrounding wasteland was a little bit more hospitable than the area immediately surrounding Ashforge City, though that wasn't a high bar to clear.
“It seems someone wanted to prevent easy access,” Calbern observed as we leapt free of the Iron Curtain, falling more than flying as we descended.
“So the caved in entrance is a recent thing?”
Calbern adjusted his suit, causing it to catch more air, slowing his fall more than should’ve been possible. “Perhaps it was a side-effect of my departure. You have noted that improperly calibrated worlds magic can have disastrous side effects.”
With a minor flex of my aura, I matched his slower speed, though I didn’t have a chance to respond until after we landed.
Calbern bled off the extra speed with a roll that transitioned into him leaping several feet in the air before coming to a final rest. With a tug of his suit, he shook off any dust he’d picked up, turning towards the entrance.
“Might’ve been you,” I conceded as I set down lightly beside him. Only to have Inertia clomp down behind us, Tresla leaping from her back. A half-second behind her, Calamity landed with a splintering sound.
It seemed I was the only one who’d flown the several hundred feet down.
Even Starbreaker simply jumped off and left a small crater where he landed. The dust hadn’t even settled by the time he started speaking. “Not the most auspicious location for an ancient transportation artifact. Especially one you hope to use.”
“Doesn’t need to be perfect, just there,” I said, stepping forward and using Sculpt Stone to clear the path, reinforcing as we went. Even with Calbern’s recent advance, even he would’ve had a hard time squeezing through the passage.
Wasn’t eager to be buried along with the Waygate.
“The collapse was deliberate,” I said, pointing to several destroyed support structures.
“Yes,” Inertia hissed out in agreement.
“How can you tell? It’s nothing but rock?” Starbreaker asked, unusually respectful.
Since it wasn’t a fast process anyway, I explained how much I’d learned about spell reinforced stone. Most of which had been picked up under Vetrov’s tutelage while doing construction around Aeternia.
“So my former master deliberately collapsed the complex before they left. A simple but ineffective means of keeping us out.”
“It would be, if that’s all they’d done,” I said, grunting.
“Master Percival?”
“They left traps. Pretty sure that one would put anyone who stepped on it into a recursive teleportation trap,” I said, kneeling down to inspect a silver line almost entirely obscured by rock and dust. Yet I could feel its presence pressing against my shield, thanks to Bahama’s ‘lessons’.
Made me wonder if there was a way to hide that presence. Had to be a form of inefficiency, that I could even feel it.
“Pretty sure this would work even on a dragon-souled, assuming they’re not a worlds mage.”
“None are, that I know of,” Starbreaker informed me, kneeling down to inspect the lines. “Will it harm the target?”
“No. Just keep them…” I trailed off as the man stepped forward, triggering the trap.
And ending up in a continuous loop.
“It is soooo tempting to leave him there,” I said, grumbling as I inspected the runework.
“Perhaps he doubted your words. Or wished to test himself,” Calbern offered.
“Can respect that,” Calamity said while joining me in inspecting the runes. “These are well done. Not the work of your master, from what you’ve told us.”
“Not to my knowledge,” Calbern agreed.
“Well, someone knows their way around their runes. I could probably do better, but not by much.”
“Perhaps his new apprentice. She is not a typical Knight Exemplar.”
“He’s got a new apprentice? That going to be a problem?”
“I do not believe Dallia will be a problem,” Calbern said. His voice was even, yet I thought I caught a slight quiver. Then again, it might’ve been the disruptions in the air caused by Starbreaker continually looping in place.
It took half-an-hour to disable the trap without hurting the man.
He appeared to the side in an unfolding twinkle of starlight.
“Ha, I knew it couldn’t…” he trailed off. The room had been mostly cleared in the time I’d been working. “I was in there longer than a few seconds.” It wasn’t a question.
Even so, I said, “Yep!” before moving on.
There were a few other traps, all of them powered by the Waygate’s stores.
"Clever" Starbreaker said as I dismantled the latest trap. One that had seemed to restore mana. However, if you stood in it for too long, it used that absorbed mana to match our own. Then it would use that to drain it away. “That would have tricked most mages.”
“Good thing we’re not most mages then.”
“Would’ve worked on me if you hadn't been leading the way,” Starbreaker admitted with a shrug. “There's a reason why I tend to destroy things as opposed to approach cautiously.”
That would’ve done it too,” I allowed even as I recovered the tier four world materials that had been put into the trap. Then I gestured to the nearby chamber we’d almost reached. “Could’ve easily destroyed what we came here for too though.”
“As I’ve said, enchanting hasn't been my specialty.”
“Yep, I remember. You're all about the smacky smack. You like your fancy clubs.”
“Fancy clubs?” Starbreaker asked, tilting his hand traced over his hilt, as if ready to draw it.
“Yep, swords are just fancy clubs.”
Starbreaker opened his mouth and stared at me for several seconds as if unsure of how to reply. “I’m not sure if you genuinely believe that… or are trying to insult half of Ro’an.”
“You know I've made a few,” I said, continuing with the momentum as we cleared the tunnel. “Fancy clubs, I mean. Or swords, if you insist.”
With a scoff, he gripped his hilt tighter. “I cannot imagine a sword made by you was of any particular value.”
I bobbed my head side to side at that. “You know, you're probably right. Swords are not my area of expertise.”
“I have to admit I am still not certain what your area of expertise is. You know a great deal about enchanting, you are not useless in a fight, and even your spell design is… adequate,” Starbreaker said as we entered the main chamber. Luckily it hadn’t been subjected to the destruction in the rest of the cave. It had more than its fair share of traps though. Even a glance was enough to see that much.
“My specialty, hmm? That's a good question.” I turned to the others. “What would you say my specialty is?”
Calbern turned away from Tresla, who he'd been talking with quietly. A private conversation in regard to the fight he'd had there with his master. Well somewhat private. I doubted there was a single person present who couldn't pick up every word they were saying, even if they were speaking in soft whispers. But we’d allowed the illusion.
“Your area of expertise?” He turned and looked towards Inertia and then back at Tresla.
None of them spoke for several seconds. I paused in my work looking up from the rune below me. “Why do I have a chill running up my spine?”
“I do believe, Master Percival, that your area of expertise is in dropping mountains.”
“Huh. Not the worst reputation I guess,” I said as I turned back to my work. “Though I did think it would have more to do with enchanting or design or… not mountains.”
“Lady Nexxa is an expert at spell design. So much so, I would say her expertise is greater than yours,” Calbern continued. “When it comes to material designs, Inertia is clearly your superior. As for combat your sister or myself outstrip you in most fields.”
Inertia whistle-hissed her laughter of agreement while the melodic chimes of Tresla’s giggles escaped her hood.
“Traitors,” I said, shaking a fist at them. “Every one of you. Traitors most foul.”
I turned back to my work and it didn't take long for me to remove the rest of the trapped enchantments. It took far longer to bring in the Home Spark anchor from within the Iron Curtain. Something Inertia and Calamity were handling as I finally inspected the damaged Waygate itself.
Which I wasn’t left to do uninterupted, of course.
“You truly believe you can get this working again?” Starbreaker asked, holding up a broken piece of stone. One that had clearly been part of the waygate.
“Shouldn't even take very long,” I said, taking the rock from him and patching it in place with Sculpt Stone. The enchantment was defunct, but the material was solid. Honestly, it was in better shape than most I’d repaired. Which made sense. Calbern had used it to teleport across a sixth of the continent. “Few hours? Maybe a day. Making it work with Home Spark is gonna be the tricky part.”
“If you’re speaking truly, I believe your friends were underselling you. It seems your specialty lies here.”
“Hold on, was that a compliment?” I asked, looking up from my work as I squinted at the man.
“No merely an observation. One you have yet to prove,” Starbreaker replied, his hand dropping away from the stone I’d restored to the Waygate.
“That's good. I’d hate to think you were starting to warm up to me.” In truth I was more worried about the idea I might be warming up to him.
After Bahama had kidnapped me and I’d simply taken it in stride, Ari had pointed out I was a bit too forgiving when it came to some people. It hadn’t quite been a fight, but that was mostly because I’d admitted she was right. I might’ve also gushed a bit at her slapping a dragon.
That had… gotten away from us a bit.
I quickly pushed the memory to the side, pleasant as it was.
Instead, I focused on getting the Way Gate working. It was even simpler to repair than I'd indicated. Considering how impressed he’d been with what I’d thought was an inflated timeline, I decided to putz about a bit. Didn't need to prove how skilled I was. To think, I’d thought I'd been making it seem harder than it was. Turned out, as experts in a field tend to do, I'd overestimated the level of competence most people might have with such a specialized field.
Thankfully, Starbreaker didn't hang around to watch, so it was easy for me to extend the time to the full day.
Not that I wasted that time. Instead of repairs, I used it to run tests on the network. The local network was in worse shape than Aeternia’s.
Though the fact it had a local network was encouraging. Since it was a Waygate Nexus, it meant I was able to connect to my citizen access. Apparently it was getting closer to being fully established. I was up to a class-3 citizen, which enabled several simple features on the interface. Features I'd had from utility access. I suspected that by class-1 I’d have my full access back at the very least.
There were still a couple of weeks left before the integration was completed, yet at the rate the access was increasing I suspected I'd be class-1 before then. Not that I intended to hang out at the Waygate for it to finish.
More useful, while delving into the Waygate settings I stumbled across a scan of the current hostiles spread across both the local section of the Forgelands and most of Aeternia.
Which included a surprisingly stretch of the Frigid Peaks. Ari’d mentioned our success deploying additional beacons yet I wasn't prepared to see half the Frigid Peaks lit up with every monster and creature across them.
It seemed that while the barriers' distance was limited, the scanning range of the beacons remained as potent as the originals. Once Nexxa woke I'd be able to send her the information and she'd be able to scour the monsters from the entire breadth of the eastern half of the Frigid Peaks. Even with her asleep, I knew Ari and Sidhe would both be able to use the information. A definite win.
Playing with the features more, I was able to identify several pockets of people who’d been missed during the outward push. It was so easy to miss people when they holed up and didn't step foot outside of their caves or half-ruined homes. I made sure to send a report to Sidhe of the monsters and people both.
Once that was done, I had another relaxing conversation with Ari and Bevel. Near the end, when Bevel ran off to grab something she wanted to show me, Ari and I spent a solid ten minutes simply sitting in silence, our hands pressed against the mirror as if we could simply hold each other.
It was right as we were saying our goodbyes for the evening that the signal suddenly cut out.
When I tested with HomeSpark again, I discovered the interference had increased. Not a promising sign, not when we’d been about to punch through it using the Waygate network. I cursed myself for the delay, all just to hide my competence from Starbreaker. Not letting myself dwell, I set to work tying the Home Spark anchor into the Waygate’s network.
The design of the sparkplug shaped anchor made it more complicated than it had to be, but considering how familiar I was with both, it was only an extra half hour to get it all working.
The very first test run was surprisingly successful. So successful I didn’t trust it and ran another dozen before I was certain it was working as expected.
It was good I had. Whatever was drawing the initial pass into the monster's trap didn't affect the Waygate network.
Not when the load was as light as the testing signal.
There was a drawback though. Considering the extradimensional weight involved at each end, it was taking too much mana.
Understandable, really. Reassuring even.
Doing the math, I confirmed an unfortunate truth. To open a portal, it’d take everything the local Waygate had left. And we'd only be able to send a few people through. Far less than our entire crew aboard the Iron Curtain.
Without a handy mana-lake or other source of mana to recharge it, so long as the interference was there, it’d be a single one-way trip.
“Problem?” Tresla asked, having apparently been watching me run the numbers.
“It’s not ideal. We can punch through, but I figure maybe eight people at most.”
“Ah. And we won’t be leaving our people behind.”
Hearing her call them ‘our people’ put a bit of a smile on my face. It faded quickly. “Yeah. We could send some of them home, but…”
“But they won’t leave us behind either,” Tresla said, her hood swaying side to side.
“So send us,” Calamity said, stepping over. I hadn’t noticed her return. She’d been slipping in and out as I worked, occasionally asking questions before going off to… do whatever it was she was doing. I’d been a bit focused on my work.
The ‘us’ she was referring to included the other Forgeborn we’d recruited. Sharpnose and the others stood together behind her, talking in the background clamor that was Forgespeak. Amazing how easily I’d learned to tune it out.
“No,” Inertia said, crossing her arms as she stared down her sister.
“Worried, big sis?” Calamity asked, patting her bigger sister’s larger shoulder. “Don’t be. I’ve checked his work. Kid knows his stuff. And you’re where the action is. You know I can’t sit on the sidelines.”
“Safe,” Inertia said.
Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe I was getting better at understanding my Forgeborn friend. Either way, I was certain Inertia was worried about her sister.
Maybe that’s why I held off on pulling the trigger. It wasn’t until a couple hours, when Ari contacted me off-schedule I realized what had been bothering me.
“Nexxa’s awake. And she’s doing well,” Ari said, her voice carrying the same relief I felt. “Her tail is so cute.”
“Tail, huh?” I asked, chuckling. So much for all that effort to get rid of it.
“Mhm,” Ari said, turning to the side.
“Don’t even ask,” Nexxa said, a single finger appearing in the silvery surface. “Was rougher than I expected. Turns out things you killed don’t like being subsumed.”
“Makes sense,” I said, unable to keep a smile off my face. “Now that you’re awake, I’m going to be sending some help.”
“You’ve got a way home?” Ari asked, her voice tight.
“Sorta,” I said, explaining the modifications and the limits.
“Calamity, huh? Anything to worry about?” Nexxa asked.
“Not any more than any other mage,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sure she’ll fit right in.”
“A Forgeborn mage?” Ari asked, her steepled fingers flickering in the silvery liquid. The signal was getting worse.
“Technically, she’s more of an enchanter. But it’s close.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Nexxa reassured me. “You’re working on your own way home?”
“Yeah. With the easy ways cut off, there’s only the hard or time consuming ones left.”
“We’ll keep things together. You just get home safe, Per per.”
“I agree with your sister. If the mirrors fail again, know we will look out for each other. Do the same.”
“We will.”
After saying my goodbyes, it was time to send Calamity, Sharpnose and the others through.
I montiored everything closely as the Waygate Nexus activated, reaching out and swallowing them.
Then it punched through, depositing them safely on the far side seconds later.
Unfortunately, the signal for the mirrors cut out once more shortly after we confirmed their safe arrival.
Once they were gone, my Forgeborn friend placed her hand on my shoulder. Inertia tilted her head towards the exit. I followed her outside, where I discovered the howling wastes had decided it was time to live up to their name.
It made it nearly impossible to hear her, even as she leaned forward, placing her head just in front of me.
"Time," she hissed out, followed by several additional short phrases in Forgespeak. Roughly to the effect it was time for her to step up and be a true friend.
Which I called bullshit on immediately. “You're already a true friend. I haven't had many who've been as steadfast an ally as you.”
Inertia shook her head, letting out a long sigh. “Forgelord,” she hissed out, the word clear despite the howling winds around us. Spreading her wings wide to shelter us, she raised her head, looking at Iron Curtain where it hung above us.
“Strength to save. Strength to help,” Inertia managed to hiss out all in one long series of words before her body started shaking. After nearly a minute she added, “Weak is luxury. Cannot afford.”
“Okay so what does that mean and how can I help?”
Inertia flexed her wings, then nodded slowly. “Armory. True form.”