“We need a new weapon for Annit,” Shayma told me, kicking her feet in the hot spring. It was getting colder outside, and while it wasn’t necessarily cold in the core room, just the knowledge that it was getting to winter made warm things more appealing. “Something that lets her use wind and water at the same time, or even has storm directly.”

“Isn’t the blowgun kind of part of her Class? That she has Skills specifically for?” I had noticed that combat Skills seemed to gravitate toward one weapon or style, and while Annit was still in her second tier, mid-thirties, abandoning a weapon and starting over seemed like it might be a bad idea. I wasn’t incredibly familiar with the process of forming Skills naturally, since most of the Skills I dealt with were created by Transcription, but I had seen it happen.

“Yes, but it’s got limitations. Not all weapons are created equal,” Shayma pointed out. “If she’s going to change it’s going to have to be now. It’s at least possible for her to take a new weapon to second tier Skill while she’s adventuring with us. She’ll definitely want it before her next tier, so the Class evolution takes it into consideration.”

“Man, I still don’t know much about Skills and Classes it feels like.”

“I did ask mom and dad about it,” Shayma admitted. “They may be just around third-tier, but they’ve been Classers for a long time.”

“Hm. So, is she switching to melee or what?”

“She actually has some melee Skills,” Shayma pointed out. “But no, primary ranged. Something close enough to the blowgun that she can use some of the techniques, both physical and Skill related, but as I said, with water or storm. She wants to get a higher tier Affinity and I don’t blame her.”

“I’d be hesitant to make her a weapon myself,” I said, partly because she was indebted already and partly because if I didn’t know what I was doing, or it was a temporary weapon, I didn’t want it to be some absurd artifact. “You can probably do it with your Smithing though. You’ve got enough resources for it.” After all, Shayma had all the various Affinity type materials I’d ended up with, and the ability to make alloys and all kinds of fancy things in her Smithery.

“Oh, I plan to, I just don’t know what to make! I was hoping you’d know what to do since you’ve always got such strange and interesting ideas.”

“Oh. Hm. Give me a minute to think.” Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t really have thought much about pneumatic weaponry. Compressed air didn’t exactly have the best energy density, and at the same time normally it took time and tools to compress air to any meaningful extent. Annit clearly didn’t need that, considering the force that her blowgun could achieve, and there was always air, whereas combustibles required a supply in the form of bullets or the like. Maybe not an issue since Annit needed ammunition anyway, but it wouldn’t fit with wind or water or storm.

So compressed air weaponry seemed to be the ticket, and Shayma splashed about the hot spring while I considered. It took me longer than I would have liked to dredge up something that might be useful, and I really didn’t know how all the mechanics worked, but if I described it to Shayma she might be able to figure it out. She was the one with the actual Smithing Skill so hopefully that would cover valves and triggers and pistons and all the other minutiae.

“Okay, so I can think of something that might work. You’ll probably want to make it out of Affinity metals, but I’ll leave the details to you. This isn’t something that I can give you every little detail for, but hopefully enough that you can figure out what I don’t have.” What I was thinking of was a little bullpup pneumatic bowgun. Since the design used air power rather than tension, it wouldn’t need the crossbars of a standard crossbow and would end up closer to Annit’s blowgun in handling.

It would need an air tank, with a way for Annit to compress the air, which she might be able to do remotely or have to use lungpower, and I was thinking about adding some hydraulics for the water requirement. Use it to further compress the air chamber, probably with a diaphragm or a piston if Shayma could figure out how to do that. The trigger probably should be mechanical for the sake of simplicity, but maybe tying it in with magic somehow would be better.

Basically, while I had a good start of an idea, and I knew that a pneumatic bolt-thrower would work, there were a lot of details that would require someone other than me to fiddle with. Shayma and Taelah between them ought to be able to work with any needed material, and there were always people at Wildwood they could consult or commission for components.

It was Shayma who pointed out that she could rework Annit’s current blowgun into part of the barrel for the bowgun, maybe even making it possible to detach it and use it normally. I wasn’t sure about that, and thought the diameter might be a bit small, but Annit’s darts packed a horrifying punch as it was and switching to cultivated steel bolts with alchemically-boosted heads certainly wouldn’t make the impact less deadly.

While she was at it, I split off a staff-length limb from the tree I’d left in the healing-mutation Field for however long so I’d have something for Keri. Neither Shayma nor Taelah were woodworkers, but they could at least give it some alchemical treatment and give it some extra metal and a setting for Keri’s Primal. So long as Shayma did all the work I felt sufficiently distanced as to not worry about some debt.

“This is a really neat idea,” Shayma said, looking over the sketches she’d made while I was describing the bowgun. “It’s going to take a bit of work to get it into an actual weapon, but I think I can do it.”

“Yeah I hope it works. Annit needs to catch a break, though it looked like One-Eye-Green helped?”

“Yes, though not the way Dreams-Ahead did. Apparently, she let Annit and Keri sort of talk mind-to-mind. It seemed to be pretty intense!” Shayma shook her head. “I’d be jealous, but it sounded kind of like what I feel when I’m with you, so maybe I should just be smug?”

That made me laugh. Shayma did do a pretty good smug. Having a fox tail and ears really helped with smug expressions, or most expressions really. Just one of the many reasons I was lucky that she stumbled into me.

Shayma happily took her sketches off to go play around with them, while I turned my attention to the evacuation, such as it was. The fact was that while I could move entire cities in one go, it wasn’t as dramatic as it might have been to evacuate most of a country. The black domes of Relocate popped up over each of the cities, save Meil, after which I turned my attention to the coastline.

Moving bunches of tiny little villages and even the occasional lone homestead was a lot more difficult than just cities. In the cities, at least, people could be told to stay inside the walls, and I could erect portals to make up for any supply chain issues while this was going on. For all the little places, I had to wait for Iniri’s bird to fly by and spout off instructions, which not everyone followed. Some people went out fishing, regardless. Which was fair enough, I did have a Coast for them but it didn’t have fish and it was going to be harder to deal with making sure they were fed and not panicked from having accidentally left behind someone.

Ultimately it was hit and miss. Some people just refused to listen and went out for the day, so I skipped them, just leaving a portal up for whoever was going to use it. Everyone else I moved, keeping them in relative order and putting them near the cities. The location of each village or homestead got a stone pillar to mark it, since the portals wouldn’t remain open forever, but I wasn’t entirely certain I’d get everyone back where they went originally. Probably a mess, but better than them getting murdered by mage-king monsters.

I was lucky I was focusing on the coastline as much as I was, because that was the only reason I spotted an Anell-flagged ship offshore, headed up from the south. It wasn’t as mana-dependent as Andis’ ship had been, considering it was using sails instead of the fancy, magic-powered stuff, but it wasn’t completely devoid of magic. It did have its own wind pushing it along, sending it through the coastal waters north toward Meil. Or any of the coastal cities, really, except for the fact that they were all inside bubbles. Not that anyone on board the ship knew that.

They were either ignorant or extraordinarily confident to go sailing into the water of a country they’d just made an enemy of, so of course I wasn’t going to let it stand. Trying to teleport it directly from the water didn’t work, since it took time to construct a teleport field from seafloor to ship and even that would teleport all the water with it, so I took the simple step of running the ship aground.

I shoved some stone pillars up from the seabed, creating a sudden reef that the ship smashed into. That gave everyone on board a good jolt, sending people toppling and rolling across the decks, but I didn’t have much sympathy. With the ship stopped I could push it out of the water and then teleport it into a Purgatory room. While I could have gotten rid of them myself, I was pretty sure they were of more use alive and as information sources. It was the perfect thing to hand off to Iniri.

That meant I had to interrupt Shayma from where she was fiddling with stuff in her Smithery. Clearly she’d gotten some idea of how to make the bowgun for Annit, since there were a bunch of components laid out on a workbench, and I hated to break her train of thought but I figured Iniri should know. Though she was already looking in the direction of the room I’d stashed the ship, so she was obviously already aware something had happened. That [Queen’s Insight] Skill seemed to be working better and better.

“Hey Shayma, there was a House Anell flagged boat off the coast, so I grabbed it. I’m not sure what to actually do with it though, so I figure you might go get Iniri and do whatever interrogations or whatever seem appropriate.”

“Oh wow. I wonder what they were thinking?” Shayma shook her head. “I’ll grab mom, too. Just in case.”

“Ah, yeah, since this is all about her.” I looked over the people on the ship, who were mostly picking themselves up and dealing with injuries from the sudden stop, and some were staring out at the nothingness of Purgatory and panicking. I didn’t see anyone with a suspicious, void assassin type Class, only [Sailors] and [Pursers] and [Ocean Striders]. Even with [Panopticon] active, there weren’t any hidden agents. It just seemed to be a normal sailing vessel, which was even more suspicious than a follow-up assassination squad would be.

Slightly over half of the crew were fox-kin and the rest were human save for the [Ocean Striders], who were both cat-kin in what I thought was a fine bit of irony. Or maybe it was appropriate, since ships were supposed to have cats. Either way, they were about as standard as standard could be, so far as I could tell, so I was a bit at a loss for how to read them.

Shayma went to pick up Sienne and Iniri while I watched the people on board the boat. There was a narrow ring of stone around the ship that I was using for the Panopticon anchor, leaving the rest of the room as Purgatory, and some people went over the side onto it, poking at the nothingness with some sort of hooked pole from the ship’s stores. Actually, they were pretty impressive, since the last time I’d put people in Purgatory none of them wanted to get anywhere near it.

It took a few minutes to gather up Sienne and for Iniri to break away from her meetings, because of course she was in the middle of meetings. Still, they were both willing to more or less drop everything they were doing and head over. Not that Iniri came alone; she had both Cheya and a number of Queensguard just in case anyone tried anything stupid. Probably a good idea, even if I didn’t see anyone particularly suspicious.

“I’ll keep an eye out in case they try doing something stupid, but as far as I can tell they don’t have any high-level combat Classes.” There were a pair of [Sea Guards], presumably the minimal security a trading vessel would need, in their mid-thirties level-wise and probably mid-fifties age-wise. They looked grizzled enough, anyway.

The room I’d made was roughly a half-sphere, though that wasn’t obvious with Purgatory saturating it, and I opened a portal in the side for Iniri and Shayma and their entourage to go through. To the people on the ship it would look like a door appeared from nowhere, with a marble path appearing in front of it and connecting to the stone island around their boat. It was just a shame I couldn’t add trumpets or anything.

Iniri wasn’t in full regalia but she had a crown and was glowing with [Blue’s Armament of Light] haloing her head so it was pretty clear she was the authority in the room. The people poking at nothing with their hooks were yelled at by someone who was either the captain or the bo’sun, since I didn’t know what any of their nearly-nonexistent insignia meant, and everyone scurried back while he clambered hastily over the side.

Triam Usaer

Level 39 [Coastal Sailor]

I found it interesting that he didn’t have a Captain Class, or anything else, but maybe Classes that represented someone’s rank were harder to come by than just being on a sailing vessel. Or maybe he was newly promoted. Surely the Captain Class existed, somewhere out there. He straightened himself and doffed his cap, trying and failing not to look nervous. I gave Shayma the name, so she could pass it on to Iniri and Cheya, and went back to trying to spot any potential foul play.

“Pay your respects to Queen Iniri of Tarnil,” ordered one of her Queensguard, and Captain Usaer quickly knelt.

“Captain Usaer,” Iniri said, crisp and cool. “You should know that House Anell is not welcome in Tarnil.”

“Um. I did not know that, Your Highness,” Usaer said, after a lengthy pause.

“I take it you are also unaware of the reason why.”

“Yes?” Usaer ventured. “I mean no. Your Highness. I don’t know why.” Iniri raised her eyebrows and glanced at Cheya, who nodded ever so slightly.

“That seems odd,” Iniri said, but didn’t clarify things to Usaer. “What exactly brings you to Tarnil?”

“Trading, Your Highness.” Usaer just looked confused, but he wasn’t that stupid, since he was still on his knees. “House Anell gave me the route here from Ir two weeks ago.” I tried to figure out when about that had been in my head, but it was well before the assassination attempt. Probably after the assassination attempt was planned, though, so I would bet they expected it to be done already.

“Is there anyone on board your ship who doesn’t belong? Or were you supposed to pick up someone here in Tarnil?”

“No, Your Highness. I just do trading. Anything beyond that you’d have to ask our House man.”

“Your House man?”

“Jord Oranell. He’s, uh…” Charell twisted his head to glance back at the boat. I found the guy easily enough, he was the [Purser], a neat little man with a greying beard who was watching from the boatrail with sharp dark eyes. I didn’t like him. He reminded me too much of a rat, even if his status said human and not rat-kin.

“Inform Mister Oranell I will speak to him.”

“Um. Yes, Your Highness.” Usaer scrambled to his feet and backed away before turning and yelling at Oranell to come down from the ship. It didn’t look like Oranell was particularly happy about the order, but it wasn’t like he had any option but to obey. The Purgatory room was pretty good at driving home how outclassed they were. Oranell clambered down the rope ladder dropped from the side of the ship, approaching Iniri and kneeling himself.

“Your Highness,” he said.

“Mister Oranell,” Iniri looked down at him. “What do you know about why Captain Usaer was sent to Tarnil?”

“We were merely here to open trade now that Tarnil is open again.” This time Cheya frowned slightly, shaking her head.

“I suspect if we search the ship, we may find a logbook Mister Oranell here is hiding,” Cheya said.

While Oranell protested I looked over the ship myself. Mostly, I looked at the little cabin where he’d been before, taking full advantage of [Genius Loci] and the fact that neither wardings nor solid materials stopped my perception. Sure enough, there was a runed compartment at the back of one of the drawers of the bolted-down desk, so I simply grabbed it. The ship wasn’t technically part of me, I hadn’t used [Assimilation] on it, but it wasn’t hard to run a thin thread up and lasso the contents of the runed compartment.

“Hey Shayma, I’ve got some stuff for you.” Shayma grinned and held her hands up as I passed her things from inventory. A little book, also rune-encoded, a House Anell badge showing the logo of the House, a simple sailing ship with HA embossed on the side, and a flask of some alcohol, the only label being a gold-leafed letter S.

“What…?” Oranell boggled as Shayma passed the book and the badge to Cheya, and the drink to Sienne, who took it with an avaricious gleam in her eye.

“You can’t hide things from Blue,” Shayma told him, quite smug.

“Interesting,” said Cheya. “I believe mister Oranell has quite a bit to say to us, even if Captain Usaer is woefully ignorant.” Usaer looked like he might want to object to that for a moment, then thought better of it and nodded. He clearly recognized that whatever was going on, it was far above his pay grade.

“House Anell will be quite upset over your high-handed treatment of their vessel, let alone accosting an agent of the House,” Oranell warned. Iniri snorted.

“House Anell attempted to assassinate Queen Iniri several days ago,” Cheya informed Oranell offhand, examining the runes on the book. “We’re a bit past worrying about what their response may be.” The [Purser]’s eyes widened, and I was pretty sure that was news to him, but considering that he kept his expression under control otherwise I doubted he was particularly innocent. Usaer, though, was clearly out of his depth.

“Captain Usaer, you’ve come to Tarnil at an inopportune time,” Iniri told him. “You and your men will be our guests for a time, as we expect the mage-kings to attack in force in a few days. I expect most of you will be returned to Ir, eventually, but I think we’ll be hanging on to mister Oranell, here.” The man licked his lips but bowed his head.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Sienne sauntered over toward Oranell, looking him up and down. He stared back, and his eyes narrowed. Considering that the vessel was full of fox-kin he probably hadn’t thought much of the two with Iniri, but now that Sienne was there he’d realized something was wrong.

“Do you recognize me?” Sienne said. “I’m Sienne Ell, Void Rapier. I would bet that even if you don’t know anything else, you know the name.” He clearly did. Again, it was a fairly small reaction, but it was definitely there. Considering Oranell’s Class of [Purser] he probably wasn’t so much a spy as just a bureaucrat. Admittedly, a bureaucrat for a big trading company that we were going to be at war with when we weren’t in the middle of trying to defend against the mage-kings.

“Let us move this discussion somewhere else,” Cheya decided. “Blue, could we request your assistance in moving everyone except Mister Oranell to a secure area? I believe you put several in the palace.” I had, in fact, though there were only a couple of jail cells meant for actual Classers, and I was sure a sufficiently determined third- or fourth-tier could break out of cultivated steel and adamant stone boxes anyway. Instead of a jail, I teleported the crew en masse to a suite meant for holding foreign visitors who may have overstepped their bounds. It was nice, but it still locked from the outside.

“I put them in the Iron Suite,” I told Shayma, as people vanished. It was a little crowded for fifteen people, but no more crowded than the ship was. “I’m going to keep the ship.” I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, but I knew Annit knew how to sail things and there’d be plenty of space in the Caldera. This was clearly not a blue-water vessel, more meant for going up and down the coast, so it’d do fine on any of my waterways. It wouldn’t be too hard for me to repair and if I ever needed an official Blue ship for whatever reason, I’d have one.

Obviously I’d have to do a lot of alterations, but I had time.

With Iniri and Cheya in charge of interrogating Oranell, I turned my attention back to the Caldera anyway since The Village was getting ready to move there. I’d already opened a permanent portal between the farming chamber they’d been in and the Forest-Fields Climate I’d prepared for them, so people could go and survey the land and stake out claims. Taelah was busy seasoning wood in bulk and some people had found the stone quarry – I hadn’t even had to suggest it to them through Taelah – and were busily carving out stone slabs.

All of that went much faster with magic and Classes on their side. The Village didn’t have any earth mages but they did have a couple people with Stonecarver Classes, and they made very quick work of raw materials. It did explain why I hadn’t seen much in the way of animal-powered or even low industrial processes around. Why bother, when a couple of people with proper Skills could do that.

Houses were starting to go up, as well as fences marking out pastures and fields. The new home for the Village was coming together with remarkable speed, but that was probably at least in part because they had such easy access to the raw materials. Plus Taelah with nearly unlimited alchemical reagents shortcutting a bunch of the necessary seasoning and waiting steps for things. She was actually really busy, producing sealing and caulking compounds, weather treatment, and all kinds of things I’d forgotten were necessary for building good houses.

Among other things, they were building a water tower so they could have proper indoor plumbing. The heating was taken care of by the simple expedient of a tank inlaid with that Smoulderroot Ghost Thorn wood, which heated water quickly. That was to say, near-instantly. The cooling was just as good, and they completed the plumbing by the sewage lines into septic tanks. Which I rerouted into Composting Chambers, but I had to admit I appreciated that they didn’t even think to ask me to solve any of those problems. Of course, that was part of the Bargain.

At the rate they were going they wouldn’t be able to move in until after the mage-kings attacked, but not long after. Not that the attack seemed to worry them, assuming most of them even knew about it. Taelah knew, of course, so I assumed the Elders did, but considering that nobody was involved or could do anything about it, it made sense to continue on as if it weren’t happening.

Since they had a nice river flowing right by The Village I went ahead and Assimilated the boat and dropped it into the river. Then I realized that was probably a little bit precipitous because I had no way to moor the thing, so I had to raise up some soil to beach it before the current swept it away. It also had a bunch of holes, first from holing it to begin with when I grabbed it, then by my ill-advised launch. At least it had a stock of water-Affinity lumber to use to patch the repairs, which I smoothed over with Customization.

After that though, it was time to get back to the evacuation. I felt maybe a little bad that I’d been distracted from it as it was, but so far as I knew we had a few days before they reached us. Between my ability and Ansae’s scrying we could keep fairly good track of where they were, so it wasn’t like they were going to surprise us, but I preferred to err on the side of caution. I had no idea if they could teleport those massive flying islands, or would send out airborne forces ahead of themselves, or what.

Part of me wished I had access to void mana myself. The traps I was making were only so effective, and at best they’d only be effective against the monster army on the ground, not the mage-kings themselves. If I could make void projectiles or something though, defending against individuals as powerful as the mage-kings would be easy. Though I could well imagine if I did have access to void Affinity it’d be horrible to work with, maybe to the point of being too dangerous. It seemed pretty ruinous when Sienne used it and she apparently had a safe void Class. Having the ability to dump a hundred thousand mana into a Void construct might well be something that threatened the integrity of the planet.

I also made a second Star. Casual to say, but the creation process for the second one was just as dramatic as the first, its ignition blazing out from the mountaintop I’d chosen for the process, hints of a night sky hanging in the air as the light faded down to something more reasonable. The Star was more or less identical to the first — they didn’t appear exactly the same, the two stars as different as two stars of the same class would be anyway, but there wasn’t any noticeable variation in color or magnitude, being just as bright and blue-white as the first. Though I would have liked to pass the second one to someone, the only person who might have been able to make use of it before the mage-kings came was Ansae, and I couldn’t just borrow it back from her if I needed it.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a third star before they showed up, so I switched all my Anvils over to making Firmament rather than Stellar Fragments. In a way that was the most valuable stuff I could make, and it certainly had the most uses. Like, layering my core room eventually, or making an indestructible sword for Sienne. Though I had yet to test whether Firmament beat void, it was merely an assumption on my part. There might be a bit of an unstoppable force — immovable object issue with bringing the two together, but nothing I’d seen so far made me think that would result in any kind of detonation. Still, better to do in controlled circumstances.

Meanwhile, Ansae was busy with scribing runes onto her tower, or laying out bits and pieces of things from her hoard. It was hard to tell how much of her limited mana she was putting into it, but it didn’t seem to be all that much since I hadn’t noticed any numbers dropping significantly. I had seen how fine her mana control was, though, so I could well imagine she didn’t need much to do enchanting. Of all of us, she probably had the best grasp of what preparations she could make to hold off massive flying islands.

If we were lucky, she wouldn’t need them.