The Newt and Demon - Chapter 5.21 - The Wavecrest Sails

The wind whipped, catching in the sails of the Wavecrest with force. The boat lurched forward, capturing the stiff breeze to send the vessel sailing down the canal. Theo leaned over the railing, looking down at the murky water below. The river met the ocean here, creating a brackish churn of spume. With Laedria at the helm, and Alex flying high above, they forged a path into the bay.

“You didn’t have to come along,” Ziz said, leaning over the rail with Theo.

“Nah. Riding a boat is fun.”

That seemed to be enough for Ziz. He stomped over to the helm to flirt with Laedria for a while. Theo hadn’t been far out into the bay before, let alone wrapping around the area to see the southern tip of the Southlands Alliance. The water here was a murky shade of green-blue, caused by silt stirred by the ever-moving tide. Beaches spanned only a few hundred feet to the west before turning into the craggy mountain.

Theo’s head swiveled to see the sights and breathe in the scents of the ocean. It was a joy to watch the sailors do their things. Even with Zarali’s enchantments on the boat, they worked hard to get rigging in place and angle the sails. In less than half an hour, Laedria ordered the sails trimmed and the anchor dropped.

“There it is!” Ziz shouted, shielding his eyes from the sun. The industrious half-ogre had hung a bright red sheet outside of the tunnel exit. “The area closest to the coast is the shallowest. Duh. So I have a few stunty columns to place here.”

The half-ogre moved to the boat’s edge, waving his hands through the air. He did a few more gestures as though he was guiding the pillar to the bottom. With a satisfied nod, the pillar snapped into existence. But it didn’t just delete the water around the pillar. The ocean was forced away from the structure, sending a wave to crash against the ship’s hull. Everyone braced themselves, grabbing onto whatever was near. After a beat, Ziz chuckled nervously.

“Should’ve expected that. But look!”

The pillar stood perfectly in the water, standing at a perfect angle. Ziz explained that his new skill allowed him to place objects in the terrain, and came with angle checking and everything. The result was a pillar that had sunk into the seabed, far beyond the top layer of mud. After placing the first one, the ship moved across the bay to place more. Theo enjoyed his time on the deck. Especially when the half-ogre placed the structures down. It became a bit of a ride.

“That’s the open ocean?” Theo asked, squinting against the blistering sun overhead. It held a deeper blue color, and none of the murky green of the inshore waters.

“Yep,” Laedria said, coming to clap a firm hand over his shoulder. “We’ll be sailing out there to place these stones. Working our way over to the lizards.”

Theo inspected the line of pillars. Ziz had an ability to line his structures up perfectly. It was a perfectly straight line of pillars with every center lined to the inch. They all stood up straight, ready to receive the bridge.

“Let’s take her out into that wide blue,” Laedria said, rubbing her hands together. She shouted orders at her sailors, commanding them to make way for the sea.

Theo watched as they passed between two islands, narrowly avoiding scraping the bottom of the boat on a sandbar. Life clung to those islands. Patches of grasses and dotted palm trees marked the islands. They were bordered by rings of white sand and mottled with tiny crabs and other creatures. Sea-garbage had washed on on the far side of the island. Seaweed mingled with pieces of rotting wood in the froth of sea foam. The scent of salty air and decaying sea life and plant matter lingered in the air. It was a strangely nostalgic scent.

“This is where it drops off,” Ziz said. “The islands mark the shelf. It’s called a shelf, right?”

“Yeah,” Laedria said, coming down from the helm. “That’s what I call it, anyway. We’re in deeper water. Take measurements.”

Ziz found his measuring device. It was a rope with knots tied at equal intervals and a stone secured to the end. He plunked it into the water, waited a few moments, then marked the knot. Even at speed, the weight of the rock sent the measurement device to the bottom in moments. The half-ogre stonemason seemed happy with the depth, and the Wavecrest pushed on.

Despite Ziz’s fears that the ocean would get too deep, they sailed for hours without seeing much of an increase. The pillar that the half-ogre had displayed back at the quarry would be tall enough for their purposes. Even if the ocean’s depth increased between here and the lizard islands, it wouldn’t be too bad. Everyone on board was satisfied with the test, and Laedria ordered her people to make way for the harbor.

Theo realized what the trip into the ocean had done for him. He saw the lands of his people from a new angle. Putting aside how interesting and fun the bridge to the lizard-folk islands would be, sailing out to sea brought a new perspective. Ziz’s new ability also showed him that others were outpacing him. Drogramath’s alchemy was a discipline that lacked specialization. Given the chance, other cores would outpace his own in specific areas. All he could feel was pride for the stoneworker and his new method of building bridges.

“We got a long way to go,” Theo said, leaning over the edge.

Ziz lost his lunch over the boat’s edge, but smiled through the discomfort. “Don’t worry about where we’ll be. You can’t worry about that stuff.”

“Are you telling me to live in the moment?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Ziz said, wiping vomit from his lips. “I’m not made for the sea.”

A sense of general nausea lingered in Theo’s gut. While he hadn’t blown chunks, he was on the edge. “I don’t think I am, either.”

Only after the boat was moored, and Theo’s feet were on land did he decide he really enjoyed sailing. Perhaps only brief trips out of the bay, but it was enjoyable. Alex honked somewhere above. The alchemist had relayed a few messages from the goose about Ziz’s line of support pillars. She claimed they were straight from her position in the sky, but the stonemason was confident in his work. It never hurts to double-check, though.

Theo checked the vendor stalls on his way back into town. He didn’t find anything that interested him, aside from a scatter of [Monster Cores]. After buying several gold worth of high-level monster cores, he found his way to the greenhouses behind his lab. He didn’t trust the golems to detect a random splicing of two plants, so inspected each one himself. There were no sudden mutations within any of his greenhouses, or his mushroom caves.

The good news was that the [Dragon Talon Mushroom] was cultivating itself well. The jagged hard-edged mushrooms grew larger every day, and the golems knew enough to pluck the ones with lower cultivation ratings. Hybridizing plants had been a goal of Theo’s for some time, but the [Azrug’s Truffle] was a mistake. It made more sense to combine reagents that had similar properties, but combining plants intentionally was likely a skill he needed to unlock.

The door to the greenhouse swung open, and Throk stepped inside. He had that look on his face every time he made something cool, so Theo dropped what he was doing and followed the marshling.

“Ran into some problems,” Throk said, pushing his way past the cluster of greenhouses. “Hovering is easy over short bursts. Over a longer time, stuff blows up.”

“Did we solve the exploding problem?”

“No, not yet. But I’m getting there. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve got interference problems, mana transfer problems… lots of problems.”

Throk opened the door to his workshop. Inside was a hover engine similar to the one Theo had seen before. He wasn’t up on the way artifices worked to know what had changed and why. All he knew was that it differed from the one he had seen before.

“How about a demonstration?” Throk asked.

“Absolutely,” Theo said, taking a few steps back. He didn’t want to explode.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Throk’s development of the hover engine had been a slow thing. Becoming proficient with artifices meant understanding how each component interacted with the others. Combined with the collection of those pieces—a collection process the grumpy old marshling wouldn’t share—this made for an annoying task. The artificer prodded at his machine, loading it up with one of his synthetic coins. It hummed to life, rising a hair from the metal stand on which it stood. The sound was deafening.

“This is cool,” Theo shouted, his voice barely carrying over the sound.

“Right? Feel that? Magical buildup in one of my components,” Throk shouted back, prodding at the machine with an alloy rod. “Once I figure out how to vent that extra magic, we’re golden!”

Theo waited patiently for Throk to disable the device. It took longer than he was comfortable with, but the engine finally went silent. As with most extensive projects in Broken Tusk, it was hard to tell if the platform would still be useful for the task when it was completed. There was always room for airships, though. The marshling explained his plans for the future, detailing a process to refine the engine. Developing a better hover engine meant developing a better maglev.

“The techniques feed into themselves,” Throk said with a nod. “Airships would be easier to run from here to the lizard islands.”

“Except people are always telling me about the dangers of magical interference. So, we didn’t consider airships for that project.”

“Your fancy wards solve that problem, right?”

“Permanently? No. We need to do more testing. My shields only stop ambient magic. And the biggest problem I was told about was magical attacks. That’s why people don’t run airships, right?”

Throk shrugged. “Not so sure about that. Problem is that we don’t know.”

Which looped back to Theo’s worries about airships. They didn’t know enough to say for sure that anything would work. What they did know was that the maglev worked. They had the supplies to make stupidly long rail lines. So why the hell not?

“Anything that keeps our people busy is good,” Theo concluded. “Instead of worrying about which one is best, let’s just build both.”

Throk rubbed his hands together. “I like the way you think.”

Theo left the artificer’s lab, promising town funds for yet another project. He knew he could supplement every project with his personal earnings anyway. Turning his attention to the town’s finances, he found they were making a killing with the harbor. Every ship that docked had to pay a fee. Then they had to pay another fee based on the amount of goods they sold. Word from both Partopour and Bantein claimed that the price was lower than most other ports. Gronro and Rivers were selling their wares through the harbor, adding more coin to the mix.

But with profits came expenses. The [Kingdom Core] needed charging. Ziz needed his stone, and it was always wise to import food. Folks might have liked their mud-grown food, but variety had been appreciated in the past. The high expense of the rail projects was offset by a need the citizens had. People wanted to travel to other places, if the results of the tram were anything to go by. That made both the airship project and the rail project vital.

On his way back to the lab, Theo spotted Salire walking through the streets. She swept the path before her with a spray of choking spicy water. A sea of frog-like things parted, dashing off into the lightly forested areas in town. Waiting for a chance to strike again. She offered a shy wave, making her way to Town Hall.

Theo sent a quick mental message to Tresk and Alex, inviting them both to Tero’gal. He made his way to Zarali’s enchanter’s workshop, inviting her instead. She jumped at the chance to see her brother again, hugging the alchemist.

“Let’s go!”

“I need to grab some stuff,” Theo said awkwardly.

“Oh. By all means.”

Snatching the barrels of [Hallow the Soil] brewing in the lab, the alchemist prepared to depart for his realm. Zarali signaled that she was ready, and they fell through the void. Uz’Xulven didn’t invite them onto the bridge, but a flash of odd light signaled her transfer to Tero’gal. The moment the rolling fields of his private realm came into view, the alchemist spotted her gate appearing.

“I’ll be in the tea room!” Uz’Xulven shouted, exiting her portal and entering the tiny cottage.

“We need a bigger meeting area,” Theo said, making his way to the collection of homes the spirits had built.

“The tea shack is too stuffy for my liking,” Zarali said. Her eyes went wide whens he spotted Belgar. “Brother!”

Both Dronon came together, embracing each other in a hug. Belgar’s form was becoming more solid by the day. There were only faint patches of wispy purple energy on his body. The new body he had forged for himself was different from the original. Zarali didn’t seem to care, embracing her brother’s new form. Theo set his barrels near the alchemy work area, then headed for the cottage. His purpose for this visit was to do some alchemical experimentation and to allow the barrels to brew. But Uz’Xulven had become something of a conversationalist.

“Where is that bear?” Uz’Xulven asked, craning her neck to see out of the cottage’s entrance. “I require tea and scones.”

Theo put the teakettle on, then found a seat at the round table. “Sometimes he’s busy.”

“I can see into his realm. He isn’t busy. He’s baking.”

Not wanting to wait, Theo pressed an issue that lingered in his mind. “Any news on Fenian?”

A pained expression flashed across her face. She laughed, covering the hurt. But Theo saw it. “He’s working himself out of a jam.” Instinctively, Uz’Xulven looked behind her, expecting Khahar to appear and clap a hand over her mouth. He didn’t show.

Theo stretched his weak senses through the void. He visualized the different realms as bubbles floating in a sea of black. While he could imagine Balkor’s realm, he couldn’t penetrate the bubble. The slightest brush against the Demon God of Necromancy’s realm revealed to him that not even Tresk could get through.

“Are you peeking?” Uz’Xulven said with a scoff. “Of all the whelpish, upstart, no-good things to do.”

Theo grinned. “I don’t see Khahar clamping his hand over my eyes. If the Arbiter says I can do it, I can do it.”

Uz’Xulven crossed her arms. “Your tea isn’t as good as the stuff the bear makes.”

“Your monochromatic bridge is ugly.”

Uz’Xulven mouth hung open. Her eyes slowly drifted across the room, locking onto Theo. “How dare you.”

Theo laughed, cutting himself off when he felt another presence in his realm. Benton stepped through his gate outside. He entered the cottage, tutting when he saw the alchemist’s water boiling. The bear god snatched the kettle up, tossed the water out, and started again.

“Yay! The man who can make good tea is here. Hooray!”

“I brought cookies,” Benton said, unloading the contents of his inventory. It was, as always, filled with confections.

Theo grabbed a plain sugar cookie, nibbling on it while Benton got set up. He paused, smiling at Uz’Xulven. “But for real. Can I help Fenian?”

“He was certain the potions you brewed him would be enough.”

“You could invite Balkor to your realm,” Benton said with a shrug. He plopped a sachet of tea into the boiling water.

“Any chance of corruption?” Theo asked.

“That’s not how realms work. He would need to overpower your authority here, which is… Well, that’s impossible,” Uz’Xulven said. “Watch!”

The Queen of the Bridge of Shadows swiped her hand through the air. A wave of dark fire rolled over Theo, engulfing the cottage. The flames passed over him harmlessly, not even scorching the interior of the building.

“That attack would have leveled a city on the mortal plane,” Uz’Xulven said, nodding with satisfaction. “In a place where you have absolute authority, it’s a stiff breeze.”

Theo closed his eyes, reaching out to his imagined version of Balkor’s realm. Confident that the demon couldn’t affect Tero’gal, he sent an invitation. Within a single heartbeat, it was rejected. “He declined.”

“Of course he did,” Uz’Xulven laughed. She paused, her eyes going wide. “Do you feel that?”

Theo saw the notification before he felt anything. Drogramath was attempting to enter Tero’gal and had requested a friendly entry. The alchemist accepted, but didn’t dare stand from his chair. Moments later, the form of the Potioneer lumbered through the door. He was taller than mortal depictions. Even the rendering provided by the temple in Broken Tusk. With dark purple skin, a coat similar to Theo’s own, and his left horn missing, Drogramath entered the cottage. He cleared his throat.

“May I share in your tea?” he asked awkwardly.

“Wow,” Uz’Xulven said, leaning in over the table. “Wow, wow, wow. I haven’t seen you in twenty-thousand years, Droggy.”

“Don’t call me that,” Drogramath scowled.

“Please,” Theo said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Take a seat.”

“Thank you, champion,” Drogramath said, sitting and folding his hands in his lap. “I see you’re collecting the souls of lost dronon. A noble cause.”

“Do you remember the First Ascension War?” Uz’Xulven asked, sighing as she took a bite of a cookie.

“I wish I didn’t.”

“We used to meet like this!” Uz’Xulven slammed her fist on the table. It didn’t move an inch. “Don’t you miss this?”

Drogramath shifted in his chair. He cleared his throat, eventually. And smiled. “I miss it dearly. We’ve become insular.”

“By design,” Uz’Xulven grumbled.

“Not anymore!” Benton said, pulling the pot of tea from the fire. He poured everyone a cup of tea before taking his seat again. “Seems to be no restrictions here. Anyone can come.”

“Thanks to me,” Uz’Xulven muttered. “No one appreciates the support gods.”

“I appreciate you.” Theo smiled.

“I also appreciate you,” Drogramath said with too much gravitas.

Benton clicked his tongue. “Come on. Cookies aren’t gonna eat themselves.”

The strange group grabbed at the sweets and drank their tea.