Singer Sailor Merchant Mage

“Life isn’t a race. It’s a relay.”

Dick Gregory

“Where are we?” Were the first words out of Namir’s mouth. While I could keep the spatial vault open enough to look out of using my expanded senses, it was far more straightforward to close it when I was not within, and Namir did not have access to the same skills I had. He had been confined for the entire flight south so far and was happy to be no longer contained as he had missed everything that had passed as we crossed the endless ice.

“An hour south,” I quickly answered. Tracking the time was easy, but tracking the distance was a little more challenging without comparing it against the mental map I was making. “I think we covered around 50 miles,” I estimated as I made the comparison.

“A day’s travel for a common man in an hour.” He sounded impressed. “I’ll have to push hard to match it.” He seemed excited at the challenge. “Any problems?” He asked as he cracked his neck and took in our surroundings.

“No, we kept low enough not to draw too much attention, and Stamfar accompanied us south, making us a harder target,” I explained. “Are you happy to take over?”

“Yes, it will give me a chance to stretch my legs,” Namir answered, bouncing on his feet. He generally seemed happy to laze around when I trained, but I guessed there was a difference between lazing around with the freedom to leave and being trapped within my spatial vault. “How exactly will this work, then?” he quizzed.

“I’ve anchored the spatial vault’s entrance to this,” I said as I removed the runed mithril necklace that Varvara had forged for me before we had left the Thorpe from around my neck and proffered it to him. The tiny runes etched into the surface acted much like how the giants used their stone glyphs to hold open the entrance when they used their versions of the Lodestone Wyrm’s cores, allowing me to anchor the entrance to a moving object. This would allow the spatial vault to be carried by Namir with me within it while I meditated and regained my mana for another flight. In this manner, we would leapfrog our way south in a relay until we found the next village where we could rest and review our progress with hopefully updated maps and a new direction to head in.

Namir held the necklace before him while I expanded the entrance again, allowing Nyx and me to enter my spatial vault for the next leg of our journey. Namir waited for me to close the entrance to the size of the necklace’s central pendant before he placed it around his neck. Our view shrunk to a peephole from which we could view the world. But that did not stop my senses from looking out from within.

“Ready when you are,” I shouted, my voice emerging from the pendant around his neck. Namir shifted in surprise before setting off as if he had not been surprised—our view bounced as he started to lope ever southward.

Once he had started moving, he replied, “And here I thought I’d have a quiet run south without your smart mouth.”

“I’ll leave you to your run, then,” I answered before turning away from the tiny exit to the outside world. To be honest, the way the view was bouncing all over the place as he dashed south was a little disconcerting. I looked away from the exit at my internal space before I contemplated the experiments I hoped to test out within the spatial vault.

. . .

Focusing on my space, I recreated what I had once imagined—the extra volume gained from the increase in my skill was particularly useful. At Lv15, it was now over double what it had started at. At 25 feet by 25 feet, I now had 625 square feet. Not only that, I also had 25 feet in height, width, and depth. It was large enough to build a tiny home within and even add a second floor with separate bedrooms for myself and Namir.

It was tempting, but I preferred my open-plan design. I kept the four trees in their corners, using their branches for the shelves along the four walls. Still, with the height, I had split the space into a 5ft basement with the ice core and our supplies, some now frozen, adding a stone layer and earth layer above to help insulate and reduce the mana cost of heating my space and keeping the trees alive. I was attempting a little horticulture with the few plants the giants had available, which I would expand on in time.

The giants had gifted me many resources, which Namir had stacked 5ft high in the basement for me. But along the back wall, I had my workstations for blacksmithing, wood singing, stone shaping, and rune carving. I had grown us some sleeping platforms 10ft up in each of the rear corners on the trees. It looked like Namir had settled into his I could see his claw marks on his side. I had left the front of the spatial vault open in the hopes of regrowing-building another ship for the sea, ice or sky.

But for now, I settled down into a cross-legged pose on the lawn I had grown in the middle of my spatial vault and, closing my eyes, I started to meditate. The quicker I recovered my mana, the quicker I could take over from Namir, and the faster we would make it home.

. . .

Namir’s POV

It was nice to run freely. Now that he had developed a tolerable tolerance to the cold the endless ice was not too dissimilar to the open savannah of Ostro. The open space stretched for miles and miles in every direction. It almost felt safer as he could see for miles in every direction, although after hunting with the giants, he knew the emptiness of the endless ice was a deception in and of itself. Beasts could erupt from beneath his feet, but moving as swiftly as he was, he doubted any would be able to catch him before he would have moved out of their range.

He settled into a long lope and enjoyed just running for a time as he contemplated his student, ward and charge. The boy continued to defy expectations, continually landing on his feet. He seemed more catlike than human in that regard. He also didn’t doubt they would leave a trail of consequences as they travelled south.

He put on a burst of speed to evade the Icewyrm erupting now behind him before settling back into a long loping run that he knew he could maintain for hours on end. It was tempting to stop and deal with the tangle that had been drawn to the surface, but his aim was to make it south as quickly as possible without any more interruptions. Besides, the IceWyrms were quickly set upon by wild Arctic Gyrfalcons that had spotted their eruptions from the surface of the ice. They had been following Namir for a while now, happy to dive on anything that stirred in the beastkin’s wake—both the ambush predators and the prey that were startled by his approach. The Artic Hares had only survived if they managed to find a burrow before the wild Arctic Gyrfalcons dove.

With the wide open spaces, icy arctic conditions, and the lack of visible resources for hunting or foraging, he was unsurprised when he ran for an hour without spotting a single sapient of the noble races and grateful that he had not crossed paths with any denizen of the depths or base race creatures. Thankfully, the Ice Giants' march south seemed to have been an isolated incident. The occasional bear had only lifted its head in interest as he passed by before returning to its own journey.

A second hour of running followed before he spotted a suitably defensive stone outcropping for a break. Climbing the tor gave him a fantastic view over the terrain he had traversed and the ground still to cover. A pack of Arctic wolves had shadowed his journey south, taking up where the Gyrfalcons had left off. Their pelts would be worth a pretty penny, but they had hoped to reach some form of civilisation before night fell. According to the Giants maps of the endless ice, they might just manage it, but not if they stopped to slaughter the pack currently tracking him. The Arctic Wolves could track him for miles on end but would hopefully lose interest if they disappeared into the sky and out of their reach.

He felt that he had crossed a similar amount to Kai’s flight although it was difficult to judge when he was only responsible for one leg of the trip. Either way, it was time for a spot of food and possibly a swap if Kai had recovered enough mana to maintain his flight.

“Kai?” He asked out loud after hanging the pendant by its chain on the protruding rock of the tor and stepping back. The entrance to the spatial vault expanded, revealing the softly lit interior of Kai’s spatial vault.

“Yes?” The child responded before stepping out into the blinding white light of the arctic wasteland. His black shadow, Nyx, slipped out after him, wings flaring to feel the arctic wind no longer bothered by the cold. Then the portal closed, and Kai retrieved the pendant from the crag.

“It’s time for a bite to eat and a swap if you have recovered enough mana. Even if you haven’t enough mana for a full hour’s flight, a switch would still be good to lose our shadows.” I explained.

“Shadows?” Kai questioned.

“The wolves.” I pointed out their presence on the last ridge in the distance, where they had halted their pursuit with him reaching the tor, climbing, and stopping. They seemed happy to bide their time, wait him out and wear him down.

Nyx hissed as he noticed the silent sentinels on the horizon watching us from afar.

“Yes, I have enough for a flight,” Kai answered.

“Food then?” I moved on to the next matter of importance: my stomach.

“What are you in the mood for?” Kai questioned.

“A bit of bear curry would go down well.” I knew some gifts the giants had given Kai were a wide variety of dishes sealed in stone pots stacked on the shelves in the spatial vault. Already cooked, sealed in airtight stone pots, and kept cool by the ice giant’s core, they would last for a long time and only needed reheating to make the meals edible once more.

“Bear curry it is.” Kai grinned, producing a pot from thin air. “You picked a nice spot.” He added, commenting on the view.

The pot soon self-heated from the stone glyph carved into it. Such straightforward glyph carvings were simple steps for stone wizards to add to the stone pots they had fashioned for us. We soon ate well and regained some of the energy I had expended on the run.

“Your turn next,” I told Kai once he had made our meal's evidence disappear into thin air. “They seem to have found their courage and are moving closer,” I commented on the arctic wolves slinking ever closer to the tor we had temporarily rested upon.

“It's my turn,” he agreed, opening the portal to his spatial vault before me. I’ll see how far I can get. Maybe I will see Drangavik before running out of mana.” He added.

“Just remember to stay low and land before they see us. We want to enter the town on foot rather than fly in. We will be strange enough travellers as it is.” I reminded him of the plan to pass through the towns on our way south without creating too much trouble.

“I remember.” Kai nodded as I stepped into his spatial vault. We would have to see if remembering made any difference to his actions. I remained ever hopeful, but if our last couple of weeks were anything to go by, we might need to flee more than ice giants before our journey home was over.