NOVEL NEXT Ch. 41: The Workshop
Cass followed Alyx out of the manor and up the main road of the palatial hill, only to turn off the road a little further up.
The entrance was well kept, but the path quickly became overgrown as they walked further down it, weeds and thistles reaching over the cobble path and growing up between the stones.
The path led to a rickety suspension bridge, stretching from the rising earth to one of the many spires floating around the palace’s mountain.
Wind shook the bridge as they crossed it. Oddly, Cass had no trouble adjusting to its swing. Given Alyx’s clumsy steps, it was probably more because of her slyphid nature than her high Dex, though there was no reason it couldn’t be both.
Looking down, Cass felt no fear at the distance between the bridge and the distant ground. Falling wasn’t something that would happen to her, and even if it did, it wasn’t something she needed to worry about.
They stepped off the bridge onto the side of the spire. The path continued winding up the right side. They would come to one end of the stone and the path would cut into the wall with a spiral staircase, depositing them some number of feet up the spire and the path would continue along its side.
Plants clung to the stone walls and grew from the gravel path. Vines hung in sheets from overcroppings and the odd flower persevered in the face of wind and exposure.
Eventually, they crested a rise of the path around the floating stone. They were met with a small shack seated in a notch of the Spire. It was a small valley, surrounded by cliffs leading up to higher plateaus of floating stone. A tree grew from one of these cliffs, its branches spreading wide and hanging like that of a willow, casting the entire corner in dappled shade.
The shack sat against the back cliff side. It was a wooden thing, with thick cylindrical posts decorated with coiling dragons holding up the corners. There were specks of paint on them like they had once been painted brightly, but now the wood was exposed to the elements.
“What is this place?” Cass asked.
Alyx brushed the dirt from a pillar, her hands lingering longer than strictly necessary on the wood. “This is my workshop.”
She slid open the door, dragging it to the side on its rusted track.
Inside was larger than Cass had expected, the shop extending well into the cliff side. A forge dominated the far wall. Long benches filled another, while the opposite wall was covered in shelves and tools.
“Your workshop?” Cass echoed.
“Well, my mother’s workshop,” Alyx amended, her hand idly caressing the table beside her. She didn’t look at Cass as she spoke.
Cass’s ears perked up at that. Alyx had said little about her mother.
“I didn’t know your mother was a craftsman,” Cass said.
Alyx shook her head. “She wasn’t. Not the way most people understand it, anyway. But, her people believe a weapon is an extension of oneself. And so you should be involved in its construction as much as possible.”
“Her people?” Cass asked.
Alyx nodded. “She wasn’t from Velillia. Wasn’t even from the Peninsula. The story goes my grandmother recruited her on one of her adventures.”
“Does the ruler of the duchy go on adventures regularly?” Cass asked. That didn’t seem like the sort of thing a ruler should do. Didn’t they have administrative things to worry about?
Alyx frowned. “How would she advance her level if she was stuck in the city all the time?”
Cass shrugged. That wasn’t something Earth governors had to worry about.
“My mother taught me the basics of weapon crafting and modification,” Alyx said. “Give me your staff.”
Cass handed it to her.
Alyx laid it over the worktable and pulled a charcoal pencil from a drawer.
Cass’s staff was a long branch about as tall as she was from a Zerden Madrone tree. She’d picked it up off the forest floor on her first day in Uvana. It was a white wood with a soft blue undertone that she’d never seen a natural Earth wood possess. One end was twisted into a gnarled knot while the other was tapered. The middle section had taken on a smooth, shiny section where her hands had worn it smooth.
She tapped the staff. “This is about where you hold it?”
Cass nodded as Alyx drew lines separating the staff into thirds.
“If we had more time, I’d find you some channel runes to reduce the cast time of your skills. Or, we could go the other direction and find some resonating runes to slow cast time but supercharge each skill.” Alyx drew geometric designs over the middle third of the staff as she spoke. “But I don’t know them and there isn’t time to find references. So what I suggest, and what I’m sketching out here, are runes for reinforcement.”
The lines wound up the shaft of the madrone wood, reminiscent of twisting roads or creeping vines. The pattern was regular, yet it left large blank sections as it twisted along the wood.
“It’s a versatile pattern,” Alyx explained. She tapped one of the blank spots. “There are a lot of accompanying patterns which you can add to these places later without destabilizing it. Runes for mana channeling, banking, or circling should all fit well enough.”
“But,” Alyx paused, glancing at Cass. Cass waited for her to continue. “I also know the patterns for Strength or Dexterity Enhancement, if you’d rather have that. But they don’t take future augmentations as well.”
Cass shrugged. “I think you had it right the first time. I’d rather my staff didn’t break more than I need more Strength or Dexterity.” Especially if she could have things to improve her skills in addition.
Then again, who could say if she would use this staff long enough to do those additional modifications? With any luck, she’d find her way home long before she had a chance to.
“How much would the stat enhancements do?” Cass asked.
“I can manage about 4% effective Strength and 3% effective Dexterity,” Alyx said. “A real craftsman specializing in that kind of thing could probably do about 9%”
Cass squinted at her stats window. That would be about one point a piece. “Yeah, I think keeping my staff from breaking is the better answer.”
Alyx nodded and went back to drawing on the staff with the charcoal.
Cass looked around the room while she waited. Despite how worn the outside had been, the inside was all in good condition. There was no dust or cobwebs among any of the tools.
“Do you spend a lot of time here?” Cass asked.
“Not really,” Alyx said without looking up from the staff. “Once in a while, when my equipment needs work but not so much work I need to take it to a professional.”
“Really?” Cass asked. The place felt homey. Hearth liked it. It didn’t feel abandoned. Instead, it felt more like its owner had stepped out. Like she’d be returning at any time.
“Telis comes by to clean sometimes, I think,” Alyx added.
There was a small shrine tucked in among the tools’ shelving. It was a little hooded space with a statue and candle. The statue depicted a woman with wings in her hair and vines climbing up her legs.
Alyx had said that her mother had worshiped Endurance? Was this her? She glanced at Salos on her shoulder. He just shrugged in response.
Right. They seemed to have changed since he was sealed.
In the corner by the door was a basket of toys. Most were carved wooden animals, but there were also three toy swords and a plush dragon’s head on a stick, sized for a small child.
Three like the number of Veldor children in the Delim manor.
“Did you and your siblings play here when you were children?” Cass asked.
Alyx glanced at the corner. “Sometimes. A long time ago.”
Cass cocked her head.
Alyx kept drawing on Cass’s staff. She didn’t look up as she spoke. “Before my mother died, I was on better terms with Kohen. He and Ahryn came up frequently. Other kids too sometimes. Everyone hoped that my mother would take a liking to one of them and take them as a student.
“She was a dragon knight. Have I mentioned that?”
“You did.” Cass nodded.
“She was my grandmother’s favorite student. Some people said that the grand duchess favored her more than her own children. She was a protector of our city. Of our people.
“She never married my father. They courted. I’ve heard he wasn’t confident in his ability to win a dragon, so he was trying to marry the woman he thought would.
“She won, but they never married. She said he wanted her to take his name.” Alyx paused. “He wanted her to serve him. He wanted her to be an extension of his honor.
“My mother had me instead. I was born of her house, of her name: Aretios Veldor. Aretios, which she brought from her homeland. Veldor, which the grand duchess granted her for her success in claiming a dragon.
“And he hates it. I am a constant reminder that he failed. Failed to claim a dragon. Failed to claim the dragon knight as his wife.”
Alyx turned the staff, her charcoal pencil gliding over the white wood. Her shoulders were tense.
“She died when I was 12. Killed by the Copper Crescent. She died failing to protect that generation’s clutch of dragonlings. The cult killed them. Killed her.
“Her name was stricken from the records for that failure,” Alyx said. “It was declared there was no longer an Aretios in Vaisom. And there wasn’t until she gave it back to me last night.
“My grandmother decreed I was to live in my father’s house. Was I to be his daughter? A potential heir? No, I’m not a legitimate child of his house. But my grandmother cares more about results than blood and far more than about legacy. If I performed to her satisfaction, she’d force him to replace Kohen for me.
“My father knows this. Kohen knows this. She delights in it.” Alyx shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Cass said.
“You didn’t know what you were getting into when you followed me home from Uvana,” Alyx said.
Cass shrugged. “You still don’t have anything to apologize for.”
Alyx snorted.
“Thank you for telling me about it,” Cass said.
“Everyone in the city but you already knew. None of this was some big secret.”
“All the more reason I’m glad to know now.”
“If you say so,” Alyx grunted. She put the staff and her pencil down. “Either way, this is done.”
“Done already?” Cass asked, returning to the worktable.
The staff lay on the table, the middle section covered in charcoal marks, but otherwise no different from when they’d started.
“Well, the sketching is done. It’s ready for you.” Alyx held out a chisel with a v-shaped blade.
“For me?” Cass repeated.
Alyx chuckled. “You didn’t think I was going to do it for you, did you?”
“Yes?” Cass said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll show you,” Alyx said. She demonstrated chiseling out the first couple of inches of the pattern. The chisel blade glided easily along the charcoal marks under Alyx’s hands, taking out a uniform depth of material with each pass. “The key is putting a little Focus into the tools and the wood and then letting them do their job. Here, you try.”
Cass took them from her. She held the staff and chisel as Alyx had shown her and pressed. The chisel bit into the wood, but it didn’t go anywhere.
“Put a little Focus in it,” Alyx repeated.
Cass scowled. She wasn’t sure what that meant. She was focusing on the task. No amount of focus would make the hard, madrone wood soft.
Would it?
She was thinking like this was Earth. Like there was nothing more to focusing than one’s undivided attention rather than a mystic channeling of one’s internal energies.
How did she apply Focus?
She knew it happened when she used her magic skills. It was part of how she controlled Elemental Manipulation, though the skill usually helped her.
Did she know how to do it on her own?
She pushed Elemental Manipulation through her staff, pulling at the air around its tip. She focused on that initial feeling of reaching through the staff.
She tried the same with the chisel. Elemental Manipulation poured easily through the wood handle and the metal blade to play with the air around it.
Cass pressed the chisel against the wood and let go of Elemental Manipulation, but grabbed that feeling of pouring through the chisel and into the wood.
The chisel slid forward. A tail of wood curled up as she followed the line Alyx had drawn. It wasn’t nearly as even as the one Alyx had cut, but it followed the design Alyx had drawn well enough.
“Nice!” Alyx grinned. “I thought you’d pick it up without trouble. Keep it up!”
Cass looked over the rest of the charcoal marks and then back to the slender cut she’d made. The charcoal wound up the staff’s length, Cass’s one cut realizing only a fraction of it.
Cass suppressed a sigh. This was going to be a long night.