Chương 159: Book 3 Chapter 17: A Bombshell

++Growing influence and notoriety also turns into an expanded list of enemies, and an increase in how much of a threat those enemies perceive you as. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Qaigor was grinning as he set off with me.

"You're going to keep making me stronger!" he declared, apparently under the impression he could order me around.

"Ask nicely," I instructed him. He scowled.

"No."

"Then I will not."

"Make me stronger bitch, please!" he yelled. I frowned down at him.

"Where did you learn that word?"

"Father."

"Okay. Well, using it automatically means a request is no longer nice." He scowled even deeper, and, with what seemed to be a visible effort, repeated his request using more diplomatic language. I nodded at last.

"Yes, I will continue making you stronger. I will also watch you and keep anyone from killing you. For the time being, you are under my protection." Qaigor laughed at that.

"Okay Isabel." This was going to be quite an annoying duty. What was even more annoying was my trip to Poloira. With Blakely accompanying me once more, I was limited to travelling by sledge rather than simply flying free. What should have been a journey of only a few hours was looking to take a full day. Qaigor made it even worse. Once I had set up my land sledge he kept yelling about how 'cool' it was, once we took off he began demanding that I let him steer.

I had Blakely watch the little brat to keep him from doing anything disastrous, like seizing the steering mechanism physically, while I skimmed us along the landscape of Garamon. That would have been a disaster. There were quite a lot of dangerous obstructions when you were riding somewhere besides open water. Once we did hit the open sea, our speed accelerated significantly.

I could have nose-dived from cloud level and still hit the ground slower than I was flitting along the water then, but compared to my top flying speeds it was like a slow crawl. Qaigor quickly tired of the velocity, due in no small part to the sealed vehicle keeping him from experiencing the winds, and began loudly whining about his boredom.

This did not seem to alleviate it, and I was entirely unable to grasp what plan was motivating him to continue complaining about something that I was, obviously, not physically capable of resolving. But it did have a pleasant side-effect after a few hours.

"Alright," Blakely snapped at last.

"Fuck, fine, we can fly, just take us into the air." That was a relief. And it was also several hours too late, because I had never taken off from the ocean before. I knew my flying spell could just about manage the combined weight of Blakely, Blakely's guns, Blakely's backup guns, Blakely's backup-backup guns, Blakely's bundle of dynamite and Qaigor, but I had always relied on solid ground underfoot to actually kick off in the past. I was fairly sure I could manage it on water now. Fairly sure.

That was not a great amount of certainty to bet my own life on, let alone that of something as potentially valuable as Qaigor. But I was also not about to subject myself to another day of the boy's whining, so I got creative fast. Fortunately, gaining altitude while moving at a significant fraction of mach speed on the ocean's surface is easier than it sounds. I carefully reshaped my sledge's front to reinforce it, then altered the spell effect that was dampening collisions with waves.

The first especially tall one we hit sent us flying ten, twenty, thirty yards vertically. While we were in the air, I altered the frame of my vehicle. It was already sealed, as I had needed, but now wings protruded from its sides and caught the air. I had gotten the hang of wing-based lift during my early experiments with flight, and it was a simple thing to do some hasty mental calculations and account for the differences in weight and area on my vehicle now.

By the time we were arcing back upwards instead of downwards, I had recreated the spell effect I used to deal with drag force. By the time we started to lose speed, I had already finished all of the other composite effects that went into my ordinary flight. By the time we started to tip back down to the sea, I was ready to strain my mana and propel us forwards once again. We started accelerating, the upward thrust from our wings returned, and in moments we were heading skyward once more.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Qaigor laughed, Blakely almost sobbed, and I tuned them both out to focus on my creation. Just because something does not explode instantly, does not mean it will not explode. This one seemed to be relatively stable, though I found a few optimizations as I continued working.

My anti-drag-force spell turned out to be fully superfluous, with the vehicle being sealed so thoroughly, and after removing that I found our velocity increasing. Of course, the enclosed nature meant that I had a brand new issue in the form of steering. I was able to identify which directions I was turning by feel, running waves of mana through the aetheric structure to get feedback, and from there simply mapped out the route by memory.

Easy enough for me, but if I wanted to get this working for ordinary mortals I would need to find a method of navigation that did not rely on superhuman mathematics and memorisational abilities. Assuming I wanted to make this available for others in the first place. It was a huge advantage to have this to myself, as far as I knew its only competition in the wider magician world was with cloudscrapers, and those were costly and rare. I pondered that as the journey advanced.

With our time cut down to only another four hours, Qaigor still managed to become impatient before the journey was over. Fortunately the rattling of the structure around us muted his voice somewhat, while seeming to also get Blakely more adjusted to the air. This did not stop the former soldier from becoming as pale as a sheet, nor trembling as much as the vehicle did, but it at least kept him from screaming in terror and shooting something, which I considered progress.

When we finally touched down in Poloira, he could barely stand while Qaigor seemed unable to keep himself from laughing and running around.

"Wait here," I instructed them both, then lifted myself high into the sky. My navigations had been off, a consequence of imperfect data, but only by a small amount. That small amount still left us a good twenty miles shy of our destination of course. I made a new land-sledge when I landed and we cleared the rest of the journey blessedly fast. Blakely's nerves seemed to abate while we skimmed along.

It had not been long since I last set foot in the oil refinery, but I was pleased to see that business had expanded in the mere week that had passed. Men were operating the machinery in greater numbers than they had ever been before, and the warehouse that had once been used to store refined oil barrels had somehow turned into three. I could practically smell the currency in the air. Ah, no, that was just toxic hydrocarbons. Well, it was a sign of affluence to personally own so much in either case.

Alira and Sethira were waiting to receive me before the vehicle even finished slowing to a stop.

"How have things been going?" I asked, cutting right to the chase. I had spent too long cramped on that sledge doing nothing but listen to Qaigor's whining for any interest in conversation.

"Production's held steady and we've started stockpiling the excess waste," Sethira said quickly.

"You could run the refinery for weeks just on the byproducts it's generated so far."

"Excellent. I have a task for you, Alira." Alira perked up at that, not seeming to have had much to say before being addressed directly. She was eager to respond.

"What task?" she asked.

"I have been saddled with my putrid younger brother, Qaigor, and I need you to watch him for me." Her face fell like someone had attached weights to the bottom of it.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because he is a moronic little gremlin, and I will get in trouble when he inevitably starts drinking the oil." I shuddered. I had never forgotten the incident with Victoria when she first saw aether, and I would not be getting penalised for such idiocy again. But apparently, that was not what Alira had been asking me about.

"Why are you giving this job to me?" she asked.

"Because you are less generally useful than Sethira."

"And why not any one of the other people you have working for you?" she demanded.

"Why me in specific, is it just because I'm a woman?" I was tired from my journey, and did not have the energy for this.

"Okay, fine, Blakely. Blakely!" My bodyguard stumbled up behind me, looking exactly like a man who had just spent the last six hours of his life alternating between motion sickness and deathly fear.

"You are to watch my idiot brother and make sure he does not kill himself or anyone else," I told him. I turned back to Alira.

"Happy?"

"Reasonably," she sniffed, then turned and headed away.

"You can get the rest of your briefing from Sethira, since she's so much more useful. I'm going to just go and be useless on my own." Sethira laughed while Alira stormed off, and I groaned.

"Children," I sighed.

"Everyone I deal with are children."

"You're the last person who should be complaining about that," Sethira snickered.

"Shut up." I got back to my standard work quickly and was filled in again about all that had been happening at the refinery while I was gone. We were just a few weeks away from our next debt installment, but making steady progress on building the money needed to pay it back. The good thing about being this deep into Poloira's countryside was that taxation was more of an idle fancy. That would not last forever of course, eventually whatever passed for government even in this region would get around to me.

Until then I was making enough money to pay off my debts. Should that change, I would have to rely on the fake-leyline to make up the difference. Fortunately, that particular hoax produced money that practically laundered itself. As I attended to one thing or another, already itching to get back to my magical studies, I found a new distraction blossoming in my mind, and took a break to seek out Alira.

Diligent as ever, she was overseeing a group of the magicians on cutting deep to a new oil deposit, already preparing for when we would need to begin extracting yet more.

"A word, Alira?" I asked her. She seemed surprised, but nodded and quickly gave a few passing commands to the magicians before heading off to me. Alira was younger than most of the other magicians I had under my employ, but, Winzorth educated and uncommonly astute as she was, I genuinely trusted her judgement more than any of theirs. This did not keep the resentment from bubbling up though, I would have to watch out for that.

"What's up?" Alira asked me, and I found myself uncharacteristically mute. It was not that I could not think of what I wanted to say, the proper configuration of words was just eluding me. I had a sentiment and a message, but no dialogue with which to convey it. Agrian had been hurt by my secret-keeping and neglect of him, and that damage may never be undone. I wanted, ultimately, to avoid repeating it with Alira. I…cared about her. I finally gave up on eloquence and just made myself speak.

"What happened before—" The explosion interrupted me.