Chapter 13 — A Minor Construction Project

The elevator's platform arrived at the fifth floor, where Welkin had said the lounge would be, and together with Ranger, Ria stepped off the round platform to a faint breeze stirring the air—surprisingly fresh smelling air.

Following the breeze deeper into the curving stone-wrought hallway led her to one of the tower’s other two elevator shafts. The breeze grew to a whistling whorl that buffeted her cloak and dress as she approached the shaft that was chained off, a sign informing her that it had been semi-permanently repurposed.

Leaning over the chains, Ria confirmed the source of the wind was the shaft itself and a hole in the side of the shaft… a hole two floors in height. Some sort of glyph-inscribed metal disks had been affixed at the four corners of the rectangular hole.

“Woof!” Ranger warned.

“Wha-!?” Ria cried out and fell backwards onto her butt as the elevator platform whooshed into place.

Iselyn smirked at Ria as she stepped from the platform and into the hole, leaving Ria to stare dumbfounded.

The heck?!

Seeing that the platform wasn’t going anywhere, Ria hopped the chains and chased after her friend, her dress billowing in the stiff flow of air.

The sight of dirt, debris, and evening sunlight brought Ria to a halt.

“Rowr…,” Ranger commented as he caught up, and Ria had to agree.

At the far side of the large chamber more of those metal disks marked off a hole in the tower’s curving outer wall, a huge hole that spanned the width of the entire two-floor chamber. Wood debris that vaguely reminded of the raised seating in the third-floor event hall was littered against a lip of stone left below the hole and in haphazard piles around the room.

A swish of skirts and the feel of spatial magic nearby drew Ria’s gaze away from the view of the academy grounds to witness Iselyn causing a pile of crushed rocks and dirt to fill-in next to a sizable mound of dirt in the corner where Malleron was growing eerie mushrooms on splintered wood looking suspiciously like pieces of an old podium…

What in the thirteen hells was her friend up to?

Iselyn’s chuckle brought Ria out of her incredulity enough to close her mouth, but her eyebrows were probably still reaching her hairline.

“You should see your face,” Iselyn teased and nonchalantly motioned toward where her familiar was working its magic. “Malleron needs wood to grow his mushrooms apparently.”

Ria continued to stare blankly. That completely explained everything. Yup. No questions left. Was Iselyn really going to make her ask? “Alright, I’ll bite. What’s all this?”

“The renovations that Katria was working on.” Iselyn gave her a big grin and directed Ria to turn around. “This lecture hall wasn’t being used so the second-years got permission to expand and improve the student lounge.”

Ria had to hold her skirt down as a sudden gust, carrying some of the loose dirt, nearly swept her out of the tower. Glancing behind her then moving to see around a particularly large pile of debris and transported dirt, Ria saw that the big hole in the tower’s outer wall wasn’t the only hole in the former lecture hall’s walls. Most of the wall separating the current room from the adjacent lounge was also gone. The openings were again marked by hand-sized metal disks, this time leaving three narrow sections—to function as support pillars, maybe?

Like the lecture hall, the lounge was also two floors tall but with a wrap-around upper gallery occupying the upper floor. The gallery was wood construction with a wider area for tables and booths and a narrower area with a bulletin board and a door to the sixth floor. On the fifth-floor level, the self-service store and an area with fancy crystal and gear-adorned machines were visible. Enchanted signboards with columns and rows of numbers occupied much of the wall by the machines, and one of the machines was familiar—an attunement measuring machine!

Did the students in her new Order compete based on their attunements? Wait. She was getting distracted. That still didn’t answer what Iselyn was doing!

But when Ria turned around to ask, Iselyn was gone.

Ranger was sniffing the large mushrooms, one of which Malleron was lounging on. The mushroom-man’s smirking mask told Ria he was surely laughing at her in his head.

Ria fought the wind to run over to the elevator shaft, and... the platform was gone too!

“Is she coming back up?” Ria asked Malleron, and the stupid spriggan started whistling and pretending like he didn’t know a thing.

Ranger chomped the spriggan’s mushroom seat for good measure, snickering at Malleron grumbling and hopping to a different mushroom.

“Thanks, Ranger." Ria patted her reliable companion on his back. "But be more careful about poisonous ’shrooms, ’kay?”

“Woof!”

Malleron huffed at her, seemingly offended about something. Whatever, she just rolled her eyes at him.

It wasn’t hard to assume that Iselyn would be back, since her familiar was still there doing the mystery task he had been assigned, and Ria wasn’t in any particular rush after having taken care of her restricted books.

The question was: what to do while she was waiting? And what was Malleron doing anyway?

With a tap of her toe, Ria cast her Sensing Sphere spell and took a closer look. The furniture wood was undergoing a change from something dead to something... alive. The sense of life was encroaching into the wood rather than reviving it.

Rot element was weird.

It was nature, but rather than absorbing light and water to grow, it was earthy and... dark? Which matched with what Shopkeeper Tyrilenil had said. Surprisingly, there was something about the way the wood was changing that tickled her senses similar to how the podium in the reception hall had. But more than the changing wood, the feeling was stronger with the ‘petrified wood’ that Malleron was wearing.

Malleron shivered and waved his hand brusquely, somehow disrupting her spell, and gave her an annoyed look.

At just that moment, Iselyn returned, quickly swishing past.

Though Ria was still shocked at the spriggan disrupting her spell like it had, there was a more pressing interrogation needed.

“What are you doing?” Ria asked as Iselyn made another load of dirt and rock appear next to the previous one.

“Transporting dirt,” Iselyn answered simply and headed back for the elevator platform.

Not going to get stuck waiting again, Ria hurried after with Ranger in tow. “Well, yeah, I can see that. But why?”

“To help out.” Iselyn pushed energy into the symbol for the lowest underground level causing the platform to quickly descend. By the slight quirk to her friend’s lip, Ria was pretty sure the girl was messing with her by being purposefully vague with her answers.

“Hmm... I see.” Ria nodded like she’d decided something. “Want some help?”

“It’ll go faster with more of us,” Iselyn readily agreed.

“Okay.” A few trips would be fine. Ria wasn’t sure how much Jeni’s pouch could store at one time, but the primary limitation was the fixed number of usages per day. The emergency-use function did let her power extra usages with her own energy if needed, so it wasn’t a hard limitation if she was willing to spend about a tenth of her energy for each storing or retrieval.

Underground levels quickly flew by until the platform stopped.

The increased energy in the air and stonework caused Ria to hesitate for a few seconds before hurrying to catch up with her friend, who had already gone ahead down a cobblestone-walled passageway. Pulses of energy seemed to travel upward through the large stone pillars partially curving out from the walls at regular intervals. “Is this really the bottom floor?”

“No.” Iselyn shook her head. “When I asked Aldri the same thing, he said there’s a floor beneath this one with large-scale enchantments that draw up energy from the ley-line nexus below and distribute it through the tower, increasing the tower’s durability and repairing damage.”

That made sense, but... “So, why does the outside look so...?”

“Decrepit?” Iselyn finished with a laugh. “Apparently, those vines on the outside continually suck energy out of the tower.”

Ria tilted her head. “Why would they do that?”

“Because they are magic-sucking vines?” Iselyn offered with a raised eyebrow.

Ria rolled her eyes. “No, I mean, why would someone plant them there?”

Iselyn grinned. “The only hints the upperclassmen gave were to look up ‘crystal-fruit vines’ in the library and that we could earn one by helping with the seasonal harvests.”

“Oh?” Ria raised an eyebrow. “That sounds... promising?”

A laugh greeted their arrival as they passed through another hole marked by the small metal disks and into an excavation in progress. “Selling those fruits is one of the Order’s main sources of income.”

The glittery-skinned alchemist boy, Tallien, was the one who spoke.

Aldri waved. “Done with Shadwich and come to join us?”

“Sure?” Ria noncommittally replied as she looked around at the excavation in progress. “But what exactly am I joining in on?”

Along the walls and arching ceiling of the excavated space, vines that looked suspiciously like the ones clinging to the outside of the tower were growing at a visible rate as Tallien used a mechanical device to spray a liquid at their roots.

“We’re making a new viewing balcony and garden meditation area for the lounge!” the elfin martial-artist girl revealed. She and a partially transformed Zell were energetically digging out a section of dirt wall that seemed remarkably loose for how deep underground they were. The dirt they were shoveling was passing through a portal Aldri was maintaining and falling into a tidy pile nearer the excavation's entrance. Red-haired Katria was meditating nearby.

“Woof?” Ranger volunteered.

“Ah, want my familiar to help with the digging?” Ria offered.

“Thanks,” Zell breathed out and wiped his sweat-dripping brow with one of his furred arms before it started turning back to a normal not-furred arm. “I could use a break.”

“Woof!”

Ranger galloped over and started digging and kicking dirt through the portal with enough enjoyment that Orlisi couldn’t help laughing as she gave him more space to work and said, “I think we’re going to need you to loosen up more dirt sooner than we thought, Katria.”

“Joy,” Katria deadpanned.

Iselyn had already disappeared with her next load, so Ria quickly used Jeni’s pouch to collect as much of the loose dirt and rocks as it seemed able to handle and chased after.

“Were you able to find a housing arrangement you liked?” Ria asked Iselyn upon catching up.

“The accommodations were old-fashioned but plenty large enough,” Iselyn confirmed. “I’m surprised that more people aren’t joining the guild just for the discounted housing.”

Ria also wondered about that, and living in the tower seemed like it would be both fun and convenient, but abandoning Keira after everything that had happened with Amilee would be cruel—they only had one class together as it was. Though if Keira moved into the Golden Dawn's Shining Sun Hall, then... maybe it would be something to consider.

An enchanted silver key dangling from the strap of her friend’s handbag caught Ria’s eye as they walked onto the elevator platform again, and she commented on it, “Looks like you solved your spatial-storage problem, too.”

Iselyn nodded and activated the platform. “I did. But I was still short some coin since I haven’t claimed the housing refund yet. Fortunately, I was able to make arrangements in regard to payment.”

“Ah, so that’s why you’re helping out,” Ria realized and, when the elevator arrived again at the fifth floor, admitted, “I was really surprised when you came up the elevator.”

“You were,” Iselyn agreed with a victorious laugh then playfully bumped shoulders with Ria.

Iselyn had definitely gotten her good. Shaking her head with a wry smile, Ria led them back into the soon-to-be student meditation garden. “So, delivering dirt and whatever Malleron is doing with the wood debris?”

“The second-years were going to ask Rialle to burn the wood from the lecture seating that Katria demolished, but having a wood sprite break it down instead would increase the nature energy in the resulting soil,” Iselyn explained as her load of dirt filled in the gaps in a section of piled debris and, looking proud of herself, added, “In exchange for that and helping transport the dirt, I get a corner for Malleron’s use, and Tallien and Orlisi agreed to pay half of my first month’s rent on the vault key.”

Oh? That seemed like a good deal. Ria unloaded her own load of dirt and motioned at the hole in the elevator shaft’s smooth stone surface. “So, what’s the deal with the hole there? Is that just to make transporting the dirt easier?”

Iselyn shook her head. “No, from what I understand, it’s to help with wind attunement cultivation. Katria made a similar opening for a new observation deck on one of the upper floors and the colder air full of wind energy flows downward through the shaft to blow out through the opening here.”

Wow. Their upperclassmen didn’t seem to do anything in small measures...

“Ria!”

Ria spun around when Jarrel’s voice called out to her from behind after exiting the academy gate.

Jarrel really was there waiting against the wall. He signaled a carriage as he pushed off from where he was leaning and offered, “Young Lady Keira told me she had dropped you off here.”

Nodding, she gave him a quick hug and a smile as she took hold of his arm. “Thanks for coming to pick me up!”

“Woof!” Ranger also greeted.

Jarrel’s arm was stiffer than expected and he grimaced like it might be sore. He seemed tired, too. Hopefully, whatever secret mission he was doing for Lord Vorshan wasn’t too dangerous.

Once seated in the carriage, Ria happily updated Jarrel about the events of her exciting day, but they arrived at the estate before she could finish. The rest would make for a fun conversation during dinner, so she was fine waiting until then and hurried to her room instead.

At first, she wanted to work on making paired communication items for contacting Jarrel so they could coordinate better. Waiting outside the gate worked this time because registration was finished and because classes didn’t start until tomorrow. Doing that on a normal day when the school was busy with possibly hundreds of noble students being picked up after classes would be asking for trouble.

She soon gave up on the idea though, as she didn’t have her dictionary of glyphs, and more importantly, she didn’t know what magic to even use. Realistically, buying communication tools was a better idea, and Arthur might be able to offer some ideas on where to get one.

Looking over her books purchased from the library, there was still so much left to read if she was to be prepared for her first day of classes. And, she needed to get started making scrolls to sell, too. It was going to be a late night.

“Ranger, you excited about your first day doing familiar training?”

“Woof!”

If his tail rapidly whipping against the floor where he was lounging was any judge, her familiar was just as excited as she was to be finally starting classes.