We enjoyed ourselves quite a bit that night. Alex was a little disappointed it was more of a poetry slam than a rap battle but the dwarves were somewhat lacking in musical development. Then again, I had not seen any kind of music box or other replaying systems in my time here. Maybe they just had not thought about that quite yet. The living fortress was at least motivated to figure something out. Eventually. First was our separate trip to the human lands.

I left early the next morning to make for my workshop. There were a few useful things I wanted to prepare and bring with me. My friends, no, my family sent me off.

“Stay safe, Fio, and have fun!”, Safrah waved.

“Be sneaky!”, Vivi sent through her [Telepathy].

“I’ll see you in a few months”, Alex said, “Maybe…”

“Yes. Maybe. I’ll keep an ear open for rumours of you. It’s not like you’re inconspicuous.”

“Goodbye!”, they called together.

I hooted and took off. The air was caught under my feathers and I rose without making a single noise. Within moments, I was a hundred metres up. Darkness flooded out of my feathers. My wingspan extended magically, more than tripling. With all the levels I had, my [Sgiathan Dorcha] Skill was extremely powerful. I was only a little slower than a plane, I thought. Alex corrected me that I did not even reach half that of a commercial jet. Still, almost 400 kilometres per hour was insane for an owl. Without a single sound on top of that.

That speed made me reach my workshop by late noon. It was about halfway to the goblin village. I knew I was able to press forward and get there sometime in the evening or early night. Thinking about it, the distances in this world were rather insane. Even land-bound travel had little issue with it, though, since Attributes and magical vehicles could heavily cut their travel time.

The mountain I stopped above was nothing spectacular. It looked like any other with one nearly vertical side to the north and a slightly less dramatic slope everywhere else. The top was not covered in snow all year round and a few dozen metres below the peak, greenery began to grow. First shrubs and weeds, then eventually small trees and grass. The closer one got to the valley, the more the land turned into forest.

My workshop was situated on the north side, about two-thirds up the cliff. It was incredibly difficult to find if one did not know what they were looking for. There was a tiny hole maybe four centimetres wide a little less than a metre above a small ledge. Said ledge was just wide enough for me to stand on and thread a tendril of shadows through it. A push of my will and my body shifted out of this world. Colours and objects turned into a vision of essence and vis, my darkness being the most prominent. It was a path which I could follow. The next moment, I returned to reality, my body forming from the shadows within the hole.

I stood up and looked around. Behind me was a flat wall. It had once been an open cone I had drilled into it with a magic beam but I since covered it up with a wall. The hole on the other side was even smaller. This way, no bird would get the idea to use this place as its nest. It was mine alone. There was actually a small space in between the newly built wall and the outside of the mountain. I would not be against a resident further covering up the fact that my workshop lay here. It was after all filled with important thaumaturgical devices.

The most prominent feature of the room was the centrepiece. A set of twelve pedestals made from arcane stone stood in a perfect circle. Clean water and darkness crystals alternated between them. The centre of the circle held another pedestal surrounded by four pillars bending towards the middle. They tapered towards the tips but did not meet. Instead, they pointed towards the most important device of advanced thaumaturgy. The runic matrix. I had no idea how to make one since mine was war spoils from a thaumaturge. Technically, I had stolen it but I killed the former owner in combat afterwards so…

The runic matrix was a cube that looked to be made from eight smaller cubes. Lines like, well, runes crisscrossed all over it. One corner was pointing straight down while the opposite nearly met the ceiling. The object was currently inert and slowly rotated around its vertical axis. If it was activated, it would speed up and the runes would start to glow, drawing in pure distilled essence from nearby.

Said essence would be gained by burning items in a specifically constructed furnace and catching the fumes in arcane alembics. That setup was built to the left of the entrance. All along the wall behind it, warded jars stood ready to hold essence or supply it for infusion crafting. That was what the altar was about. It could take objects and pure essence to infuse them into a catalyst and create something new. Like my silverwood wand. Both the wand core and the caps had to be infused properly to make it work. That was one of the items I would definitely take along.

Currently, it rested in the far back of the room. I had dug out another area last autumn for just this one purpose: Collecting nodes. A ring of six node stabilizers stood around another pedestal. This time, the central piece was modified a little to allow any item placed inside to draw vis from connected nodes. Each stabilizer was supposed to have a major node of mostly one primal aspect but that was still a work in progress. I had found one each for earth and water easily enough. Order had been a little more of a struggle. Destruction and fire still eluded me. The most recent addition was my medium air node. I had found it about a month after Stormbringer’s last passing in winter somewhere up on a peak nearby the goblin village. While it was only medium, that was still better than nothing.

Now, the only real problem was fire. I had destruction vis myself in my Core and could supply it manually but a decent fire node would be necessary. Until now, I had to fall back on vis crystals bought from the Dwarven Hills but they did not have the kind of supply to really let me get started. Then again, my current research was not at the point where I could easily do something. All experiments I had in mind were extremely risky and could spread taint or create another hungry node. Both things I needed to figure out how to keep in control or possibly even destroy.

Hidden in a corner was the last piece of thaumaturgy. My crucible. It could do very simple infusion processes without having to fall back on the infusion altar. Some thaumaturges called it alchemy because of that but I knew better. The concepts behind the two tools were nearly the same, just upscaled and altered for safety in case of the altar.

I would definitely take along my crucible. My storage Skill made that one an easy decision. The heating plate I had crafted over a year ago would come along as well. It was much easier to move than the nitor I used here for heating.

Two golems also stood in the room. They were basic designs and had simple instructions to move any distilled essence from the arcane alembics to my warded jars. The jars were even labelled for that purpose. My earth node was used to power them. Right now, they had nothing to do and stood still, waiting for any signal to change their behaviour. I paid them no attention.

I knew I wanted to take a long some other things but I also wanted to keep a bunch of space in case I ran across something interesting. What I definitely would take along was the Thaumonomicon. The magical tome held every work of research related to thaumaturgy. Well, that was not quite the full truth. Every thaumaturge had their own personal work but what was finished, they could put inside and anyone else meeting the prerequisite knowledge would be able to read their work. And yet, it was not enough. Either nobody had figured out how to deal with taint or hungry nodes or I lacked the information required to access what I wanted. I had tried to explore every approach I could think of but to my frustration, there was nothing.

Still, it would come along. The magical tome was very important to verify if I found something truly new. And if that something could help me with my goals.

There was something else I would always want to bring along. Salis mundus. It was glittering dust made from balanced shards. Vis shards infused to hold every primal aspect. They were then heated until they crumbled and the resulting white and purple powder could be used to magic objects in the real world. It could turn a pile of books into a Thaumonomicon or a cauldron into a crucible. If I wanted to recruit someone for my research, this would let me give them what they needed to get started.

With all that, I went through my inventory once more. I had my crucible, heating plate, my wand, my Thaumonomicon and a bunch of salis mundus. I also brought some extra food which stayed fresh inside my storage Skill. And a bag of berry blend fruit tea. Okay, a few bags. It was my favourite, after all. If I desperately needed something else, I could always make a trip here. Or just buy it in a city. I had a vis coin worth of assorted assets. A bunch of gold, silver and bronze coins. I heard the human plains used a different currency but would accept dwarven money without issues. That might only be in Trade Town or nearby but I had high hopes the most technologically advanced civilization’s coin would be accepted by its most coveting neighbour.

That was everything. I was finally ready. It was back north. My birthplace was there, somewhere along the mountains. Maybe I could check in on my blood relatives. They were not sapient, last I saw them, but that was three months after I hatched. Maybe my mother or father had found a node and reached higher mental Attributes? Yes. Checking on them seemed like a good idea. There was even a human village nearby if I remembered correctly. I could probably use that to gather some information.

With a goal in mind, I took off again. Owls were normally nocturnal so if I wanted to observe my parents, leaving now would be the best option.