Quicker than I thought, the weeks slipped by. I was constantly busy with establishing our research team, planning and checking the construction of the new defensive line, and setting up the university. Although Al arrived a week after me, I didn’t have much time for him.

He did make himself useful, though. Perhaps I’d been too caught up in thinking of him as my twelve-year-old brother, forgetting that he’d come from Earth, too. He spent most of his time in the lab, helping us make progress. I even toyed with the idea of revitalizing my computer project, which I’d pretty much abandoned as other demands increased. But it’s not like that’s time-critical, while the other ones might give major improvements in relatively short time, I told myself.

Despite what I’d feared, the university thing went smoothly, at least at first. I got a property in the center of the city for it and had it renovated. The city government was happy to help, or so they claimed. Probably didn’t want me ordering something worse for them. It was harder to find good people to get it started. Even weeks after the building was finished, Suaki was the only one I could consider a permanent fixture. At least he’d brought in a couple other experts, some of whom might work out in the long-term. We hadn’t opened for a real semester yet, but there were a few students. Until this got off the ground, there probably wouldn’t be fixed semesters and courses.

One day, I walked down the corridor to talk with Suaki, when I met a girl I recognized immediately. It was the one I’d helped at the Carmine Cloud Sect, who’d then gone on to participate in sort-of bullying me. I almost missed a step, then carried on, deciding to ignore her. From the periphery of my vision, I noticed her bowing, but I swept onward to Suaki’s office. I wasn’t in the best of moods that day.

I should have expected something like this, though. Our recruits mainly came from the same people who would go to sects, especially those who for some reason didn’t want to become a disciple or had left their sect. Students needed to have a good educational background, after all. At least we got some from the poorer parts of the city who’d done well in public schooling, even if I had to send a few people out to look for prospects for a few days.

When my nineteenth birthday rolled around, I suffered through a great party in the palace for a few hours, trying to ignore the stares and rumors, before I escaped to my rooms to continue studying the last set of plans Lei had drawn up for a jet. Building and testing that would take a few more months, at least, especially since I wanted as much of its mechanisms to work without qi as possible. The controls would probably have to be formation-based, along with enchantments to improve lift.

By the time the first phase of our new border fortifications was built, months had slipped past without much notice from me. I took a few hours off that day to take stock of where we were at and how things were going. The border would take some more work, but I might stay here even once it was done. Although we got good reports of the factories in the capital taking off, and more being built in other cities, I liked what I had to work with here.

Although I might increase the frequency of my visits home. Maybe I could even persuade Mother to let me take Xiaodan south for a bit. I was starting to miss my little sister.

I’d stayed in occasional contact with Mother, mostly to let each other know what was going on. The university she’d started in the capital seemed to progress pretty much like the one here. Otherwise, I got the feeling Mother was too busy with politics to pay much attention to the details. From what she said, there’d been a few diplomatic meetings with the Zarian. Things didn’t progress much, but at least we were talking. I’d count that as a blessing.

Perhaps I’ve been too cynical. A war isn’t something anyone would really want, considering the risk and devastation associated with it. Perhaps they’ll keep taking potshots at me in the shadows, but back off if it’s clear that fails. I snorted. It feels wrong to think things like that in a magic world, but there are no jinxes here. Right?

I shook my head and returned my attention to the documents I’d gotten. Their presence alone would have clued me in that something was different. And as I read through them quickly, I realized why. Information like this was easier to carry physically than through qi communication.

I leaned back in my office, blinking against the light of the winter sun coming through the window opposite me. In a few minutes, it would have moved on enough not to bother me, but I liked looking out over the city and the valley east of it. That river would flow into the sea a good number of kilometers further down. I tipped my chair back a little while I considered this. I hadn’t really been to the sea, but I remembered Mother mention she wanted me to contact the spirit beasts there, though I’d lost track of that. It seemed like the time had come now.

“Tenira?” I called. “We need to prepare for a trip.”

After a moment, the door opened and my friend stepped inside. “Where?”

I tossed her the message, watching her read while I thought about it.

Idly, my fingers played with the miniature windmill standing on the desk. I only noticed what I was doing and stopped after a few moments. The model was spinning rapidly, drawing its power from the rudimentary capacitor beside it, little more than two metal plates stacked atop each other. But it worked. I stopped it with my finger, frowning. It wasn’t that hard to build something to convert qi to electricity, like using formations to move a turbine and generate electrical power.

But what I really wanted, long-term, was the reverse. Generating electricity was doable, while no one really knew how qi formed, if it did. Probably it was like energy and couldn’t be created or destroyed. Storing qi wasn’t easy even with formations. And making formations required someone to put qi in, it wasn’t like batteries that you could just mass-produce in a factory.

I shook my head. I’d thought about this before, but now wasn’t the time for these musings.

Just then, Tenira folded the message and handed it back. “They’re building a new port in the bay, not far from where we fought the nomads,” she commented. “We could go for a visit.”

I shook my head. “No, I’d rather go to the east coast. Maybe a little further north.”

Tenira raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason for this?”

I shrugged. “Let’s say I’ve gotten curious about our ancestors and would like to take a look.”

The west might be easier or more promising on the face of it, but I wanted to combine this trip with visiting a few settlements. The ‘Sea People’ had lived there, their descendants now part of the Empire like many others. But my ancestors, the start of the Leri family, had come from them. I remembered what Mior had said, though I hadn’t had the time to do much about it. But now was the perfect opportunity.

While I was holding talks with krakens or sea serpents. Now that could be interesting.

Tenira left to arrange things, while I turned back to consider Mother’s message again and plan how I might proceed. I also looked through the books I’d taken along from the palace libraries and stored in a side room. I hadn’t had enough time to read through them all, but now I looked for descriptions of the spirit beasts in the sea. There wasn’t much I hadn’t read before.

In the end, it was a smaller group that gathered in the airship to travel to the coast. Lei and most of the others stayed. Al, however, decided to come along. He was probably just as curious as me. And there were the guards, of course.

Although we used a fast airship, the flight took several hours. We were also flying east, which meant time zone trouble, or would have if this world had those. Time was still measured locally, usually according to the standards of a province or region. I made a mental note of that as another thing to look into. In any case, it was afternoon by the time we arrived.

I stepped out of the airship, taking a deep breath of the sea air, salty and fresh. The wind was blowing, cold enough to have normal people scurrying to get out of the streets quickly. The houses around me looked simple but well-made, worn away by time and weather but still standing strong. The streets were wide, and I could sense the sewer system stretching beneath our feet, run by some complicated formations.

I started walking down the main street, away from the plaza we’d landed in. After a few meters, the ground sloped down a little, giving me a good view of the place. The sea stretched ahead of me, wide and glittering. To one side, docks held fishing boats, while some more of them bobbed on the water. Another dock housed larger vessels. All of them were built out of wood but carried a lot of qi.

I looked past them out to sea and quickened my pace. I knew at once that the tide was rising right now. I could feel it pressing against me, like a current to my qi senses. If I concentrated, I could feel an echo of a familiar presence in it, a hint of what I’d seen from the spirits. Something in me responded to it, just slightly. I barely even noticed where I was going as I bathed in that sensation. I couldn’t wait to get into the sea and see if there was a difference.

It didn’t take long for us to arrive at a rocky shore just outside the town, looking out over the sea. I glanced behind me, at the guards, Tenira, and Al, who waited quietly. Then I let my presence stretch out, my qi sweep outward over our surroundings. I could sense a few spirits taking note, pausing in what they were doing for a moment.

We didn’t have to wait long. A splash alerted me to something coming in from the sea. A strong qi presence accompanied it. A moment later, the upper part of a dolphin popped out of the water. It regarded me for a moment before the spirit beast sank back down a bit as if bowing.

‘Imperial Princess?’ a smooth feminine voice asked in my head.

I nodded and took a step closer, ignoring the spray against my lower robe. ‘Greetings. I need to talk with the dwellers of the deep. I assume you’ve been informed?’

‘We have. I will go out to make contact with a leviathan of the deep.’

‘Great. How long will that take?’

The spirit beast bobbed to the side and back. ‘I do not know. Hours or more.’ Then the dolphin vanished under the water. I felt the beast’s qi moving away from us, towards the deep sea.

Well, that was short and sweet. I turned around and looked at my guards. “Lirta, stay here, please. Contact me if anyone comes here again.”

The guard I’d chosen bowed and took my place standing on the rocks, while I turned away and walked towards the town, Tenira and Al following me.

“This was a little boring,” Al complained. “And now?”

I shrugged. “While we wait, I’ll take a look around the town. The sea people is where our clan came from, you know. The people living in this area are their descendants.”

Unfortunately, it turned out that the town didn’t hold any historical secrets. We walked through its streets for a bit, but I only saw more of the same kind of houses. The people mostly spoke Common. I did catch occasional examples of another language, although I didn’t understand it.

“Tenira, can you speak the language?” I asked, stopping beside a fountain in a park.

She shook her head. “I know a bit of our clan’s old tongue, but only a little. And the language has shifted in the centuries since our family was driven from here, picking up words and patterns from Imperial Common, and even another local language.” She looked around, clicking her tongue. “These people are barely Sea People anymore. At least not the way they used to be, before the Empire’s coming.”

“Not that our family is any better,” Al added. “They didn’t keep much besides a few names, right? Like yours.”

I blinked. Wait, why didn’t I ever notice that? “Do you know what my name means?”

Tenira raised an eyebrow, a smile playing on her face as she looked at me. “As I understand it... ‘moonrise’.”

I groaned and resolved to look up the meaning of names like Tenira and Acura later. “Now I feel stupid for not noticing anything sooner.”

They laughed at me and I started chuckling, too. But I felt the smile leave my face soon. I looked around at the town. A quaint, prosperous, fishing town, of little strategic value except for building warships and hosting a fleet outpost for times of trouble. But nothing really distinguished it from any other place in the Empire. I could visit other settlements in this area, but I knew I probably wouldn’t find much there.

“I thought this was the oldest settlement of the Sea People and one-time capital?” I asked. When I didn’t get anything more than shrugs, I sighed. “Let’s go talk to the mayor.”

It wasn’t hard to find him. The town hall stood right beside the central town square, an old building made of stone painted in bright colors. My guards went in ahead of us. As Aston walked us through the building, no one got in our way, so they must have cleared it for us.

The mayor, a middle-aged man with a weatherbeaten face, knelt beside the desk in what had to be his office. When I told him to rise and asked about the town, he looked hesitant. “Not much history in this town, Your Highness. This was all built after the Empire came.”

“Then what about the old town? Where did the old Sea People live?”

He cleared his throat. “That’s Old Riacis. It lies under the sea, now. Down in these rocks.” He looked down. “They say there’s caves crossing the rock under here, maybe a little further out towards the sea. The old city was built right into the waves, but it sunk, the coastline changed, and there we are.”

I frowned. “Was nothing recovered?”

“Yes, Your Highness, expeditions were sent down, have been for centuries. But it’s hard. The sea isn’t kind to our possessions, and there are many beasts in the water. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are areas not explored yet. Not many people are interested, either. Our ancestors didn’t leave their treasures there, and few people care about our history.”

I sighed. “Thank you. That’s all, then.”

I turned around and left the town hall, the rest of my group trailing behind. I hadn’t intended to go on a diving trip to see this town. But I needed to concentrate on my upcoming encounter with the sea spirit beasts, anyway.