aerland

/ ˈɛ:land/

Noun, any of the various levitating lands that grace Eryth’s skies. Some are static, anchored to one location, while others meander the heavens like nomadic sojourners.

“Phew! That was a hell of a work out,” Arthur remarked as he toweled down his wet hair. He and Aeskyre sat down to a hearty lunch. Their noon-time meal was the previous day’s leftovers with an accompaniment of mashed potatoes.

After the amount of energy expended in the training field,it was well deserved. Aeskyre was already partaking of the steaming bowls of food that were arrayed on the kitchen’s island table.

“By the way, I meant to ask—” Arthur asked, hesitant about the response.

“Yes?”

“Whatever happened to the Mark Two?” He held his breath.

“If you mean that contraption that almost got you killed, I left its carcass where it lay. Why?” Aeskyre replied, She didn't even look up from her food.

As he piled his share of food on his plate. Arthur contemplated how he was going to convey his thoughts to his host. He took another breath and then released it, bleeding off his nervous energy. Of late, the breathing exercises had served as some sort of therapy whenever he felt anxious.‘This could go either way’ he thought as he met her heterochromatic gaze whose irises twinkled like a cat’s.

“Well?”

“It worked—the engine was working as I intended but then...something happened to it.”

“So then? What do you need me for?”

“Huh? I thought you’d flip out or something. Won’t you stop me?”

“Why would I do that? You’re here, alive and well. That was then, this is now. If I started treating you like an egg, I wouldn’t be doing you a favor. I might not always step in, but I will always make sure you have learnt the lessons from your experiences. I hope you learnt what happens when you meddle with untested ideas —mana can be a fickle thing.” Aeskyre pointed out.

“I understand.” Arthur said, regarding the food on his plate. The steamed potatoes reminded him of home; of all the things, food stayed with him. “ If I were well rested before I tested the engine, I would have been more alert to what was happening right in front of me. I failed to account for deviations in my testing. Better yet, I should have waited until you came back.”

“It pleases me that you are aware of your own faults.” Aeskyre said, grinning like a proud mother. “ As long as you’ve realized that, you can continue tinkering with your inventions. However, I want you to do everything with your own hands. Even if you can’t maintain your lightning magic for long, it is still better than nothing.”

‘What a bummer, this might set me back days if not weeks. Maybe I can salvage what was left.’ Arthur thought dismayed

“Assuming I don’t vaporize it…” Arthur mumbled as he picked at his food.

“Then I shall inculcate the importance of being conscious of the resources you have at hand. From now on, you will have to get the materials yourself. I shall only give you a few ingots to start with;I have already been generous enough…”

“I would not be quick to besmirch the generosity you’ve shown me so far. You've already done so much for me even though I was just a stranger that happened upon your lair.” Arthur bowed his head.

Aeskyre just grunted to show she’d heard and returned to her food and the two lapsed into a comfortable silence until they were done with lunch.

Arthur approached the workshop that had been his most frequented place in the Keep, discounting the study that took every waking hour of his. As he passed underneath the lintel separating the room from the adjacent hallway, the first thing he saw were the lightning flowers that blanketed the workshop’s walls like a proliferation of black lichen.

Hairline cracks marred the walls while the splatter of congealed blood, pieces of metal that were half melted and strewn haphazardly made the workshop look like the aftermath of a warzone.

The mage-lights were flickering like faulty fluorescent tubes casting the room in shadows that danced and flickered in the corner of his vision. But the gloom was no impediment to his view of the other odds and ends that formed debris. That included the husk of an engine that was the Mark Two still attached to its restraints like a trapped animal.

He knelt alongside and ran his fingers across the body of the decrepit invention. The exterior casing was riddled full of holes and a gaping wound that was the epicenter of the explosion. Slag clinging to its body sloughed off and crumbled at his touch like scorched sandstone.

As for the canister containing Pyrtherite crystals, it appeared to have been obliterated along with half of the engine’s internals. Likewise, the canister containing the Aertherite crystals was not left unscathed. It had ruptured from the inside when things went south and not a peep of it remained—magical reactions could be very efficient when they wanted to be.

“Damn, I guess I’ll have to build it from scratch.” Arthur sighed as he got to his feet and dusted off his hands.

Getting down to work, the youth grabbed an unbloodied, albeit sooty leather apron and set about preparing things for another engine. First he fixed the flickering sconces of mage lights using [Diagnostics] to find degraded runes which he remedied with [Basic Repair]. He contemplated using the latter skill to fix up the engine when he saw just how easy it made fixing the mage lights but it failed to activate.

‘Guess there is a reason it’s called [Basic Repair]; can’t fix something that is missing more than half of its internals. I’d wager [Kill Switch] and [Null Field] also do what they say on the tin,’ he inferred. ‘I should try [Diagnostics] and [Basic Repair] to see if I can fix my Earth technology, like my phone...maybe? meh—maybe later.”

Deciding it would be best to see what his other class skills did, he experimented with the mage lights. [Kill Switch] did what it said; it literally killed the lights and plunged the workshop into darkness. It was an active skill that he could turn on and off by just willing it.

By the way they gradually dimmed as the enchantments ran out of mana [Null Field], and seemed to create a barrier which prevented outside interference including interaction with the mana that powered the lights.

[Null Field] was both an active skill just like its counterpart as well as a passive skill he could leave running for as long as his well of power was topped up. ‘Note to self: The World also rewards sticking your neck out, as long as you come out of it alive,’ he thought after testing his skills.

One hour later, the workshop was well and truly not flouting safety standards enough to cause a dwarf-smith an aneurysm. The lighting was stabilized, the coagulated blood had been scoured using pressured water and hot air from a lit forge had been used to dry it quickly. Arthur sat down for a short reprieve watching the entrancing flames dancing in the forge.

Afterwards, he got up, rolled his shoulders to remove the kinks therein and picked some ingots to get started. He split the metals between those that would be melted down in the forge and those he would melt personally; that meant the mithril alloys went into the forge while the steel was melted down by timed bursts of lightning—a painstaking process as it took all his concentration not to vaporize the metal.

He threw himself at the tasks, making sure that there was no air in the molten metal as he poured it into prefabricated molds.

Unlike when he’d just stumbled around the workshop winging everything, now he knew his way around the forge. Even then, he couldn’t hope to become a decent blacksmith overnight—perhaps with time he would.

For now, he was content with having his [Magitech Aercrafter] skills compensate for his shortcomings and what he assumed were some of his Earth skills that he knew by rote.

He had [Basic Rune Lore], [Eidetic Memory], [Detect Flaw], [Advanced Crafting] and [ Basic Artificing] from his previous class which was already overkill for what he was doing.

Added to that, [Diagnostics] and [Basic Repair] and the slew of skills made Arthur well rounded to cover his own bases nicely. As he was, he could open his own shop already but that was a matter for another time.

Arthur did not go to sleep until he had extracted the cast metals from their molds. He also made sure that he had inspected them for flaws. He would not be taking chances when he had limited materials to work with this time round.When all that was done, he got cleaned up and went to bed.

From then onwards,it was sword practice with Aeskyre in the morning to drill techniques into his body, then a bath and breakfast. Afterwards was the forge where he started enchanting new components for the mana engine; this was the most tedious task of all—etching runes had to be done carefully yet it was an area that he had a bit of experience.

There were no Aertherite and Pyrtherite crystals at hand however. As she’d said, Aerskey decided that he was going to have to acquire them himself. Therefore, he made sure his plans included space for screw-in canisters when he was assembling the engine.

Five days flew by and Arthur had calluses on his palms to show for it. Thanks to [Regeneration] they did not hamper his work greatly; blisters were healed almost as quickly as they appeared.

Also, he was filling out his frame nicely because he took every meal. Where he previously looked like a wiry convalescent, now he was close to being brawny. The sort of brawn that reflected a prime constitution in a 24-year-old youth.

As a side effect of overcharged [ Regeneration] he had grown a couple of inches taller, nearing the 6 foot 2 mark. Aeskyre assured him that he wouldn’t stand out because well, there were half giants who were even taller but that was beside the point.

He also had stretch marks underneath his biceps but they were so faint that you had to squint to see them. His body was also successfully accommodating his new strength.

Occasionally, he had to be careful not to cleave through a chopping board or mess up his rune etching. On the whole, he had grown up and been tempered well enough to be heads and shoulders above the average native, literally and figuratively.

If it were not for his combat prowess which was, regrettably still substandard, he would have been a fine adventurer. Not that self-given Red the Mithril appellation that he fantasized having people call him, but a Mithril level adventurer who was known across the entirety if not most of Alkerd.

There was only so much Arthur could do about swordsmanship, especially when it only existed in works of fiction while growing up. Arthur had gone from what his instructor dubbed flailing around to a novice swordsman who knew the where the pointy end went

However, Arthur had yet to pick up a swordsmanship class. Unlike studying and other manual work which came easily to him, training and using muscles he’d never known existed was drudgery. Then again Arthur had discipline in barrels and an unwavering enthusiasm to swing his sword and practice his footwork until he got it right.

Having said that, occasionally Aeskyre had also started beating technique into him, by combat. Something about leveling in the face of adversity called counter leveling. She did it in the hope that putting him between a rock and a hard place would induce his psyche to gravitate towards the class.

“ Are you sure you should be sparring in a dress? What if it gets ripped mid fight?” Arthur was a nervous wreck. He already had first-hand experience with Aeskyre’s strength, but this? This was madness.

Aekyre, as usual, had her practice longsword that almost dwarfed her. Her holding it one handed willy-nilly like some sort of prop that weighed next to nothing never ceased to make for an amusing spectacle.

To an external observer from Earth who had no context, a petite woman in a sundress, toting a ludicrously large sword was utter insanity. For Arthur, it was the pits. Again what was with the sundresses though? An observer could only wonder.

“Oh, pshaw!" She flicked her wrist indifferently. “It's enchanted to stop an arrow shot from point blank. How do you think I've been fighting wyverns without armor on? Now put your guard up, less talk, more fighting!”

‘Dragons must kidnap princesses for their clothes,’ Arthur mused.

Arthur took his preferred defensive stance. He kept his body low to the ground in crouch with one foot ahead of the other at a 45° angle. Then he held his own practice sword, that had been his companion for a while,in a two handed grip with the blade diagonal to his dominant side as he met his partner's eyes.

“ Hmph! An offensive stance,” Aekyre narrowed her eyes to slits. “It allows you to extend your reach towards your enemy. For a defensive stance, you'd want to square your shoulders and hold your sword off to the side, closer to your body but not so close that you'll get in the way of your own sword when parrying. Let's begin!” such were the words of the woman, repeated in different variations to make sure Arthur remembered.

Said woman glided across the ground with her sundress billowing behind her. Her bare feet kicked up sand as the ground cracked and buckled from the use of draconic strength while the sword was poised for an overhead chop, but Arthur knew better than to fall for the gambit.

It was a feint, or was it not? There was no time to think, he had to react at the speed of thought, so he advanced with his sword poised to parry. Blocks were ineffectual, unless he wanted to have his sword, his arms or both broken by concussive force. Once you remembered that she had the might of a dragon, you had to think twice about meeting her head on.

Thankfully it wasn’t a feint, so Arthur parried the blow. He twisted his sword to catch his partner’s blade on the parrying hooks but she had already withdrawn; she was fast! Next came a swing angled towards his right leg, he flinched. There was not enough time to intercept or parry, so he jumped up and let the sword pass underneath but then she reversed the swing, and he was caught flat footed in midair.

What could Arthur do? Magic—He cast a blast of wind which angled him away from the incoming blow and landed knees bent, out of range then, before she could recover he went on the offensive.

Aeskyre rebuffed his attack and riposted, responding in kind, He let his legs give and parried the blow with an overhead hoist of his weapon since the sword had gone for his neck but alas, the dainty draconic woman took that opportunity to step on his knee, doing a front flip with the swords still in contact and while in the air, she angled it to smack his back.

“Dead!” she declared. He had left himself wide open. “What did I say about flashy movements? If it were a real sword I would have run you through the back.”

Dusting off the sand from his knees, he retorted, “No one would think about doing a front flip mid-lunge. Not everyone has the temerity of a dragon in a woman’s body.”

“Pardon me?! What is that supposed to mean?! You have to learn to expect the unexpected.”

“Nooothing. Even I don’t know what I was getting at. Just frustrated that’s all.” He stowed away the Zweihander on the weapon’s rack.

Aeskyre regarded him as she also stowed away her sword “You're getting better at this nonetheless. You stayed in our fight longer than our last bout and only used your magic at the end.”

“At the speed you’re moving, that assessment does not inspire confidence.”

“Mayhap you need a change of pace. Pushing yourself too hard will burn you out,” She added. “How about you go stretch your legs outside, there have been no wyvern sightings for a while now and the weather should have calmed down.”

“Mmh, good idea. Of late, I’ve been feeling cooped up ,” he replied as he left the training grounds while Aeskyre remained behind.