Chapter six - Fodina Helton

*** Leo Cazador ***

“Papi?” the soft voiced trilled into my ear. Papi, means daddy in the Spanish language of my old world, it has no equivalent translation here making it my guilty pleasure as I neither taught her it’s meaning nor to anyone else. It became her word to address me, though she was aware that Leonardo was my real name. She was only three years old, but more intelligent than any other of her counterparts. Well that may be the thoughts of one who considers her in a biased form, though it matters not, her intelligence was a source of pride for me.

I was already teaching her what I knew about magic, at least its fundamentals. It would take her years to master the forces, but already she was commanding the world energies in a way none, but the two of us could muster.

“What is it my little flower?” I raised myself from the ground that comforted me. We were currently on the grounds of the Helton Mine, a territory tributed to the Helton family line as a reward for serving me. The lands granted to them constituted a great deal of territorial patches from the surrounding lords, none of them had a say in the matter.

She came waddling towards me turning to point towards the pit that was the Helton Mine, the entrance had been expanded, after all the entrance itself was a cave and that was but a premature mine. Far deep down into the mine was a muddy lake constantly being processed up and down into an exterior pit. There a sifting process separates the iron from the mud, the mud keeps the sulfuric waters in which the iron resides from killing anyone, though other countermeasures were in place to protect the laborers. Hard to mine without hands to mine the mine.

Some of the things being done in the mine required my hands and abilities to perform, such as the sulfuric separation into a powdery compound. For now the nearly pure sulfuric powder was being stored in large warehouses, these warehouses were constantly under construction expanding to meet the storage needs of the yellow powder.

After mining deeper into the cave an interesting thing was discovered, the sulfiuric iron puddles were a delicate byproduct of a combination of a grainy iron rich bedrock constantly being washed by high pressured water that would come up from a boiling lake far below the ground. The water was being heated by the ancient magma veins that once composed the volcanoes that raised Boraia from the bottom of the ocean.

Coming from the direction she was pointing was Helton and his family.

“Helton!,” I exclaimed not expecting the old man to meet with me.

“How are you my lord?” Helton asked casually, Erik Helton bowed from his waist in reverence of the man he was indebted to, even if the man was a child.

“Same as always,” I shrugged off his bow as I stood feeling abashed in the presence of his family. It was not like me to feel for shy before others, though the loyalty Helton gives to me makes me see him as no ordinary man. If loyalty could be refined into a substance then at its end you would meet a Helton.

His woman and three daughters followed with him. They were all wondrous flowers yet to bloom, many had come to the newly established Helton Estate, to propose marriages and potential future partnerships, all of which Helton had refused. It was Erik’s way, he was a happy man with very little and gaining more would only serve to corrupt his soul. In the last week I had the lady Grovild do me many favors, including keeping the Heltons away from greedy nobles and merchants.

Liliana, Jovina, and Erika were his three daughters, Jovina was his oldest, older than myself by at least three years. Lili was my age, and Erika was Liliana’s younger twin my mere minutes.

“I did not expect to see you today,” Sophia gave me a meaningful glance and I ushered her forward, she wanted to play with her friends, Helton’s daughters. At this display both Helton and his wife gave a light chuckle. It was nice to see children at play, it made one forget that there were horrors in this world, in all worlds. For a moment my mind wandered to the day I died, but quickly I pushed away the thought and focused on the here and now.

“Well my lord,” Helton began. “With the court magister Granate who came in yesterday to inspect the mining of the quartz and with you coming in today I had to be here. As always my house and I are at your service.”

“Thank you Helton,” I said looking over towards the field where the girls had chosen to play around in. “Let’s leave the girls with your wife as we head down into the mine then, no?”

“As you will,” he then turned to his wife and gave her a meaningful glance. She simply nodded gracefully and gave him leave. We both started our way down into the deeper mine in silence. I had already sent down the reason for my coming, I was simply resting when Helton had found me. Having moved the item and Sophia all the way here had been draining.

The quartz mine was a recent discovery, it was laced with gold and other elements, though by not much of a significant degree. The quartz had been in the deeper levels of the mine, far below what the average man could endure exploring. It’s discovery had been down by a prospecting group that got lost, of the three only one survived and spent weeks in recovery, he had acid burns, normal burns, dehydration, and fall wounds.

The thing about quartz is that in this world they act as batteries, they are capable of storing the wild mana that I can control. With spell circles of my own creation these batteries can fuel all kinds of mage tools. Its applications are virtually limitless and the supply equally so. The deposit of quartz was vast, some crystals were larger than the castle walls that protect the capitol.

We entered through the main way and quickly made our way down into the crystal powered minecarts that shuttled us further down until we reached the cavern where the crystals were being processed before being loaded onto carts and shipped out to certain shops that would engrave them with spell circles written by me. Each of the scribes were placed under the control of slavery marks, some willingly accepted the burden, some resisted.

These scribes and shops were managed by Granate, he had encouraged their creation and had been among the first to accept the mark of slavery. I was surprised by his willingness and eager attitude, but it was clear that he accepted that the changes I could bring to the world were worth being enslaves for. He was not the only one that had surprised me with wanting the mark, even Bjorn, this large, bulky, soft bear of a man was more than happy to accept the mark. I believe that Granate had told him beforehand that I would reveal much of what I know about machinery and the solutions to many of the puzzles that still confused him. Having Bjorn directly under my control, I did exactly just that, opening wide his horizons. In no time at all he was given commission to build the new ocean fleet after his designs were approved and applauded. A new drydock was built in all of the major cities, Odea, Kanta, and Isyndril, to speed up production.

With Bjorn commanding the drydocks I managed to insert the construction of a secret fleet as well. A drydock was commission for the Grovild estate and another unmarked zone to the south east. These two would be fueled by myself, income was already coming in from all the items I was creating with the quartz.

The first of the fleet were set to make their maiden voyages in a few more months.

The public vessels would be powered by sails, however those vessels set aside for myself were being fitted to house a powerful quartz engine.

*** Granate ***

“My lord!” I smiled broadly, though I am in my mid twenties I easily accept that the child I lower my head to is well above me in all of the important aspects.

The child was with Helton, an honorary council member of the Illuminated, a group of my own design approved by our great lord. It consists of dozens of specialists, men and women with great skills and masteries in their fields of study and research. Every single last member had taken on the slave mark, a mark specially designed by our lord, it was by far the most intricate magic I had ever seen anyone design or use. How it is that the slave mark worked was a mystery, though the young lord had made it clear what were the most important aspects, do not disobey and do not betray.

“Granate,” his voice filled my ears. “Have you set up the machine?”

“Of course my lord,” I motioned towards a crate that was half the size of a normal man. Within was a strange contraption, its use was not readily discernable.

He had called for the gathering of just about anyone important within the mine so there was quite a crowd gathered around waiting to see exactly for what reason they were called.

“May I ask if the device has a name?” I humbly asked following him as he started fiddling with the machine.

“I call it the atom bond disperser,” the young lord grinned. After a bit more fiddling he mounted the machine on his shoulder, it appeared to be some cross between steel and quartz crossbow without the bow. In the place of the bow were four bars that were the length of one’s arm and each had complex spell crest designs including some quartz batteries.

“This is going to be your new mining tool,” he said to everyone in general. There had been some chattering in the crown which quickly died down as everyone rushed to assemble around the young lord.

He walked over to the nearest wall marked for excavation, he pointed the tool at the wall and suddenly the four bars separated from it and connected with the rock wall. He placed the machine against the wall as well.

“This is the atomic bond disperser,” he explained loudly. “What this will allow you to do is mine at an unprecedented rate. What took months to do will take a lot less time. It makes brittle the rock and theoretically it should make the rock crumble down or even reduce itself to dust. Well here goes, live test number one…”

It did not literally break apart atom bonds, instead it produced a field over a certain distance covering any sort of solid material, in this case rock, then it would release a vibration force that would destabilize the solidity of the object. The burst of vibration was not a concentrated burst, instead it would be generated through multiple points so that the destabilization would only occur in a localized zone. It was similar to the cancelation of frequencies, though the lethality of that method would be exponentially higher. Instead this would be a more controlled force, unfortunately I should have at least considered that even if the magnitude of force was lower, to what magnitude of force could the human body survive?

Too late to worry about that, the trigger was pressed.

THWOOOM!

The tremors could be felt from outside the mine.