Chapter 192 - Skyreach Spire IV

Closing the door behind themselves, the two centaurian additions each placed a hand on his chest and bowed. Both were Marquis—warrior lords entrusted with the defense of Cadria’s borders—and both were thrice ascended, but their appearances shared little beyond a basic outline. One was a bucking young stallion with a thick beard, a coat of jet black fur, and a short head of scruffy hair to match. His wings were not the feathered standard, but rather veiny and insectoid, evidence of the thoraen blood that flowed through his veins.

The other was an older man with a curled moustache. His mane, which for the most part was still a fiery red, was so long that it ran all the way down his humanoid back. On the battlefield, it would have been left untamed, but it was perfectly arranged for the formal occasion, lifted into a graceful, flowing ponytail. Had his dress been better tailored to hide his bulging muscles, it almost would have been possible to mistake him for a member of the finer sex.

“Lady Augustus. Your presence is unexpected, but most welcome. You have grown plenty since I last saw you. Congratulations.” The ancient marquis met her gaze with a bright, confident smile. “And Lady Phlence, I thank you again for your service in our time of need.”

“Good evening, Lord Pollux,” said Mariabelle, with a curtsy.

Silently standing up from her seat, Claire said not a word, but met the men with a brief nod.

Log Entry 6815

You have acquired the Cadrian Court Etiquette skill.

A familiar card returned to Claire’s hand as she looked down on him the same way she always had. Like weapon mastery, the etiquette skill was meant to provide a passive bonus that would aid her in combat.

Log Entry 6816

A discrepancy has been discovered and reconciled. Cadrian Court Etiquette has been adjusted to its maximum level.

But she required no such thing. Her posture was already perfect, her lack of respect rightful, and her emotions perfectly hidden beneath her two-layered mask. Had she left anything to the skill, she would have long been consumed by the wolves that haunted the palace.

“It is an honour, Lady Augustus,” said the younger marquis.

Still silent, she approached the younger man and clasped his hands in hers. When their eyes met, she nodded and smiled, taking care to ensure that her ears remained unmoving. The last thing she wanted was for the already jealous maid looming behind her to mistake the congratulatory gesture as a means of flirtation.

“I was put under the impression that you had regained your voice.” A frown on his face, Pollux brought a hand to moustache and stroked it. “At least if the testimonies are to be believed.”

Shaking her head, Claire began pouring her magic into the crystal in her hands. Once it was charged enough to sport a faint glow, she pressed it into the fox’s palm and raised the creature so it was level with her face.

“I c-cannot?” stuttered the fox. “It is true that I have uhmm… appropriated a means of communication, but it is not in my voice that my words are spoken.”

The bulky marquis cocked a brow. “What an interesting artifact that is.”

“It was uh… laboriously obtained from the depths of an… adventitious dungeon, located well within the great rainforest’s depths. Unfortunately, it is not fully err… conducive to the replication of formal speech,” said the glowing rock fox. “Hey, wait a second! What’s that supposed to mean!?”

Sylvia spun around and lightly drummed Claire’s face, but she was soon repositioned just far enough for her target to be out of reach.

“Would you mind if I took a quick look?”

Nodding silently, Claire handed both objects over to the marquis, who carefully eyed each before infusing his magic into the horn. When he pressed it to the fox, he did so gently, and made sure that it was firmly wrapped in her hands.

“This is a test to confirm the uhmmm… malleability and greatest extent of this unit’s functionality as well as the err… comprehensibility of its diction and the length of the phrases it remains capable of uhm… rendering in a breath.”

“Fascinating. Very fascinating. I haven’t the slightest clue as to the way that it functions,” he said, his eyes alight. “The magic does not quite appear to be encoded within the crystal in any known format, and the fox’s circuits are too complicated to analyze. Truly, a marvelous pair.”

Claire nodded before taking back her tools.

“Your interest has been noted. However, Marquis err… Poorcucks, it is unfortunately beyond the realm of uhm… feasibility for me to offer up a tool that er… resin states?” Sylvia tilted her head before clapping her paws together. “Oh, reinstates! It is beyond the realm of feasibility for me to offer up a tool that reinstates my ability to speak,” she repeated, more confidently.

“That is certainly a fair point,” he said, with a smile. “So? To what do I owe the honour?”

“It is not for any particular err… impetus that I am present, but rather a uhmmm… serendipitous happenstance of uhmmm… infinitesimal proportions, for I was one of the err… fortuitous few to have been uhmm… solicited for their uhhhh… métier.” Sylvia narrowed her eyes and spun around again. “Hey, wait a second! Now you’re just using hard words to mess with me!”

There was a brief pause.

“What do you mean you have to!?”

Another pause.

“Wha!? I’m not rude! You’re the one that’s being rude by calling me rude! Ugh! I can’t believe how mean you are sometimes.” The fox spun back around following a quick cheek pinch. “Unfortunately, the use of this artifact requires the cooperation of a um… reynard possessing a rather er… vacuous intellect. Communication has become a more uhm… arduous assignment.” Again, the fox spun around. “Hey, wait a second! You just called me stupid, didn’t you!? That’s it! I’m not talking for you anymore.” Huffing, she crossed her arms, raised her snout, and turned her face away.

Claire looked to the gentlemen, placed a hand on her chest and curtsied before setting both the vixen and the crystal down beside her.

“No need to apologise, Lady Augustus,” said Marquis Pollux, with a chuckle. “Your plight has been made apparent.” He continued after a subtle nod urged him on. “I will be preparing for your party a sequence of rooms for the duration of your stay, separate from the barracks prepared for the other adventurers. You are free to request any additional needs or wants from the servants.” He looked briefly at Sylvia. “Will you be requiring a litter box?”

“Wow, that’s even more r—”

Claire clamped the fox’s mouth shut and shook her head.

“Excellent. In that case, I shall be returning to the party in order to finish playing my role as host. Please come see me in my office at a later date, once your device has volunteered itself to speak again.”

Bowing again, the older centaur excused himself from the room and walked back down the hall with a brisk trot. The younger man, however, stayed behind and continued to hold his position until addressed with a nod.

“I simply wished to thank you, Lady Augustus, for providing Mariabelle with so much enrichment. She always does appear to enjoy speaking of you and the various antics that you have gotten yourself up to.” He smiled kindly before rising to his feet. “It is a shame that we have not an extended opportunity to speak, as I must also be returning to my duties. Please do not hesitate to speak to us if there is anything that does not meet your requirements.” His part said, he winked at Marie and followed the other marquis down the hall.

“Wow! That was stuffy as heck.” Sylvia spoke as soon as she was confident that they were out of earshot. “Is being a noble always that much of a pain?”

“Not always.” Claire tucked the crystal back under her skirt before lifting the fox into her arms.

“Claire, please don’t tell me you were doing that just to mess with them.” Marie pressed a hand to her face and groaned.

“I wasn’t,” said the lyrkress. “I just didn’t think it necessary for Pollux to know that I am not a mute.” Armed with a fresh understanding of her recent dreams, Claire retracted her spike and pulled her pet closer to her chest. There was clearly something going on behind the scenes. And she was confident that one night’s sleep was all she required to determine exactly what that thing was.

___

That night, after catching up with the naggy maid that had always been her confidant, and seeing her drunken companions to their upgraded suites, Claire found herself struggling to fall asleep. It was not the fault of the unfamiliar bed. The fluffy mattress was more than soft enough to appease even the pickiest of royals, and her sheets had all the qualities that one would expect from the finest silk. Its comfort had already been proven by Sylvia, who passed out just a few minutes after hitting the hay, but the scalewarden struggled to seek the night’s embrace. Every bit of effort she put into sleeping pushed the land of dreams further and further away.

After what felt like an hour of failed attempts, she got out from beneath the sheets and stepped onto the balcony. The dungeon was much closer than it had been earlier in the evening. The cloudy formation had long grown from a distant pile upon the horizon to a giant looming spiral, an immediate threat for anything that happened to cross its path. She could see the individual clouds churning in the vortex, spinning as they were repeatedly consumed and reformed by the razor winds. And it was only getting closer, slowly growing larger and larger as the Cadrian ship flew through the starlit sky.

According to the pamphlet, the passengers were meant to disembark for their preliminary investigations in the afternoon. Claire almost couldn’t wait. Had she not had any companions, she surely would have plunged her way through the storm, and sought out the dungeon that lay in its interior. It was not the thought of challenging monsters that had her heart pounding, but that of exploring new lands, of charting the deepest depths of terra incognita.

It was a chance that she would never have had in Cadria. All the local dungeons had long been conquered by the knights, and those in the friendly neighbouring lands had met the same fate. There was no sense of mystery. Everything was already known and documented, robbing all future spelunkers of anything that even remotely resembled a sense of wonder.

With a small sigh, Claire lowered her eyes and pressed her face into her hands. Seeing the spire had done everything but aid her predicament. There was no way she could possibly sleep with her heart pounding with excitement.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never really tested just how fast I can go.”

She glanced around the empty courtyard before turning her nightgown into a casual blouse and leaping onto the ground. Completely ignoring all the guards that curiously watched her, she slowly walked through the garden, her eyes on all the distinctly Cadrian plants, and approached the airship’s far edge.

The barrier was disabled. The wind would have been broken had it been active, but she could clearly feel the breeze against her skin, gently blowing by as they soared. Still ignoring the concerned centaurs glancing in her direction, she leapt off the edge, her arms spread wide and her tail dangling behind her.

She stopped shy of sprouting her wings and allowed herself to plummet through the sky. Something about the way that the world raced past her was liberating, enlightening almost. She could feel her spirits calm as the night became her bed. It simply felt right. Just as right as it had when she was deep in the sea.

Disregarding the winged centaur that had leapt after her, she altered the forces affecting her body and turned gravity on an angle. It began pulling her away from the sea and up into the sky above, towards the infinite abyss of space.

She could tell that the air was growing thin. It offered less and less resistance as she rose, but she had no trouble breathing. Once high enough, she shooed away all the forces affecting her, pulled out her wings, and cut through the sky like a blade. She had no idea where she was even going, but Pollux Manor had become a speck on the horizon by the time she decided to slow.

The tower, on the other hand, had become even more of a monumentous obstacle. It was so massive that she quickly lost the ability to see it in all its glory. She tried to focus on the various pieces, filling her vision with an assembly of different images, only to discover that she could process a maximum of exactly 138 concurrent perspectives—not enough to paint the diorama.

Spinning around, she began working her wings and vectors in tandem. Everything she had was used to send her body plummeting into the sea. Her momentum carried her a hundred meters into the ocean, the water the only thing to break her fall.

She continued falling through it until she spotted a series of distant lights. And upon chasing them, discovered a Vel’khanese city. There were only a few hints of illumination, but its architectural style was mostly identical to the half of Vel’khagan stuck beneath the waves.

Magical lights began to flicker on as she continued pushing through the sea, rapidly enough to cause a loud disturbance. Two orcapeds, which she presumed to be with the city’s guards, began chasing her with lamps held in their tentacles, their faces twisted to reveal their obvious annoyance. Smiling to herself, she swam away, quickly as she could, and rose back above the water’s surface, where she spread her arms wide and allowed a series of haphazardly inverted gravitational forces to pull her off in random directions. Again and again, she fell through the sky, freer than any bird or winged horse. After one such fall, she took a moment to look across the aether and focus on the manor, where she found the centaur that had jumped after her floating around and scratching his head.

Smirking, she decided to play a prank on the armed soldier. After moving out of the city limits, she dove into the ocean again, took on her true form, and swam through it as quickly as she could. Once directly below him, she burst out of the waves and rose above him, scaring him into swinging wildly with his spear, before flying off again, giggling all the way.

At her full size, her speed only increased. The sound barrier shattered when she pushed herself forward. She almost didn’t want to stop even as she approached the spire. She could feel its winds pulling against her body, drawing her in to be consumed by its violence. But as much as she wanted to accept the challenge and break through the storm, she veered away at the last second, turned back into a humanoid, and fell in another direction. On a thousand whims, she veered off course, playing with her momentum and basking in a strange primeval joy.

“What the heck are you doing so early in the morning?”

A fox appeared on her head soon after dawn broke, yawning sleepily with a paw held in front of her mouth.

“I’m not really sure.” The longmoose retracted her spike and pulled the orange furball into her chest. “But it’s fun. Want to join me?”

“Sure!”

Snuggling into the embrace, the fox stretched her back and joined her half-bred pet in soaring through the sky.