Not (Just) A Mage Lord Isekai
Chapter 149 - Dangerous Playspace and Playmates

Don't know why, but I was certain Vaserra was going to say Detroit. There was no good reason for it. Even if I’d been pressed to guess a planet, my guess would've been Mars.

At no point would I have guessed Venus as a possible place of origin. Would’ve guessed Venice before Venus, and that would’ve been a long way down my list.

“So… this ‘Stranger from beyond the stars? You’re sure they said Venus and not Venice?” I asked. It would make more sense.

Vaserra repeated both words, shaking her head. “I’m unsure, though I believe it was Vee-nus.”

“Don’t suppose she’s around? Would love to talk to her about her past,” I said, looking over Vaserra’s shoulder as if this bonded woman would appear.

She laughed. “I’m afraid she doesn’t wish to discuss her past, even with me.”

"So, you've got a member of your tribe who's from Ro'an, but also from Venus. Does that bother you?"

"She is happy. Happier than she has been since the loss of her partner. I find myself grateful to the stranger, for bringing back my friend," Vaserra said, prompting Frost Lily forward, though at a gentle pace.

"I…" I debated if I should tell Vaserra of my own origins. Would it even matter to her?

I realized that it mattered to me. After everything we'd been through, Vaserra was becoming a friend to me. And it wasn't like it would be some great betrayal. "I'm similar. Not from Venus though. Part of me is from a planet called Earth."

Vaserra nodded, her expression not shifting. "That does not surprise me. Not truly."

"Sure as heck surprised me," I said, chuckling softly.

"The stranger said there was likely someone from her home, living in your lands, when she learned of your woven wings," Vaserra explained, gesturing towards the sky. "It is not surprising that it was one of your only ensouled."

"Guess it does make sense," I said as we approached the heavy stone gate that separated our lands. “Honestly, you don’t seem that surprised.”

“There are old legends of starborn crossing over. It is a rare event, but as I said, change is coming…” she trailed off, her eyes moving forward. "This is new," Vaserra noted, studying the gate. "Large and strong. I do not mean to seem ungrateful… but would it be possible to create a device that would allow me to work stone such as this?"

"Need some decent Stone essence materials, but otherwise… yeah, shouldn't be too hard," I said, sliding off Frost Lily's back so I could open the gate. With a stretch of my will, I reached through the wall and pulled at the stone bar securing it.

"That can be arranged. Especially now that we do not need to dedicate our time to hunting meat," Vaserra replied. With Frost Lily a short ways behind, I moved into the tunnel, sealing it behind us. It somehow felt a lot more claustrophobic with the giant wolf and Vaserra than it had with Fang.

Maybe cause I was walking in front with Frost Lily breathing down my neck with every step.

Once I had that thought, I moved to the side, letting them move alongside me. We emerged on the far side without incident, and I climbed up behind Vaserra once more before we made our way to the portal and the newest refugee camp. Tamrie and Alister were both there, organizing said refugees alongside a couple dozen Tethered.

Tamrie stopped working when she spotted us, pulling her notebook against her chest as Frost Lily bound closer.

She was inside the main chamber, though the transparent stone let her watch as we pushed through the storm. I bid farewell to Vaserra with a shouted promise to get the location of that abandoned city from her soon.

Soon as I stepped inside, before I could even greet Tamrie, Alister was there. "Magus Percival, we have a problem."

"Uh, hi Alister," I said, blinking at the man.

"Ah, yes, greetings, of course," Alister said, nodding to me. He was clenching his teeth even as he nodded.

"What's wrong?" I asked, deciding to take pity on the man.

"These people do not… the numbers are wrong. They are consuming far more than they should," Alister said, grumping as he held up a page of notes for me, too close for me to actually read.

I pushed it back, attempting to read it.

"Hoarding, like as not," Tamrie said before I had the chance, shaking her head. "Seen it in the Lower Holds, before everything boiled on over into riots."

"It's not just the food. They're taking extra wood and cloth as well," Alister said, waving his sheet, eliminating any possibility of me reading it. "More than they need."

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"They've lost their homes, more'n we ever did," Tamrie said, squeezing the man's shoulder.

"Doesn't make it right for them to abandon reason," Alister said, though his voice had calmed slightly. He saw his crumpled sheet and started flattening it out. "If they'd only work with us…" he trailed off. "Would prefer if we could secure our supplies better, is all. We have too many people coming. Vetrov’s had word from Spellford. There are thousands getting ready to make the trip at the end of the Howl, if not more. What will we do if we're already spread thin on this end?"

"We might not be spread as thin as you're imagining," I said, my thoughts turning to the fields I'd just helped Vaserra with. She'd wanted a way to repay me. How poetic would it be if she were to supply food to keep the people under my care fed as well. With a little magical assistance of course. “There’s a lot of farmland in the Frost Riven’s valleys. If I get the right equipment to Vaserra, and we get trade set up… well, I think it’ll help a lot. We’ll need something to offer them, but honestly… I have a lot of ideas for that already.”

“Well, what are you waiting for. Return to this woman and give her whatever she needs,” Alister said, pointing his now rolled up sheet of paper in the direction she’d bounded off in.

“Need to make the equipment first,” I said, smiling at the man’s enthusiasm.

“Right. Best you get that sorted then. We’ll handle this,” Tamrie said, pulling me close and laying a surprisingly fierce kiss on my lips.

I blinked, but she was already pulling a flustered Alister after her.

“Okay then…” I said to myself, looking around the room to find a pair of unfamiliar refugees smiling at me. Adjusting my robe, I turned towards the exit leading to the Waygates, striding forward. “I’ll just…”

Before I made it three steps, I stopped, then headed to our stash of broken tier 3 heartwood. Still wasn’t sure what had come over Tamrie, though I did my best to put it out of my head as I thought over everything I’d need to make a proper tool for Vaserra. A staff would be best, considering the available materials and the desired function.

It was going to require some extra design work to both hide the actual enchanting and to ensure the heartwood would play nicely with the Astria's Garden spell, but I was looking forward to the challenge.

Especially since after retrieving the heartwood, I decided to rope Bevel into helping. Which was rather easy, since she was already playing with Neta inside the workshop when I arrived.

"I should probably be warning you about something right about now. Maybe something about dangerous playspace and playmates," I said when I entered the room, catching them playing catch with one of the tier two monster bones that Neta had cleaned. "But since neither of you've broken anything, I guess we'll let it slide."

Bevel didn't even seem to catch the implied chastisement, running over to where I was pulling my materials out, already pulling my notes and squinting at the very basic drawing. Neta, for her part, didn't respond either, choosing to curl up and watch us from across the room.

"What're we working on?" Bevel asked, taking one of the pieces of heartwood and frowning at it. "More growing stuff?"

"Food's important," I said, taking the piece back. "And we're going to make it so the Frost Riven can supply us more food. At least, that's the plan."

Bevel nodded, running her hand over each of the pieces while I pulled out my grimoire. Then we sat down and started working.

Part way through the process, Bevel was laying flopped over the edge of one of the workbenches, flipping through one of my notebooks while I was trying to explain to Neta how I wanted several pieces of heartwood reshaped.

"Huh. Did you ever do the dimensional safe?" she asked, holding up the notebook, the images all upside down, matching her dangling head.

"I… did not," I admitted, glancing over.

Having apparently grown tired of my attempts to explain, Neta yanked the pieces of heartwood and the designs out of my hand and brought them over to several workbenches further down the room.

Knowing from experience that the work was well in hand… or rope, as the case may be, I moved over to Bevel and took the notebook from her dangling hand. "This is pretty complicated stuff… did you want to see if we can? We're gonna be waiting on Neta for a while anyway."

"Yes!" Bevel said, pushing up from the workbench, knocking her knee on the wall as she spun. Despite holding her knee as she climbed down, her smile told me she was clearly much more excited than she'd been about the farming enchantment we'd been working on.

I chuckled, as we went through our notes. I didn't have the materials for anything other than a tier-1 storage space, though that was probably for the best. From everything I'd read, spatial storage was one of the trickiest forms of enchanting.

Which was why we moved to the far end of the workshop, so as to ensure not to disrupt Neta's work. I was tempted to create an entirely separate space to work on the prototype, but the workshop's enchantments would take a lot of effort to reproduce, so it was safer to stay.

Together, Bevel and I spent the next few hours refining the design while Neta happily carved away at the tier 3 materials. There was the occasional sound of growling, which wasn’t something Neta normally did when she was working on bones. Neither of us felt comfortable disturbing her. Plus, we were a bit enthralled with our own work.

We stopped for dinner, Bevel protesting when I called it a night, but giving in grudgingly when I agreed to read her another story.

When I got up the next morning, she was waiting for me on the tips of her toes. Even though Neta was done, Bevel’s enthusiasm was contagious, so we continued working on the safe.

Setting up our own version of a dimensional safe in the workshop wasn't the worst place to put it. Afterall, most of the materials needed to come through the place anyway.

Even so, since we were starting with a pretty basic storage, without any of the comfort or utility features, it wasn't going to get much use.

Which turned out to be especially true when I finished the last of the enchantment, activated the safe, and then it…

Vanished.

"Uhm… was it supposed to do that?" Bevel asked, using the largest piece of tier-3 heartwood Neta had refined like a regular stick to poke at the now missing cube of metal.

"It was not," I said, frowning as I inspected the area with Reveal Mana. There was a lot more Worlds mana in the air than there should've been. "Can't be certain, but I think it basically ground it up like pepper and turned the bits into mana."

"Huh. Thought it'd be louder if it…" Bevel glanced down at the notes, flipping to one of my earlier pages. She nodded as she read the word off. "Imp-low-ded."

"We put in safeties for that," I said, grumbling.

"Yeah, to keep it from popping," Bevel said, flipping to the design page, pointing at the runes. "But not from making noise."

I nodded, retrieving the tier-3 heartwood from where she'd dropped it. It was still going to be the main component of the staff. "Unfortunately, our experiments will have to wait. That was the last of my Worlds materials."

"Aw, does that mean we're doing the lame plant staff?"

I took the stick and bopped her lightly with it as I chuckled. "Yes, that means we're doing the lame plant staff."