The Past
Caelum's taxi, a steel, clockwork, drum-shaped airship thirty feet long and six or seven in diameter, creaked and shuddered as the Utopian fiddled with the tarnished brass-fitted controls. It was mostly enclosed; apparently the work he did, sometimes deeper into the Aetherium, involved places with similarly wonky gravity as well as a lack of breathable air. There was a little bonsai tree adhered to his control panel, its soil webbed in so it wouldn't float away. Purposefully tangled in a hammock, Oren watched the Utopian's muscular back through a haze of an anti-emetic potion. While he had been promised there was powdered coca leaf in there, he didn't feel it, probably due to the Mystic's shenanigans.
"How long until we make Freeport?" Ava asked from her hammock beside Caelum's pilot harness.
"Won't be long now. M'sure 'a that."
"You guys ever think in hours?"
Oren remembered the candles with their rule running down the wax; they had marked time with candles. He thought he remembered a proper clock in the founders' room, but his memory was funny lately. With no sun or moons, no seasons, or any sort of natural cycle in the Aetherium that Oren could tell, the question from the woman who bore him was still germane.
"Sister, time is time, y'know what I mean? Dread at control, man, and I come to Freeport when I come..."
"Oren," she said, "have you done anything toward getting in touch with our old friend...? Like all that time you spent in Utopia, doped up on ghostwine and drooling on yourself?"
"Friend," Oren said, "sure. No. I haven't. But I got a funny story along those lines, left over from Silfanore." At least, he remembered it being in Silfanore; as acknowledged, his memory was funny lately. He told her about Douma chasing him down the street, mirrored in shop windows.
"Mists," she said, "there goes a chance. Why didn't you stop and chat with it?"
"Could've been anybody," he lied. "Elven sorcery... I dunno..." He shrugged.
"Not just because you were scared, huh?"
He shrugged again.
"Do it now."
"What?"
"Now. Anyway, talk to your dead friend about it."
"I'm high as fuck," he protested, but reached for a vial of ghostwine. The magical contraptions Galeas had purchased for him were there on the taxi, set up behind Caelum's pilot harness so he could conceivably work remotely.
He downed the ghostwine. When he let go, the vial drifted away. Caelum didn't give him shit, but plucked it out of the air when it floated close enough, tucking it away so it wouldn't get in the way. The interior of the airship was centered around an artefact that created and cleaned air. He supposed it had been made for travel to and life around the colony in the middle of the Aetherium. The walls were covered in painted lions and black stars, the few colors on their palette overlaying words in a script that wasn't suited to Common.
He glanced past Caelum's shoulder to a small glass screen on his control panel. On it, a map made of light moved. The taxi's path was a line of red stars, Freeport a green circle. He watched the line extend itself, adding a new star.
He took out the soul totem.
"Dec?"
"Yeah."
"You ever try to fuck over a demon?"
"Sure. I died. First time. I was larkin', high as a kite..." And he went on a verbal meander for a while before Oren redirected.
"Like, with magic tricks and dead juice?" The ghostwine didn't taste like death, not exactly, but it still squicked him out.
"Yeah."
"What'd it look like, it's defenses."
"Cube of... not-light."
"How'd you know it was a demon?"
"How'd I know? Fuck. Its wards were thickest, densest shit I'd ever seen. Anyway, shut all that down, looked with my eyes, and then went and did my research."
"Yeah?"
"There are honest-to-gods demon-hunters, you know. Anyway, demon was working with this crime... family."
Oren chewed on his lower lip and gazed through the walls of the airship, out into the chaos of the Aetherium, senses hyped up on the ghostwine. "Archebold, Dec?"
"Archebold, yeah."
"And you went back?"
"Sure. I was crazy. Figured I'd try to play it... got through a line of its security and... My accomplice said I was foamin' at the mouth like I had rabies. Knocked me out so's I couldn't see it and it couldn't see me.."
"And your heart stopped."
"Well, that's the stuff of legend, ain't it?"
Oren pushed the soul totem back into his pocket. "Mists," he said, "how do you think Dec died, huh? Trying to fuck with this particular demon. Great..."
"Go on," she said, "the two of you are supposed to be an enchanted team, right?"
The Present
For all that Aurin jumped all over the continent these days, for some reason, he found himself more often in Kalzasi while Torin was not than he normally did. While he didn't let on that he missed the boy, he found himself doing things for him in his absence.
Today, he cut out of the Golden Peacock rather earlier than normal.
"I'll be back on the morrow," he promised his secretary, who nodded. "You might as well check out early as well," he said, pausing at the door. He turned, too quick for his secretary's gaze snapping back to a piece of parchment not to be obvious. Aurin smirked a bit. "Get fancy, get a drink. Use my tab at the Cabaret if you like."
"Thank you, sir," he said, flushing. His lips parted as if he were going to say something, but he lost his nerve. "I will see you tomorrow."
"You will indeed."
Aurin quit his office, the theater, and proceeded to vault from the plaza to the Cloudhaven district where he bought drinks for a nouveau riche pair of ladies who were considering investing in the theater to show off their beneficence. On his way out of that, he caught a stray image from one of them, apparently considering his derrière and whether to ask her wife whether he would be a good candidate for making heirs. He laughed once he was outside, thinking of Korvaelis and, for some reason, Hilana in faraway Solunarium.
Then he vaulted to the Low-City, a glamour sobering his attire. There was a shipment of goods for the valley, and after making payment and shaking hands with the warehouse supervisor, he opened a rather enormous portal from the warehouse to the valley, and all hands, expecting him, crossed over to help move the supplies and various sundries across with the help of several warehouse workers.
Leaving Kalzasi behind afterward, he made sure that everyone had what they needed. The supplies and everything were piled next to Torin's slowly building home. The pile, now diminished, would keep for a while. He squinted at the sky, various sunset colors with only a few scudding clouds to speak of. He wasn't really a weather witch, but it seemed as though the lumber wouldn't get rained on soon. While Torin's house and most of the valley's constructions were made of local timber, a couple of the residents wanted other sorts for various little projects and Aurin provided in lieu of their liege lord.
In any case, the spirit of the valley would probably be happy that fewer of its trees would need chopping.
Gadry was looking around, worried.
"Oh, here," Aurin said, and pulled a slender wooden box out of his coat pocket and held it out to the blacksmith. His parents' medicines were carefully kept inside, the glass ampules padded with silk batting. "I picked them up from the Tranquil Gardens and didn't want them to get jostled."
"Ah, thanks, Master Kavafis," he said, intensely relieved.
"Think nothing of it, Master Gadry," he replied with a gentler sort of smirk. "I hope your parents are well, and that you're enjoying having the forge to yourself."
"They are, thanks," he said, rubbing at his forehead in a deferential gesture. Aurin had found him, made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and now he was most grateful. But Gadry made Torin's life much easier, and kept the valley villagers happier, so it had really been a win-win situation. Aurin was just good at sniffing those out. "And everyone keeps me busy, but not so busy I can't work on little side projects for myself and spend time with my parents. You... well, your offer seemed too good to be true, but..."
"Don't worry, kid," he assured him. "Kaus was telling me there are some Starfall folk interested in settling now that the weather's natural again. Might be some choices in prospective wives soon too. Or, you know, you can have a holiday in the city if you want and I'll introduce you to some ladies."
He winked. Gadry flushed. But if he took Aurin up on it, he would be as good as his word. He was an old hand at curating adventures in Kalzasi.
