The carriage rocked back and forth as the caravan moved onward, one by one down the gravel road. The Tearen family's cart was indeed put at the back, as Damien had assumed it would be. Regardless of how well he and those around him received the Fae, other people in this world would not be swayed so quickly. Hopefully, that would slowly change as time went on, but there was no guarantee. The Fae certainly weren't helping their case with their obnoxious personalities.
Either way, unlike in his old world, Damien wanted to make sure they had a place to live even after the industrial revolution began anew in this one. He wasn't sure if that was why the fairies had left Earth completely, or if they had actually, but he didn't want such magnificent and beautiful creatures becoming scarce on Eleria as well.
With those thoughts, he turned to his left to look at Kastra. She was laying, full size, on the cushions next to him. He and Garrett were both off the hook for driving at this point in the day, so Damien had retreated to the interior of the coach and found her sleeping. Marci also napped on her stomach, resting her tiny head against Kastra's chest as a pillow.
They had left the forest's border less than an hour ago and were well established on the highway leading out of the country. The journey had begun at the start of the day but already they were clear of surveillance wards in the Academy. That's just how small the country was.
"You may use my lap if you'd like to sleep, Master," Adrenna said casually from his right, likely seeing him watch Kastra sleep.
"I would prefer to use you to steer the cart instead of making me do it," Damien scoffed out.
"If only I knew how to drive one. Woe is me, so unskilled," the girl said back, black eyes seeming to glimmer with mirth when he observed her.
He'd asked why she hadn't been put in the rotation when they'd originally made it, and it turns out it was because she was never taught how to drive. He wanted there to be three teams consisting of him, Garrett, Vanessa, Emily, Alexa, and Adrenna, but without the latter knowing how, they opted for two squads. When he suggested she learn, everyone had vehemently opposed the idea of allowing a novice to potentially scar such a beautiful carriage.
Apparently, Lemshire's gift was more expensive than he'd originally thought.
"I wish you'd teach me," Kastra grumbled out from next to him, where she lay.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," he said back, smiling as he looked over to her. "How was your nap?"
"Pleasant," she said, sitting up and scooting over to him, wrapping her arm around his and grabbing his hand as she leaned into him, ignoring the thumping sound of something hitting the bench. "But this is better," she said casually.
"Atta girl. You remind me of me when your mother and I started dating, Kastra. I love it. Don't you let her be the only romantic here, Damien. You gotta keep up the effort so she'll always feel wanted. I-"
"Yes, dad, I know," Damien interrupted with a shake of his head. "I know how much you do for mom. We all do. We see it every time you're together. I wish you'd keep your hands off her, sometimes. It makes us sick," Damien finished sarcastically, getting a wide grin back from his dad.
He did his best to keep from letting a similar one adorn his face as he coughed to clear his mind.
"That hurtttt," Marci whined, having tumbled to the cushion next to where Kastra was sitting when she'd sat up.
Kastra looked back at the Fae with an expression of wonder on her face before turning to Damien.
"Now I know what you mean when you ask me to weigh more when resting on you. I didn't feel her at all."
Damien nodded. It was like a feather sleeping on his chest. He couldn't help it if he didn't notice it before sitting up.
"Oh, hey so why are the Fae so afraid of Iron?" he asked, remembering what he'd been thinking on earlier.
"We fear nothing!" Marci responded indignantly, purple hair shaking at her tiny shout.
Damien glanced down at her and rolled his eyes, prompting her to fly up on top of his head and start pulling at his hair while he laughed. When he looked down at Kastra, she seemed to be lost in thought.
"...I guess... it's because of the deal we made?" she eventually said questioningly, unsure of her own words.
"A deal?" Garrett cut in before Damien could, intrigued by the topic.
"I was told about it when I was born. It's why we Fae value our word and promises so heavily," she said with a nod. "We aren't exactly afraid of Iron, just... it makes us nervous."
"Could you tell us about it?" Damien asked, still wincing every time his second favorite Fae would yank on his hair a bit too hard.
"Mmmk."
Damien felt his hair return to his head as Marci seemed to placate, leaning forward and laying down.
"Kastra's stories are the best!"
"I'm not so sure about that, or the specifics of this really... but what we were told was simple," Kastra said, weaving some magic together to create a small forest on the floor of the coach.
Damien's mouth hung open in awe at the talent she'd never displayed before. Grass, bushes, trees complete with branches and tiny leaves, and even a small river that flowed down the length of the carriage sprung into existence between him and his father. Many multi-hued lights followed, forming and darting to and fro, all around the forest.
"Way back in time," Kastra started, "before I had even come into existence, or so I was told, our kind came to be on a random planet due to an overwhelming amount of mana left behind by a world creator. Originally, we'd thought him to be our father, but we were abandoned and didn't understand that he'd never return, waiting for him to tell us our purpose. Life continued to spring up around us as we played in the forests and deserts as we do now, time passing by the hundreds of years as we waited for our creator. We were immaterial with no real physical form until finally, the oldest began to take shape."
"Many more years went by and slowly, our kind matured into what you see now. We slowly forgot about who created us and the world we called home. We spent time learning about and experimenting with magic and the many different branches of it, eventually finding that we could create portals to other worlds from our Fae domain. We began traveling across the endless stars, meeting other life forms and beings of a similar nature to us. Within these life forms, certain ones were special. They maintained the same consciousness from planet to planet and were present everywhere, except in the Fae realm. Made from an element's mana saturating to a breaking point, similar to how we came into being, they were the first true Gods."
As she continued to speak, Damien watched the fairies move through the process of creating portals. Eventually, they traveled through them, and the scenery instantly changed from a mountainscape to a desert, then the ocean, continuing to more and more diverse landscapes as the story continued. New lifeforms in the shape of elements joined the performance, moving about in unique ways. Fire dancing in a Humanoid form, the earth moving about as if it were a snake, water swirling and undulating in unnatural directions in the river... It was like the elements had minds of their own.
"Eventually, we found a way to converse with them, and we began to help them with tasks. We would do certain things they couldn't do and receive homes on their planets, mana, and other such things the Fae could want in return. Each god was one of a kind, none like the other, and growing immeasurably stronger than any single Fae were as time passed, but still we maintained a positive relationship through this arrangement. There were things thousands could do that one couldn't, and it was peaceful."
"This is how we met Iron," Kastra said as a small clearing near a mountain cave opened up, a rippling boulder of metal moving out of it with a mind of its own. "Iron was a lesser being than the others, and much more timid. It hadn't asked for our help yet, but when it finally did, it asked for something we couldn't obtain for it easily."
Damien looked at her questioningly as Marci went from laying to sitting upright on top of his head, on edge.
"Iron wanted power," Kastra stated plainly. "It wanted to be stronger than the others of its kind. The Gods all had their planets where they mostly resided, but Iron wanted more than that. He demanded our help with stealing mana from one of his kin, and in return, he offered us exquisite sculptures, gems, metals, foods, and anything else we could wish for. The Fae of back then accepted his conditions and received their payment upfront. Then, our leader at the time, believing Iron to be weak, chose to betray a God."
The scene melded from one of a peaceful gathering to one where a single Fae stood in a cave mostly covered in lava, flames, and brimstone. Kastra fell silent as the small Fae moved toward an enormous living flame that seemed to reside there. The two figures made gestures and different body movements toward one another, looking as if they were having a conversation. Suddenly, the flame enlarged and began to shake about as the cavern began collapsing, the walls melting into lava as heat radiated off it. The small fairy quickly vacated the area through a portal and the scene changed back to the Fae realm, now adorned with many riches and fascinating structures that hadn't been there before.
"Through telling Fire of Iron's plans, we had broken our word for the first and only time in our kinds history. Iron became enraged, more so than Fire had become at learning of his brothers attempted betrayal, and set about massacring our kind whenever a chance came along."
The scenery turned dangerous and hopeless as many Fae ran from the mountains and forests, hiding high up in the skies and water, avoiding the ground like the plague. Many retreated back into portals while others, seemingly drawn by curiosity, attempted to return to the ground. Those that got too close were impaled shortly after by spikes they could not see coming, or grabbed by their throats by hands of iron that ripped them out of the air and into the ground. Damien felt his hair being gripped tightly as Marci watched on, droplets of water slowly dripping onto his forehead from above as the bloody massacre continued.
"With no way to fight back, it was a slaughter. Any plane we were on besides our own, if there was iron in it, was no longer safe. The God would sense us and would bring his consciousness to the plane, using his powers to wipe out thousands upon thousands of our brethren for good. The only way a Fae truly dies is if killed by a soul-rending blade, or by a God itself, and he was determined to end every single Fae he could get his claws in."
"We begged the other Gods for help, and finally, they chose to step in to put an end to it all. With all of the energy Iron was using, he had become easy to subdue, and they took control of his planet and imprisoned him for millennia, angry that he had gotten in the way of their contracts with our people, not for what he'd done to us. When he was released, he never again came to us for a new promise and never did we fulfill our old one. Iron hates us, and we can never forgive it for what it did to our people, but it was also this that impressed upon our people the severity of oaths. If we cannot accomplish what we pledge to, we will die trying, or we are not Fae."
Damien watched the floor in their coach slowly revert back to normal, the prisoner melding into the floor with his bloody, iron body. Once it was all gone, Damien finally allowed himself to lean back into the wall of the carriage, sweating profusely. He had asked such a simple question and had not expected a ten-minute long movie of sorts as an explanation, and certainly not one that was so horrendous.
"That's why our kind doesn't like iron," Kastra finished unceremoniously.
"The Gods of this world..." he started, trailing off as his mind tried to wander.
"Not the same as the first Gods. They are mere fragments of power and memories, broken off from the true lords that have not been seen in many eons. Many think they are dead as Iron no longer views our kind through his pieces, but we prepared for the case he isn't and comes back with a vengeance. Our kind taught itself defense and attack magic, determined never again to take such an affront lying down as we had to before," Kastra responded.
Damien glanced across the carriage at his dad, who seemed just as flabbergasted as he was. Kastra had casually just broken their world views, calling the strongest beings in existence on this planet as tiny fragments of a much larger and ancient creature.
"What a painful story," Adrenna said quietly from his right.
"We can and will cause as much suffering as he did us if ever he comes back to the material plan," Marci promised darkly from atop his head.
He didn't know if she had been alive back then or not, but even without a pact, Damien could sense the hate in her words. The small Fae was trembling with rage after the story, Kastra choosing to eventually pluck her off his head to calm her down, squeezing the small Fae to her bosom.
"Well then, I guess we will have to avoid using iron in anything ever again in our lives," Damien said, chuckling awkwardly. "And... that may be a problem considering what I have planned..."
"You're... nervous? Was the story not good?" Kastra asked, turning to him with a concerned expression.
She hadn't appeared to be affected at all by her own story while telling it or now, so Damien was unsure how to react. Looking at her face though, he smiled and kissed her on the forehead.
"It was a great story, I just didn't expect how intense it would be. The show you put on was beautiful as well," he said, gesturing towards the floor. "Your magic is so different from mine; it baffles me that you can even think what I do is beautiful when you casually perform something like that."
She smiled at the praise and he felt like he'd won the lotto. She'd continued getting quieter more and more of late, and whereas he wanted to respect whatever level of energy she chose to live at, he missed seeing her face light up like this as often as it used to.
"Was it ok to say all of that, though? I imagine that's not common knowledge and if Lemshire-"
"I put up a barrier before I took my nap," Kastra responded. "It's fine."
Damien nodded.
"Thanks for always being so diligent, my love," he whispered, pulling her into his side with his left arm. "On the topic of your magic, though, I have a question for you all in here."
"Go for it, buddy. Distract my mind from what I just learned, please," Garrett immediately said to him, shaking his head back and forth.
Damien smiled. He was in the same boat, if he was being honest, and the topic of his project might be just what they needed to move on from that earlier dark atmosphere. He had questions about it all, like he was sure Garrett and Adrenna had, but he wasn't sure he cared to know the answers. Would it do anything rather than worry him if he knew more about the true Gods of this universe?
'Perhaps it would be a nice story to hear another time,' he pondered.
Focusing his thoughts, he began speaking.
"I wanted to know if it was possible to shrink everything with magic. I've seen Kastra and Marci do it with certain items and themselves, but is it possible with anything?"
Garrett looked at him questioningly before he replied.
"Interesting query, son. Is this related to your project?"
Damien nodded back and his dad continued.
"It is possible to shrink whatever you want, but sometimes the item implodes randomly. It's not exactly the most common form of magic, either, as only a communed spacial mage is capab-"
"Or the Fae. We can do anything you silly mortals can do better," Marci cut in, looking much calmer than she had been after the attention from Kastra. "And we won't wreck it."
"Right... Well, the item you want to shrink is almost always destroyed when you try to revert it back to its original size, not to mention that it retains it's weight after being shrunk too. There really is no practical use for the magic as far as combat is concerned except for making tough weapons heavier and tougher for the strongest combatants in the world to use. In fact, even when building homes and coaches, it's easier and cheaper to condense the material directly than to shrink it down using spacial magic."
Damien smiled at the news. What he'd just learned had opened up a huge avenue for increasing his combat efficiency. Unfortunate, the item could be destroyed, but it made sense in a way. He had no idea how you'd even go about shrinking something without condensing it, and there was no way he could learn, but communing again as a spacial mage...
'How the hell would you even do that?' he wondered.
Luckily, he didn't need to do that anyway because he had Kastra and Marci. Now, all he needed to do was figure out just how much an item could be altered with gravity magic so he didn't have to lug around a twenty-pound brick all day.
"Do you know how to alter an item to reduce its weight?" Damien asked.
"I can... though not very well. I never really practiced much with weight reduction magic. It reduces the effectiveness of weapons and most combatants wear armor they have no trouble carrying around. The only time I really used it was when your mother and I traveled, reducing the weight of heavy cast iron pans... but I'm not terrible at it," Garrett answered.
Damien grinned.
"What project do you exactly have in mind, boy?" his dad asked.
"Project ho!" Marci yelled, completely back to normal and causing Damien to laugh before responding.
"I have been thinking about trying to make a way to store and generate electricity, or lightning. I've been wanting to find a way to make it appear naturally so I don't have to waste mana creating it, and after getting all the extra materials from the shop, I want to start on my prototype. It'll make sure I always have something to defend myself with even when I'm running low on the ability to create new electricity. Just, it would be heavy and unwieldy. Too much so to make it worth actually carrying around. But if I can shrink it..." Damien trailed off, grinning widely again.
In this world, it had become obvious to him that of the combat-oriented mage professions, ones with naturally abundant resources available at all times would be at a huge advantage. If you were always limited by what you could create with your mana to defend yourself, it didn't matter how strong you were. Once you were outnumbered, it would all be over. Unfortunately for him, the amount of electricity available throughout the world was basically nonexistent when compared to other elements.
He'd always been thinking of a need for a power generator of some kind, but wasn't sure how he would go about it. He didn't want to work on it while at the school, in case Lemshire caught wind of it, and before he'd gone to the Academy he'd already had enough trouble just trying to get his mana and abilities under control. Dealing with the sheer number of intricate movements and manipulation a power unit would require... his handling hadn't been nearly at the level he'd needed it.
"Well I definitely can't make anything like that. We could see if..."
Now though, those issues had become non-issues. They were about to be out of range of the Academy's surveillance and Kastra would be able to put up her barriers without worry that Lemshire would be tinkering with them. He'd already been getting better at manipulating different instances of mana at once, and now, he could handle six out away from his body if he really strained himself. He couldn't do anything extremely deadly with them, choosing to fight with only two or three different attack magics at once was the most optimal, but he didn't need to be deadly. He just needed to handle four at once when he had downtime to recharge.
"Son? Are you list..."
The idea he'd come up with for his electrical generation was a simple one, yet hopefully effective: he'd make an alternator. If everything went to plan, he'd be able to charge some iron with electricity to create magnets, like he did when manipulating Eira and Kiara, while rotating the magnets around inside the machine with earth manipulation. This would let him generate his own electricity relatively cost-free. In theory, he would be able to make the magnets as strong as he wanted while rotating them as fast as he needed to increase or decrease the output. This was all provided he could keep them under control, taking care of all maintenance, heat, and damage caused by the moving parts with manipulation as well.
A couple of problems Damien had right now was making a large enough one to generate practical amounts of energy, and that the Fae hated iron. The former would make it awkward to carry and almost not worth making, needing to use it to charge himself before a fight but not being able to during. Shrinking the unit opened up tons of avenues and possibilities, however. He could hang the alternator off a necklace, keep it in his pocket, or his favorite idea yet, make it in the shape of a ring.
The latter issue was... more complicated. He could use steel, but he didn't have very much on hand right now, and iron was the perfect metal to create a magnet out of with electromagnetism. For the prototypes on this trip, he'd need to use what he had and hope Kastra didn't dislike him too much for it, though he felt like Marci would be the only one to really object.
Eventually, though, he needed to throw away every piece of iron they had. He didn't want some revenge-hungry God taking away his family.
Another issue with all his concepts was the weight. He might be stronger than most, but hanging fifteen pounds of solid, rotating metal off his neck or on his finger would not be pleasant at all, though doable. The extra weight would throw off his balance and fighting techniques, but he could probably cope. So for his first prototypes, while it was an issue, it ultimately wouldn't matter too much.
His latter plans are where the issue would take a leap in the negative direction. Making a huge unit, large enough to generate electricity on the scale of powering a city, would be hundreds of pounds. If his dad could shrink the weight of that unit down to less than a few pounds, not only would friction and wear be reduced, he'd probably be able to shoot an endlessly powered lightning bolt out of his hands for hundreds of feet outward.
"Lover, your face looks strange."
But, first, the prototype. If he went too big off the get-go, he might generate too much wild electricity and be unable to control it. To counteract that and assist in storing even more than what he could in his body, he'd also have to make some type of battery or capacitor. Either way, controlling the strength of the magnet would ultimately be what kept him from overdoing it.
"Lover," Kastra said, poking his side and breaking him out of his thoughts.
"Sorry, yes?" Damien said, looking around as Garrett stared at him with a cocked eyebrow and Kastra was now laid across his lap.
"I definitely can't do anything like that," Garrett said, giving Damien deja vu. "I don't know any Alteration expert that can either. No one uses lightning magic, or electricity as you call it, enough to even try to find a way to... make it. There are plenty of spells and techniques to make the creation of elements less stressful on your mana veins, and there are a particularly large number of specialized ones for fire and water creation, but lightning..." Garrett trailed off.
"I don't... well, I do want a ring that makes the creation of elements easier in general, but the band I make will be able to create the lightning on its own, without mana," Damien stated. "I just need weight reduction magic and a way to miniaturize it to make it wearable."
"What?" his dad asked, confused.
Damien grinned as his dad pieced through his words.
"That is... possible? How would you even accomplish that? Creating lightning from nothing... If you don't want to use mana, I don't..." Garrett trailed off, scratching his head while Marci flew over to his shoulder, looking at Damien from across the cart with glee.
"I'll explain it but... first I... Adrenna, I'll have to ask you to leave here," Damien mumbled out, looking up apologetically at the woman.
"Oh come on," Adrenna complained, staring at him with a seriousness in her eyes. "Stories of old Gods and wars I can listen to, but not this?"
Damien laughed nervously and scratched his head.
"To be honest," he started, "I should have asked you to leave for that too, but I forgot. This is... very personal. Please leave," he implored.
Standing up as if a switch had been flipped in the woman, her face went neutral as her mouth opened.
"Yes, sir."
With that, she made her way toward the door and outside, not looking back while Damien's body and mind wracked him with guilt. The side door of their coach closed softly, not impressing whether or not Adrenna was angry, hurt, or upset. Just professional.
A few moments went by where the atmosphere remained awkward, Damien looking off to the side as silence ruled following the closing of the door. Eventually Garrett coughed, prompting Damien to look up at him.
"So... Something from your world?" he questioned.
"A technology I know of, yes" Damien confirmed with a deep breath. "I believe I can make it in the form of a ring, but it would be heavy and large."
Garrett stared at him with disbelief, causing Damien to chuckle.
"You can create lightning without the sky or mana?"
"It actually isn't that hard to do," Damien replied with a shrug.
"Well, as much as I'd love to see that, wouldn't it be dangerous if the ring got into the wrong hands?" Garrett asked. "We already decided against releasing your knowledge into the world haphazardly... What if this got out?"
"It could be dangerous, but without understanding how it works, the only thing someone would see is a strange and very intricate ring with weight reduction magic on it. Even if they decided to rotate the insides of the ring, without knowing how to send an electrical charge to a specific area to generate an electromagnetic field, they would get nowhere, and I know no one on this planet can do that but me," Damien finished. "The item is useless without me."
It was a safety feature to use electricity to magnify his rotor instead of using permanently magnetized poles to instead. Anyone that found the ring would be unable to generate a charge or even comprehend what he was doing without opening it back up to dissect it, and even then it wouldn't make sense. Better yet, from what they had just explained, if the thief tried to enlarge it to get a better look at it, it would destroy itself in the process.
Garrett stared at him with a blank face while seemingly trying to piece together what he'd said. Whenever he spoke about his passions, Damien knew he had a tendency to use words not native to their language.
"Basically, it wouldn't be dangerous to lose at all," Damien said.
Garrett eventually nodded.
"What do you need to make it then?"
"Everything I already picked up," Damien said, lightly kicking the box beneath his seat. "The silver was expensive, but the rest of the materials were cheap. I should have enough to make two of what I want."
"And you said this item was common back in your world? How rich was such a place that so much silver was used everywhere?" Garrett asked with disbelief.
Marci hadn't spoken yet and was eating up all the information Damien was dropping, loving every minute of the talk if her eyes and creepy wide grin showcasing her teeth was any indication.
"Well, in my world we used a different material called aluminum for the outer casing and handling the flow of heat," Damien said. "So silver wasn't always used, but... I mean, silver would look so much more beautiful than that or steel..." Damien said, trailing off.
Garrett snorted at him.
"Living here has spoiled you. It's too bad you didn't try to make this years ago. We could have built it as a project together," Garrett sighed out.
"Well, we can do it now instead, dad," Damien replied with a smile.
"Yeah yeah. Now you don't need my money though, at least then I could have felt useful," Garrett responded. "Oh well. At least I get to help!"
Damien laughed at that. If there was anything other than his mother that attracted Garrett's interest, it was making and altering items. This was probably going to be the most interesting thing he'd seen in years, too, and the man seemed as excited as Damien was.
"Yep. But this all goes nowhere if Kastra doesn't agree to help us shrink it," Damien said, looking down at his lovely Fae.
"I can't," Kastra said, gazing back up at him. "I'm not very good at spacial magic. I haven't practiced it yet this life. Marci is great though," she said, looking over at the Fae who'd been eavesdropping.
"I won't do it," she said.
"Why not?" Damien asked, confused.
"Because you owe me a pirate hat and an eyepatch already and haven't delivered," she said with a smirk.
"I'll make sure Kastra sleeps with you for the next two nights instead of me," he said, holding out his hand for a handshake as Kastra's eyebrows knitted slightly.
The look on Marci's face showed he'd struck gold with his negotiation tactic as she pondered his words. He knew she'd either try and get more out of him or agree to his terms. The Fae lived for their own desires after all, and she loved Kastra like a sister.
"Make it a whole week and you have a deal," Marci demanded.
"One day then. If you don't agree, we'll just wait until my love here gets better at shrinking things and have her do it. She's so intelligent, it shouldn't take too lon-"
"Two days! Ok! Deal!" Marci yelled, darting before him to shake a finger on his hand before disappearing outside the coach before he could speak again.
Damien and Garrett chuckled as she disappeared.
"You sold me?" Kastra asked, looking up at him.
"A necessary loss," Damien said back, feigning pain at the decision he'd made.
"What do I get?" she asked back.
"Anything you want," Damien replied, looking down at her.
No matter what she wanted, it was a win-win for him.
"Then... forgive me for not being able to help you with it," she said carefully, staring up into his eyes.
Damien cocked his head to the side as he stared into her colorful irises. He hadn't sensed any regret from her being unable to help, but it seemed like she had felt some. So hard to deal with, his two women, both too used to hiding their feelings.
"You could have no mana whatsoever and I'd still love you as much as I do," Damien stated, running his hand along her jawline while leaning down to kiss her.
He could almost hear his father rolling his eyes.
"Ok. Now I understand why you all get annoyed by Em and me."