“Many consider war as a tragedy. It is. A tragedy for my wallet, anyway. I will grant, though, that war opens up a lot of opportunities for my wallet to grow a bit. So I can forgive it for that.”
-Last words of a victim of the Parlor Bombings
*====*
Mori marched out of the meeting room with a neutral expression barely holding up under the immense boredom from sitting through an hours-long meeting with little to nothing happening apart from reaffirming the plan they had all agreed upon not half a day before. The rest of the time was spent with her trying to keep up with the power plays happening with the clockwork regularity of the sun rising and falling.
It was a demoralizing experience and far worse than fighting a legion of Clockwork Snipers who felt the alarming urge to shoot her in the face. It was worse than even dealing with the Kharon’s original owners; at least the answer to the latter was easily understood and implemented.
Nevertheless, Mori was free to go back to the Kharon for the rest of the day. She was leaving with her crew to search for a place to begin tunneling, and she needed to settle a few issues before anything began. As she basked in the evening glow of the sun, she began making a list.
The first, and most important, thing on her list was what to do with the other otherworlders. As much as she wanted to take them along to dig a hole in the ground, their presence was simply an inconvenience. Ushkia and Aetra already promised to supply her with a group of elite fortification mages— as well as a sneaky group of mechanics for her project— but they were giving only their people a supply of food. On top of that, there would be nothing for them to do. Sure, Mori would send small bands of her undead into the mountains to hunt down other Clockworks, but they were far too fragile for such things.
In the end, she would have to ask them to leave. Even with that solution, however, there was a snag… Eva. And Desire. The two had become fast friends, and Eva was by far the person she was most fiercely loyal to.
Apart from Mori herself, of course.
In a sense, it would do far more bad than good to separate them. Mori had seen the work Jel had been putting into that new mana type of hers and she was quite curious to see where it ended up. She put that thought on the back burner, planning to think about it later.
Second issue: Fanrik and Juka. After carefully considering it, she thought it would be up to Fara, her dad, and Juka to decide what to do. It was not her place screwing with the family lives of her friends.
Third on her list was, in fact, herself. She was acutely aware that she had been neglecting far too much about herself and her powers in the last few weeks. Sure, she had gotten into the habit of Connecting to Unio every day or so, but she felt like her psychic acuity was lacking. It was mainly in learning how to use it in combat.
As much as the idea of learning about how her soul worked appealed to her earlier on, she realized that she hated the idea of directly causing the type of pain she had experienced. In lieu of that, she needed a new application for her psychic powers, preferably one that would synergize with her magical prowess, seeing as it was the main object of her study over the last weeks.
Fourthly, she needed to get a sense of command for her death knights. Looking at her Minion Page, she had a whole thirty three zombies under her command after the few that got sniped, not counting the reanimated Clockworks she had hidden underground nor the twenty-odd wyrms. That meant that each of her death knights could have three zombies under them. That, however, assumed that each of them wanted subordinates.
Aerolat would just decline, Desire preferred the company of the living, Crave would likely only ask for assistants when the library became too large for him to manage on his own, and Avarice was simply too grumpy of a zombie to enjoy the company, though she would need to be careful with assuming his mood. That meant that she could give each of her death knights that wanted subordinates four zombies each, with a few spares for helping the other four if or when they needed it. Mori simply hoped that there was a way to give control of a zombie’s Trait slots to a death knight.
Moving on in her mind, she thought of the fifth thing she needed to do. It was much, much less important, but nonetheless something she needed to consider; the artifacts. She had incorporated the weird armband she found in the reliquary into her armorm as little as it seemed to help against being shot in the head, but she now needed to figure out what to do with the other ones. Thinking about it a bit more, she decided to leave them as they were, and focus on the other four problems.
As she ascended the staircase leading to the Kharon slowly, she listed everything out in her mind, ‘First the Passengers, then Fara and her dad, then the pyraustas, then I can start playing around with everything on the way to wherever we’re going.’
Finally, she reached the skiff to find a mostly deserted upper deck. The only ones present were Fara, with her mask on, and Fanrik. They were leaning against the gate on the other side of the skiff, looking out to the sea of other skiffs parked in the sand. Fanrik turned his head as she approached, “Hello again, Mori. I heard about a few of your adventures-”
“Misadventures,” Fara said, eyes crinkling like they did when she smiled.
“I would call them happy accidents myself, but that’s just my opinion. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you two,” Mori said, leaning against the gate beside them, “I was wondering what your plan was, Mr. Notchings. We’re leaving this place tomorrow and going in pretty much the opposite direction from the fighting. There won’t be much to do out there other than venturing into the mountains, so…”
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Fanrik held up his hand, “Don’t worry about it. Fara and I have both discussed it. I am going to be joining the front lines and distracting the Clockworks; I do not want to be a hawk of a parent.”
“I’m very appreciative of that,” Fara said, “I think going out of our way to avoid each other is the best for us.”
Mori nodded slowly, “Is it a mechanic thing? To give each other space?”
“Sort of,” Fara answered, “Either way, tonight's be the last night for me and him,” she said, pointing to Fanrik, “To talk. Do you mind if…”
“Hey, I get it. I’ll give you two your time and space. I’ve got a few other things to deal with, so I’ll see you around,” Mori said, turning and making her way to the stairs leading to the lower decks. After a bit of searching, she found the Passengers all in the dining hall, eating and speaking with each other. Mori strode in and waited for them to quiet down, standing at the front of the table. It took barely five seconds for them to settle down. As they all stared at Mori, she gave a grin, “Thank you. Now, I know you’ve had a good time here, but there’s something I have to tell you.
“I hate to do this, but I don’t think you guys can stay here anymore,” she finally said. She waited for questions, but all she got were blank, confused stares, “Alright, let me explain it, then. Basically, my skiff is going somewhere else along the mountain range to dig a tunnel. I doubt you want to do that, so if you really want to fight, then I suggest getting off here. I’m sure Eaner can find some accommodations for you. Questions?” she asked.
After a few moments, only one hand went up. It was Eva, “Um… does that include me…?” she asked shyly. Mori knew that was coming, but she was surprised by the acceptance of the others at the table.
“You’re a special case, so I’ll talk to you in a bit,” she said, “Before that, are the rest of you alright with leaving? I’m not sure if you’re ready or not, but what I do know is this: if you guys come with us, your growth is pretty much guaranteed to be non-existent. I mean, you haven’t really done anything major, but that’s beside the point. So, again, are you all alright with parting ways?”
A round of nods and murmurs of agreement followed, and Mori smiled. She gestured to Eva as she left the room, waiting for the now-shy woman to follow. Mori led her through the skiff, finally bringing her to the workroom, then to the storage room connected to it. “U-Um…” Eva squeaked out.
“Hey, calm down. I don’t know why you’re so… jumpy now, but I wanted to know what you want to do,” Mori explained, patting the woman on the shoulder, “I think it’ll hurt both you and Desire if I split you up, so… what do you want to do?”
Eva took a moment before looking directly into her eye-flames, “I… I want to stay here… I really like Dessy… She's kind and caring and diligent and… I think I’m in love with her…”
Mori raised her hands, “Hey, I can’t tell you who to fall in love with or anything, but you do realize that I’m pretty much like their mother, right?” she asked, receiving a wide-eyed and cautious look from Eva, “Hey, don’t give me that look. I approve as long as you two care about each other and contribute a bit. Desire was pretty much the one who dealt with the living for the other death knights, so I think it might be best if you helped her with that. I don’t know. Just do whatever needs to be done, I guess. So, what do you say?”
“I’ll do it! Whatever I can,” she said with a resolute look, “Though… I do have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you alright with my boyfriend staying?” she asked, quickly putting up her hands and shaking her head, “I-I do love Dessy, but I also love Mark. Apart from that, he may want to go off and fight on the front lines too, s-so…”
Mori sighed, “Does Desire know?” Mori asked.
“Of course! I told her right after I sort of proposed to be her girlfriend,” she quickly said.
“Then I have no problem with it. Well, that’s all I had for you, then. Make sure to say goodbye to everyone before tomorrow,” she urged, letting Eva rush past and back to her friends.
“That must have went well,” Avarice said as Mori left the store room, “She had a grin splitting her face.”
Mori shrugged, leaning against the workbench nearly a dozen things wrapped in cloth scattered around, “I just told her that she could join us for the boring bits of our journey.”
Avarice gave her a look, “Was that a pun?” he asked flatly.
“If it was?” Mori countered, “Anyway, what’s up with those packages?” She gave each of the cloth-covered things a look and looked towards Avarice,
“I don’t know. Fara told me to leave them as they were,” he said simply.
Nodding, Mori leaned against the only table that was not cluttered with clockwork devices, “Well, either way, I have something for you to think about,” she said. Avarice looked towards her, waiting, “I’m thinking of splitting up the zombies for each of you guys to use as you see fit. Do you want any?” she asked. Mori found it a bit weird to offer creatures to another person, but she just shrugged it off in her mind.
“The ones that do maintenance,” Avarice said, not looking away from whatever he was doing.
With a start, Mori realized that she needed to have someone doing maintenance and that it needed to be some of the zombies. She slapped herself on the forehead, “Thanks for reminding me about that. I’ll give you the five best ones I have doing that stuff. Alright, I have to talk to the others now. See you tomorrow,” she said as she left.
The rest of the night was spent finding each of her death knights, asking them the same question she asked Avarice, and checking up on Frankie as Jel healed him. In the end, each of her death knights get their fair share of zombies. Idle got two zombies to act as guards with her. Fury, Mae, Ally, and Tisi asked for a combined ten to act as a flying unit to work with them. Desire, Crave, Aerolat, declined having any. Finally, Jel and Pride asked for a combined six; they wanted to test if joint spellcasting was really feasible and decided to use zombies for that purpose.
Mori had a whole eleven zombies left over after allocating each of her death knights their own, so she kept them doing maintenance work; they were level zero, either way, so they needed the small amount of experience to level up and be available for use later on.
Finally retreating to the library, Mori had a moment to herself, not chasing someone down. She wondered what to do with her free time, but settled on getting a head start on her using her psychic powers. It was a long night, but it was a productive one, and one that let her relax a bit before getting ready for the next day.