Ralouf came out of Kestra's realm wearing a cloak so black that she wasn't sure that it wasn't made from shadows, or at least Shadow mana. The only part of him that she could make out were the golden orbs of his eyes with their vertically slit pupils.
"You do the talking. I'll just loom in the background," he told her.
"Good plan!" Kestra agreed, chuckling as she wondered just what kind of reception the mine's foreman was going to give them. She didn't think of herself as cruel, but there were only so many ways she could react to the absurd extremes of Etiquette common to the Myriad Realms. As if the more powerful someone was, the more time they had for toe lickers!
"Have you tried Earth Gliding before?" Ralouf asked, a stone disc rising up from the compacted dirt trail Kestra and Graemire had been following toward the mine.
"No..." she said, the word drawing out because her attention was more on the way that Ralouf was manipulating the mana in the earth than her words. She copied him, her disc not quite so symmetrical. The bits of fancywork that Ralouf drew on his disc while he waited for her didn't seem to have any great effect on the mana, but they did make his disc look much prettier.
Kestra barely got her disc up and supporting her like Ralouf's did himself before the Sage started off, slowly at first. With a few fits and failures, Kestra followed after him. She had to use Control Air to brace herself so she didn't fall off the disc as they picked up speed.
A bare few minutes of moving saw them leaving behind the light cover of the new woods growing up around the palisade of the mine encampment. The wooden wall was anchored into the sides of the mountain, a near vertical cliff rising behind it. The encampment it protected couldn't be all that large without digging into that cliff for more room behind the palisade.
Kestra left off playing with this Earth Gliding. It was fun and faster than jogging, but she wasn't good enough at it to look competent. The people of the Myriad Realms were a lot more concerned with their presentation in social settings than Kestra was used to, to the point of calling it their face with the idea being a complicated mix of dignity, propriety, reputation, and respect.
Then again, Kestra had been a Free Lancer Guilder, and not part of the more militaristic Company. They were the irregulars of the irregulars, and barely had what this world would think of as a "client-face".
"Getting better," Ralouf said, his tone encouraging. He continued to stand on stone and glide it over the road's surface. She back-of-the-mind noticed that they left a path of smoothed dirt behind while Earth Gliding. That trail was at least as compacted as the dirt road, but the smoothness stood out. This was not a technique to use when being discrete.
Kestra jogged to keep up with him. "Not good enough that I'm not using most of my Reaction to keep my rumpus off the ground."
"You just need more practice."
"Yep." Kestra might have said more, but she spotted a small group, eight people, wearing something akin to the combat casting robes of Moh, standing before the palisade gates. Their robes had the luster of silk instead of thin leather, but had the same hardened stiffness to them of infused enchantment medium. The fabric took up colors nicely, and though there were some differences in the cut of their robes, being all green with yellow and red adornments made them look like uniforms.
One of them moved quickly to intercept Kestra and Ralouf.
"Travelers, you have no business here. Leave," the messenger, a fresh faced youth, haughtily declared.
"And who are you to know another's business?" Kestra asked.
"We are the Climbing Mountain Sect, and this is our mountain. I will not tell you again: leave."
Talking out loud, Kestra said, "Now, this is one of those interesting situations. This boy has some control over his mana, but that fear stink! I can't tell if he's afraid of us or of someone in his group. Regardless, we have a contract, and he's rudely standing in our way. The boy himself is of no consequence. A bit of training evident from how he holds himself, but only a bit. So many openings in his stance, if he did attempt to use violence against us, I could probably cripple him before he took his foot off the ground. Yet, if I do that, I'll have to play the tyrant to his entire group, and that's just bothersome.
"This arrogance! It's so ...!" Kestra heaved a dramatic put upon sigh.
Then she cast Control Air and Control Gravity on the boy, plucking him up from the ground and launching him back to his group.
"Hm. Not enough Mana Manipulation to combat my control of the spells, or not enough battle experience to react quickly enough," she added.
Graemire mock sighed. "Face-slapper."
Ralouf, though, frowned. "Sects claiming the mountain, eh? Uppity bunch to do that."
About then, the boy landed on his backside and rolled to a stop at the feet of his group. Kestra had had to strain a bit at that range to cushion his landing. Strong-man posturing was one thing, actually harming someone escalated things too easily.
She and Ralouf continued up the road to the mine.
The group of sect members divided their attention, with two watching the palisade, four watching their advance, and one helping the messenger boy stand and checking him for injury.
A woman who looked only a few years younger than Kestra stepped a bit forward of their group. When they got within range to converse with only a bit of yelling, she called out, "Who are you to be so high handed with our shidi?"
Kestra glanced to Ralouf. "They really are an uppity bunch."
She hadn't bothered to speak softly, nor had she raised her voice, but the sect members stiffened.
Addressing them now, Kestra said, "Your shidi should have asked that question before trying to play the strong man, but even so, our names aren't likely to mean much on this low of a realm."
They were close enough now for Kestra to see that the sect guys all had similar problems with their Mana Manipulation, and had the presence of levels more in line with the city guards on the High Mortal Realms than those she had seen around the Mid Mortal Realm cities so far. She estimated them to be in the upper twenties, level-wise, and by their grouping and movements, rather inexperienced both individually and as a team with facing off against sapients.
A few of the sect members were smart enough to grow cautious at the mention of this being a low realm, but a few just sneered.
"What, you're so faceless you don't even have names to share?" The speaker was one of the sneering bunch.
Kestra tipped her head to the side and said, "Hm. Not just uppity, but stupid, too. Is your skill so low that you can't perceive the mana around you yet? Stop yipping and step aside. You children are being far too rude."
The woman's face went red, but two of the people behind her tugged at her robes. She had the presence of mind to at least glance at them, and their somber miens kept her lips closed.
One of those sleeve tuggers stepped next to the woman and offered a shallow bow. "Honored Transcendental, we have a dispute with these squatters upon our mountain. It is our duty to see them removed. I must ask, what is your business here?"
Ralouf put a hand on Kestra's shoulder. He said, "Our business is not yours. Do not insert yourselves into it. And by that I mean, leave. Run back to your sect and have them prepare an appropriate apology gift for your rude conduct. It should be left with Fengar's Minerals."
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The woman's face got a bit closer to purple, but before she did more than open her mouth and suck in a breath, Ralouf dropped the weight of his levels upon them.
Without Ralouf's hand on Kestra's shoulder, she wasn't sure she would have stayed upright. The sect members, and some of the people on the walkway lining the top of the palisade, were flattened.
"Go," Ralouf ordered before pulling back his presence.
Watching the sect members drop trigged a small epiphany for Kestra. "Huh. So that's why everyone's so quick to get on their knees around more powerful people," she jaw-talked loud enough to include Ralouf and Graemire.
"Oh?" Graemire asked.
"Can't fall over when someone's flexing if you're already on the ground."
Ralouf shot her a side-eye glance, his mana brightening with amusement, but he gave no other indication of hearing her.
"The position is called a kowtow, and assuming it is kowtowing," Graemire said. "At least, when one folds one's self of one's own accord."
Those same green robed figures picked themselves up and ran, the two with more red than yellow trim picking up one of their fellows in a shoulder carry.
While Kestra watched them run off, the gates of the palisade were unbarred and swung open. Everyone inside was kowtowing.
Ralouf's hand dropped from Kestra's shoulder, and he murmured, "Your show again."
She didn't have Graemire's vines covering her face, so she refrained from showing her amusement. Deciding to play up the role of a Divine's servant, Kestra bowed to Ralouf, then walked through the gates.
Inside the wooden walls stood four boxy buildings. Only one had windows, the smallest of the structures, and those were pointed toward another palisade contained within the first. This one was a little shorter, the trees that had been used to make it younger to judge by the difference in thickness of the trunks.
She called out "Foreman Jude Bing? Please come forward."
One of the men about halfway between the outer and inner palisades rose and scurried over to drop into a kowtow two meters from Kestra. "This lowly one is Foreman Jude. How may this lowly one appease Honored Divine?"
"Foreman Jude, stand," Kestra said. She didn't need to correct everyone's misunderstandings, and she wasn't inclined to stoop down to do business. "As long as everyone is circumspect in their tone, there won't be any need for the Honored Divine to relax his presence again. Your people may return to their normal activities."
The man stood, his gaze sweeping around them with obvious worry.
Kestra handed him a copy of the contract she arranged with their factor. "Did you get word of this?"
He took the scroll of the contract, glancing over it, and handed it back. "Yes, Honored Divine, the Povuli factor notified us. Would Honored Divine prefer to rest first? Tea?"
Kestra glanced to Ralouf, who shook his head.
"No. Lead the way to the mine entrance, but not any closer than is safe for those lacking Body of Poison. Honored Divine will make his assessment."
"Honored Divine is too kind!" the foreman said, turning toward the inner palisade and quick stepping over. "Open the inner gate!" he hollered.
Four men scrambled up from kowtowing to do as ordered. The inner gates were big enough for a single wagon to pass through at a time, three meters wide. The inner palisade was no more than four meters tall, which was two meters shorter than the outer palisade, and this inner gate had no overhang. Foreman Jude stopped and kowtowed at the gates. "Honored Divine, we have formation plates on the inside to prevent the vapors from the mine from passing the inner curtain. This is as far as our procedures say is safe in these circumstances."
Kestra bowed to Ralouf, who patted her shoulder and walked through the gates. Over their communications devices, he said, "It's a good procedure. Have them close the gates after me to close the formation. I'll call ahead on my way out."
She did as Ralouf suggested, and then took the foreman up on his offer of tea.
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Between having a native resilience against the components of stone, including the metals found within, and his own grasp of the Elemental Control spells, Ralouf didn't find the mercury vapors all that bothersome. The mine tunnels were fairly extensive; he traveled close to five or six kilometers just searching through them for the creature reportedly causing the mercury to vaporize out of the ore. With that size, Ralouf couldn't help but think that the seam of cinnabar was either far more massive than most, or it was mostly played out already. Extending his senses to detect the cause of the vaporous purification of the ores meant Ralouf had to travel mortal slow, and that was not an exaggeration. He walked at a pace that barely covered a single meter with each relaxed stride.
Thus, it took him an hour and a half of exploring the mine shafts to find the one with corpses still present. He paused to examine the bodies and discovered that they had suffocated as much as been poisoned by the mercury. A few showed signs of reanimating: chaotic splinters of ghostly mana prodding at the flesh.
He pulled out one of his more useful tools, a copper inscribed Sky Iron dagger. It was one of his Masterworks and even induced a forging tribulation. The resultant weapon was able to steal mana from whatever it pierced. If a crystal was socketed in the pommel, the mana would first be absorbed into the crystal.
Not wanting to fight the remnants of personality in the ghostly mana, Ralouf plucked sulfur crystals from the walls of the mine. A bit of stone shaping molded the crystals into the right dimensions to fit into the open prongs at the dagger's pommel. With a crystal slotted into the hilt, he plunged the dagger into the belly, heart, and head dantians of the corpses, destroying them and trapping the ghostly mana in the crystal. One crystal was needed for each reanimating corpse, a testament to both the poor suitability of sulfur crystals to cleansing work and how the near the corpses had been to rising.
He socketed in more crystals and repeated the destruction of the dantians with the other corpses, just to be safe. Now, even if the corpses attracted ghosts, the ghosts could not use the mostly intact meridians to move the bodies about. It wasn't a perfect cleansing, but it would give people time to properly see to the final rites for these dead miners.
A quick sluice of mana across the dagger cleaned it, and he stored away it and the now mana clouded gems.
The corpses hadn't all fallen together, and seeing to them had taken Ralouf farther and farther down the mine shaft. A few more minutes of walking brought him to the end. He blinked away the moisture that gathered at the corner of his eyes and sighed to settle his breathing. Then he called through the communication device to Kestra.
"Little Potential?"
"Yes, Honored Divine?" she answered.
"You taught your sprites the Elemental Control spells, yes?"
"The basi--. The spells for the True Elements, yes. Only Natspri is advanced enough to learn the pseudo elemental control spells."
Ralouf felt his lips twitch at her slip up. He didn't mind how the true Elements were called, but Graemire did. However, "Does that mean that Orespri is unable to use Control Air?"
"The spell itself? No, the little one hasn't learned it, but I'm guessing you mean for Orespri to gather up the vapor mercury? It's still metal, and Orespri's natively good with that spell."
"You guessed correctly. There's also a shattered mineral sprite. With Orespri being bound, it should be able to gather up the remnants of the mineral sprite and advance without worrying about shattering."
Kestra was silent a moment. When she spoke, she sounded sad. "I'll send the little one over to you."
A few minutes later, a familiar tumbling pile of variegated ores rolled over to Ralouf. It had already picked up matte reds from recombining stray vapor mercury and crystals of sulfur into cinnabar. The pile was a little larger than normal as it contained five mana stones, each five centimeters in diameter.
Ralouf called Kestra again. "Why does Orespri have Earth grade mana stones with it?"
"Because I don't know how much mana Orespri will need to use to coalesce all of the vapor back to an ore, or what the effect will be when my little guy takes in the mineral sprite bits. Graemire said one should be enough, but I'd rather over prepare than under. And if you're needing a snack, Orespri knows to give up some of them, too."
"Ah," Ralouf said, caught unprepared again by the girl's generous nature.
To the Ore Sprite, he said, "I should hold on to four of the mana stones while you're incorporating the shattered sprite there. When you're done, I'll give them back. Good?"
Orespri didn't speak yet, but formed scoop-like divots in some of its component ores and held out the mana stones, cupped in those divots. Ralouf took them, and then pointed the Ore Sprite at the shattered mineral sprite.
Ore sprites were mostly shed from metal elementals, their purpose to gather the traces of metal into harmonious ores. Mineral sprites were less common, usually advancing from stone sprites, which were shed by earth elementals. They, too, gathered trace kinds of earth and metal into harmonious pieces, but they tended to focus more on developing crystals and special kinds of stone.
Normally, ore and mineral sprites moved as easily through stone and soil as an elemental, but unlike an elemental, they could be caught fast if they entered an area with the wrong kind of balance to it. This mineral sprite looked to have had the sad misfortune to be drawn to a discarded wyrm egg.
The egg itself was barely viable, the wyrmling inside now dormant from lack of mana. The mineral sprite, it would seem, got too close to the shell composed of deep earth metals and minerals, and the embryonic wyrmling had seized the sprite and drank its mana, holding on until the sprite shattered itself trying to escape. At that point, the wyrmling rolled its egg and itself up in an instinctive defensive formation and entered a state of hibernation.
That egg now rested in the cradle of Ralouf's arm. It was half the size it ought to be, and there was no sense of elemental affinity coming from the nascent wyrm within. It wasn't an egg of his seed, but discarded like this, well, he wasn't going to just leave a wyrm about to picked up for just anyone to make a pet of, no matter how weak it was.
If no better option showed itself, well, Kestra's mana well could use a guardian, and the little thing would have a chance there to grow strong enough to gain Sapient Speech.
As Orespri incorporated the bits of shattered mineral sprite, the torment of those bits stopped vibrating the ambient mana and the vapor mercury began to condense into a rain of liquid mercury.
Ralouf, meanwhile, made a much more thorough study of the egg in his hands. "Barely" was still viable.