For being only a week old, Azure Village was quite well developed. Partly, that had to do with how the transmigrators had figured out different spells and skills, while the other part had to do with how much of a cheat the Village Stone could be when properly funded.
Village Stones were interesting. They could be attached or independent. Attached Village Stones were attached to cities, and the cities they were attached to could provide extra resources under the restriction that the village couldn't grow beyond a certain percentage of the city. The benefits of the Village Stone would decrease the more the village grew out of proportion with its parent city, but the one thing the Stones would always provide was a no-spawn zone.
Independent Village Stones had no limits on their growth. Given enough time, they could become Kingdom Stones, if properly managed, but they also required a lot more maintenance mana. That mana came from the residents of the villages, and if it wasn't paid in tithed mana, it would be paid in E.X.P. To pay in mana, one had to have at least one open mana foramen. Learning that at least illuminated one reason why the people of the Low Mortal Realms weren't leveling so well. Most of them were born without any open foramina.
Independent or attached, the Village Stones could be used to access the Rewards Store, like with clearing dungeon challenges, and could convert mana to challenge points for the purchase of goods, though it was something like 100 mana for every 1 challenge point. Aside from suppressing monster spawns, if villagers provided the resources, the Village Stones could help layout buildings and provide skill boosts to crafting done within the Stone's aura.
Kestra had payed the mana price for the Sortalheim City Stone to produce an Independent Village Stone, which she then stashed in her stasis realm, and also for Azure Village's attached Village Stone, which cost significantly less. She still had more mana stones than she knew what to do with.
Her Divine Creature friends were happy with one or two of the Earth grade mana stones a day to make up for the difference in mana density from their home realm, which meant she had had around one hundred before handing twenty off to Xanta Liam. She wasn't supposed to over feed her sprites, so she had over four hundred Base mana stones and around three hundred Foundation grade ones after Ralouf's crafting and her purchases and whatnot.
All that meant that she had sent Tami and Puck off with a Village Stone and a box with ten Base mana stones. Even at that, she had worried that she was inviting them to be robbed soon enough. For comparison, all of the emancipation packs she funded came out to less than four Base mana stones in value, and that was including the sourcing cost for the storage rings bringing them up 50 silver per. True, if she had paid for the finished scrolls, that would have been more expensive, but the ink and paper came a mere silver per scroll.
Her realm shenanigans duplicating cheat took a chunk of mana on par with what could be extracted from a Base grade mana stone, so the ink and Transmute Knowledge technique made a definite efficiency multiplier.
Kestra cast her Minor Healing spell on herself when she realized how scattered her focus was, and she ate some nuts from her storage to satisfy the peckishness she felt after the healing.
The walls of the village were dried mud with woody vines grown throughout, though the exterior had been smoothed over to prevent easy climbing. They stood five meters tall, on par with the walls around Sortalheim. There were three points of egress to the village, currently with wooden barricades that could be quickly shifted to block them. Inside, faint golden light marked off planned streets and buildings, while at the center was the Village Head's house. A large communal building loomed beside the Head's House.
As they passed through the gate, Kestra spotted work crews building up houses. Simple pole-fencing cordoned off what was probably the Village Green, but the antlered oxen were out and about, hauling sleds of materials from somewhere outside the village to the work sites.
Word passed through the work groups quickly, and Tami and Puck soon quick-stepped over to meet Kestra and Graemire.
"You two an item?" Puck asked, with the eager glint in his gaze of a born gossip.
"Cultivation partners, yeah," Kestra answered. "About--"
"Honey!" he cried, smacking his chest like a [Dramatist] enacting a heart-wound. "Is that what y'all young things are calling it these days? Iffing you wanted a good time, you could've just kept the splinters out of things!"
Graemire stiffened while Tami dropped her head into her hands, but Kestra just laughed. "Oh, Puck! The splinters are the fun part!"
Puck dropped his hands to his hips and assumed a concerned look, betrayed by the up-tug of his lips. "Baby-girl, you do know men are supposed to be bigger than that, right?"
Before Graemire could do more than suck in a breath, Kestra grinned back. "There-there! There's no need to feel so inadequate! I mean, I'm sure you can make the most of your limited resources. After all, there aren't that many women being offered what ever they want, where ever they want, when ever they want, with someone more fascinated by the female orgasm than an insulted xyline out to prove the superiority of their training."
One of the women on a nearby work crew abruptly stopped and stalked over to them, her face fierce with some intense emotion.
"Damn! Really?" Puck said, eyes rounding. He turned that impressed look to Graemire. "You trained your woman to defend you good! How cute!"
Graemire's angry expression had smoothed into one of dismissal. "I was considering turning your corpse into mulch for my woods, but now I think perhaps your bloodline is cursed and you merely seek death. I shall not gift you a reprieve from the torture of your existence."
Before things continued, the intense woman arrived, her gaze latched onto Kestra. "What do you know of xylines?" she demanded, her nostrils flared enough to whiten her nose and flush her cheeks. Her hair was long and tied so it covered her ears, but Kestra noticed that the bumps for her ears were higher up on her head than most people's would have been. It was a subtle thing that dropped the playfulness right out of Kestra.
Soberly, her gaze on those ear bumps, she asked, "What do you know of Fashriyan or the Altare Archipelago?"
The woman's face lost some of the intensity as she frowned, a trace disappointed. "Nothing."
"Ah. Well, I'm calling where I came from Moh for now. I don't know if anyone ever gave it a true name. There, the xyline tribes built up the nation of Fashriyan. They look human enough until puberty. For humans on Moh that happened between 11 and 14 years, but for xylines 16 to 20. Puberty is the change from child to youth, and during their youth, xylines discover their Paths: feline, canine, vulpine, ursine, corvine. Not many piscine that I know of, but it was as much as a rare occurrence among the families that settled in the Archipelago. Is this familiar to you?"
The woman nodded, her face pinching in with melancholy.
Kestra gently pushed the woman's hair back from the mutilation of her ear. "That can be healed," she offered.
The woman grimaced. "I'd rather not experience having them torn off again by the next draggle worm who wants to toy with a weak Awakened."
Kestra tipped her head to the side, and turned to look at Graemire. "You said there are elves and gnomes. Are they Awakened or Ascended?"
"Ascended," he answered. "One must begin with an Elemental Core to be an Awakened." He turned to look at the xyline woman with curiosity. "You appear more to my senses like an Ascended with an Awakened bloodline. If you can claim your bloodline, that is quite a potential for growth, to lay open Core, Tempering, and Foramina all together."
Her gaze bitter, the xyline woman said, "Unfeasible potential is no potential at all." The bitterness flickered briefly to annoyance, before the woman's expression just slid into resigned sourness.
"May I ask what your path is?" Kestra's heart reached out in sympathy, but she was pretty sure she'd get decked if that showed too much. The xylines of Moh, at least, could be very prideful.
"Vulpine," she said.
"And your name?"
"Su'ami. My clan is lost to me, so, just--. Su'ami." She pronounced her name in three syllables, but the last was all rushed together. It was a musical name, Kestra decided.
Her gaze noted a lack of token around Su'ami's neck. "You rejected citizenship?" she asked.
Su'ami's face snarled, but her voice was calm. "I have no joy in this place, and no desire to remain once the oath you extracted of me is fulfilled."
"That wasn't a Heavenly oath, you know." Kestra mentioned it more to see Su'ami's reaction than anything else.
"My honor is still my own," she answered.
Kestra turned over Su'ami's hands, looking at the callouses. "You are a smith?" she asked, noting the shine of ember scars around her palm. The missing tips of her fingers angered Kestra, but she swallowed that down. This was not the time for raging.
"I was, before this," the vulpine xyline answered, her fingers unconsciously curling into Kestra's. Xylines as Kestra knew them were highly tactile, and the very minor easing of the woman's tension told Kestra that this one had been touch-starved. The abuse probably hadn't helped.
"Well, Su'ami, the whole point of coming to Azure Village was to make sure your skills settled and you had a place away from the city and something to fill your hands while you considered what you want from your future. I have another place where you can do the same, but I have to warn you that there are more Elementals and sprites there than any of the Ascended races. The laws are rudimentary: no murder, no theft, no violation of the Four Agreements. Once you go there, leaving will require an Oath of Silence, to protect the location. If you make friends with the ore sprite, I'm pretty sure you can get materials to smith again, if that's your desire, but there are other trades you may take up."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"Why?" the xyline woman asked.
Kestra's smile was heavy with sorrow. "We are all strangers to a strange land, finding our songs in a new choir, and not all of us can find harmony in the same places. I have had xyline companions before, and I found that the differences between human and xyline were as much quirks as culture, but the similarities were enough to make the differences feel starkly insurmountable at times. Sometimes it is easier to find harmony when the differences in our individual songs are great enough that no one expects your song to follow their tempo and beat."
Su'ami gave that a moment of consideration. "When do we leave?" she asked.
"Gather your belongings and meet us at the Village Head's house. I don't expect our business there to take long, but we'll wait for you," Kestra said.
Su'ami took off, amid yelled shouts along the lines of, "Where are you going?"
Puck shook his head. "Now you done it," he said with a sigh. "There'll be at least ten more people wanting to go with you now. But what's this about having business with us? We got the notice you're not the City Lord no more, and there's a regent for the girly-boy Ramakith."
"You are pretty, but not enough to make up for that kind of attitude," Kestra said, just as depreciatingly as the man had sneered "girly-boy".
He grimaced, but didn't otherwise respond.
"To the Head's house for talky-talking," she said, moving them along.
Puck, like the instigator he seemed, asked, "Why'd you get upset for the Ramakith kid?"
"He's not a goat, and if that was an insult I don't understand it. I am sick of all the perverted twits who are obsessing about what the child wears. It's not their pants; it's not their business what's in them! At least the elves advertise their sexes more so their women won't waste time trying for casual encounters with their men."
"Wait, what?" Puck asked.
"Eh, back on Moh. I don't know about here, but elven men have times when they're fertile, and they'll spurt in anything with a crevice, but the rest of the time, if their 'elements' aren't aligned, the men get vicious head pains after they spurt. The humans here don't have that excuse, but they also lack a firm grounding in the Four Agreements. I blame all the Profaning that has to stir up for their fixation on other people's sexes."
"Er, aren't the Agreements something like ... 'Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.'?" Tami asked.
Kestra blinked. "Good ideas, but, no. The instinct of your body, the feelings in your emotions, the intent and the trust in your mind, and the readiness of your spirit. If all of these are in agreement on your course of action, you create sacred energy when you carry it out. If you force yourself -- or you are forced -- to act in a way that has any of these screaming 'Abyss No!' you create profane energy, which damages you and anyone connected to you through the collective Will. Sometimes you have to endure a bit of the profane to survive; I've certainly shat my pants staring down a monster's maw more than once. However, just because there's a certain amount of the profane we have to endure doesn't mean we should embrace it!"
Puck sniffed at her comment about collective Will, and he looked unimpressed. "That all sounds ... hoaky. No offense meant."
Kestra patted his bicep consolingly. "Earth had crap for mana. Your title should have come with one open mana foramen. As you open more of them, you'll get a better perception of the mana around you."
She took the hand that had been patting the big man and held out her palm, conjuring up a ball of fire to crackle there. "Then you can do fun things like this."
She dismissed the flames. "You'll also get a better appreciation for how a human's social senses work, and a better sense of how the people you've bonded with shape the growth of your own soul -- that mana seed inside you that carries your essential personality.
"I don't have time to stay here and convince you, nor do I particularly care to, but if it's important enough for you to disprove me, ah, here. These are some step by step instructions to grow your mana cultivation. Figure it out." She passed over a scroll Inspri quickly copied from the Ramakith library haul. It wasn't that much, just an entry level description on how to gain the Meditation skill and some hints on how to prepare foramina for opening.
Puck made the scroll disappear into his storage ring, but he looked more thoughtful now.
Graemire's expression was flat, but he remained in the background. Kestra could feel him trying to be a remote observer.
They had reached the Village Head's house, and Tami stepped forward to open the door. "After you," she invited.
Inside, Kestra produced another document, this one a short page with a simple oath of silence. "I don't trust the locals to keep from trying to enslave the lot of you all over again, but it's also not my life to live. I have some contingencies I can share with you if you're willing to swear this oath before the Heavens." She handed over the page.
Tami and Puck read over the page, then glanced between each other and her.
Tami sighed. "Before the Heavens, I agree to the oath on this page," she said. Puck echoed her a moment later and they glowed with the Heavenly confirmation.
Kestra handed them each an arm cuff. "Push a bit of your mana into these."
They took a moment to fumble at the imprimatur process, but once they got it, she added through the armbands, «You don't have to wear them, but they need to be close to you to work. I would have made them as rings if those weren't so easy to cut off. Also, what you just did is called soul-binding. No one else can use these but you, even if you die. Not everything can be soul-bound, and not everything is safe to try binding like that. There's a comfort enchant on them, too, to help them stay where you put them.
«You can push your mana at these arm cuffs, and I'll get a notice that you want to talk. The more mana you push, the more urgent I'll assume you feel the talk.
«Graemire was kind enough to take the communications anchor for these cuffs up to some of the higher realms and verify they still work to connect to the Mortal Realms. Better yet, it can function as a keyed, cross Realm Sea teleport beacon. That part is rare even in the Divine Realms, hence the silence oaths.
«Oh, and they're storage devices. That's what they're disguised as, at least. I can drop things into them, and take them out, so please don't use them to store your personal things. For now, I'm giving you enough Mid Novice spears, crossbows, bolts, and hardened leather armor for a quarter-call village militia, and copies of some spear and crossbow training manuals.»
The pair's reactions to her silent speaking were minimal, but she definitely had their attention.
"Check 'em out," she said out loud.
They did, and grinned.
"Some of that you can bring out whenever and have only a bit of fuss," she added, taking back the oath terms. "And with that, our business here today is concluded."
Puck grinned. "No tea ceremony! Yes!"
Kestra shook her head. She and Graemire headed outside. Su'ami was waiting at the edge of the boundary that marked off the yard, along with another woman and a man. Kestra stepped off the porch of the Village Head's house and passed the short-ish rainbow-over-gold rectangular stele standing to the east of the path to the Village Commons, using the time she was walking up to them to notice the way the xyline tried to keep some distance with the couple.
"Are you ready to go, Su'ami?" Kestra asked.
"Yes."
"Oh, Sui! Don't be so rude! Introduce us!" the woman spoke with forced happiness.
Kestra didn't have a chance to say anything. Graemire let out his presence -- much more controlled and contained than when he had mana-flexed in front of the Zonzhi Association's Master Alchemist. It was still enough to wipe the false cheer from the woman's face and replace it with fear. "Presumptuous," he declared.
With an agreeing nod, Kestra turned away from them and linked elbows with Su'ami. "The Honorable Divine Emperor of Wood Graemire wants to take a last look at the wilds he created before we depart. Let's exit through that gate, shall we?"
Graemire led the way, and Kestra deliberately ignored the shine of unshed tears in the xyline's eyes, the quiver in her muscles, and the way she unconsciously crowded up to Kestra. The poor woman had to have been quite touch-starved to have such reactions.
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Nahrehego met them just out of sight of Azure Village and within the tree line. He bowed deeply, having calmed somewhat from his initial ecstatic response to meeting Graemire, but he was still very respectful toward the Elemental Emperor. A small forest lion butted its head into his shoulder, and he draped an arm over the tamed creature's back.
"Oh, stand!" Graemire ordered with a touch of amused resignation. He looked to Kestra. "I appreciate our meeting ever more."
Kestra looked away, feigning exaggerated innocence by blinking wide eyes and pursing her lips, only to look back at the Emperor of Wood with a cheeky grin.
The Druid of the Vine led the way to the Grove he, with Graemire's interested aid, had begun. Kestra swung Su'ami up onto her back when the xyline woman proved unable to match the now level 20 Druid's pace.
Graemire had taken him through a single run of the Trial of Force at the mountain dungeon Eilith had found. He claimed to have acted as much because he wanted to make sure the man had the ability to keep order in the Azure Woods as to see what his own capabilities were after the loss of his cultivation. They stopped when Nahrehego hit 20, and the druid had experienced a similar dizziness from the swift leveling that Kestra had felt.
In the grove, a Five-Seed Brumi sapling grew. It was the first offspring of Kestra's Elementally advanced tree. Graemire took a seat facing the tree and pulled Kestra down into his lap, situating her so that she faced him. When she exhaled, he inhaled, and when he exhaled, she inhaled. The mnemonic aided them in passing mana between them. The rhythm of the exchanges calmed Kestra, and brought her fully into the moment, though the giddiness of finally getting to leave behind Sortalheim and the City Lord title was still buoying her mood upward.
In the middle of this back-and-forthing of mana, the Emperor of Wood shaped a special sprite. It was a considered, controlled process, one that took well beyond sun down. The moon was at the zenith of its passage when this new sprite opened its eyes and uncurled.
Still caught up in the tides of their mana exchange, Graemire and Kestra moved together, both sets of their hands reaching to support the new sprite and bring it to the young Brumi tree. Graemire began the intricate weaving that bound the sprite not just to the tree, but the whole of the Azure Wilds to the sprite.
Dawn broke when he finished that task, and Kestra could feel that he had planned it that way, that it was something Elementally significant.
Then he told the sprite, "I may have given you form from my own form, but you are not mine to command. I give into your care the Azure Wilds, to grow or shrink as you see fit. These Wilds contain a befouled land, and the dungeon repairing that befoulment. Maintain that containment and the Heavens will reward you; abandon it, and you will have to find your own way."
Then he called up the Druid. "This mortal is called Nahrehego. I have challenged his knowledge, and I judge him to be as able a caretaker of the Wilds as a mortal may be. He has sworn to me that he will act as your guardian until you are able to guard yourself from the threats present within the Mortal Realms. What happens after that time depends on the relations and choices the two of you make."
Nahrehego bowed to the newly created sprite. "It is my honor to serve you, Sprite of the Azure Wilds."
The sprite climbed up into the Druid's arms, peered into his face, and then curled up.
Graemire smiled. "It may take a year or so for this little one to decide to speak, but the little one understands Sapient Speech. I expect that within a decade you will know whether you serve a Lord or a Lady of the Azure Wilds. Should you have need of me, you may pass along a message to either Miss Tami or Mister Puck of the Azure Village."
Graemire didn't wait for Nahrehego to respond. He picked up Kestra and a now sleeping Su'ami, and flew them to the same mountain dungeon Eilith had found and where he had leveled Nahrehego.
Su'ami woke during the flight and eeped, which Kestra found adorable.
"We're going to make sure you're of a level to enter the Peak Mortal Realms, then we're taking you to the place Miss Kestra told you about," Graemire said.
And when they reached the dungeon, they went through the Trial of Force. Kestra reached level 50, and Su'ami 21. Inspri collated and then Kestra passed Su'ami a list of suggestions for the Reward Store, if she wanted to focus on her Smithing skills in the Myriad Realms.
Then it was time to depart. Kestra brought Su'ami into her realm, then brought Graemire over, and finally, Kestra brought herself through.
She barely had a chance to introduce the xyline to Ralouf before Graemire carted her off for a cultivation session, to help balance her new levels.