“Are you alright, my lord?”
Wyll gave me his hand and I stood up.
The guy who drew a sword on me was beaten by a lot of people and thrown into an alley. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have the slightest sympathy for the guy, I think he thought I was one of the kids who robbed him and he was a bit drunk, but he was also an asshole who pulled a sword on a little kid, on me.
And I froze again, at a moment when I should have protected myself... But what could I do against him?
“My lord?”
I looked at Wyll, “I have to go home,” and he looked at me silently for a while and then nodded.
They brought two horses for us, put me on one and Wyll on the other and we rode the normal way to my house. The guards at the gate looked at me in shock and opened the gate. One of the guards, Elron, entered the house with me and escorted me to my room. When we got to my room, he opened the door for me and after I entered my room and took 2 steps, I jumped at the sound I heard.
“Did you have a good time at least?”
The owner of the voice was my mother, and I looked at her in fear. She was sitting in my chair, crossing her legs, waiting for me. She had a strange expression on her face that I couldn't tell whether she was angry or happy. Her eyebrows were fortunately not furrowed.
It was like she was thinking... My punishment?
No?
“I'm sorry...” The words came out of my mouth.
My mother got up from the chair, came to me and hugged me. I could hear her taking a deep breath.
After a while she stood up and after gently playing with my hair, she left my room without saying anything.
“What was that?”
**
Breakfast... Well...
My father didn't seem to know anything, for now. He was looking at my mom strangely because she kept turning her head and looking at me. And after breakfast, my mother unexpectedly told my father that she wanted him to take me with him today.
So I guess that meant I could now enter the Ocean, if I understand correctly? Yes? I hoped ?
Even my father was surprised for a moment, but he accepted straight away.
And right now, after breakfast, father, me and Nazir, we got into my father's carriage and left the house. At first I thought we were going to Ocean and my father was going to show me around and introduce me to the people he does business with, but when we started heading to a different area instead of going to the main gate of the city, I looked out the window in surprise.
“Where are we going?” I asked, looking at my father.
“I have something to do.”
Something to do?
I hoped this doesn't turn into the classic unskippable father side quest.
**
WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS TORTURE!?
We came to a place like a shipyard and from the moment we arrived, my father kept talking to different people.
Since morning, we have been going left and right, sometimes sitting and sometimes standing, and my father was always talking to someone. I've already forgotten how many people he's introduced me to. And the conversations he had weren't like business conversations, they were just chatting.
It was afternoon, I was extremely tired and if I hadn't trained myself physically in the last months, I would probably have fainted by now. If we talked about mental fatigue instead of physical, I think I was going to kill myself.
As we were walking somewhere again, I finally couldn't resist and asked my father, “I thought you didn't like talking to people.”
He looked at me and smiled, “Yeah, I don’t.”
“Then what was all this time we spent?”
“Business.”
“You were chatting.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t understand-”
He interrupted me by putting his hand on my head, stroking my hair and continued walking with a smile.
I sighed and continued to follow him. We came to a giant hexagonal structure, the big metal doors were opened by 2 people who noticed us and we went inside and I saw that there was a very large ship, half of which had been built and the rest was still being built.
The middle of the place was connected to the sea, and there were dozens of different races of people inside. Some were transporting materials, others were manufacturing the necessary parts for the ship. My father and I started moving towards the ship and people who saw us were bowing their heads to my father.
When we came to 2 men, one with orange hair and the other with black, who were on the stairs leaning against the stern of the ship, we stopped and my father looked up and played a whistle. The two, who looked like they were in their twenties, looked down and smiled when they saw my father and the one with black hair called out, “Uncle, how are you?!”
“How is the work going?” When my father asked this, the one with the black hair said, “Well, it's going…” then he was saying, “It would be going better if he-”, and the one with the orange hair interrupted him, “Shut up!”
“What happened?” Father asked curiously, and the one with the black hair continued, “This idiot ordered the wrong tree.”
“Solonius said-”
“Did I tell you to ask Solonius or Yunus?”
The one with the orange hair frowned and my father asked, “Is there any ‘big’ problem?”
“No problem, we still have what we need in stock. I just wanted to replenish the stock before we run out...” As the one with black hair said this, he raised his hammer as if to hit the one with orange hair and the other one flinched.
“Is that Altevia?” He asked as my father giggled and my father put his hand on my shoulder and pointed to the one with the black hair, “Altevia, Leonida.” Then he pointed to the one with the orange hair, “Altevia, Albert.”
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“Julian told me I had cousins who helped you build your ships, but I didn't know they worked directly in the field.”
Albert smiled after I said that, “Letting someone built your ships is like letting someone fuck your wife, after the job’s done, all you can do is hoping that she’ll stay loyal to you.
Your uncle’s words.”
Leonida raised one eyebrow and looked at Albert, “Did he really say that?” and Albert nodded.
“Father is getting more creative every day.”
Father chuckled again and asked, “Do you need anything?” Leonida looked at Albert, then at my father and shook his head “No, thank you.”
“Alright, be careful.”
After this little chat, we finally left the shipyard and came to the city. And this time we finally came to the Ocean. One thing I couldn't understand about this place, all the signs around said Northside, but people called it the Ocean.
As we passed through the street of bars I came to last night, a lot of people greeted my father. I thought my dad was going to talk with lots of people for hours again, but luckily we didn't stop to chat with anyone except for small greetings and we came to the harbor. After we got off the carriage, many people nodded to us again. Everyone who saw my father had a smile on their face.
We went on board and my father asked where Yunus was, and one of the men said he didn't know and called someone to him, and after whispering something, the person he had called started to run somewhere. Then my father went to his office and when he opened the door we saw a tall, orange-haired elf man, who looked to be in his late twenties, sitting in my father's chair with his legs stretched out on the desk. The guy had a smile on his face as we walked in and he said, “I heard you missed me a lot.”
My father looked at him for a while, chuckled and asked, “How long have you been sitting like that?” and the man said, “Would you believe me if I told you I woke up when you opened the door?”
“Get your ass off my chair.”
The man jumped up from his seat and quickly tilted his head as if in mockery and cleared the table with his hand.
“Is he?!” The man quickly walked up to me, picked me up as if I were a puppy and called out excitedly, “When did you get so big!”
It wasn't hard to guess who this man was because of the orange hair and the way he was comfortable with my father: It had to be Sergius.
“Are you my cousin?”
My father looked at us and introduced him to me, saying, “Altevia, Sergius.”
“Have you seen your family? Leo and Albert don't seem to know you're here.”
“I haven't seen anyone yet, I arrived last night and not even Neptune can make me walk across the Ocean right now.”
After my father chuckled, Sergius looked at me sitting on his arm and said, “He's not resisting at all! Julian would have started pushing me by now,” and my father replied, ”He is like a cat sometimes and, he likes to be held.”
What?
“By the way, speaking of cats, I saw Rat King in the city last night, is he getting better?”
“Rat King? In the city?”
“I mean, not in the city but he was pretty close.”
“That’s nice, I’ll see him tomorrow.
It’s been a while since I last visited him.”
I didn’t know who this Rat King was, but, “Father, do you need anything from me today?” My father turned to me and a sneer appeared on his face, “What's wrong? Are you bored already?” and I nodded.
He came to me, and when Sergius put me down, he straightened my clothes and said, “Ask Nazir to take you to your uncle's house, you met Julian, right?” When I nodded to him again, he patted my head and opened the door. Nazir was waiting by the door and when Sergius saw him, the whistle blew and Nazir looked at him and smiled, “You'll be coming to Callieri's tomorrow.”
After Nazir nodded, my father walked us out of the ship and then Nazir and I went to my uncle's house.
Home would be a fragile word for this place. It was a mansion, to say the least. It was surrounded on 4 sides by a wall of red-orange fences. The walls of the house were light gray, but the roof and many columns on the sides were made of wood. There was a huge garden at the back and a large balcony overlooking the garden. When we arrived at the gate of the mansion 2 demons met us and when they saw Nazir they nodded and opened the gate. Once inside we followed the stone path to the mansion and finally came to the gate.
We hadn't even knocked when a young, pretty girl with long orange hair opened the door.
“Mom, my cousin is here!” Shouted Orea. Unlike my other cousins, I saw Orea almost every few months, I think she must have been about 20 years old, she was beautiful and as sweet as ever. I think she was extra happy that I was coming here for the first time. She immediately approached me and picked me up like a puppy, just like Sergius did, and hugged me.
“I thought you'd never come here and, look at you, getting bigger every day!”
You know what my father said, he likes to be held, that's not really true. I gave up would be more accurate.
“I'll show you around,” when my cousin said that and started to walk inside, I said, “No need, I'm actually here for Julian,” and she stopped.
“Julian? I think he was in his room.”
As Orea led us to Julian's room, I looked around. Compared to our house, it was much more opulent, full of gold-framed paintings, vases and sculptures that were clearly expensive. A different maid came out from each corner.
We stood in the middle of a long, wide corridor and Orea knocked on the door and suddenly there was a tiny explosion and something hit the door. Nazir immediately opened the door and we saw Julian lying on the floor with a big shield in his hand. He had obviously been thrown here, but fortunately he was not hurt.
Nazir immediately helped him up and I looked curiously into his room while he looked curiously at us. The wall directly opposite us was a long wall of made out of hard glass, to the left was a twin sized bed, and to the right was a L-shape marble table against the glass. The table was covered with tons of runestone and you could see many burn marks.
Please don't tell me you're going to be some kind of mad scientist or something in the future.
“Julian!” Orea yelled and Julian stood up saying, “I'm fine.”
“Let me look,” Orea leaned over, checked Julian's whole body for injuries and there didn't seem to be any.
“I told you to be careful playing with those things! What if you got hurt?!”
“I was protecting myself, and it wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't been distracted,” after Julian said that, he noticed me, “You... Altevia?” I nodded and asked, “What were you doing?”
I think he said he was interested in runestones, but I had no idea what exactly he was doing. Julian was approaching me when Orea grabbed him by the arm, shook off his clothes and let him go. Then she went into her room and opened one of the glass walls and let the air in.
“It stinks in here, clean up your room and that table before father sees you.”
“Alright...” Julian looked down and silently watched his sister tidy up her room. Orea did everything she told Julian to do, checked and organized everything, then patted my head and said, “I'll be in the garden if you need anything,” and left the room.
“Did you need something?” After Julian said that, I went into his room and looked at his desk, “No, I came to see you.”
“Me?”
I nodded, “What were you doing?” As I asked that, Julian walked over to his desk and asked, “Have you ever worked with runestones?” I shook my head and he said, “No problem, I'll explain,” and picked up a stone with a green scribble on it. When I looked carefully at the sketch, it looked like an L-shaped wind drawing that resembled an arrow coming from above and turning to the left.
“This is a wind stone, if you transfer your mana to this-” A gentle gust of wind hit me in the face and my hair fell out. “See?!”
“Felt.”
“Oh, sorry.
And, this is a firestone,” as he picked up the stone with the glowing red scribbles on it, I put my hand out towards it and said, “Okay, I understand,” and had him put it on the table.
A long time after that Julian spent telling me about his runestones. In the simplest logic, a mage can sacrifice a portion of his mana to create a magic stone that can be used for a single use, or more precisely, until the mana he transfers to the stone is consumed. The stones were not different from ordinary stones that you can find anywhere, but the stone needs to be a bit large because the runes scribbled on it have a meaning. By combining different elements, like combining wind and ice to make a small air conditioner, you could create things as far as your imagination goes.
While we were playing with the runes, my Uncle Pedro came into the room and grabbed Julian and me by the shoulders and squeezed hard.
“You come to my house without telling anything !?” He was laughing as he squeezed my shoulder so hard that it hurt, and when I said, “Hello, Uncle,” he stopped and tapped me once on the shoulder.
“Look at those muscles! What are they feeding you?!”
I laughed, bowed my head without saying anything to my uncle and, he played with Julian's hair and looked at the table, “What were you guys doing?”
I saw Julian gulped, he handed his father the runestone he had made, which worked like an air conditioner, and said, “I thought it might help you in the heat.”
Pedro took the runestone, activated it and when the cold wind hit his face he smiled and tapped Julian twice on the shoulder, “This is great!
I heard Sergius came yesterday, did he show you this?”
At that moment I noticed Julian paused for a moment, he lowered his head without saying anything and I jumped in, “No, he just did it, isn't it really great?”
Pedro was surprised, I saw his eyebrows furrow for a moment, but he immediately started smiling again and said, “Really? Well done.” Then he played with Julian's hair one more time and stood up with his runestone. “Okay, you guys hang out, I have work to do,” he said and left the room.
I realized that Julian was looking at me in silence and surprise, so I tapped him on the arm with the back of my hand and said, “What else can you show me?” and took one of the stones. And then we excitedly went back to playing with the runestones again.