"Elect of the Frozen Wind?" Ran hissed as they followed the guide out along a glass walkway that circled the lower perimeter of the mountain. "How did you get that one?"
Jair smiled fondly. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Remind me next Nuprima eclipse and I’ll show you."
“Are you trying to be intentionally mysterious, or do you just do this by habit?”
“Habit. When you know everything about everything it’s easy to overshare and ruin your chances if you’re not restrained. Better to be restrained by default and only share what needs to be said. But you’ll appreciate it much more if you see it in person. Can’t go giving away all my secrets ahead of time, can I?”
It took only a few minutes to reach the first descent, a path carved down into the stone through the mountain. Their guide led them down a spiral set of stairs that twisted slowly around until they were upside-down. From this angle the bottom peak resembled a mountain of mana crystals, growing upward in every direction, covering the entire underside of the floating mountain.
"It's so beautiful. Where was this hidi-- Wait." Ran swayed unsteadily and pointed upward as he caught on. "That's the ground. You can still see the domes. What--"
Gravity constructs glowed strongly, holding their perspective stable, but Ran took a stumbling step backwards. Jair caught his arm and kept him from stepping off the path. “If you get vertigo, don’t look up.”
"We're upside-down.” Ran tremulously pointed upward to where Nuprima’s surface spread out above them. “Why are we upside down? How are we upside down?"
"Gravity constructs." Jair pointed downward to the interweaving of mana crystal, glass, and mithriline, the key connections even reinforced with tiny lines of starsteel. "You’re standing on one of the most powerful gravity fields in the world. Wouldn't even run anywhere but here. It's perfectly safe, just don't step off the paths."
Ran looked like he wasn't about to step anywhere, certainly not off the path. "I'll wait here," he said, looking distinctly unwell.
"Enjoy the view." Jair began walking through the maze up the mountain steps, searching for just the right crystals. He needed something heavy enough and the right color, something that wouldn't fracture when taken away from its mana-dense atmosphere and returned to the planet below. Most of these crystals were still young despite their size, too fragile to survive away from their mountain.
The hovering height of the mountain was the best indicator of when the crystals were mature enough to be harvested. Sounding lines could be used to test the height, but many of the mountain keepers could tell by feel without even bothering. Humans tended to underestimate the precision of a stormkin's senses, mistaking them for their less acute avian beastkin cousins.
Jair found what he was looking for on the left branch toward the peak - the lowest point if you were looking from the ground - in a cluster of heavy crystals that looked significantly denser than those around them. They must have been too fragile at the previous harvesting, but with an additional cycle to grow they'd become the clear dominant crystals.
Jair took out his first holding cloth and set it on the ground beside him. He wrapped one hand loosely around the crystal to catch it when it fell, then pressed his other palm to the central crystal's tip.
He bore down with his full weight as though to drive the mana crystal into his flesh. The crystal repelled contact, neither piercing nor yielding. Jair persisted until it lost its resistance and flowed around his hand and through his fingers like water. He slid his hand rapidly down to the base, cupping it around the protrusion from which it grew, then flexed his manabody to cancel the synergy.
With a pop, the entire mana crystal disconnected from the base, molded perfectly to Jair's hand. He wrapped it up and repeated the process until he had five of the prime crystals of this batch. He didn't have anything specific in mind for them, just good to have on hand. Valuable in trade, or usable to power constructs in future. It was mainly to fulfill stormkin expectations that he'd used the number seven.
The last two were what mattered, and they needed to be something more specific. The search took him on a full exploration, up and down the crystal mountain three times on different stairways, until he finally located a suitable crystal.
Most with the proper color were too weak, and most with sufficient strength were the wrong hue. But among so many thousands of crystals, it would be harder to not find what he needed as long as he kept searching.
This one he harvested the traditional way instead, using a hammer to strike the stone protrusion from which the crystal grew, gentle taps around and around until the crystal cracked from its base and fell free. Some impatient harvesters would rush the process by striking the crystal itself - which admittedly would take a fraction of the time - but that was a prime way to blow yourself up. Impatient harvesters rarely returned more than twice.
Even this was a less efficient method than the advanced synergy, allowing a good ten percent of the crystal's mana to escape into the air, but Yast would expect this form. The other would raise too many questions and take him down a route he didn't have the time for at present.
The last crystal on his list was easiest to find, he simply broke off the first vaguely-blue crystal that wouldn't dissipate on impact.
He found Ran conversing with their guide, though the conversation died at once when he appeared around the curve and descended the last few steps.
"Have a good chat?" Jair handed the guide his seven bundled crystals for registration. The stormkin louped each with practiced precision before handing them back. "I don't suppose you want to jump?"
Ran shook his head rapidly, eyes wide.
Jair laughed. "Don't worry, I don't have my gravity spells yet so I can't either. Another day."
Yet it wasn't until they'd climbed all the way back down and once again stood on Nuprima's frozen surface that Ran was able to relax.
"Who's next?” Ran asked as they walked back toward the domes. “And where.”
"Security expert. Yast Mebort. Lorsit will be easy, so better to get the tricky one out of the way first in case we need to revert.”
Stolen story; please report.
Since the Lorsit negotiation would mainly be about convincing the stone mage that Jair’s word was good, he had no concerns on that score. Yast required a bit more finesse to handle properly, and he’d never tried it so early in the timeline.
Ran shivered. “Somewhere warmer, I trust?"
“Much warmer, yes, though not as much as you’re used to in Veor. We’ll be heading to northern Almas.”
“How far north?”
“Yast lives in Zilay. He’s a construct specialist, but he knows how to break what he knows how to build. And he knows a lot.”
“Zilay, as in… trading capital of Zakvay?” Ran’s head swung around to stare at Jair. "But, isn’t that…”
"Yeah. You might want to sit this one out," Jair suggested as they arrived at the Nuprima lunar platform. "Yast only speaks Zakvari, so I doubt you'll find it very interesting. You could go tour the markets. They’ll have translators around there for visitors."
Ran considered, then nodded. “I've never met a real elf, only the half-kin types.”
They dropped off their cold-weather gear and protective air-suits at one of the rental stands. Their second trip through Nuprima wouldn’t require them to leave the safety of the domes; the passage to Orard would be along main trade routes, and they'd already finished Jair's side business.
"You’ll definitely want to learn Zakvari one of these days. It’s widespread enough to be worth the effort, and quite a few of the later events will bring us in negotiation with elves.”
"I can't just learn Zakvari overnight!"
Jair grinned at him. "Sure you can. Spend the next three months hiring tutors, revert, repeat until you're an expert, revert, and overnight mastery acquired!"
"Aelir above... is that what you spent your life doing? That sounds horrifying."
"You like learning as much as I do. What's horrifying about it?"
"Exploiting people for their knowledge and never giving them a thing for it once you get what you want?"
Jair snorted. "If I had to remember to go back and reward everyone I ever learned anything from, I'd spend my whole lifetime just handing out thank you baskets."
"And you can't learn it on your own without exploiting people?"
"Why waste time when there are qualified teachers around? It would be more inefficient and reach the same outcome."
"How about to not exploit people without their knowledge?"
Jair grinned. "So it's better to exploit them with their knowledge?"
Ran smacked him. "You know that's not what I mean."
"I don't see how it matters. I obtained the knowledge, and their time isn't being taken up. They can use the hours they would have spent training me to teach any other paying customer. Nothing is lost."
"I... well... it still feels wrong."
“Feelings, who needs them?” Jair waved it away. “As long as we’re having fun, that’s what matters. Besides, you can revert us at any time if you feel uncomfortable.” He made sure to mockingly emphasize the last couple words.
Ran did not appreciate his humor, still seeming bothered.
Jair snorted. “Don't worry about it. I’m not going to force you to find a proper instructor if you don’t want one, and I can teach you anything you need to know given enough time.”
“True." Ran's tension dissipated and he let out a chuckle. "Time is one thing we seem to have in abundance.”
Though they did need to waste nearly a half hour of their time bargaining before finding a caravan heading to the right city. They technically could have gone anywhere in northern Almas and used local transit to reach Zilay from there, but even without local delays it would require hours of convoluted travel to get around all the rivers.
The Nuprima passage dropped them into a veritable oasis amid the bustle of the Zilay prefecture. The lunar platform here sat in the center of an open garden, trees and flowers arranged artfully around the arrival space to all but conceal the city beyond.
The caravan started along the broad trade road immediately, white cobbles artfully accented with the occasional single painted brick of blue or orange.
Beyond the heavy footfalls of the Nuprima caravan’s beasts, echoes of a lilting melody drifted on the air, while a deeper rumble of voices and footsteps pervaded the city itself.
As they followed the caravan out of the arrival garden and into the city proper, Ran’s pace slowed. He stared about, his noble training allowing him to seem restrained and polite in what Jair recognized as shameless gawking.
Despite being primarily elven in citizenry, Zakvay shared a similar architectural style to that which dominated urban Veor. Large grey blocks of stone took the place of sandstone, but the structure and shape remained recognizable. Two and three story buildings were common, most left with natural coloring, others whitewashed, with the main splash of color being doors and shutters.
The climate wasn't significantly different from Veor. Zakvay may be slightly cooler and the surrounding lands were relatively dry scrublands instead of pure sand, but it was still very definitely Almas.
Aside from the shape of the buildings and the surrounding landscape, however, the cities couldn’t be more different. Where places like Astralla City, Vaes City, or even the twin trade cities were crowded and stifling, Zilay boasted wide streets and frequent courtyards.
Carefully-maintained parks provided the vibrant bloom of nature that elves so admired. The elven ability to coax plants into life far from their native climates was legendary. They had no need of a climate-controlled dome to turn their dry city into a veritable garden.
A gentle breeze swept through the city, bearing the mingled scents of a hundred types of leaf and flower, with the thick undertone of elven curries and the airy scent of their signature herbed breads. Jair’s stomach rumbled in gentle reminder that it was after lunchtime and he’d neglected breakfast.
“Find someplace for us to eat,” Jair suggested as they reached the first market plaza. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Ran agreed and wandered among the shop-fronts and open-air stalls, taking in everything from the unseasonable array of produce to the overpriced ‘traditional elven’ jewelry that Jair knew for a fact was about as culturally significant as a bowl of mud. Imitation dream-crystals tinkled and glittered as they spun in the breeze. A trio of young elven women in layers of diaphanous robes wearing fake beastkin ears sang in well-rehearsed harmony, smiling at anyone who caught their eye.
He shook his head and left Ran to his exploration, hurrying down an eastward-heading street away from city center and toward the outer districts.
Yast’s home wasn’t in a particularly well-kept neighborhood, and his courtyard gardens wouldn’t be winning any prizes. He seemed to have lazily planted a few local shrubs for the sake of saying he’d tried and called it a day. His blue-painted door had faded and peeled to where it was more a slate-grey with pale wood visible in unsightly streaks.
Jair knocked in the heavy rapid pattern elves defaulted to, being both faster and stronger than the average human.
The door opened, and Yast Mebort stepped outside. A large elvish man with loose white hair hanging halfway down his chest, he wore the usual sleek silver suit of the local construct guild. Each of the sleeves and trailing tails was made of ten or so linked ivory circles each carved with construct patterns, each circle big enough to barely fit in the palm.
It was an unseemly-expensive sort of outfit to actively use, serving more as a uniform than anything practical. While scale had little impact on an imprinted spell, constructs had a direct correlation between size, power, and precision. These constructs boasted maximum precision, but minimal power.
"I am Jair Welburne, nice to meet you,” Jair introduced himself in Zakvari, and Yast answered in kind.
"Yast Mebort, how can I help you today, young human?"
Jair ignored the vaguely patronizing tone. As a human, even an ancient and wizened one, any elf would consider him young. Not if they knew his true years, but he’d long since stopped being offended by such things.
He took a step forward and lowered his voice. “I am the echo of the future. Your desires are known and the path clear.”
----------------------------------------