Azura yawned. His friends had kept the questions blissfully short, even when that meant physically restraining Roran from speaking. Elsimera had thankfully decided that she was relieved enough that the tree was in good condition to let him rest before asking him anything. He had been going nonstop on these projects for the past few days after all. He was tempted to re-enter the subspace to sleep, but that would involve setting up a place to do that… or sleeping on the ground, which he figured probably wouldn’t be too bad there. Still he had decided that his room would be ideal at the moment. He needed as much rest as possible if he was going to be in top form for the event tomorrow.
The event that would no doubt give them the responsibility of having many lives in their hands. So far the only exception was the cyvran tourney, but even then it simulated something along the same lines. As much as he normally enjoyed speculating, he found it incredibly difficult at the moment. He idly wondered how he could be tired, outside of being out of mana anyway. His body was made of magic, so in theory he could just reform it fully energized so long as he had the magic for it. Sure enough with some effort a white light swept over him as he shifted his body slightly, and he suddenly felt refreshed.
He stopped. “Honestly, I wasn't expecting that to be quite so effective.” Thankfully no one was there to witness him talking to himself in a shocked stupor. What was he supposed to do now? He felt wide awake, and his body felt as if he had just slept for a while. However he was quick to notice that while physically he was completely refreshed he was still mentally exhausted. That made sense, exhaustion that went to his soul would stick around, so probably best to still sleep like he was planning to before, even if his body didn’t need it anymore.
Decision made he resumed walking. He wished his new workshop wasn’t so far from his room, but he supposed that once all the equipment was moved to the subspace it wouldn’t be anymore. A small smile came to his face at the thought. An extradimensional base of operations, with almost all of the equipment he could ask for. What could be better than that? Would it help him handle his father? Not really, but it would make his lie a lot more convenient. He’d consider putting his sister there for protection, but she didn’t deserve to live a life devoid of human contact, and it was probably best to leave her in the care of the princess. Who could protect her better than he could. Even if the princess was using her as a shield, as long as the princess was a shield in turn he was fine with it.
He blinked as he realized he was already at the door to his room. He had been more lost in his thoughts than he had realized apparently. Hopefully getting some rest would help him correct that. Energized body or not he was asleep the second his head hit the pillow.
***
“This is incredible!” Cynthia was astounded at the beauty of the world Azura had created. His copy had recovered enough to teach them the spell for teleporting to the subspace, and had given them each a pendant with a magic circle inscribed on it that allowed them to teleport to and from the subspace. So of course they all immediately headed there even as the copy dissolved.
“It is certainly well beyond what I had imagined. Surely there could be no place more suitable for yggdrasil. It’s a truly beautiful landscape.” Elsimer was glancing around with wonderment. She couldn’t help but agree. The floating islands were an incredible addition, with more grass and flowers resting on them, and the waterfalls that came down from them sparkled from the reflected light. The sky was an oddity unlike they would have expected. They had to move quite a ways before the tree stopped blocking their view, but when it did they were met with a strange sight. A night time sky with infinite stars twinkling alongside the full moon, but the truly strange bit was the sun also shining in the sky.
Because of the odd mix of day and night in the sky everything was bathed in light from multiple directions. Even somehow the area under the giant tree, which should be covered in shade. It was so far beyond her expectations that she didn’t even know what to think. She had honestly expected it to look like an actual place, with a normal environment, but she could say with certainty that a view like this wouldn’t exist anywhere on their planet. Perhaps not even anywhere in their dimension.
“I don’t think the sky was done on purpose actually.” Roran broke the stunned reverie of the rest of them, and she tilted her head curiously at him. “I think he was focusing on the relevant details first, and only gave a brief thought to the sky, which he just modeled after the sky in our world. Since he glossed it over it just took on all the traits that Azura associates with ‘the sky.’” She supposed that made sense, she idly wondered if Azura would ‘fix it’ or leave it as is. It really was quite breathtaking after all.
“You’re probably right. Azura does love the moon and stars, but he also likes the blue sky, so I can’t imagine he’d get rid of it on purpose.” Katy had a point. They had all seen him stare into the endless blue expanse broken up by the occasional cloud before. She wondered if it was the dragon in him that had always drawn him towards the sky.
“I don’t know, he may have just covered all of his bases, look at the river.” Sure enough just as Siara said, the reflection in the water didn’t match the sky above. The water reflected a blue expanse, with a few white clouds drifting about. Curiously though a full moon existed in the reflection of the water, but no sun. She wondered how he had done that. Light and reflections definitely didn’t follow the rules they did in reality, or at least sometimes they didn’t. When she looked into the water her face stared back at her just as it would in reality.
“Leave it to Azura to make something that so blatantly ignores the natural order of things.” She chuckled at her own message. It showed how much time they had spent with him, that not 1 of them freaked out at this whole world. The beauty of it had drawn their gaze sure, but no one worried about the impossibility of it all. It was one of Azura’s projects, and thus normal logic held no sway.
“Pretty par for the course for him at this point.” Katy joined her in laughing at their currently absent leader.” she silently giggled. She had honestly missed his shenanigans while he was gone. The copies didn’t have much time for missing around, and so they didn’t really do much in the way of ridiculous after he left. Save the fight against lux, and possibly some stuff the corrupted copy may have one without them.
“Well I can definitely say he earned his nap. This is different from the simulations in more than just appearance. The plants here are actually alive. They are without a doubt ‘real’, in the simulations any plants were just projections and I couldn’t actually feel or control them.” That was interesting, she wondered if it was too expensive to hire a nature mage to actually add the plants, or they just thought it was too much hassle. She took another look around the serene view, and took in the fact she could come here whenever she wanted. Just another thing they owed Azura for she guessed.
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***
Azura woke earlier than usual, stretching his arms behind his head with a yawn. A quick time checking spell revealed it was roughly 5 hours after midnight. That meant he had got his 8 hours, which was good, but it also would have been nice to sleep in a little. Well no point worrying about it, he was up now and wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep anyway. He wondered what everyone else thought of their new base. He had wanted to add some facilities for them to use, but complex objects proved too difficult to form easily, so those would have to be done one at a time.
Well it was a Saturday, so he didn’t have anything important to do today. Best to just make it productive. He made 5 copies. “Ok so one to the library, one to the forge, and the rest will be moving all the equipment the headmistress generously provided us into the subspace. Hmmm I should probably give it a name just so I don’t have to say our subspace everytime. Ok we’ll call it the Armory for now.” He curled his lips and nodded. Armory wasn’t a bad name for it. Especially as it would be where he did the majority of his work going forward.
His copies split off to do as instructed. He grabbed the small dagger he had inscribed the spell on and quickly cast it teleporting into the subspace. Technically this was his first chance to really take a look at the space, but there was no need. He was intimately familiar with its entire layout. It was dim, the sun having gotten significantly dimmer during the ‘night cycle’ he had set. It was starten to brighten a little again, but it wasn’t yet bright enough to wake the people laying around in front of the tree.
He hadn’t expected his friends to fall asleep here, but the sight warmed him more than he would have expected. A smile threatening to make its way onto his lips without his approval. He sighed in mock exasperation instead. A simple spell lowered the temperature in the area slightly. It was still mid July, and summer may be nearing its end, but it hadn’t ended just yet. He for one would rather not see the warm months go. Sure he could use magic to warm himself, but he still didn’t like the cold very much.
Once he was done making sure they didn’t overheat he walked up to yggdrasil, and put his hand on the giant tree. One of the blue lights on the tree vanished as he was teleported to a floating island much further into the territory. This one was rather big being almost a mile across. He figured this would be a good place for most of the facilities. Now in much better condition than last time making the teleportation circle was much easier. This time it took him less than 5 seconds to have one perfectly engraved.
After that He began to make plans on what all was going to be in this space. A large pool on the west side of the island provided the infinite waterfall, and further west was the tree, so it would make sense to make everything face the western side, but on the flip side the view on the east was perhaps even better than staring at the massive tree and its thousand glittering lights. For now there was still a little bit of sky to the west before the tree took up the entire view, but at the rate it was growing he didn’t know how long that would last. The tree was already far bigger than it was in that room. If he had to guess the tree grew into whatever space it occupied, and he didn’t know how much of the Armory it would decide to take up.
He was interrupted from his planning by 3 of his copies appearing in the circle each carrying pieces of the forge the headmistress had given them. The copies glanced around before giving him an approving look. “Not a bad place to set up shop. We’ll leave this stuff off to the side for now and go get more of the equipment.” he thought once more on how grateful he was for his unique magic. It’s utility was easily worth the thousands of deaths he had suffered, and the months of brutal mental conditioning to get to the point where they would die without thought.
He took a deep breath as his thoughts moved back to the matter at hand. First things first, he should make a building for all the magical crafting he was going to be doing. It wouldn’t be the main building, so it wouldn’t be in the middle. Given how noisy it would be it was probably best to have it towards the outskirts. He was thinking that having it next to the pool of water would probably be for the best. With his decision made he went towards the large pool of water. It was easily 100 feet across, and obviously unnatural in that it was perfectly round, as was the island itself if you didn’t count the rocky mass underneath that tapered into a point beneath the island.
A quick spell created a bridge that stopped about 10 ft from the center of the pool. The bridge was made out of a white metallic material. The very same material his dragon scales were made of. His copies had been researching the techniques for stabilizing magical constructs so they would be permanent even if the source of them died. He wasn’t good enough at it to use it in combat yet, but it was better outside of combat anyway. His scales had turned out to be an excellent material for building almost everything. Perhaps not as good as yggdrasil bark, but much easier to use. He had actually already finished Elismera’s sword, but hadn’t had a chance to give it to her yet, and he was glad for that. After he had temporarily assimilated the tree he had learned about some of its features he hadn’t drawn out properly. He’d be damned if he didn’t fix it, he had nearly become a tree for that knowledge.
He shook his head, he was having a strangely hard time focusing lately. Back on track of building his forge. The scales would be an excellent material for it. He added a golden handrail on both sides of the bridge that was barely wide enough for 2 people to walk side by side on. Still manifesting and shaping his scales separate from himself was a lot more taxing than standard magic, so probably best if he used simpler means when possible. His gauntlet glowed a ruddy orangish brown as he cast an earth spell to create a perfectly square base for his forge to rest on. 20 ft across wasn’t huge, but with some enchantments to make the inside space a little bigger, and an economical use of space it should suffice. Worse case he could always add extra floors.
The walls came next. They were a gleaming white like the bridge, but the scale layer was much thinner to conserve power with the majority of the walls actually being stone. The door would actually be the hardest part. Wood wasn’t a material he used very often for his spells, and he wasn’t all that great at nature magic even with a shard. The subspace itself had only been made with so much greenery because the tree helped him along. He supposed he could just make a door out of something else, though that felt odd to him. He’d make the door out of marble for now, but he might come back to change that at some point.
The roof he made out of stone, simply a flat roof 12 ft above the support slab. No need to get too fancy with it for just this preliminary building. Another magic circle made this a spot he could teleport too at any time. With that done his copies would work on getting all the equipment moved in and set up. Along with the enchantment the building would need to make a proper forge.
In the meantime he should probably draw up plans for any other buildings they might need. He was thinking a big castle in the middle would be cool. He could use it to play up his noble status if he needed to, and it was actually practical for storage and a place to sleep. It would also match the aesthetic nicely. So long as he didn’t over decorate it as many nobles were known to do.
A library was a given, it would be nice to keep most of the books he’s collected in the same place. Perhaps even all of them. Perhaps the best hiding place for the book of origin was surrounded by other books. Well thoughts for later he supposed. A place for their familiars would be important too, though he didn’t really see a problem with them simply roaming the castle like the rest of them. Still, it would probably be best to fill up the whole space, and 1 giant castle and then a tiny little forge wouldn’t look right. Not that many people would ever actually see it.
Well whether or not anyone else would see it didn’t matter, he’d have to see it every day, so it wouldn’t do to be sloppy. He supposed he could just make a bunch of buildings with no specific purpose and then repurpose them as needed. That had some merit. He could also link doors in the castle to specific buildings to cut down on travel time, and make it so they didn’t have to use his ritual teleport everytime. Ok that would work for the general idea, but now he’d have to actually start designing the place. He sighed, he had thought this process would be a lot cooler for some reason.