What I wanted to do was make a flying dock for all of my knives, hence why I continued making so many despite only being able to manipulate a total of 5 at a single time. The way this would work is that I planned on making a large flying station, about the same size as me, but perfectly circular, and a little less than one foot thick. Then all around the circumference of this flying disc, there would be cubbies, making about 50 columns, and each column would have 3 rows. The top row would be specifically for knives with my eye enchantment, with one knife seeing in normal visible light, one knife seeing in infrared, and the other three as backups in the event that I sent one of the two seeing knives out to scout something. This would lead to 10 different angles where I could see in both normal visible light and infrared, equalling 20 different windows that would pop up in my view, and 30 backups.
Now, normally this would be horribly taxing on my attention span, but you have to remember that I would only technically be flying one object at a time, as all of the knives would be in my flying disc. Also, I planned to have the disc organize everything that I was seeing for me. The way I wanted to do this? Every five columns would constitute a specific Project Horizon Designation, the slightly curved line representing Horizon, and the Roman Numerals through it determining specifically which one it was. Then, in that categorization, three of the five knives in that row would have the same Designation, but with an extra line underneath the curved Horizon Line, and two of them would have the same designation with an extra line running parallel to the Horizon line above it, through the Roman Numeral. The three knives with the extra line below would all be set to normal vision, and the two with the extra line above would be set for infrared.
Each Designation for Project Horizon would then have an attached organizational enchantment with two windows, and in one window would be the Horizon symbol with the line underneath, and in the other would be the Horizon symbol with the line above. This would make it so that, for example, if I were to get the video feed for just Horizon I, a box with two separate windows would pop into my vision, one in the normal visible spectrum, and one in infrared.
Now, between each pocket there would be switches, and the way that the switches come in, is that the video feed connection to all five of the knives in a Designation would always be set to “Off”, with the exception of whatever two knives I was using, which would be set to “On”. In the event that I needed to send one of the knives to scout out on their own, I would flip the according switch at the same time as I remove the knife from the pocket. This would cause the video feed into the Designation to switch over to the next knife in the sequence, and the original knife that I removed would then become its own window in my vision, separate from the Disc’s windows. Each pocket would also be connected to the absolutely massive battery that powers the Disc, making it so that when I brought the knife back to the pocket it came from, or if I drained half of the power from it by using a long ranged attack, it would be able to recharge from the disc.
After that, each Designation would then meet up in the middle, where there was another Organizational Enchantment, this one just the Horizon symbol, but with a small tally. Around the tallied Horizon symbol, there would be a small circle inside of a significantly larger circle. The space between these two were then split into 10 segments, and each segment would be connected to a specific Designation. This way, in my feed, rather than 20 boxes placed randomly showing the world through various angles, I’d have one window that was circular in shape, and would show me not only what my knives saw, but also the position in relation to which direction the Disc was facing, orienting my window in three dimensional space.
Now, this leaves us with two more rows of pockets, totalling 100 additional empty spaces. And inside of each one of these pockets would be another flying knife with an eye enchantment, but rather than being used to add unnecessary extra angles, these eye enchantments were purely for targeting purposes. After all, these would all be explosive knives. My Disc would be an all in one Project Horizon toybox, where I’d be able to see everything around it in all angles, target anything I wanted, then fire my long ranged attacks, then if those failed due to the target possessing resistance to whatever attack I happened to use, or the target putting up magical defenses, I’d be able to bombard them with explosives.
You may be asking, ‘If you have all of this planned out already, then why haven’t you built it yet?’ To which the answer is twofold. The primary reason is security. I do not trust Duke enough for him to know that I have this available, which means that I can only really work on it when he’s not in the shed. Even now, the primary structure of it, the four wooden discs each with a six foot diameter, as well as the ten main support rods, and the 120 secondary support/separating rods were visible against the walls of my shed, but I’d told Duke that it was for a separate organizational project I’d had, which promptly disinterested him.
The secondary reason is that: this thing would CONSTANTLY leak mana. There would be 150 knives, each with their own small battery that experiences its own mana leakage. This means that even if they weren’t being used, each knife would need to be recharged about once a month. This isn’t too bad, until you remember that the rate of mana leakage is something that’s heaviest when it’s fully charged, and that the Disc would automatically try to keep all of my knives fully charged. This means that all 150 knives would be constantly set at their most severe mana leakage, draining straight from the main battery. And this doesn’t even mention the fact that my Main Battery would experience even more mana leakage than all of the knives combined. Now, I do have a solution for this, but it will take time to implement. The solution namely being my Aspect Manifestation Cloth.
As you may recall, while my golden thread does in fact experience significant mana leakage, my white thread does not. This means that when used in conjunction, the leakage from my mana batteries will diffuse into the white thread, where it’s then trapped, and flows around, eventually making its way back into the battery. This means that as long as the Main Battery is woven from my Aspect Manifestation Cloth, and as long as the connections between all of the smaller batteries from my knives and the Main Battery of the Disc is also done through pockets woven from my Aspect Manifestation Cloth, I should not experience any sort of mana leakage.
The plan currently is to make enough cloth to cover the top and bottom of each of my four discs, making 8 six foot circles, on 7 of which, truly massive batteries will be sewn, which will all be connected in a circuit through the Main Support rods. On the leftover top face is where I’ll put the organizational enchantments, the main flight enchantment, my stealth enchantment, as well as my own Leo symbol, connected to a chain enchantment, so that if anyone who isn’t me attempts to take control of it, they end up freezing, completely unable to move or do anything while their mana slowly drains out of them.
I then need to make each of the 150 individual pockets out of my cloth, which will have stitched circuits connecting to a ring, and each ring connecting to the three batteries above them, with the 3 batteries below serving as backup charges for the three above, and the battery on the very bottom as a backup for the entire Disc. The top row of pockets would also have 10 completely separate circuits that each connect to their associated Designations.
By my safest estimations, I’ll need about 10 sheets worth of fabric in order to make this, which is where the main problem ensues. Just a few months ago, I was only able to make about 1 sheet of cloth per month, due to the limitations of the battery on my spinning wheel. Then, one month ago, I upgraded the battery on my spinning wheel, making it able to fully automate the wheel so it doesn’t randomly stop spinning thread after a few hours, which pushed my efficiency up to about 2 sheets per month, which I recently used to make Ash her own comfortable outfit.
Currently, the projects that I have that I’ll need cloth for are the 10 sheets for the Disc, 2 for Sophia’s comfy outfit in her true 8 foot form, and then 2 for each spacesuit for me, Ash, Sophia, Veronica, and Sean. Duke’s spacesuit will probably be able to be covered by the remains of whatever I don’t end up using from each of those previous sheets, which means that all in all I need 22 sheets. Making 2 per month, that puts me at about a year until I have everything I need for all of my various projects. This also isn’t accounting for any possible loss of efficiency at any point over the next year, so the safest estimate is about a year and a half.
Considering the fact that I only just recently was able to build the device needed for measuring the distance between here and the moon, it’s fairly safe to say that I won’t need the spacesuits for a while, meaning I only need 12 right away, and 10 if I don’t prioritize Sophia’s second comfy outfit. That would have still ended up taking about 5 to 6 months. That is, if I hadn’t started working on increasing my production efficiency a month ago. Given that the primary choke point of my ability to manufacture cloth is the process of spinning thread, I spent about a week last month crafting another spinning wheel, this one having three wheels that spin in tandem, while the original wheel would be kept separate, to be used specifically for making my gold thread, easily tripling my productivity.
At least, it would have, if not for the fact that allowing for more spinning created a new choke point in my production line. Now, the limiting factor in how much cloth I can make is directly related to how much of the cloud tufts I can separate by hand before they’re spun. The way that I had to fix this is that I designed a machine that will automatically do the separation for me, basically, I’ll feed the clouds directly into a basket, and from there, the fibers will be pressed between a rotating pole and a brush, separating all the various fibers, then the resulting neatly separated tufts, now looking rather like a web, will be split into three, connecting to the three different spinning wheels, all three of which, along with the separating machine, will all be connected to the same battery, so that once the battery’s empty, everything will stop at the same time.
Ironically, the part of this that took the most time is finding an actual damn brush that I could use. People don’t really regularly brush their hair on this world, and even if they did, I would need something close to a horse hair brush. This meant that I wouldn’t be able to find what I need at any store that I went to, so in the end, I needed to go to a tailor shop, find out where they get their cloth, then go to that place, find out where they get the thread that they weave into cloth, then go to that place, and find out where they got the brush to separate out the fibers for the cloth that they make. All in all it took about a week to track down just one damn brush, but finally, I got it, and managed to finish my automatic separating machine.
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Now, literally the only three parts of my entire cloth manufacturing process that still needed to be done by hand were the initial separating of gold from white, the cutting of the thread for every spindle, which I had to do twice a day, resulting in 6 completely overstuffed spindles of thread daily, and then the immediate next part of using the thread on those spindles to refill the bobbins on my loom, which wasn’t too difficult, as those had an enchantment to spin themselves, taking the thread from my spindle to the bobbins automatically.
It’s been about three weeks since I finished the automatic separation machine, and everything’s been running constantly since then, so I currently have 3 sheets of cloth. It would have been 4 plus one extra that finished while I was finding the damn brush, but Ash’s clothes took two of them. In order to start my Disc project, I need a minimum of 5 more, so that I can at least make the discs themselves while I wait for the rest of the cloth to make all 150 pockets. This means that it’ll be another month before I can even start the next part of Project Horizon.
Ash’s POV
For the past month and a half, X and I have been going out during the day, while Duke and Leo work on stuff in the subspace. Honestly, I don’t see what’s so fun about sitting in a dark room all day, but to each their own. As time moves on, the crowds of the Capital have grown more and more, as the Bazaar starts to come in full swing. I’ll definitely have to start bringing Leo back out tomorrow, so that he can walk around with us and we can all do some shopping, but for today, I’m just enjoying the company of Xavier.
Spending time with X is very different from spending time with Leo. While Leo is constantly moving around, doing something, working on something, or talking about something, X is more…relaxed. A lot of the time we’ve spent together has passed in a comfortable sort of silence, as we just take in the view of the people and places around us. Whereas Leo has absolutely no trouble just blurting out whatever he happens to be on his mind at any particular moment, X is more thoughtful, speaking only when he truly has something to say. Whereas Leo and I could easily hold 10 different conversations simultaneously, each one shifting and merging into 10 completely different conversations over the course of an hour, X and I would generally only have one conversation at a time, that would end up lasting the entire day.
Despite spending so much time together, I don’t actually know all that much about him. Sure he’s told me a bit about his family in broad strokes, and some of the stories of bandits he’s fought, but he never really delves too deeply into the specifics. Not to the extent where I think he’s hiding something, but more so…that he doesn’t really have anything to tell. Like, his life up until now has been very routine, and very structured, making every day similar to the day before. A kind of stability that people like me, like Leo, just have no concept of.
To be perfectly honest, a big part of me envied X for that stability. However, an even bigger part of me was grateful to him. Grateful that he shows up everyday, grateful that he was so relaxed, grateful that he is letting me borrow this stability of his, even just temporarily. The longer we spent together, the easier it was to picture myself with someone who wasn’t Mike, a life as someone who was happy, despite not being the one he chose. X and I weren’t quite there yet, but…I think we were getting there. Or maybe I was way off base, given the question X asked me next.
“So how long have you and Leo been married?” Wait what?
“We’re not? His wife is Sophia, we’re just friends, didn’t he mention that?”
X looked at me carefully before saying, “Just because he married Sophia doesn’t mean he didn’t marry you as well. Given that the pair of you share a single room, it wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
I couldn’t help but burst into laughter, as I replied, “Wait, this whole time you thought we were actually sleeping in the same room?! Holy shit dude, no! That’s just the place where Leo brings us in and out of the subspace so we don’t pop in and out of existence right in front of people. No, we have a big house set up, where he and his wife live in one wing, and I have my own, then there’s a common central area for all of us.” I explained, using my hands to indicate the layout of our house.
X listened, a slight flush appearing on his neck and cheeks, before he replied, “Sorry for the misunderstanding then.”
I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it.” Though on the inside, I felt rather stupid for believing that he actually might-
“So you’re single then?”
His question stopped my train of self deprecating thoughts right in their tracks. Various emotions flooded through me, happy that he’s interested enough to ask, humor that he asked at the exact moment that I thought he wasn’t interested, considerably more excitement than I would have thought, but…the primary emotion that I was feeling…was it guilt? Was it loss? Was it both? I couldn’t say. I let out a sigh, and answered his question.
“Yes, I’m single.”
He stared into my eyes, a look of discouragement on his face, then asked, “Why…why do you sound so unhappy about that?”
He must have thought that I was about to turn him down the moment he asked, so I decided to tell him everything. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with you, or…any potential outcome of this conversation,” He turned away, slightly sheepishly. Quite adorably actually in my opinion. “It’s just that, well, there was this guy, Mike, you’ve met him.” X nodded in realization.
“I was…I am…no, I was in love with Mike for years. I never did anything about it, because he’s something like the golden child of a prominent clan. I guess you could say he’s the Foxkin version of you. And to other beastkin, a mutt like me is…well, not a viable romantic option. We’re beings without packs after all, without clans. This means that even if something had happened between us, it would end up kinda ruining his life, and I didn’t want that for him. So…I kept it to myself. And somewhere along the way, he met Liz, who you’ve also met.” X nodded again.
“The moment Mike met Liz, it’s like nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t care about his clan, his status, none of it meant anything anymore. As long as he could be with her, he would be happy. Which for him is a good thing, since being with Liz would end up resulting in new mutts, getting both of them kicked out of their respective clans. For about a year, I watched Mike chase after Liz, and her repeatedly failing to show any sort of return interest, until the three of us met Leo.
“The day we met Leo, he pretty easily was able to tell how I felt. Apparently, I kinda stared at Mike a lot, which, looking back on it, probably means that it was fairly obvious to Liz how I felt as well. And that day, Leo gave me some advice on men. ‘Men are simple creatures, we generally give our loyalty to the first person who makes us feel wanted.’, he said. And so, I made a decision. That night, I was going to tell Mike everything, how I felt. How I’ve always felt. But…
“Before I could do it, Liz said yes. A whole damn year she wasn’t interested, but the day I decided I was finally about to ask, she said yes. And then, all four of us spent about a year traveling together. Leo would leave to his house in the subspace every night, but he was keeping it a secret from Mike, Liz, and Aozia, the merchant we’ve been escorting, so he generally would travel to and from the subspace from my tent, and we pretended like we were sharing the tent that whole time. The thing about Leo’s wife is that she’s very…let’s say passionate. You could also say possessive.” I chuckled, thinking about the woman who was one of my best friends.
“Every day when Leo came back, he’d be bearing new ‘markings’, as you’ve seen, her way of claiming that Leo is hers and no one else’s. The only problem with that, is that Mike and Liz didn’t even know that Sophia existed, so from their perspective, Leo would come into my tent every night, and leave the next morning with new marks all over his body…” X and I were both laughing now.
“To be honest, I didn’t really mind. I was jealous of Mike and Liz, you know, and even though Leo and I weren’t doing anything, the illusion that we were…I guess I was hoping that it would make Mike jealous? To be honest I don’t really know. But I do think it’s part of what started their relationship troubles. You see, during the year that we spent traveling, Mike and Liz started fighting a lot. Mike wanted to actually have a physical relationship, whereas Liz didn’t want to give herself to him. I don’t know why she ever said yes if she had no intention of being with him, but all I know is that when we finally reached the Kingdom, the two of them were separated.
“I couldn’t help but feel like…this was my chance you know? Like, they’re going to break up, and the moment they do, I can finally get off my chest how I’ve felt all this time. The closer we got to the Capital, the more excited I was, since I figured that if they were going to have the conversation where they split up, they’d do it here, once they were in an environment where they didn’t have to constantly travel and could actually sit down like adults to talk things out.
“But when we got to the Capital…they talked…and Liz agreed that Mike had had a point. And from that point on they’ve been more secure than ever. All that hope, all that excitement, it all came crashing down on me for the second time. Somehow, despite the fact that I’ve felt it all before, it was worse this time. Like, instead of just getting my heart stepped on, this time someone intentionally lifted it up and threw it down as hard as they could, you know?
“I’ve been trying to get over Mike ever since then, but…it’s been hard you know? I loved him for years, and it’s only been a couple months. I just don’t know how to…let go.” I trailed off. I didn’t want to talk about Mike to X, especially since I didn’t want to face the fact that I’m basically just using X as a replacement for Mike. X doesn’t deserve that. The two of us walked in silence for a bit before X said,
“I can’t imagine having an unrequited love for years like that. Just what did he do? What did he do to make you love him like that?”
I stayed silent for a moment, thinking about X. His relaxed nature, his easygoing attitude, his quietness, his honorability, his loyalty. I can trust him. I decided to trust him. I started talking softly about my life. Moving from village to village, about being kidnapped in my sleep. About my parents being enslaved.
About Sam.
About the night I was too slow.
The night I was too loud.
The night I didn’t watch.
The night I ran.
The night I was alone.
I told him about running into Mike. About the words that he said, the acceptance he gave me. The way that I felt about him that I’ve never been able to feel about anyone else. And the more I talked, the more I felt it. Not the love that I used to feel…but the relaxation. The stability. The more I talked, the more it seemed like I was expelling Mike from my system, and the more X’s quiet stability filled it in its place. Not to an absurd degree, and not enough to say that I loved X. But…enough to help. Enough to make it hurt just a little bit less. Enough to feel like…maybe I could let go. Someday.