In the beginning of winter, there is a lot of work to be done, but as the frigid months pass, people have less and less to do. Dwarves deal with this in the same way as most, but Keith had run out of alcohol only a month into the harsh winter. He had meant to order more over the summer, but Archibald’s latest prototype had been having some teething troubles while Tom had been around, and rebuilding a new part almost every other day didn’t leave time for shopping.
He had been dreading how much the merchant would charge him for a long time, but if he didn’t do something soon he’d have to go out and buy human alcohol instead. The Soulsteel was around, but wouldn’t have any recommendations for him. Every single mage was still drowning in the piles of revisions each of the Soulsteel’s tweaks caused. The big idea that started all of this frantic winter work had come from the Soulsteel, and had given Archibald so many more. He had now roped everyone else into trying to get the designs and prototypes finished before spring, as they couldn’t finish development on the road. The budget was absolutely colossal, but the old man had convinced the Duke it would work, so there was a good chance it was really going to all come together.
Currently, his part was to build the overgrown teapot that the Soulsteel was working on, but it had taken the designs away from him. This meant he’d have freetime for once, so he was going to spend it getting his hands on something to drink. Now that he had finally caved, he made his way to the ShadeTree Inn to look for Tom, but instead he saw different, but still familiar faces.
“What are you two doing here? Already done with skinning that wyvern?”
“No, we’re just taking a break for the end of the year. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk, have we?”
“No, those mages like to keep me busy, and the Duke pays in Drakes, not days off.”
“You’re not wrong. What brings you here to the ShadeTree? I doubt it stocks anything you’d like.”
“I’m here to see my liquor supplier, Tom.”
“You know Tom? He went out back to check on the horses, always does this time of night. He’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
“Mind if I join you in the meantime? I wouldn’t mind trying some of that Flame Drake’s Draught.”
“It’s just a fancy name, same old whiskey.”
“I can pretend, at least. You two were going to join us for the trip to Cloven Heights, aye?”
“We were. She’s convinced it will set us up for success.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. It just might.”
“What do you mean? I just thought the Duke and the Archmage would make good references.”
“That Soulsteel you two found is the major reason. Well, the real reason is he’s given those wizards a big idea that’s letting them try everything they’ve ever wanted and to stuff it all in one giant artifice, but it’s his fault all the same.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me. We’re going up to the Heights to search their records, right?”
“Yes, but come on now. There are only two reasons humans want to go to the heights, instead of just going to the depths.”
“I can think of two. The view and people looking for the lost continent.”
“They might be trying to convince the High King to support our independence.”
“No, the lass is right. The fools have a good excuse to go looking, and if their idea works out they might have the first good plan, ever.”
“That must be some idea. Can you tell us anything else about it?”
“Well, I can tell you a couple things. Dwarves would never have come up with what they are gonna build when we reach the Lake of Stars.”
“What? Why?”
“Dwarves don’t build ships. And you know the worst part of it all? I’m in just as deep as the rest of them.”
“Oh.”
“Tom, there you are. How’s the winter treating you so far?”
“Good, Keith. Treating me good.”
“Oh, you’ve already been delving into the bottles before I got here, huh?”
“I’m not that deep. More of a Cloven Range than a Cloven Depths, you know?
“Sure, sure. How’s your stock of dwarven liquor? Is it already bought out?”
“I was absolutely certain you’d be needing more this year. I meant to bring it up when we met in the market, but I got distracted by that new coin. Bigger than the old ones, huh?”
“Yeah. The Duke wanted to push the value of a Drake above old ridge coins. Do you have any or not?”
“For you, I kept only the best, and plenty of it. You three already know each other?”
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“Yes, we bump into each other from time to time in the estate.”
“Yeah, of course you do. Okay. Let’s go.”
“What, Tom, where are we going?”
“I’m gonna show you some real booze, and guess who’s paying?”
“Fine, but only because you saved it for me. Come on.”
The four of them celebrated the new year in the back of Tom’s wagon. The other merchants that were wintered down didn’t come out to the barn, so they had the whole place to themselves.
~~~
Rodney was cursing his luck. Poetrak, that damn know it all kid, had sent him on another wild goose chase. He’d ‘waited three days by the tallest Oak in The Greenwood’ and not a single person, let alone any knights, had come ‘gallivanting by’. Poetrak had said, for the first time, he’d foreseen him coming back successful, but there was absolutely no one here. Today he could finally start heading back from the multi day hike he’d had to take to find the stupid tree in the first place. Every druid claimed their tree was the tallest in the forest. The treents had been more helpful, but it was hard to get them to wake up this deep in the winter. However, as he looked up at the sunrise, he saw smoke, damnable smoke.
Following it to its source, he found three of Cordillera’s knights, and one of their court mages all huddled around a bonfire. The conversation they were having through chattering teeth was loud enough that he didn’t need to even try and sneak closer to hear them.
“Why do we only need to blight beech trees? They aren’t important to the Duke, he doesn’t even have that many carpenters. And the last time we started one down south it hardly affected their crop.”
“I don’t know, but the seers never seem to tell us why, do they?”
“Probably because they don’t know themselves. They always cultivate an air of mystery and superiority, but they are just making guesses at the future.”
“He did make the prediction right after we got word the duke was hiring a bunch of craftsmen. He could be onto something.”
“Seers are always onto something, it’s just that they’re never the ones to suffer for it in the end.”
Four on one wouldn’t be very difficult, and if he asked nicely he was sure one of the ents would be willing to help him carry them at least as far as Breaksdenn. He did hesitate though, as Poetrak was going to be so smug that he’d gotten another one over on Cordillera’s Gap that he’d probably not stop gloating the rest of the winter.
~~~
When Archibald showed me the lightning generator, I got to work laying the groundwork for a steam engine. I started with the ideal gas law, and Keith already had check valves on his bellows. It was a simple thing to whip up a small model, but even with my ever growing metalworking proficiency, something at scale was beyond my ability to instantly create.
They really took my idea and ran with it, though they kept trying to use mana for things. I had to stop them from using fire mana, and swap to a normal wood fire instead. Just insulating it properly was a fight, as they had wanted to carve spells into all of the pipes. The hardest part was the controls for the engine, as I didn’t remember enough about valve gear. It was Natasha and Keith who contributed the most to that hurdle. I showed them what it had to do and they worked their way to something that could manage it, but we had a lot of dead ends were they kept trying to use mana again. They also kept trying to get me to make it smaller, but if it was gonna spin Archibald’s lightning box it needed to be big. It wasn’t until I saw the complete design on Keith’s workbench that I realized they were planning on making a whole airship.
Now that I knew what they actually were going to use it for, I started working on making a smaller and more efficient engine, as opposed to one that would produce massive torque. I thanked god I’d worked on naval drive systems, not that my expertise in packing mattered very much when the ship was gonna fly, but it was still better than if I'd stuck with my backup plan of being a barista for the rest of my life. Although, I might not have died if I had stayed at my old job.
I still didn’t know why they wanted a flying boat so bad. I'd tried to sell them on a plane, or a zeppelin, but the concepts must have seemed too different to them, or maybe they wanted to still be able to land on the water. By a month in, my conversational skills were still improving. I had died in late december, so it didn’t initially strike me as strange when we celebrated their new years first. It did strike me as strange when they brought me to church for “First Life Day”. Gift giving was still a staple, but no Christmas trees, mangers or Santa.
I didn’t get anyone anything because I didn’t even know this was coming, but when they started giving me their presents, even if it was mostly clothes, I couldn’t help myself. I’d had to miss my last Christmas on Earth, and I didn’t realize how badly I’d regretted that fact until now.
~~~
Cole, Tommen and Natasha hadn’t expected that Creighton would cry over socks, but when he did they were all at a loss. They had tried to figure out how to communicate that the holidays were coming up, but they figured just letting him experience them would be the ideal way for him to understand. They had settled on giving him clothes as he’d been slowly wearing his armor around less often, but the only clothes he had were the generic ones the servants had scrounged up for him.
Tommen had been the first to run over and give him a hug, but he was not the last of the little gathering to do so. Cole had taken the longest, as he was bewildered by what must be another first, as if it wasn’t someone would have written down that Soulsteel cried pure light mana as tears before now.