I had been willing to humor the kids, but then Leona and Larrik had shown up and having a grown woman laughing at me was just too much. The four of them started talking while I returned to the hammoc’s area, and rather than getting undressed properly I just shrunk out of Tommen’s clothes, and then shifted into my armored self again. I don’t actually need my clothes as my metal skin can’t chafe. Tommen and Natasha looked a bit cowed when I came back out, and they apologized to me. I didn’t exactly understand what for, so I just patted the two of them on their heads.

Pretending to not notice the dress Natasha had brought, I climbed the ship’s ladder up to the deck. I had two competing ideas, and I wasn’t sure which one I should be trying first. A wyvern was my safe bet, as the one I had killed proved something that looked like it could fly, but my other idea was less monstrous. I was torn between the two, but I couldn’t suppress the desire I was feeling to reiterate my manliness in front of the kids. This drove me towards trying for a wyvern, but if I could staple wings to my own back, surely I could manage a pegasus. When I tried to ask around, Larrik answered with what I interpreted as support for starting as a dragon. Tommen also seemed quite taken with the idea, so as I approached the edge, I penciled out the rough shape.

Originally I’d tried to base my forms on what I fully understood and just scaled existing animals up or down like a sort of mental computer aided design. Ever since I’ve started letting the mana guide me through the smaller details, I’ve found the cost to maintain the resulting forms drops considerably. Not to say I could lift a whole wagon without putting extra mana into my muscles, but even routine exertion didn’t noticeably impact my mana anymore.

~~~

“You can’t treat him like a doll, Natasha.”

“I wasn’t really.”

“Why did you bring your old ball gown then?”

“Well, if he wanted to try it…”

“If he wanted to, he’d try it for himself. He doesn’t need clothes to try out a new form.”

“He might have just not thought of it.”

“I’m certain he put plenty of thought into his human form. You told me about how he even replicated a scar on the palm of his hand.”

“What do you want me to do then?”

“Tell him you’re sorry for pressuring him, and that he doesn’t have to transform into something if he doesn’t want to.”

“Are you going to apologize for laughing at him? He didn’t seem too bothered before you two showed up.”

“I don’t know Natasha, he didn’t seem so enthused while we were bringing him down with us, or when you returned with the clothes.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You normally pick up on stuff like that before I do.”

Creighton had only briefly accepted Tommen and Natasha’s apologies, and promptly headed straight for the upper deck. This highlighted to Natasha just how reserved Creighton had been acting, as it reminded her of how whenever he was actually excited about something it really showed. It was only a short walk up the ship’s main stair, but having been occupied with her thoughts Natasha was the last person to reach the daylight. She was just in time to see Creighton step up onto the ship’s railing, strike a strange pose, and then fall backwards off of the ship. Only the smile he’d sported and the fact she knew he could fly for a little while kept her from completely freaking out.

There was no sign of him off the starboard side, below or above the ship. It wasn’t until they turned around to check the port side that they saw the silver dragon with its tail coiled around the maimmast's port shrouds. Natasha hadn’t brought a managlass, but Creighton refused both her and Leona’s offer of mana, so he couldn’t have badly exhausted himself coming up with his new form. He was small for a wyvern, about equivalent to a medium sized dog, though his wings and his tail caused his breadth and length to be far greater. Creighton seemed quite pleased with himself, and everyone flinched when he breathed fire near the tarred rigging.

When they told him to not do that again, Creighton only replied with whistling, seemingly unable to speak. Tommen pointed out that before he’d first turned into armor or a human he’d been only able to whistle for attention. The next couple hours until the ship stopped for lunch Creighton spent getting comfortable with his new form, and everyone not on duty was watching the silver streak weave in and out of the forest below. They set the boat down in the Iron Run, where it was just wide and deep enough to fit the boat, the gangplank needing to incline to reach the river’s bank.

While everyone else was eating, Creighton had been sunning himself on one of the Plates of Advanced Levitation. It was only once everyone was done eating that his size grew and he approached Tommen. His wings were now visibly crackling with lightning mana, and Natasha surmised he’d been gathering it during his rest on the plate. She had to suppress her jealousy when she watched Creighton give Tommen a ride.

When they came back Creighton was a dragon no more, returning as something that wasn’t any creature Natasha had ever heard of. A horse with wings was the union of her two favorite things, and she was so shocked she didn’t realize that Creighton was offering her a turn until Tommen told her to hurry up and get on. As they took off, she briefly remembered how she’d given up trying to summon a horse as her familiar. She was now certain she’d find a way to replicate this rush, no matter what she had to do.

~~~

Cole was watching as Creighton took his apprentices for an aerial joyride. He had been feeling queasy before lunch, so he waved Creighton off to do more laps with Natasha when he had come to land by him. Shortly after he was called over by Eugene and Fredrak, something he had suspected they might do, as this was the first time they would both be seeing Creighton fly.

“Mage Cole, can you tell us more about Creighton?”

“I will answer any questions you have, but if they’re of a personal nature I can only relay what he’s told me.”

“The first thing I want to know is just how strong is he? Do you think he’d be willing to spar with me?”

“The knight Larrik, that man down there, and Leona, the mage about to get a ride, have both been training with him. He’s interested in testing his limits and has been trying to become competent at wielding the weapons he can make.”

“What kind of weapons are those?”

“He can make anything, but he generally sticks to spears, emulates spells, and one time he even used a strange horizontal bow during target practice.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Could you ask him if he’d be willing to get some practice in with me? I’d need to pull my blows for any of the duke’s knights.”

“I can, do you want me to do so right now?”

“No, Eugene has other questions.”

“You told my father that this is his second life, but not who he was in his last life.”

“That’s a lot to explain. The closest job we have is a shipwright, but it was more complex than that.”

“Some kind of advanced shipwright? Did he make flying ships like the Galefast, then?”

“No. He worked on oceangoing vessels, just ones that were made entirely of metal. He sketched one for me.”

“How large was it then?”

“The one he drew for us was twice the size of the Galefast, but he worked on ones even bigger than that.”

“He did leave the Forgemaster and his son with ratios of impurities to reintroduce for strengthening steel.”

“If we can’t make it on this expedition, our next plan is to make a new skyship made of dwarven steel.”

“Did you already pitch that to my uncle?”

“I did, though it was not in so few words.”

“Then isn’t it strange that he’s taken so well to shapeshifting? Or was it commonplace in his old world?”

“His world was without magic, but their mundane technology was far more advanced than ours.”

“Completely devoid of the arcane? And in what ways was it more advanced?”

“The way he explained it to me was quite roundabout, but they could Conjure Greater Illusion multiple times a second and then distribute copies for anyone to view in real time.”

“At what scale? Did he tell you how many people lived in his world?.”

“He didn’t know the specific number, but it was more than seven billion, all living in relative peace.”

“That’s a lot of people. How could they feed them all?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Was he of Noble lineage then? Or perhaps a Scholar?”

“He had an education similar to that of a Scholar, but was working as the equivalent of a journeyman.”

“How many years of education then?”

“He said four years of ‘greater’ education, but I don’t know how many years of ‘lesser’ that would imply.”

“Even if we assume it was another four years, that’s a long time to make journeymanship.”

“What age was he when he died?”

“It’s not exactly the same because his world had fewer days in a year than we do, but he was in his early twenties.”

“I could see eight years of general education starting around ten, and then four years specifying a specific trade, if they were so advanced.”

“I just want to warn you, he’s left a family behind, so he can get sentimental about things that remind him of them.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He cried when we gave him socks.”

“Soulsteel can cry?”

~~~

“The Gilded Carp is going to leave within the week, but I can’t identify if the envoys ever go aboard.”

“Could they just not be going?”

“I’m sorry my King, but I can’t yet say either way for certain. They’ve left the Peak, but I can’t find any of them anywhere.”

“Can you tell me where that human Soulsteel is?”

“I haven’t been able to locate him either.”

“The dwarves aren’t going to keep him so they can use him to dig tunnels, are they?”

“No, most of their focus has been in their foundries since the Soulsteel arrived, and that lines up with the Court Mage Archibald coming up with some new invention to bribe the dwarves.”

“We still don’t know what it is?”

“No, but the Soulsteel definitely contributed significantly to whatever it actually is.”

“Why couldn’t it have landed here, If it’s so great it would make quite the fearsome fighter.”

“One of the reports came back that it is just as durable as normal Soulsteel, but it can cast its own spells.”

“I don’t have time to try and deal with Duke Drake before it gets back.”

“You could try bringing The Duke back to the negotiating table. We might have been unable to pressure him into a reliance on foreign food, but he might give in to enough coin.”

“Edith’s ‘smugglers’ have been making me a lot of money, perhaps I could reinvest it into getting Duke Drake on my side.”

“We’ll have to lower the prices next year, otherwise a real famine could develop.”

“I have a feeling that, one way or the other, Edith will be reaping a most bountiful harvest this year.”