We hadn’t left the riverbank for what felt like hours. It seemed Cira was the kind of person to carry more things than she needed at any given time. One who valued abundance. This also carried over to food. I told her we would start with a single underworm, then she pulled out a loaf of bread that was still warm when it reached my hands. As fluffy as if it had left the oven mere minutes ago.
“I’m no Mephisto, but it’s hard to go wrong with a wormwich.” My master’s next move was to materialize a wedge of cheese in her hand. It was mostly white with a slight orange tinge, sparse holes running through it. “They call this elder cheddar—I’ll have you know this is one such heirloom left behind from my father. I still remember the days when it was an entire wheel…”
Can cheese be so important…?
Her gaze grew distant as slices rose from the wedge like petals in the breeze. They danced around me expectantly as I frantically enchanted a large block of gold. My stomach growled and my head spun. The delirium of blood loss was a certain pressure I was unaccustomed to working under, but I hadn’t made any mistakes yet.
She made us make those pressure cookers once, so the heating elements were easy. The moment it fired up, Cira started slicing worms into patties and frying them on a titanium skillet.
“Your speed and form have improved, and it works great for meat, but sometimes you need to be able to control the heat. Observe.” She ripped a ball of gold out of the ground and light etched glyphs into it. In seconds, it sat next to my own crafted artifact. Cira turned a small dial on the front before the bread I sliced rose from its crystal platter and landed above its low flame on another freshly conjured pan.
Thin slices of cheese shone in the sunlight like rich harvest moons—but square. They landed in sequence, forming layers on each piece of bread. Finally, once the cheese melted, she lifted the underworm off the skillet and made two rather tall sandwiches. I thought it was a lot of cheese, but it ended up being a lot of worm, too.
“I don’t have lettuce or anything… but enjoy.” My own sandwich floated over to me.
After the first sandwich… I felt well enough to imbibe in the legendary river of ale. Cira was on her third glass by the time, and somehow still blabbering on about clouds.
“Do you think the bottom of the Boreal’s storm is a field of mammatus from sheer cloud weight or simply an unnatural contour like when we exited it upon Plackelo?”
“I don’t even understand what you’re asking… You can’t possibly expect me to remember all the different types of clouds.” Today, it was safe to assume all her weird words were cloud names. “Are you trying to say the trans-Boreal storm is related to Paradise?”
I bit into my second sandwich in that many hours and finished another glass.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She cocked her head. “As elated as I was to find a natural storm which persists indefinitely on its own, how could there ever be a storm that doesn’t go away if not by design? I would hope you know how wind works at this point, but do I need to find you some books in the library about weather, climate, and atmospheric circulation? Air does some very interesting things on a large scale, you know.”
“Maybe… once we get back some books might be helpful.” I could not deny it.
“Very well. I won’t be around for long, so you will need to transcribe them all as quickly as possible and study them later. It helps for retention though, I swear.” Cira had a look of grim reminiscence on her face as I waited for her next words. “Have you ever seen this barrel?”
As the allegedly intermediate sorcerer spoke, an unassuming wooden barrel appeared. Suddenly, the river of ale flowed into it like a violent whirlpool that rose to the sky to the point we could see the riverbed. I watched what had to be hundreds of gallons pour into it before Cira threw her crystal mug to the golden ground. It shattered, and she held out her hand as the barrel floated towards her.
Perhaps her intentions were unfathomable to me, but another crystal glass materialized in her hand as ale poured freely from the barrel.
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“Jimbo is too small minded,” She finished the glass swiftly and refilled it from the greatest flask I’d ever laid eyes on, “Now let me commend you. It appears you completely forgot about your latest lesson, but your reservoir has enshrouded you for the last couple hours at least. What you’ve conjured is not so different from that spatial amateur of the Third Order. Roman’s son. Anyone could manipulate your wind with just as much authority, so… Focus now on solidifying your idea of it it as your own air, and nobody else’s. Not even the sky’s. Yours.”
It appeared we were moving on already, but she was right. I had completely forgotten I was accumulating air and all of a sudden, it’s all around me.
It was a strange sensation like the wind was silk between my fingers. I wondered if that’s how water felt to my master.
I was mid drink when she decided to lecture me, so I polished that glass off before responding, “I think I get it, hic, it should be easier now that we’re just sitting here.”
My crystal mug caught the sunlight and miraculously filled before my eye. I took a drink, naturally.
“About that,” Cira said, “I think it’s about time we get moving. There is much to learn here.”
That storm… The so-called wrath we felt. That meant something right? “We’re finally going to hear the end of the creator’s story?”
“Of course… I am very interested to learn more of what befell this great mage, but now is not the time.” Cira smirked, and I noticed her orichalcum staff glowing above us. The golden earth beside us started to bubble up and formed strange shapes above the ground. As I watched in confusion, a pirate ship of solid gold steadied upon a divot in the island. Somehow, it seemed like golden waves had started to ripple against its hull and Cira laughed victoriously, tossing her glass to the side as it seemed to reach a path of orbit around her. It must have been an advanced technique. “We have a much more important quest to see through. I was promised a second spring. This is unprecedented. I will see this spring of golden ale.”
I was baffled as she started floating towards the river on her lonesome until the solid god-damn gold pirate ship crashed through the waves of… liquid gold?
Is this even real?
The excess gold from the breaking waves coagulated to form the rest of the keel and fill in the hull. As if she were atop a raging sea, the ship left shore and bobbed along the not-so-violent waves of beer. It seemed she was rocking the boat dramatically for some reason.
“Hurry!” She called, waving her hand inward as her fingers cut through the airborne froth, “The Saltier Songstress only has room for one more!”
Is she making a joke…? No, is she drunk? Is this what absurdly powerful people do when they’re drunk?
I didn’t know how I was supposed to board the vessel that bounced up and down on the waves, then I saw her smirk. Clearly, I was supposed to use my wind…
I quickly realized how gentle a hand one needs to control wind. Normally, it’s a far more delicate act, but I was surprisingly closer to Cira’s state—drunk off my ass. As if such a thing could be done with a flick of the wrist, I found myself high in the sky.
Cira’s laughter disappeared as I rose higher. Somehow, it seemed my domain was responding to my last intention. I had pretty much no idea what was going on as I entered a free fall. Fear overtook me and I let out an embarrassing shriek before slowing down, directly into a seat across from Cira.
“What… did I just do?” My glass found its way back to my hand. “Let’s… just go I guess.”
“Verily,” Cira raised her own and I could have sworn it was her fifth or sixth. They weren’t small. How does such a small girl drink so much? Is it sorcery again? She calls magicians phony, but she’s sure got a lot of tricks. The so-called Saltier Songstress cut through waves of ale as it traveled upstream. Its sail did not seem to care which way the wind was blowing. For that matter, I don’t know how thousands of pounds of gold in the shape of a pirate ship could float. “This will not take long. Paradise is slightly smaller than Acher. The first spring will surely be a taxing affair, but we will stop at the second afterward to hydrate and possibly take a nap.”
“Can you…” I had one hand on my stomach and the other on the railing, “please stop bouncing around so much?”
“Oh… sure.” The ship steadied at a word, “I intend to do a full geological survey of this place, so make sure to pay attention. Such is a necessary skillset to reach the realm of an elementary sorcerer.”
My head bobbed as I tried to sober up, somehow setting another empty glass down—it didn’t stay empty for long due to powers beyond my control. Did she say I can’t even call myself a sorcerer of elementary caliber yet? Wouldn’t that be the level of a child? All I could muster was a nod and she seemed to accept it.
“Got it. Geography. What’s at the spring though?” I burped in such an undainty manner that I was glad Jimbo wasn’t around.
While I wasn’t looking, a notebook had materialized in Cira’s hands, along with a vibrant quill that swiveled in the air as she jotted something down, “Close enough, but the entire point of finding the spring is that I don’t know what’s there. Sure, with Spatial Sight I see a very large amount of ale… but I don’t know what to make of it. I must see it with my own physical eyes and let it rain down on me—I must immerse myself within it.”