Reshaping oneself was an arduous task. Doing so required a great deal of concentration, but to concentrate too deeply, oneself may be forever lost. She was already thinking many times over, much more than previously considered possible. If her single line of individual consciousness paused for even a moment, she feared she would be incapable of starting it back up again. This was not yet proven fact, but to prevent this Cira had her reliable friend Nina dance around on top of her head, flitting her wings about from the perch. It kept Cira present and being present afforded her much time to think.
By now she had finished healing all of the injured she could find. That long creek-side settlement had received the worst of it, but they had apparently been assisted by a mage in her stead. A nameless spellcaster dressed in rags lived there, and he could manipulate the water to pluck victims from it into safety. She realized this man was probably the only reason she wouldn’t end the day as a mass murderer.
“Don’t overdo it like you always do, Cira.” Gazen’s voice crept into her head, “The one who pays the price is none other than yourself.”
Well, he was wrong this time. And when Dad’s wrong, it’s overwhelmingly so. Was he underestimating me? The destruction she wrought could not be denied. As a testament to how this island survived so long in the first place, it didn’t fall apart, but there was debris everywhere. Whenever she stopped to heal, she had to repair the caves, surrounding walls and sometimes buildings.
Far, far too reckless, but what else could I do? Pappy was an idiot to think something anything short of this could fix the flooding. But… maybe I should have turned down the job. Nobody would have been hurt, I wouldn’t have had to deceive Nanri, and I’d be far away by now.
The shock of waking up and having brought doom to Fount Salt with her very own hands had kept her preoccupied. For a while she frantically searched the island for dead but miraculously found none. She could only show gratitude to the hardy salt beneath her feet and whatever laws of this world kept the islands afloat. Perhaps there is another which holds them together, else they’d collapse under their own weight. Still, her heart beat relentlessly like a war drum and she couldn’t calm her nerves. She walked a fine line between salvation and genocide today; it was sheer luck that Cira came out on top.
That fact was not lost on the reckless young sorcerer. Her hands trembled as she tried to push it down for later. She knew she screwed up on an unprecedented scale, but this was hardly the time to wallow in it.
By now her commandeered titanium had crawled its way past Uru. Countless rivers were abandoned and by now a series of main waterways had begun to form, each splitting off to wherever water was needed with a few points of convergence. Uru was one such point. The people there were still reeling from whatever disaster she caused and then the rain of holy light that struck the city. The disaster miraculously cleaned itself up as the people healed in uncertain panic.
But I did all of this. This entire disaster is my fault. If I see one more person praising me… Uru was particularly bad because that’s where the high priest resided. Cira had overheard him saying some nonsensical things as she stopped to heal Uru earlier. She tried not to look too closely as her metal overtook the city, but this place took a personal touch.
She didn’t want to ruin the natural beauty of the former queen’s nest. The way the water trickled down from the ceiling was indeed difficult to copy as Nanri claimed. Cira had to take extra care to replicate the texture of the bare salt and cheated by making it just for show while most of the water bypassed the chamber entirely before coming back in at the bottom to retain the rivers which already flowed beneath the city. By the time she was done with it, it looked closer to the active queen’s nest than it did before.
Cira’s reconstruction was well on its way to the spring, but her mind was still down in Uru. She had watched them earlier, not long after she awoke on the floor in a pool of blood. Seeing Nanri’s determined efforts to heal Lomp put a smile on her face. Cira remembered how long she spent reading it herself and the look on Nanri’s face when she told her the books were a present. Seeing her gifts set to good use made a tinge of pride well up in Cira’s chest. It was bittersweet.
The sorcerer didn’t want to say goodbye, and the thin silver lining she clung to was that she didn’t have to say goodbye in the end. Not really—she hid from doing it directly. Cira was never any good at writing letters either, but she poured her heart into the necklace in hopes the gift would soften the blow of her betrayal.
It’s a pittance at best, Cira thought after watching her open the box, but if it can help keep you safe, that’s enough for me.
It wasn’t until the witch made it to the bottom and unfolded her letter that Cira’s heart grew heavy again. “I at least wanted to say goodbye,” the witch had said. And it wasn’t until then Cira realized she wasn’t very satisfied with how things turned out this time at all. She began to think she could have handled things in a hundred different ways and been better off.
A sorcerer does not lie. I know I told her that. And it’s pretty clear that rat’s out of the bag now. It makes me wonder if any of the lies were necessary in the first place. She was certain they weren’t, but then she couldn’t help wondering if they would have become friends had she denied being a witch from the get-go. Would we have fought? Would we have simply gone about our separate business?
Cira let out a long groan. “This is getting me nowhere… I can wallow once I’m beyond the clouds.” She reinstated her dimnut copium and tried returning to her tasks at hand. The rivers didn’t require a lot of attention, but smoothing the islands surface did. Hundreds of balls of raw material floated around it now. While the titanium continued to rise, the salt fell—most of it would be needed below.
While Fount Salt was getting a much-needed makeover, Cira had also begun work on what would become the new Zero Stratum. She plucked the nymph off her head and held her in her palms. “Any requests, Nina? I’m building your forever home.”
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In perhaps a great feat of intelligence, Nina pulled down the brim of her hat and hid behind her knees facing away from Cira.
“I’ll never understand you, Nina…” Cira wistfully returned her focus below the island. She left a gargantuan blob of metal down there for this. It was unclear to her at this point if Nanri would be able to stick around to work on the project, so she wanted to get it started at the very least.
I’ve learned the nymphs like large, open spaces with plenty of room to lazily spread their wings. Water is needed, of course, but they seemed to enjoy the waterfalls over in the sanctuary. Maybe I could add a few water features. Some light artifacts should help the effect. I could even build them a fake spring! They didn’t seem averse to titanium, necessarily, but they don’t seem to like their home being built out of it.
“I’ve got it!” Nina stopped hiding and looked over her shoulder. “Good thing I studied up on practical geomancy.”
The book she offhandedly read for fun before arriving at this island would be a great help here. To begin her first attempt, she started working off the current real queen’s nest. She spun out long lattices of dense titanium which dug into the surrounding solid island and formed a frame against it. Soon the lattices swung down and formed hollow pillars, boxing in an area about half the size of the nest. Spheres of salt found their way in, seeping throughout the woven frame and lining the inside with a thick layer.
Aside from its oddly uniform shape, it looked nigh indistinguishable from the queen’s nest it grew off, just another bulge in the island’s exterior. Still more orbs of salt flew in and seemingly straight through, shaping the terrain inside to be a little less boring and hardening anything inside as much as possible to resist centuries of moisture.
A few waterfalls came in from above, lit from behind with cerulean light artifacts. They all split into a menagerie of little creeks or rivers. Whether or not they would enjoy them, she made some stylized faux-wooden (titanium) bridges and trees. A waterwheel for good measure, with a light that spun around. Some rivers stood on precarious stilts and flew through the air, secretly supported in great deal by titanium and only plated with hardened salt.
Of course, on top of all the titanium in case it ever eroded, all the rivers in this place were lined with the most hardened salt she could muster. So much so that it strained her mind, and she felt a draw on the deritium. Checking it with a glance, the one in her orbit was hardly taller than she was.
Now that I’m getting used to it, I can feel it everywhere. It’s seeping into the salt, and still flowing through the waters as if I never plucked it away. I can’t stop it from leaching in, but… Why don’t I use it?
It was everywhere, so she quickly started to take advantage of it for her continued ascent up the island. Cira wanted to have some close by later and she was attuned with this piece, but she worried what would happen if that were to be exhausted before she finished her work here.
She could pull more from elsewhere ahead of time, but all her peripheral deritium deposits were pumping their mana to the outside to fund her beautification efforts and letting Aquon sap off them to aid her vertical conquest.
In Zero Stratum, the first section was nearing completion, and she began on the next. Using these techniques, she could make truly massive structures using about half of each material, even leaving a little air channel in the middle. It was just large enough for the nymphs to fly through and she thought it might be fun.
The decorations and amusement installations varied, but she plopped down a few more of similar make about once an hour, by her estimate. Soon it was almost like a nest of honeycombs with the real queen’s nest protected inside. Take that, smugglers! Protecting the queen’s nest was an accidental bonus, but she thought it was a nice touch. Soon there were nine honeycombs set up, totaling a great deal more space than the original nest alone.
Many of the rivers that used to fall from the queen’s nest connected into her newly crafted chambers and she took the liberty of widening each opening so the nymphs could just wander in. There were so many of these rivers that snaked throughout the entire complex from the island above, that they worked as added supports. All the titanium on the island was a solid piece, more or less. I wonder what modern magicians think of load-bearing rivers.
“I think I’ve outdone myself, Nina. You should go check it out,” She tried encouraging her with a nudge, “Go on, I think you’ll really like it down there.”
The nymph emerged from her hat like a hermit crab would and stood up, looking Cira in the eyes and crossing her arms.
“A-are you serious?” Cira was at a loss, “You haven’t even seen it, and you don’t like it?”
It was the grumpiest face she thought Nina had ever made, and before she could get another word in, the nymph fluttered off through the wall.
“Geez, I’m sorry…” That didn’t feel great for the sorcerer. A frown formed on her face, and she let her endless gaze wander, “Why do I keep pushing my friends away? I just wanted to help…”
As she drifted through the island, the sound of countless wings made her snap back to reality, “Huh? Nina?” The nymph was fluttering before her, still crossing her arms but with a mildly different expression, “Why do you look so smug?”
Behind her there was a mass migration of her fellow nymphs, seeming to flow out from the sanctuary, above, and below. Even the spring chamber’s population had thinned considerably. “What’s going on?”
To find this out she followed them as they floated through her monolithic and salty body with Spatial Sight. There were groups of nymphs all flowing down the island, as if coordinated. It wasn’t fast, and it would take a while to get there, but they each had their own path, with a single nymph at the front.
“No way, are those all queens?!” She turned to her lone conversation partner who held the same smug pose without falter. There’s nine of them… Did this little scamp have a hand in this? Cira eyed her suspiciously, but the nymph held strong. Lomp had said there were a few, but nine seemed like a lot—ostensibly ten. “Were they already queens, or did you make them queens? What in the world does that make you then, huh?”
Nina spryly twisted around and hid in her hat. “You’re kidding…” With a sigh, Cira turned her attention back to the island. She considered making another of row nests above the last, when something caught her attention. It felt like a mosquito pricking her bum, “Yowch! What creature dare?”
That’s where the New Shores District was… When did that ship get there? It’s got an awful large Earth Vein insignia… Should I take the mithril from their sail? No, that would surely cause issues… “Tch. I guess this means the witch has come. But what bit me?”
The ship had a large hull crafted with red-stained wood and only a single low-profile mast that did most of the work. The canopy sails which held it aloft were sleek and almost shaped like wings. Definitely a pretentious vessel, Cira thought. She looked past it and noticed a hole blasted into the salt with black char marring the edges.
There was no activity on deck, but as she peered into the hole and followed the trail of mana she found two women dressed in robes approaching Nymphus with a commanding gait. How crass. They would bust straight through the wall to infiltrate my island?