Two days passed like a summer storm. Two summer storms passed, as if driven by a typhoon. Then the typhoon hit them.
Ulric had never experienced a major storm system, Winter's Herald aside. The bomb cyclone blown in from the Vatyn was ferocious. Ulric didn't precisely know how warm the waters of the inland sea splitting the continent got, but he hadn't gotten the impression it held the tropical heat needed for the heat engine processes that drove normal hurricane systems. The gale force winds that drove in carrying stinging, biting rain, near to horizontally proved that such systems did, in fact, exist. Proved that reality beyond dispute.
Huddled within their teepee, [Stonewalls] raised hurriedly by Ulric around it to keep the lashings from being snapped like a guitar string under tension and carried off into the skies, Ulric had felt compelled to ask whether such blows were normal for the season.
Taipan's delicate, strong, hands signed "Not really." from her place tending the small fire. It was a pitiful, smoky thing, since all the wood outside was getting drenched. There wasn't much anybody could do about that situation but to bring as much inside as they could and keep bringing it inside as it was used, giving it a chance to dry before being tossed into the struggling coals.
"This was not storm birthed from the sky, Glade Chief. This storm is the conclusion of a war. A flame elemental was killed by an ocean elemental, dragged beneath the Vatyn's surface to drown. It's dying burned off much of its enemy's essence as it went, broiling sea and elemental alike, before flinging its remains skyward. That combination is what gave life to this gale." His Shadow narrated.
Holy hells. Now that was definitely a fascinating little nugget of Vardan existence.
"Does that happen often?" He asked, running a Glassresin honing rod down the length of his belt knife, creating a curiously high-pitched singing from the rod.
Oddities like that happened when you worked with mana laden tools. He mostly ignored the idiosyncrasies of magical items, unless they had functional applications.
The material of the fang was immaculate, but all edges needed touch ups. Glass or other ceramics had the requisite hardness to bring his [Forest Lord] tooth knife to proper order.
"Not particularly." Answered Taipan from her crouch, stirring the coals briefly to liven them up before placing another couple of small pieces of wood into the tidy pit.
"Not that it isn't unheard of, I am told that several islands in the Vatyn give rise to fire elementals from their great cinder cones with some regularity. Normally though, those hatchling entities do not stray close enough to the shore for an ocean elemental to snatch them up. Not even Gother knows why the beings of salt and sea do it, but they seem drawn to try to kill flame elementals whenever they have the chance." The woman regaled him, her calm voice washing over him with its music.
Predatory behavior amongst pure mana creatures? Something more territorial? Or was it a compulsion from the Primes? Perhaps the great Ocean itself had a grudge and carried out its vendetta with its lesser incarnations. This was a mystery he'd not crack any time soon. Too much of it was spooky Vardan wizard nonsense.
Curiosity was all this interaction would remain to him. And slight annoyance. Ulric had been planning to carry out his intended negotiation two days past. The storms had come through with fury though, and walking through such was not a grand idea, even for a mage.
A widow maker blown free from crown high up would kill him just like anybody else.
So, they'd spent much of the morning riding out the storm and the rest of the afternoon helping the fledgling village structures grow roofs. That had been a timely development, he noted sardonically. Ulric had created two centimeter thick [Stonewalls] in a long line, only eight centimeters wide, with a distinct curve from base to top. The resulting tiles could be plucked from the ground and formed a quaint appearance for the budding village housing.
If nothing else, Ulric had a future in roofing. A fall back for his planned export of debonair spices, rare alchemical reagents, metallurgy consulting, and [Steelwood] lumber. The scope and scale of his soon to be economic powerhouse of a homestead grew and he resisted the urge to dry wash his hands and cackle.
The following morning encore of sleeting lightning, stiff gusts, and pelting rain interspersed with hail was what had the Prespangers stirred like a kicked ant's nest. They knew the signs and what these smaller storms portended. After explaining what was on the horizon, literally, the Orlethrem, joined by himself and his Shadow-Wife, went into high gear to finish the structures that could be finished and baton down the hatches. If not for Adept Brodin squeezing himself like a fresh orange of mana to go about reinforcing the joinery, Ulric doubted the modest shelters would have held against this rousing bit of Vardan weather.
Even now, the winds howled outside, shaking the leather walls of the teepee disturbingly. They were well made, stitched from the hide of the [Forest Lord], with its own sinews. That did not mean that they were invincible to hurled limbs, stones and other natural shrapnel, nor immune to being carried off into the clouds. Ulric really hoped the teepee held up, otherwise there was going to be some real miserable fucking hours ahead of them. Maybe it'd be worth it to not have the Captain propped up over there glaring at him all the time though.
They'd had to bring the woman inside, of course. Couldn't just leave her out there in the teeth of the storm. Still. He was going to put a damned bag over her head before too long. With her around, he wasn't able to engage in the usual pleasantries of married life, other than some cuddles beneath the blankets. He'd changed much in the last half Vardan year. Not enough to pork his lady beneath the watching eyes of a POW.
Aggravation. He'd also been force to hiatus his intended repairs and experimentation. After being caught by his lass doing a stupid, and paid the wonderful price she'd exacted of him, he had to conduct his trials outdoors. Outdoors was, at that very moment, dropping fist sized hail, a combination of ground strikes and cloud to cloud lightning that had his mana senses buzzing with the closeness of that much Ceraun, and blowing wind hard enough to potentially lift him up and sling him into the forest, almost certainly to bash his brains out upon the trunk of a hickory. That is to say, less than optimal conditions for carrying out his plans. Any of his plans. No repairs. No experiments. No negotiations with hostile powers to barter for ships. Nada. Nichts.
Whenever they'd had these kinds of forced downtimes, he took the opportunity to pick Taipan's brains. She was a classically educated woman from a family of long history and consummate prestige, so she had much to offer in terms of worldly knowledge that only one of her elevated position would have, along with the run of the mill, commonsense workings of day to day Vardan life. More or less, he just asked her for stories of her upbringing and life in Iriel and put the pieces together to form a coherent picture of the world, through Aes'r colored lenses, that is. His Earth sensibilities were, frequently, jarred by the differences between what was considered normal here. If he'd had the time for it, Ulric would have known a huge degree of culture shock back in Irielhos.
As it was, he'd only intersected with a rather narrow portion of Iriel'en culture and that sliver was fairly similar to what historical background he had, because war never truly changes and military doctrines, paid for by the blood of kin, tended to have profound similarities. The warrior cult of Iriel had taken him in wholesale and he'd drank it up like Mother's milk. Probably because that's what the humans of his old world did better than most other things: destroy each other. Only at the end there had they learned their lessons, and those too late to offer Ulric a chance to witness the full glory that Earth in antiquity was said to have offered.
The result of these two days laboring to beat the typhoon, and now an expected three days to wait out its passing, were that he was going to, finally, sit down and be able to enjoy his Wife's company. She, it turned out, was also looking forward to a slow spell to share Iriel'en culture and the humble pleasures of house and home. All the morning long, she was also becoming increasingly agitated and the smoky looks, pouts, exaggerated runs of hands over her hips and chest were, finally, hint enough that something had to give.
Ulric exercised his Lordly rights and banished the Captain to other quarters, snatching up the prisoner to brave the storm before noon of the first day of the hurricane's passage. Out into the driving wind he strode. Ulric learned that making a [Sky Shield] while the wind was already being slung so violently was, basically, impossible. For him, at least. He just couldn't wrangle it into shape with his mana before the air behind his attempted working blew it apart in another fresh blast of wind. Sodden, soaked, and pelted by the odd hailstone, the Lord of the Ancient Glade soldiered on, braving the blow to deliver her wriggling form to Adept Brodin, to do with, like, whatever, he didn't give a fuck so long as she lived to be his bargaining chip.
Freed from the hateful staring, Ulric found the next two days of hiding from the storm's fury to be far more bearable. Especially when, upon returning from dropping off the captive, he was tackled from behind while peeling off the robe pasted to his skin by a missile of horny Elf. He had not been the only one chafing from the unexpected intrusion into their privacy. If you haven't been thrown to the floor by a randy Amazon you should definitely give that a shot. The bruises fade quickly you won't feel them anyway.
Bird song announced to all the third morning that the worst of the hurricane had passed them by. Glad he was for it, too. The forced rest for two days on end, after two half days of being penned indoors was a blessing, but he was ready to get to business. Taipan declared, upon achieving clothed status, that her body was healed. Ulric didn't believe it but the [Scan] told no lies, she was healthy as a horse. Damned if Vardan biology wasn't just all kinds of top notch. Broken bones like that should have taken a month to heal.
His mate hadn't even had Sano hands laid to speed the process. That there was just good genetics. And the artistry of the Watcher's guided evolution at play.
"I think today's the day Taipan. I will fix my armor this morning, and then! We shall depart to negotiate with Kistalfer for the purchase of some ships and crew, the better to be away from their lands without further bloodshed." Ulric spoke aloud his intentions.
"And if they refuse to accept a parlay or become hostile again?" Probed Taipan, always intent on discovering the odd twists of her partner's mind before he did something crazy.
"Then I'm probably going to have to burn all the ships in the port, and I might try to destroy the Baron's castle, to remind him to play nice in the future, or his descendants not to be puppets to monstrous assholes." Ulric mused aloud.
He wouldn't permit those ships to be used to carry troops or goods from Prosper. Either he got to use them too, or nobody would. Afterall, he was giving the ruler of this city a chance to declare himself not Ulric's enemy, in spite of the "misunderstanding" earlier. The Baron could be forgiven that, even if the orders were from his lips, in the interests of curtailing the violence. Peace deserved an attempt to live. But. If war was the choice then Ulric had to respect that. And act accordingly.
"I agree." Taipan agreed, her midnight locks of shimmering hair bouncing along with her satisfied nod.
"Then I suspect I might have to purge the populace to keep them from coming behind me." Ulric said, deadpan.
"I cannot allow that, Ulric. Both for you personally, and for your House. Some things should not be done outside of the very last of resorts. As my Father learned." Taipan told him seriously, frowning at the suggestion he'd laid before her.
Ulric smiled, glad that his partner had shown the appropriate willingness to keep him from doing something awful, "Just checking. I, of course, have no intention of harming the citizens of Kistalfer, those that do not raise arms. But I needed to know whether you had a handle on your own vendetta. I haven't forgotten the, eh, call it temperature of Bald'rt's temper of old, or your own."
Taipan fingered her knife hilt briefly, too casually, before replying, "I do not like that you would test me in this fashion, Ulric." She told him warningly.
"Nobody likes it Taipan, but that's why it has to be done. I trust your advice, trust it too much at times." Ulric shared his concerns with the former Hunter of her family's enemies, an assassin in truth.
His assassin now. Her displeasure mellowed slightly at his confiding the extent of his reliance on her.
"I do not know what I am doing, as you are well aware. I was a scientist, an engineer, in my old life. All I know of politics and whatever governments exist in this world are based on the history of my own people, who did not have magic, classes, monstrous hordes of beasts, or at least six sapient races with independent cultures. I'm making this shit up as I go and I want to be sure that I can rely on you to check my worst impulses. Humans are one of the most aggressive species on my planet. Their sins do not need to follow me to this world." He explained carefully.
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This conversation was even more important now. It was no longer just he and her. There were others, those who had implicitly declared themselves as under his banner. That meant Ulric had power, the power to order people to do terrible things. His education, his instincts, demanded that there be a check on himself, to prevent the corrupting influence of such power.
Taipan looked at him almost sadly. She forgot sometimes, how utterly lost that he was. For all Ulric's sophistication, he'd been thrown headfirst into the deepest waters, to learn to swim the currents or drown.
"You are mine now, Ulric. We go together now. Fear not, you will not stray from the path while I scout the way." She told him, not without warmth.
Ulric clapped a hand gently on her shoulder, smiling.
"It is good to know. And I'm glad your leg and ribs are better, I was worried about having to go out there alone. It's going to be fine, now that we're able to stand before the walls together. So much for our little plan of staying unnoticed, eh?"
Taipan's soft chuckle filled the shelter.
"Ulric, you were never going to remain unnoticed." She giggled, before steadfastly telling him the facts of the matter, "The Twice Born always bring change, for good or ill depends upon their natures. But you seemed determined to try, so I wished to help you go that way."
"Are you now to be flying your standard?" Asked Taipan drily, gesturing in the direction of the Captain, now returned to her position bound to the flag pole, overseeing the village from her place at its top.
He shook his head. Varda twisted all his plans, sent everything sideways on him. He just had to roll with the punches.
"Alright, alright, enough fucking around. Time to get down to it. I'm going to do some fucking magic this morning!" He declared, turning to exit the teepee, a [Thunderhorn Sheep] horn in hand.
Ever dutiful, his Shadow padded silently after him. He ignored her when she muttered "He will set something on fire, I am just knowing it." in Elvish.
I mean, he told himself, that's sort of the point of it this time.
Under clearing blue skies, dotted with the dark grey remnants of the Fire Elemental's murder, he looked around at the morning's activity within the now enclosed village. It was going to be a shame to leave this place behind. Perhaps someone would come to colonize it sometime. Anyhow, good thing everything was wet. Who knew how this was going to go when he dialed up the amps on this spell.
Start slow, Ulric, he reminded himself, do not just swing for the fences right from word go. At least everything's wet, should keep the chances of an accidental spark taking kind of low.
Down upon the ground he placed the horn, its light blue color, whirls of white and dark grays streaking to elicit the sense of a stormy sky. Ulric didn't know why the creatures would have thematic coloration towards their abilities, but Varda, and by extension, the Watcher, might have had an artistic flair.
Holding one end of the horn in his left hand, Ulric concentrated on the magic, summoning the mental constructs he'd worked out over the last few days, the final configuration being refined in his thoughts while he waited out the weather. The image of a circulating jet of Caelum, tight down the axis of the spell, but forming wide loops back to the "nozzle" of the tight beam of Ceraun that would drive the cutting arc. Almost without conscious effort, Ulric's core spun up to ready his mana, eager to reach out, inconsiderate of what effect being touched by lightning would do.
[White Interference]
A measure of lightning attuned mana opposed itself, reverting to unaspected white mana, wild magic, free to be impressed upon by his will. Ulric attuned that portion to Caelum and guided it into his pressure jet construct, simultaneously filling the electromagnetic differential that would power the lightning part of the spell.
He lowered the pointer finger of his right hand to a few centimeters above the surface of the horn, using his core as an oscillator, driving the Ceraun at his fingertip into a frantic high frequency oscillation, while loosing the air jet. Ulric felt the magic through his core, felt the building pressure to release, even as the horn was cleared of debris beneath the thin, powerful air stream. He raised the voltage just a bit more, before the lightning bridged the gap. Contact.
A brilliant lance of ionized Caelum woven with Ceraun stabbed down to the surface of the horn, emitting a keening shriek as the incandescent plasma began to shower sparks of molten material from the horn's surface. It resisted, its nature being similar to that of the magic that touched it. It resisted for all of about two seconds, Ulric pushed his magic into the horn, running his own mana to force a connection, the arc brightened to blinding, then it reached sublimation and a hole bored completely through the horn, woven lightning and air in an incredibly tight spiral, like the finest threads of silk rope, driving into the wet ground below.
Steam erupted from the substrate and Ulric cut off the magic, temporarily flash blind. He'd forgotten how insanely bright plasma cutters were and, even turning his head aside, it hurt his eyes. Ignoring the flaring pain in his orbs he looked at the horn, trying to discern the effects.
A neat hole the diameter of his finger was rapidly transitioning through the blackbody spectrum, from white hot, to bright orange, dull red, and then to a black discoloration of burned horn. By the rapidity of it, Ulric concluded the horn was an excellent thermal conductor.
Interesting. It had opposed the lightning for a significant amount of time, courtesy of the significant Ceraunic aspect of the storm mana that the goats had wielded, most likely. Electrically resistant but thermally conductive? That sounded sort of like graphite or composite materials. Horn was a composite so that made sense. The internal structure of this bastard sheep's primary weapon might be rather more sophisticated than he'd originally suspected. He could simply force his own mana through the material, it just took a little effort was all. The advantage of a Ceraunic attunement to his core, he was certain.
Wonderbar.
To inspection of the hole itself. Pouring aching eyes over it, Ulric found himself well pleased. It was clean, very clean. Immaculate even. No deviations, no creep, just a perfectly symmetrical cylinder removed from the material along the axis of his pointer. A CNC would have wept with joy.
*PING*
[Voltaic Riot]***CAELUM HYBRIDIZATION***OVERRIDE***[Scintillating Touch]
image [https://imgur.com/iVZQQBH.png]
"Geschickt! I might be getting sort of good at this wizard shit." Ulric observed, ecstatic from the better than expected results of the experiment.
It was everything he'd wanted, with a bonus. The obvious flaw in ever using this magic as anything but a method for machining or shaping inanimate materials, due to its requirement that he be touching them, was actually a built in synergy. Just as his [Voltaic Grip] rendered targets unable to coordinate their movements through the surging of electricity through their bodies, so too did the new spell. If Ulric managed to secure a hold on his target he could get all the benefits of that first magic he'd made with the added bonus of being able to use his other hand, or, really, any part of him he wanted to use as a locus, as a plasma cutter.
Magic was beautiful.
He looked up to Taipan, who stood behind him, her hands over her face to shield her eyes from the spell's brilliance. Sparks of molten horn had scattered around him, he noted a few minor burns on his sleeves and torso, bits of slag jettisoning from the bore to hit him. The cooling, steaming ground beneath his horn target revealed a bit of vitreous mud, glassified by the heat of the lance of woven mana.
"It worked, Taipan! First time too!" He exclaimed, excited as a kid discovering a new trick with their yo-yo.
The tall drink of water over there pulled her hands down from shielding sensitive eyes and looked at the smooth walled hole drilled through the ram horn. She frowned thoughtfully for a moment.
"Ulric Glade Chief…what will that magic not do that to?" She asked, hesitating for a second and gesturing to the cleanly bored hole.
Good question. He chewed his lip thinking. Hmm…you could use a high throughput cutter on just about any metal alloy known to man. You could get suboptimal performance, mostly pilot arc cutting on poor conductors, like woods or plastics. More or less the only things it wouldn't touch were ceramics and glasses.
"Probably I couldn't brute force glass, dry stone, or a homogenous ceramic. I think I can weave a streamer of Ceraun through about anything else that will complete the link to initiate the spell. Even materials that have a small hydraulic component can be finagled, it just takes more effort on my part." He told her, fairly certain.
If the resistant properties of the [Thunderhorn Sheep] horn hadn't been able to withstand his core, he didn't think much else would that wasn't totally electrically inert. The horn was grown such that it controlled and directed flows of energy, it didn't stop them completely. You could put a pin in a wood plank connected to a battery and it would burn a path through the material, proving that the dielectric of a substance was mostly just a suggestion when the electric potential was high enough.
"Why?" He questioned, curious.
"Oh, nothing of import, Ulric, just another piece of evidence that proves you are too dangerous to leave unattended." Taipan chirped, slightly aghast.
"Come here, Taipan. Pull my finger." Ulric ordered, pointing the digit towards her.
"Ack!" The Elf woman shrieked, and jumped away, acrobatically somersaulting to stand some meters distant.
"Do not amuse yourself with such jests, you maniac Valin!" She shouted from a safe distance.
"That's what you get for shooting arrows at me!" He told her, laughing.
She'd used blanks with big down and wool filled heads, and hadn't come to even a quarter draw but it was still disconcerting to see an arrow coming towards your hind quarters.
"Phaw!" She scoffed, "My prank arrows did not burn mud to glass!"
That was fair.
"Okay, that's fair. I promise that I will not point my new god slaying finger at you." He swore, waving the digit about threateningly at the sky.
"We are all of us doomed." A Celestin from across the clearing announced.
"Aye." the rest of the watching Elves, Men, and Beastkin, chorused.
Everybody's a critic. Well, Ulric knew progress when he saw it, and this magic was damned good progress. Armed now with the ability to cut metals to shape, he was one step closer to precision machining. A finger wide cut was too large, really, for anything that demanded exacting dimensions. Not to mention that it was limited by his dexterity and he would have to find a way to construct a light blocking visor or he'd be going blind.
"Jealous! All of you!" He crowed from his crouch over the site of his successful test.
"You only wish you could be as mighty as this Glade Chief. And with as fine a rump!" He challenged.
A few Elves who had been making rough tables shared glances.
"It is a fine rump." They agreed.
"There!" Ulric declared taking that as all the proof he needed.
Validation is a heady drug.
"My year's harvest against yours he turns himself to ash before next Winter's Herald? Who else wants action on this?" Another demanded aloud.
At that, the betting got lively. Ulric surviving to Winter was a Sixty-Forty split. He bet on himself, obviously. He was absolutely going to clean these doubters out, come Winter's Herald.
Suckers.
Riding the high of successful magic, and the promise of fleecing the unbelievers in the future, Ulric set about fixing his armor. Carefully, very carefully, he performed two more tests, fining down the width of the spell, with difficulty.
It was hard to narrow down so much magic, tightening up the Caelum that carried his plasma arc, and constraining it to prevent slop. Laminar flows were important for both the wind and lightning aspects of this working and his [Cloud Hammer] construct had proven a boon to his new application. Practice keeping the boundaries clean was tricky, but doable.
With a bore now about half the diameter of his index finger, Ulric burned free the two rivets, their [True Steel] holding up surprisingly well against his magic before yielding to spray against the ground below. Now, he had only to fit the newly prepared straps of [Forest Lord] leather with the old buckle and affix them to the cuirass and pauldron with new rivets of the same material, courtesy of Taipan sacrificing a single broadhead from one of her arrows. Induction heating was as easy as holding the metal between his fingers between two chopsticks and oscillating Ceraun between them, the fantastically accelerating fields causing the metal to, through its own internal resistance, heat to glowing where he could cut the hand length broadhead into quarters and then roll them into the correct shape with a borrowed smithing hammer.
It was rough, crude work, but it would suffice. The four pins slotted nicely into the prepared holes for the soon to be rivets. Ulric placed the pin on a flat stone, hammer raised in his left hand, the armor held steady by Taipan. His right hand heated the end of the pin and he brought the hammer down.
*Ting*
Once, mushrooming the red hot, softer head of the rivet against the cooler metal in the middle.
*Ting* again, to flatten the top, preventing it from advancing through the holes.
Then, Ulric turned the armor around and repeated the process on the tails of the rivets, pressing them down and heating the tail before smooshing it with a few powerful strokes of the three kilo blacksmith's hammer. Rinse. Repeat three more times. And now, he beheld the restored armor that had saved his life at least a dozen times since walking from the lifts that raised up into Irielhos.
All told, Ulric was finished with the repair before Midsunsrise. It felt good. He hadn't gotten to do something constructive with his magic in a good long while. Creating was always harder, more rewarding, than destroying.
"You and my Uncle are not so different, are you." Taipan stated, more than asked, looming over him while he filed the rough edges from the tails of the rivets.
Not at all. Ulric's first life was spent almost obsessively in the chase for his craft. He'd spent unhealthy hours behind monitors, reviewing crystallography, calculating grain boundaries and yield curves, and electrostatic seeding potentials, as well as consulting a veritable library of materials science references. Especially after his crippling, when most other hobbies had been denied him and he'd retreated from virtually all social life. For him, those last few years, the work was all. Flogging himself with his own need to master the secrets of his field, until that goddamned graphene seeding project had been thrown into his lap.
There was more than a little irony in that, he found.
The conditions Ulric had simulated as necessary to successfully dope the graphene demanded a Ceraunic Mage hold the lattice stationary binding the electrons, reducing the vibrations of the orbitals until the metallic cations could be introduced into their own lattice within the scaffold of the graphene. Then, the entire thing could be released and the lower energy state would snap the material together, like popping a glass pane into a frame. Conventionally, it was impossible. Upon Varda? For one professionally trained, child's play.
"Not so much, really." He confirmed.
"Losing everything I had ever worked for overnight sort of put things into perspective though. Dying is a wonderful lens for focusing on what matters. It also made a difference that I was healthy again, virile, strong, everything that I had lost given back in spades. Sort of gives you different priorities. There is also the fact that most of the computing and machines I relied upon are not in existence, and will remain that way." He said, looking over the rustic civilization growing up around him.
She seemed a touch surprised by that.
"Then you do not wish to revive your civilization?" She inquired.
He did not.
"I do not, lass. I do not at all. We had our chance and our world. We fucked things up. Best to let go, to find a different way. What other use is history but to learn what not to do?" He answered, posing the question that had baffled him throughout his entire life.
Why didn't people ever seem to learn from the past? His cynical answer was that they, mistakenly, thought that they were better by default than those who came before. They believed themselves wiser, more refined, less inclined to the same weaknesses and faults of their forefathers. They were all wrong, in his book, and the data supported his theory.
Taipan placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, "You hate your people, don't you?" She asked, surprised.
It would never have occurred to her that one could be so distant, so contemptuous of their kind as to come to hate them. For her, who viewed her people with high pride, it was alien.
"At the end there? Yes. I did. Now? I like to think I'm just disappointed in them. They could have been great, you know. Could have colonized the very stars. Instead, we let the worst of us destroy our world and, despite all our efforts to recover, I don't think we would have made it. Too self-destructive." Ulric told her, completing his analysis on the humanity of Earth.
Perhaps the Watcher's guidance would be sufficient to prevent that sort of carnage on Varda. Perhaps that was why Valin were not the only dominant sapients to walk the land. There were buffering species to restrain their growth, to control their predation. Certainly some of the same faults in the species were there, Ulric had seen too many parallels to think the worlds were completely unrelated.
He didn't know why this world and his old were connected, or how, but they had to be. Perhaps the Impossible had taken pity on its dead cosmic sibling and tried, from afar, without the proper tools, to adopt that world. It made as much sense as anything else, really.
But enough of that!
"It's time to get a move on Taipan. We've got some diplomacy to conduct with our neighbors." He told her, his grey eyes taking in the bound Captain, enjoying still the captive's vantage planted in the center of the village.
He donned the cuirass and buckled the pauldrons on over top. The armored skirt he belted over his pants, making sure that his knife was clear to pull, should he need it. Xef'tocht went on over his shoulder, the release snap given a quick inspection, to be ready to free the blade at a moment's notice. Ready.
Now that they knew the way, it would be no more than four hours to Kistalfer. They were going to run the Boston Marathon in an hour forty five flat. From there, they'd close in on the city at a much more conservative clip, to avoid potential scouting patrols. Taipan doubted that the city's leadership would risk any more troops outside the walls without relief, but she told him that it wouldn't be the first time Prespang threw away her soldier's lives without good cause, so they'd be prepared anyhow.
"All right you lot, I'm leaving for Kistalfer, to negotiate passage by ship for the bunch of you back to Orlethrem territory. If it goes well, I'll return by sundown tonight to escort us to the sea, where we will board and sail for the Zelas. If it does not go well, I'll probably still be back by sundown tonight but in a much shittier mood. Don't burn the house down while I'm gone." He told the gathered folk, after having waved them in for a quick status update.
"Mage Brodin, I leave the safety of these folk to you. I trust you can manage in my absence." Ulric confided in the young adept.
He hadn't known the youth for long, but anyone who could stare a lifetime of indoctrination in the eye and then pick a fight with an empire to oppose it was alright people to Ulric's way of thinking.
"I will preserve this place with my life, if necessary." The Germen Adept promised.
In the middle of a forest, that life would be a tall order, the Mage was in his element.