Chapter 58: Ch.53: Checking In Part I

“With the establishment of the Gold Standard and the Imperial Weight as universally accepted measures of commercial quantities, more esoteric methods arose from various crafts where need arose and the gold standard was used as the base for them. Alchemists for example, needed smaller units for precise calibrations of alchemical ingredients, cooks also required the same due to the similarities they had in their vocation. It is no wonder the propagation of potions and various prized foods the coastal cities, let alone those in the interior took some time t. The value of potion recipes for example could not be verified if two alchemists had their own measures for the ingredients they used and the same held true for any crafter that required attention to such things. Borrowing a leaf from the establishment of the Gold Standard Weight system, they decided that it was about time smaller measures of quantities were standardised too. ”- Excerpts from Archival Records of the Merchant Guild, Antecian Calendar Year 1220.

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[ Storm Dragon’s Scion Level 4!]

[Skill- Eye of the Storm acquired!]

…

[ Magitech Aercrafter Level 19!]

[ Skill-Dispel Matrix Acquired!]

“Aye, easy easy…watch tha’ pulley. Lower…lower!”

“ Oi crewman! watch the boom!”

“ Clear the way…!”

Yelling and a groaning sound like a heavy weight settling down on wood made Arthur stir. He scrunched his brow, wondering where it was that he’d ended up until the cold nipping at his nose roused him awake.

‘Ugh, what even is that Skill? And a measly one level from all that mess? C’mon,’ Arthur grumbled. He rubbed at his nose with the hand that had been outside the blanket. Pins and needles crawled up his other, unsleeved arm, as the sensation of someone leaning against him drew his awareness to his left.

He turned and found a fair skinned sylvmaiden sharing his blanket as they lay against burlaps of straw. Her metallic silver hair had a lavender sheen. He squinted at the unfamiliar face and rubbed at his encrusted eyes before he remembered to cast [Cleanse]. Only when the motes had gone from his eyes was able to clearly see who had been leaning against him.

‘Oh, it’s just Nora,’ Arthur sighed as he stretched, trembling with euphoric tremors that wracked his frame. Then for a moment, he was befuddled by his surroundings until he recalled the events of yesternight.

‘I must have been more tired than I thought,’ Arthur mulled. His circadian rhythm was still adapting to normal time after Lysfall’s city spanning time magics. He recalled that after leaving the Fetid Woods behind, they had traversed the Shallows and found Nora, Margaery and the rest of Wyvern’s Woe at a waypoint.

Then they’d switched, to have two brunhorns aboard the sloop and the rest of the herd left with the half giant and much to his chagrin, Aindreas. Margaery had been brought aboard to assist Nora with looking over Yssinia and Elenaril.

Ralf, Triston and Ahnaestra, another sylvmaiden also came aboard while Quinten the Warrior swordsman also stayed behind to help the two members of the Wyndfinders corral the remaining mounts. The aersloop’s two passenger compartments which seemed bigger at the time had filled up with convalescing people forcing Arthur and Nora to sleep outside, on the promenade deck. At least the ship’s auric field kept out inclement weather; it was like a thin warding that you could put your hand out.

The events after that were a blur as the [Quartermastresse] occupied his and Nora’s time. Isignel had talked to Nora and him about joining the Guild if only on probation, adding that they could use both a [Runecrafter] and a [Healer] of their talents. At the time he was leery of interacting with Ragnus the half-dwarf and revealing too much.

The grounding enchantments and steam engines had been a point of interest but just didn’t know how to raise the issue without making a slip up of what he knew. Nora told him he was being paranoid as though every dwarf would be out to get him after the dungeon incident in the Dust.

Margaery had also nattered his ears off about some rivalry or other between the Guild and the dwarven version of the same. They called themselves the Seekers,and their mandate ran parallel to the Guild. In fact, they may have been older than the Guild and had their origins in exploring the Underneath which dwarves called their world.

The Ahrakni had described how the dwarve’s overarching authority in charge of the Seekers, called the Dreimarch, had made it increasingly difficult for the Guild to own aerships and aersloops. Only medium sized and larger branches had one at mos.

Ultimately, while the Guild had the numbers, the Dreimarch had the reach and gear to put their Seekers anywhere they wanted. Forget the aersloop which the Guild [Quartermastresse] had leased, they had their own specialised sloops for whatever it is that their Seekers did.

Most of them actually prospected for artefacts and arcane materials same as Adventurers and therefore the dwarves had a leg up. As it was, the three previous days, the Guild had been spread thin trying to rescue their lower ranking adventurers , most of them Bronze Tier and below that, Iron Tier as well.

From what he understood, Elenaril’s ordeal had not been an isolated incident and hence the Guild’s staggered response. And there had been casualties; some had not been so lucky to have people stumble on them like Nora and Arthur had with Elenaril. It was the biggest disaster the Guild had ever had to encounter because they were held back by logistics. Arthur felt that he had to help somehow―

‘Damn. Bet there’s some nasty politics waiting to blow up in my face if I do that.’ Arthur mused. ‘ I’ll have to ask Nora what she thinks. She might also get embroiled in the healer’s debacle too, hearing that Aldmoor only had two of them at hand. And they belong to the Orders…’

Thinking of encountering even more players on the board was making his stomach queasy. Wanting to detract his thoughts from such concerns, he retrieved the letter from Elder Volemhir and reread it, occasionally peeking up whenever a ship crewman would wander by.Arthur still could not believe that it was easy to magically forge a vouch of identity nor that it would hold up to scrutiny under an [Appraisal] skill but it did.

The semantics of it was lost on him but from what he understood, the vouch of identity held up because it was backed by an attestation of engagement. Said attestation mentioned Nora as being an adopted sylvmaiden with no father and mother. Since the sylvani were matrilineal, it meant her last name was her mother's name. No one knew how many offspring the Elder had so it had been generally easy to just squeeze Nora somewhere in his lineage.

And as per the Elder's instructions it meant that Arthur and Nora had to take on new names as though they were already married , giving Arthur his third name as befitting sylvani customs.

By incorporating the meaning of Arthur's name with Nora’s, Arthur got his third name thus becoming Arthur Sturm Löwenmaul. It was convoluted as it was brilliant and nobody would scrutinise it too deeply from the non-sylvani end. The name also sounded dwarven; at least his translation skill, [Rosetta Stone] was making it sound German to his ears.

‘Great, just great,’ he sighed, banishing the letter into [Inventory Chest]. Of course Nora accepted it with a straight face which was all the more disconcerting. He cast about for the satchel that the letter had come in and rummaged through its contents,retrieving the keystone Elder Volemhir had attached with the letter, alongside other things.

It was an agate crystal with a looped notch and was supposedly attuned to the wards guarding Ascal Cornieva’s home. At least it would smooth their way if they got past the red tape.

“ Port ahoy!” the [Sighter] cawed.

‘Corvani…’he remembered as he drew himself up by the gunwale. The [Sighter] had been the first winged and feathered person Arthur had seen out of the mixed crew of mostly humans and a few hybrids of different heritages. Nonetheless, the Avensi’s form was closer to humanoid than avian. They had extraordinarily large eyes, scleras that were too white and small pupils, black and ringed with blue like a raven.

Their hair had been black bristle feathers with an almost bluish tinge that lay flush with their scalp. And they had ears like the beastmaiden’s with tufted feathers instead of fur. Also, they had not one but two pairs of wings they could wrap around themselves like a cloak. Which explained why despite the cold, the Corvani was only in a pair of trousers and utterly barefoot.

As he squinted across the forecastle, a tower, lit by a large chromastone beacon appeared in the predawn mist. Arthur took in the port of Chasm’s Edge for the first time.

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The lighthouse, hewn into the cliff, was hundreds of metra tall and stood like an obelisk shooting from the depths of the chasm. Its giant chromastone was a regularly shaped pyramidion that haloed the mist around it as its light refracted through the precipitation.

More of the port came into view as the mist parted at the Rustflint’s advance. It was built in a crescent shape with the points against the edge of the Chasm. It was also connected by two wagon roads along its North-west and South-West axes. One led past a weald with trees shorter but no less imposing than those of the Faeriweald called the Moorhill woods. The other cut across the town parallel to the Chasm itself.

He could hear the roar of water echoing in the rift from the Misting Rapids that run below. The wind howling outside the ship's magical shielding could be seen snatching at smaller rivers that flowed into the Chasm in the distance.The Chasm was deeper and grander than any canyon and mist obscured the bottom.

Chasm Edge’s Port proper jutted out over the rift in an ingenious design that only a dwarven architect would have conceived. The main structures consisted of steel girders and stairs that hugged the sheer cliffs of the Chasm.

Berthing platforms rose out of the hewn walls like bracket fungi leading to artificial caverns that looked like hangars. There were vessels, both large and small, moored with their sails furled.

A few others seemed to be catching some of the Chasm’s wind to move upstream Then there were the barge cables, drawn across the Chasm, and hooked up to giant flywheels and pulleys.

The cables ended at more hewn out caverns which seemed to open above into a plaza, like a subway would open into the streets above . Most of the buildings above the Chasm also seemed to be concentrated to the right and around the lighthouse.

Nearer the edge, the buildings were built Tudor style . At most, they cleared three storeys of height with flat roofs on the northwestern side and hipped shingles on the southeastern side where rain would most likely be blown from the Faerieweald.

Chromastone lamps lit the eaves and the three main streets that met at the steambarge plaza while smoke wafted from chimneys. There was already activity on the cobblestone streets as the indistinct figures of people and drawn beasts became clearer at the aersloop’s advance.

“First time?” the Quarter Mastresse remarked, yawning as she came alongside.

“ Huh?” Arthur started at Isignel’s presence; he hadn’t even heard her footsteps; swordcraft practitioners were eerily silent when they wanted to be.

“ I meant to ask, first time on the frontier?” Isignel repeated.

“ Ah, that. Sure,” Arthur said, pursing his lips as the port drew closer. More crewmen roused and the big man himself came thumping on the deck while he fastened something to his forearm. An arcansygnum, or as Arthur had known it prior, a sygnum.

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“ Morn’ greets to y’all,” Ragnus yawned and smacked his lips. He fiddled with his sygnum and then satisfied something was in order, flicked a spring release. A clasp open to reveal the pearlescent gem that served as the sygnum’s main focus . It was a different make of arcansygnum from the one he’d seen Livierre use.

“ [Message]; [Chasm Port Tower]” the half-dwarf grunted, as his eyes seemed to glaze over. A moment passed and then he started talking to whoever was on the other end.

“ Aye, ‘ere be Ragnus of the Rustflint, sanctioned Guild expedition. Flyover to Aldmoor, no cargo,” he said. Getting the response he’d been waiting for, he turned to the helmsman.

“ Helmsman! Bring us about! ‘fast grub is at the ‘moor. Hold on to yer breeches! [Full Steam]! [Swift Winds]!” he bellowed. The sound of steamvanes whirring became an incessant drone as the sails suddenly seemed to bulge of their own accord.

Arthur grabbed onto the gunwale to keep from being knocked on his butt as the ship lurched underneath. Then they were flying above the waking outpost of Chasm’s Edge, getting a face full of aromas, smoke and the reek of civilization beneath them. The enchantments kept out the wind but not smells it seemed.

And less than two pars lapsed as they followed the wagon trail that cut across the Moorhill woods, passing early morning wagons trundling along with their muldyr, brunhorn and feathered volucitrex.

The Moorhill Woods truly came alive with mundane flora and fauna. Birds were roused by the shadow of the aersloop passing overhead, some taking flight in front of it . The scents of pine, mint and humus replaced those of civilization and as Chasm’s Edge fell away, the first rays of daybreak tickled his neck.

There was an expanse of farmland between the Moorhill Woods and the town walls that appeared in his field of vision. An expanse of steadings, divided into tracts and demarcated by walls of fieldstones that went as high as a fully grown man sprawled across the moor. The farms were replete with crops ripe and golden and brightly colored orchards bowing with blue, peach-like fruits that looked read for harvesting.

The houses spewing smoke from their chimneys were reminiscent of old English countryside cottages of greyish brown thatch worn to smoothness by age . Older buildings even had the wooden frames and daubed walls. There were barns and wide open ranches with grass browning in patches where the auroch and other livestock had grazed on it. It helped him place what season it was ―

“ Aestas, season of growth,” Nora said breathily as she laced her arm around his bicep. Arthur caught a glance of the Guild woman on his other side, quirking a brow before she returned to gazing at the scenery. Arthur stymied the tiniest urge to flinch as his heart did a flutter. Nora gave him a droopy look and smiled.

“ Morn greetings to you too,” Arthur murmured as he patted down one stray hair on Nora’s head. Half a quartz later, they reached the town; Aldmoor.

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It was a ringing bell that heralded the aersloops arrival while the Corvani [Sighter] waved a brightly coloured flag right above the crows nest. A similar flag was hoisted on the other side, giving them the go ahead to go over the town wall just two storeys tall. Despite seeing Aldmoor for the first time, it felt like someplace he could get used to. It was so, unmistakably human and down to earth.

Magic or not, Arthur could recognize that human sensibilities had gone into the town as he got a momentary bird’s eye view. The town seemed to have been built on a low hill, with buildings spiralling gently into quarters. He saw the Sojourners Quarter, to the left of the main thoroughfare called Havenwold Street.

The Guard barracks and notably a whole estate of stables took up the rightmost sides nearer the gate , and hosted wide open spaces. The streets from what he could tell, were cobblestone roads that ringed the uprise of the land. Two circuits in, they terminated where the layout of the city was broken up by larger more arbitrarily spread estates and establishments that screamed affluence.

There was also the council’s seat and a cathedral in the shape of a hexagon with seven steeples was obscured from view by a small grove of trees. At the crest of the ascent, grew the tallest tree standing sentinel above its shorter brethren and changing with the colours of the season. Arthur could imagine that such a place would be of commemorative significance seeing as there was no building on it.

Turning back to matters close at hand, he heard the sounds of activity as the aersloop pivoted to set down at the enclosed aerdock near the walls. The Guard barracks were a large complex that looked to be of recent construction with two double storeyed wings abutting the main building which had three floors.

It was built like an open fortress out of dark grey rock, with a crenellated flat top and towers that were taller than the top of the town's main walls. There was a training bailey between the ensconced between the wings and smaller shaded structures, then a low wall.

A road ran parallel to said wall heading off towards a portcullis before connecting with the thoroughfare beyond. The aerdock also had its own constructions including a warehouse and a single storey building which could have been the town’s version of customs and border control.

The ground rose to meet them with the winding down of steamvanes and a hiss of steam emanating from vents along the hull. There was no landing gear to extend, rather, the helmsperson eased the aersloop near an maintenance apron with berthing struts. Several other aersloops dotted the small plaza while a pell mell of activity went on around it.

“ Master and Mastresse Löwenmaul,” the [Quartermastresse] said, turning to them. “Once again, you have my gratitude for all that you have done. I hope you do not care for some manner of remuneration or some sort of liaison to help you get your bearings ,”she said.

Before Arthur could get a word in, Nora startled him by squeezing his arm with excitement.

“ We would welcome such assistance [Quartermastresse]. I assume there are some formalities that precede entry to the town?” Nora put across as the hull thunked and groaned against the berthing struts. The equivalent of a gangway on wagon wheels was carted alongside the hull ready for their disembarkment.

“ Aye, “ the woman nodded as she looked askance at the activity below. There were guards in what brought to mind riot police helmets or the imperial gallic helmets of the Romans. They had those extended earguards, a sloping neck guard, brass trim and decorative tracery which included the insignia of Aldmoor.

They seemed to favour burgundy coloured brigandine, pauldrons and a gorget worn on top, greaves and cuisses over leather pants and vambraces for their arms. And they were armed with, of all things, wands and leather saps holstered at their utility belts. Only those patrolling atop the walls had spears. All given, that was surprisingly tame; that or Aldmoor didn’t see much threat from beasts.

“ I'll vouch for your entry into the town,” Isignel remarked. “ Get them ready to disembark.”

“Beloved~ I’d like your assistance with my patient if you don’t mind,” Nora said unabashedly. Arthur almost froze but a placid, almost gentle countenance just slid in and he found himself leaning into it coolly.

“ By all means my flower ,” Arthur whispered coyly as he let himself be led away. He had been one goof up from giving away that they were not in fact betrothed and suddenly he’d played into it like a [Method Actor].

Internally however, his thoughts were chaotic with cringe and embarrassment at the public display of affection. Somehow it seemed as though they were muted and banished to the periphery; it clicked and suddenly he was aware that a skill was buoying him along. [Eye of the Storm] had stepped into the gap without his realising.

So, led by his betrothed, Arthur walked down into the compartments that could be appropriated for passenger voyages. There was not much in the way of accommodations since it was majorly, a courier vessel as its RCS designation purported. The rest of the compartments were taken up by the cargo hold buzzing enchanted with spatial rune workings.

Almost as if expecting them, the door to the first cabin slid aside to reveal a peppy eyed Margaery bursting with energy.

“ Morn greetings to you . I never realised we’re in Aldmoor already. I wager the Guild must be waiting outside.” she chimed.

“ Morn greetings,” Arthur nodded nonplussed. He was still stewing over the abstruseness of the new skill. He prodded its matrix for an inkling of what it did but it could only give him impressions. Not that he had ever been inside the eye of a literal storm.

“ Morn greetings to you,” Nora reiterated. “ We’re ready to disembark. Think you can help me with Elenaril?”

“Ah, by all means,” Margaery said, confused at Arthur’s indifferent demeanour. She turned aside and went back into the cabin. The passages were narrow, and only enough to allow two people abreast.

He stepped into the compartment, taking note of a bedraggled Elenaril and Ahnaestra who seemed to have slept in the bunks. Even with the straw filling, they didn’t look comfortable as all the beddings had been used to cushion the still comatose beast maiden. Nora hovered over Yssinia, murmuring to herself as she passed her hand over her chest and her forehead before standing aside.

“ She is still indisposed but her vitality is unaffected. You can carry her out,” Nora said.

“ Very well,” Arthur said, carrying the beastmaiden beddings and all. Nora went to check on the other sylvmaidens, giving them a clean bill of health as they all bundled out after Arthur.

As they stepped out, a fatigued Ralf and Triston the [Rogue] emerged from the second of the cabins, the former being assisted to walk. The grey bags and blueshot eyes of the mana sick mage had receded somewhat. Triston gave them a nod of acknowledgement ;Ralf was too ashamed to even look their way.

However, as soon as they emerged above deck, Arthur could immediately tell that there was a tension that had not been there before. It entered his awareness as though he had peripheral perception.

It was so much more than [Mana Sense] which had a range of 1.5 metra around him and it wasn’t [Danger Sense] that prickled the back of his neck. Rather it felt like the feeling of a pregnant cloudburst one heartbeat away from happening. He could actually feel it in his gut with surety and almost pinpoint where it was roiling from.

“ Arthur?” Nora nudged him by the small of his back. Arthur turned towards the docking plaza below.

“ There’s trouble…” Arthur murmured as he walked towards the gunwale. At the bottom of the gangplank stood an assortment of uniforms. The blue and white with silver trims of Diane’s and Claritas’ Orders and the olive green and brown of the Guild, and the burgundy of the Guard.

What drew Arthur’s eyes was the golem and a stalwart bear of a man that loomed over Isignel by a head; and Isignel was tall. From their body language, he could tell that they had been in a heated discussion.

The bear, no man, with amber eyes drew his gaze from talking with the [Quartermastresse] and stared at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. Arthur felt a chill crawling down his spine as his ring of obfuscation grew warmer.

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