The next few weeks passed in a bit of a blur, and there was now less than a week before our wedding. There was a ton to do, but not much of it was exciting. I think the building anxiety of our upcoming ceremony was making me pretty distracted a lot of the time, and we were kind of waiting on others for all of our dungeon related activities right now. We had gone down to collect more of the mana-infused gems a few times, but after the excitement of the first couple delves, we knew what to expect now. Valkin's team wasn't well suited to collecting them, but the Jol'ket's team has had a decent time gathering some, so at least gathering the gems wasn't all on us.

  After I had grown one of the blue moon lotus flowers for Celeste, she hadn't asked me to grow another for her. I didn't want to be there when the others delivered the flower petals and the lotus seeds to Celeste, so I don't know what they told her about what happened, but she hasn't brought it up to me again since. I was kind of glad about that. The experience had been strangely hard on me for reasons that were difficult to put into words. I did hear from Luna later that they had successfully created the potion, so at least my efforts hadn't been in vain. I suppose I'm not totally against doing it for her again, but I'm not in any hurry to. I don't think I would do it again for free, though.

  Our group had been split up a lot more over the last couple of weeks. Luna had been spending more one on one time with her mother in the dungeon. Now that Celeste had helped me get a better handle on my instincts, she shifted most of her attention to Luna. Celeste was personally teaching Luna some new spells and working on sharpening some of her casting techniques. Luna was mostly self-taught, except for what she learned under Milana. As good of a teacher as Milana had been, Celeste was on an entirely different level based on the way that Luna talked about her. Luna was also refining some of her lightning magic, and since Celeste shared the affinity, they were working on improving the lightning spells together. After I explained the difference between DC and AC power and told her about concepts like power lines and generators, I had essentially run out of things to teach her about electricity. Most of what I've told her about lately was just the various applications of electricity in my old world.

  I knew a little bit about logic gates and binary, and I tried to explain them to her since they were loosely related to electricity, but I could tell pretty quickly that Luna wasn't as interested in that sort of thing. I'm sure someone would be interested in the basis behind computers, but that would have to wait. In the meantime, Celeste had given me a leatherbound journal to take notes in. I've begun to write down everything I can remember about math, science, and technology, just in case any of it becomes useful in the future. It was a struggle to remember a lot of the details since I didn't have access to the internet anymore, but the earliest I could write a lot of this down, the more likely I would be able to remember it. I wasn't sure when or how to share this information, so I wrote it all down in English rather than draconic so I could keep it to myself for the time being. I had gotten a lot better at reading, writing, and speaking in draconic between the practice I had done and some of the comprehension I gained from... eating those people. But at this stage, I think it was better to keep a lot of my notes in my native language. I'm sure it could probably be translated, since draconic follows a lot of similar grammar patterns to English, but it would probably still be a struggle. I wasn't really that worried about it anyway.

  Piper was splitting her time between working with some of the soldier healers and spending time with Alto. Piper had a lot of anatomical knowledge from some of her training as a child and what she had learned from using one of her magical abilities to essentially scan someone's body. However, even my rudimentary knowledge about the human body was surprisingly helpful to her. Since she had that diagnostic magic, she could verify or fill in the details of various explanations I gave her. She was quick to share this information with the soldiers and get them to open up about some of their abilities and training in a knowledge exchange. When she wasn't doing all of that, she was hanging around Alto and flirting with him.

  The two of them were really cute together. Piper blushed anytime anyone brought him up. As devastating as her teasing had been, she can not take it at all. Even light ribbing makes her totally red and clam up. It's always really amusing, and it's become one of Maxwell's favorite pastimes. Alto had gotten even more creative with his cooking lately, since there was little else for him to do other than find new ways to cook crab. Crab-topped pizza was becoming a quick favorite among the soldiers who were willing to shell out some of their earnings for the cheese. I found the topping absolutely disgusting on pizza. My opinion didn't really stop the soldiers from enjoying it though, and even Luna seemed to like it! Gross.

  Iris and Aria spent a lot of time working with the soldiers on the first floor. Iris seems to have finally hit her soft cap on how much the crabs empower her, but the two continued to work on other techniques together once she reached that point. Iris is still pretty new to magic in general, so she's been working on improving her fine control, something that's more useful to wind mages than most other spellcasters. The two of them have been working hard to use Iris's wind magic to make Aria's shooting more deadly in different ways, and it seemed like there were a lot of improvements to make there. There were other mages who had wind affinity among the soldiers who were willing to give her some help as well. It had become an open secret that Luna and Celeste were related, and some of the soldiers were eager to find ways to ingratiate themselves with our team to hopefully get some positive attention from Celeste. It actually worked too. Celeste seemed to know almost everyone who was under her and was happy to hear that some of them were willing to help Iris improve. Occasionally, Iris and Luna worked together to practice their parallel casting as well, which is different from concurrent casting, apparently. Combining their magic to create an altered effect is distinct from enhancing each other's power by mixing your magic together to cast the same spell but bigger. It took a bit of time for Luna to explain the difference to me between what she was doing with Iris versus what she had done with Celeste.

  When Aria wasn't helping Iris, she was spending lots of time with Maxwell, obviously. The two of them really got along well, and already acted a bit like a married couple. It was fun to watch them joke around and tease one another. Unlike Luna, the two of them had no reservations about sex before marriage, based on the scents I smelled on them regularly. It was a bit embarrassing to admit that I could usually tell, so I hadn't... actually told anyone how easy it was for me to detect. The two of them acted so casual afterwards that I didn't want to call them out on it, and it didn't bother me, so I just kept it to myself. I really hoped neither of them cheated on each other, though. I would be able to tell in a heartbeat, and I really didn't want to deal with that.

  Maxwell kept himself busy, but since he didn't have much to do himself, he mostly hung out with one of us. He occasionally spent time with Me, Piper, or Aria and Iris, but rarely with Luna. I think he was trying to respect her time with both me and her mother. He was mostly waiting around to see what the crafters would cook up to help him fight the bugs on the third floor, but I wasn't sure if there were plans for us to go any deeper after that. The dungeon was obviously valuable enough for them to lock it down, so I don't think Celeste wanted Luna to tempt fate anymore. She wouldn't be able to protect her everywhere she went, but there was no reason to send Luna any deeper into an uncharted dungeon when people... more expendable to Celeste, could go instead. She had gotten enough information to come to a conclusion on the dungeon, so she didn't really need any more information at this stage.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I was broken from my meandering thoughts when Emi found me in the common area. "Miss Helena, My Lady Celeste told me to bring you back to her tent. She wanted to show you a few fabric samples," Emi told me.

  "Sure." I stood up and followed the drakken through the camp. Everyone seemed pretty busy right now, which was a little peculiar at this time of day. "Is something happening?" I asked.

  The silver-scaled drakken looked back at me. "You haven't heard? Dragon Prince Callisto is arriving today with another group of soldiers and builders. They're beginning the fortifications around the dungeon, and My Lady wanted Dragon Prince Callisto to be present for your wedding."

  Emi knocked on the post next to Celeste's tent, but proceeded inside after only a moment when no one answered. I turned and closed the tent behind me as I had done the many times I've come here to train with Celeste. I then proceeded to follow Emi through another flap into a separate area filled with boxes and another desk.

  "My Lady wanted to show you these fabrics to choose from for Luna's dress. Miss Luna insisted that the details of the dress should be chosen by you, despite it normally being the mother's duty. She said that you two spoke about it?" Emi asked.

  "Ah." I nodded. "She promised to follow some of my customs regarding the dress. I'm pretty open, I just want the dress to be white and fancy looking."

  "Yes, My Lady told me Miss Luna suggested something similar. We have a few choices here. This one is the brightest white we have, though it's pretty plain if you ask me. This one is fancier and has a quality lace trim, but it's more of an off-white. There's also this one, but I don't know..."

  Emi pushed the three samples to me and I looked at them. The off-white one wasn't too bad, but it was more like a very light beige. I looked at the third one, which was less fancy than the beige one, but it was closer in color to the first. The only problem with it was that the texture was just... not that appealing. It almost felt like burlap or something. I know it was white, but this would make for an awful dress.

  "Would it be possible to use something like this first one as a base, and then use the fancier one on top, or as an accent or something?"

  Emi scratched her chin. "I think something like that can be arranged. We should discuss this with the seamstress. I think My La—"

  Her musing was interrupted by the tent flap being thrown open in the other room. The voices of Celeste and two others carried through to the back of the tent, and then all the sound beyond the tent fell away as Celeste activated the thing that isolated the sound from outside. Emi's eyes went wide, and she glanced at me before miming for me to remain quiet. I nodded and perked my ears.

  "Why are you really here, Saiph?" Celeste growled.

  Celeste's other brother, the one I had only ever seen once before, sighed. "I'm here to act on our father's will in his place. You would technically be insulting the crown by talking that way to me... but since I'm here to tell you that you're reinstated as fourth in line to the throne, I suppose that doesn't matter anymore."

  Callisto's voice cut in, "Now, Celeste. I know how this looks, but there's actually a good reason for why he's here..."

  There was a pause, and from the time that I've spent with Celeste, I imagined she was glaring at Callisto right now. "What reason would that be, my dear brothers?"

  I could hear some faint shuffling from the other room, and from the way the sound bounced, I could make out how awkward the two brothers looked using my echolocation.

  "Father is sick. He has been hiding it from all of us... for a while. Two weeks ago, he told us that he's not expected to last much longer," Saiph finally said.

  "What? Father is dying? How long?" Celeste asked in mild panic.

  "He's not expected to make it another month, likely even less than that," Saiph replied grimly.

  Hello! It's coming! Only a few more chapters till it finally happens! Buuuut, some interesting things are coming up right at the worst time. Things are getting complicated back in Ironcastle. The two brothers came back just in time for Helena to listen in on what will probably be quite the important conversation. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading!

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