There had been very little fighting for Jerome since he got to Alvion. Old Wen had yet to wake, except for a few times when he was woken to take some food and water. His frame had filled out incredibly and he was packing enough muscle to resemble his old self. But the damage done to his body was extensive and required time to heal.

  The Messengers hadn’t been able to breach the city walls since Jerome introduced his rifles to Vorthe’s army manning the walls of Alvion. And the Judges outside the city were waiting for something; he was pretty sure it was another Elite — maybe a few.

  A temporary underground chamber was provided to Jerome to begin his work in Alvion. He was able to automate the process of creating rifles in less than a tenday — a testament of being able to perform arcane magic of the fae. Achilleia helped to supervise the whole thing while he worked on creating a flying artifact for Ash. Man-sized golems filled the place, moving crates of bullets and guns through a portal to the battle front.

  During that time he met with the Lord of the City, Lord Ismethil Ullysius. A broad-shouldered, hunk of a man with the look of a war veteran. He was average in height — at least to Jerome — with a full brown beard and long shoulder-length, chestnut-colored hair. The man walked around with a chip on his shoulder and only showed deference to Vorthe’s Sages.

  But Nyx scared the hell out of him and he stayed away from her as much as he could. The rest of his teammates try to stay away from him out of respect for his status, but Jerome had come to realize that the man was a rake and had no control over his urges. But not only was he the Lord of the City, he was also a Sage — a poor excuse for one, but one still.

  “I’ve never seen him come here,” Ash said as she watched Jerome work. “He doesn’t know about your workshop, does he?”

  The sound of whirling machinery and the heat of molten steel from his blast furnace had become a constant in his life in the past few days that Jerome was used to it. Others, however, weren’t — except for Nyx. Even Ms. Tara, who was a fire essence wielder, wasn’t used to the extreme temperatures of this chamber.

  “Are you okay being inside here?” he asked.

  “Well, the heat is slightly uncomfortable but I’m fine,” Ash replied.

  Jerome looked her over to make sure. “To answer your previous question. No, he doesn’t.” He pulled the boot he was working on off the last holding it in place. “Put this on.”

  Ash took the boot from him. “Wow, a metal boot. It’s lighter than I expected. How does it work?”

  Jerome smiled as she looked it over. “It’s made of a lightweight metal and absorbs essence both from the air and your ring, or you — which I hope never happens. There are essence storage crystals inside it that traps and preserves essence for use. And a complex mechanism inside it is powered by the runes of flight on it to help you fly.”

  That was a watered-down version of it but it got the point across.

  “Do I need to take off my boot to put it on? It feels like it can just go on like that.”

  “No, you don’t. Just put it on.”

  Ash wore the sleek, black metal boot over her right leather boot, while trying to move her thick long tresses out of her face. She stomped it a little on the ground to let her foot settle in. Her right leg looked twice as big as her left because of it though, and a bit funny.

  “It’s not going to break, is it?”

  Jerome chuckled. “It’s a lot sturdier than you might expect. How does it feel?”

  “It feels… I don’t know but it’s not uncomfortable.”

  He nodded. “Guiding essence outside your body is not possible for now so you have to rely on your ring. I made the boot voice-activated because of this, but beyond that most of the process is automated.”

  “Automated?”

  “It means—”

  “Operated without the need for manual control.” She shrugged at his look. “Achilleia has been teaching me.”

  Jerome smiled to himself. “First you have to bind it; and then speak an activation phrase.”

  Ash bound the boot to herself and screamed, “Fly as fuck!”

  The boot instantly gave off a mechanical hum, vibrating gently.

  Jerome almost couldn’t believe what he just heard. She laughed at him saying, “Your jaw’s on the floor, Jerome!” But concentrated again on the boot as changes began happening.

  The shaft of the boot extended upward, gripped right below her knee and extended some more, reaching halfway up her thigh. She flexed her leg, squatting and standing to test the flexibility of the metal. Subtle glowing essence pathways within the boots metal framework lit up and some runes etched beneath the surface of the metal lit up as well, lighting the boot up like a futuristic Christmas tree.

  Jerome cleared his throat. “How does it feel?”

  “I can feel it, somehow, just like I can feel my computation ring. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Don’t you want to fly?”

  “Shouldn’t it fly with just my intention?” she asked. “Did I need to say those words to get it to work?”

  “Those words are a failsafe; to keep someone else from taking it from you. When I bonded with my gauntlets during Pilgrims’ Keep, there was no activation phrase, so no failsafe — well, a failsafe could be anything. The gauntlets could have been taken from me, my bond to it ripped away by someone more powerful than I. You get the point?”

  Ash nodded and looked up. The ceiling of the chamber was thirty feet high. As if the boot knew of her intentions, it lifted her a few inches off the ground. Ash held her arms out trying to balance herself. White light glowed out of the sole of the boot as it propelled her upward some more. She looked up and the boot shot her upward but she lost her balance and tumbled through the air.

  “Calm down, Ash,” Jerome said. She regained her balance in the air and landed in front of him.

  Ash began to talk excitedly, vibrating in exhilaration. Jerome shushed her with a palm and chuckled.

  “Are you calm now?”

  She nodded, still excited about the result.

  “This is just one of the boots, that’s why you can’t find balance. When you have both, I’m sure you’ll be able to fly smoothly.”

  “Let me go show Ms. Tara and Aunty Nyx!” She wanted to bolt out of the room but Jerome held her back.

  “Uh-uh” — he shook his head — “You can’t take it along with you. Create a deactivation phrase.”

  She pouted. “Stay put like shit.”

  “Seriously?”

  She shrugged, still pouting.

  The extension of the boot retracted into the boot and its grip on her leg loosened. She took it off and ran for the door, but rushed back to give him a kiss — a full blown kiss on the mouth.

  “I can get used to that,” she said, smiling, then dashed out of the room again.

  Jerome shook his head in thought. Nyx was right. Ash wasn’t so innocent at heart anymore.

  ~~~

  He spent the next few days creating a second pair for the boot. Others were in the works but this first pair needed to be tested for reliability. He trusted his handiwork but it still paid to test it.

  The First Matron visited him soon and they chose a day to test Ash’s boots. But she also came to discuss a topic he had been expecting as well.

  “You’ve done quite well for yourself here,” she said looking around, which she absolutely didn’t need to as a careful scan with her perception would tell her all she needed to know about the place.

  “I try,” Jerome said. “Are my rifles to your liking?”

  “Yes, the boomsticks are quite effective in taking down the Messenger clones.”

  “‘Boomsticks’, I didn’t want that name to stick.”

  The Matron shrugged. “It’s what everyone’s calling them now, so you might as well go with it.”

  “I’ll be needing more catalysts soon—”

  “Yes, we’re working on that,” she said impatiently. “I do not know why you need strange orange or greenish crystals to make steel but the only arid climate we can probably find something like that is the deadlands.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Oh,” the Sage looked at him as if realizing who she was talking to for the first time. “I forget you’re the Fated Dark One sometimes, and that these things haven’t been taught to you.” — Jerome shrugged — “The deadlands are between the Redwood Forests and the lands of the Church. Vast swaths of arid lands affected by the Cataclysm from eons past.”

  “Why did I never read about it? Wait, don’t answer that.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  She smiled at him. “Anyways, the deadlands are the best places to find your gem-like mineral deposits.”

  “Carnotite… There’s also vanadinite. They’re usually found in aged sediments and from them, I can extract vanadium which I can use to temper the steel, making it lighter yet stronger.”

  “Car.. nonite?” she said, giving him an odd look to which he shrugged. “Is that what they’re called in your previous life… world?”

  “Huh,” Jerome muttered in near shock. “Exactly how many people are in the Curia Regis?”

  “We’ve got scripts to help temper our steel,” she argued, dismissing his question. The number of Sages in this ‘Curia Regis’ must be a secret, which actually made sense. Who would reveal their strength to a potential enemy? “I see the usefulness of it and I am curious to know more but… time isn’t on our side…”

  Jerome nodded, thinking about how and when he could make a trip to these deadlands himself. It would have been great to have someone run this errand for him, especially since there was a potential of extracting uranium from carnotite — if this world even produced the mineral. But if it could form metals like gold and silver, it should form such minerals like vanadinite and carnotite.

  “Understood,” he said. “I can extract what I need from the ores you provide but those gem-like crystals produce more. And trust me, it is better to temper steel this way, with Mother Nature’s own creation. It’s more durable and lasts longer.”

  Except they used runes but who would waste precious energy to craft runes just to create rifles?

  “The twins tell me that you created a… an artifact out of gems that destroyed the portal in the jungle. The ‘particle-antiparticle generator’?”

  Achilleia tittered in his head.

  “A collider,” Jerome said. “A particle collider.”

  “You said it yourself, you’re not good at naming things. Why you thought you could do better than the scientists in your previous world is beyond me. They were the scientists, you are just becoming one.”

  Well, that’s humbling.

  “Hmm. Gotta make sure your head doesn’t grow too big and pop.”

  The First Matron mused over his words for a while before saying, “Particle Collider. That is very telling. How does it work?”

  Here we go, Jerome thought. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that,” he said, looking her in the eye. To her credit, she didn’t try to push him. There was nothing in his contract with Vorthe that said he had to reveal knowledge to the Royal Family or anyone else. “What I can tell you is that Vorthe has neither the knowledge nor the capabilities to recreate it… yet.”

  She nodded. “The city lord has provided us with a training ground outside the limits of the city to the north to keep away prying eyes when we test Ash’s boots. They are ready for testing, are they not?”

  “They are. But hers wouldn’t be the standard by which you should grade the rest I’ll produce.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see. However, could I interest you in another trade?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Horses. Draft horses…”

  She laughed. “You took the Church’s horses?!” She laughed some more. “Where are they anyway?”

  Jerome shrugged with a smile. “When you’re ready we’ll go get them.”

  “Very well. We’ll talk later.”

  ~~~

  Outskirts of Alvion. The Northern Gate.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been holed up in that place for almost two tendays, Jerome,” Ash said, stomping her booted feet on the ground. “I think I’ll die of boredom if I were you.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “I was doing something I’ve come to love doing.”

  “So how does this thing work?” the First Matron asked. “Does it have a name?”

  “Thinking of one, still,” he responded.

  Jerome took in the fresh air of the field around them. Winter was coming and the fall breeze was cold and dry. The grasses had turned yellow and leaves fell all around them from the scant number of trees around. He could hear a brook nearby and smell the freshness of the water in the air.

  “So?” the First Matron asked again.

  “Yes. Skysails function by manipulating the air around the wielder so they can control it to fly. This artifact functions through propulsion. It burns essence to propel the user forward and they can manipulate it to change direction.”

  “Huh!” the First Matron exclaimed. “That’s impressive. But don’t you think you’d burn a whole lot of essence trying to do this. Skysails are useful because they are not only fast, but energy efficient.”

  “But they cannot get Sprouts above a certain altitude; and cannot be used by Blanks. If we truly want to break the limits of flight, we have to use something that can create an upward thrust that is equal to the weight of the individual flying. There’s also manipulating space around you, but if Vorthe could get every Sprout out there to do that you wouldn’t need me, would you?

  “My creation might consume more essence than normal but from my calculations, it’ll be just a quarter more than normal. I plan to support it with another artifact to make it more energy efficient. But for now, this is what I can offer.”

  “Well, you made these boots in just two tendays so… let us see what they can do.”

  “Fly as fuck!” Ash said and the First Matron screwed up her face in disgust.

  Jerome sighed. “I’m in the process of removing that function.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Don’t remove it,” Ash whined.

  Madam Sheela Vorthe watched in awe as the boots hummed and lit up, extending up Ash’s thighs. Ash shot up into the air and flew around the field, screaming excitedly at the top of her lungs. She was still sloppy at flying but she was doing it nonetheless.

  “How long can she maintain that?”

  Jerome took a look at his pocket watch, timing her. “Do you mean her speed or just the flight in general?”

  “The flight.” She glanced his way, studying him. “You’re… ticking. What’s that sound?”

  “This,” — he held up the pocket watch — “is a timekeeper. It tells the time as I designed it to.”

  “Ah! Princess Aeldra informed the Academia about your claims of time. I’m not convinced though.”

  But he could tell she was curious about the golden, circular, flat item in his hand.

  “Ash will not run out of juice anytime soon by the way. But hers is a special case. We will need to find a Sprout to experiment on the next pair of boots I make.”

  “It is already a miracle of incredible proportions that you could get a Blank to fly.”

  It wasn’t that impressive to him but he kept that to himself. “Tell me, Esteemed Sage. How long is a moment?” he asked.

  “An inward breath, by our standards,” she answered. “But that also varies.”

  Jerome held out his timekeeper to her. “Listen to the ticking sound. We can conclude that that’s shorter than a breath, can’t we? And a moment can be shorter still. I call this duration a ‘second’. Sixty of this second makes a ‘minute’, and sixty of this ‘minute’ makes an hour. Three hours make a quarter of a day and twenty four of it is more or less equivalent to the duration of a full rotation of the planet.”

  The First Matron looked at him in shock. “You know about the rotation of the planet?!”

  Jerome nodded. “You know about my reincarnation, Esteemed Sage. Why does this surprise you? I think it pales in comparison.”

  She shook her head slowly and deliberately. “To you maybe; to me it was a discovery that shook the foundations of all that I knew; a discovery that reshaped how I perceived the world around me, and how I interacted with it.”

  “Perception, huh,” Jerome muttered in thought.

  “Yes. It may not make much sense to you until you advance to Pillar; when you advance to Sage, it will become even more fascinating. It’s also fascinating to hear the things you speak with my own ears.” She looked away from him at Ash who was still giggling and screaming in the air. “Layla will be here in a few days. When the next pair is made, I will like to see you test it on her.”

  “Noted. But why Layla though? Thought you’d like someone who’s a Vorthe through and through to own it.”

  The First Matron shrugged. “She’s acquainted with you. And she misses her friend. Oh.” Her brows went up in pleasant surprise. “They have stabilizing runes.”

  Jerome didn’t like that she saw through that so easily. “The runes resonate with the wearer’s essence through the boots, which becomes a medium through which intent is passed, enhancing control and stability.”

  “Impressive. Not many young artificers know the difference between runes and scripts; not many of them have the endurance to work with runes if made available to them, talk more a network of runes. The ajanai is not for children to play with…” She gave him a look. “That is not to say that there are many young artificers your age, Jerome.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.

  “Coming from her, it’s a true compliment,” Achilleia said. “She isn’t the First Matron of the Academia of Sanctum for nothing… I’ve been doing some digging of mine.”

  “This timekeeper of yours, though,” the Matron continued. “What’s the use of it? Our sundials can tell time enough as they are.”

  He shrugged. “You never know what you were missing until you have a taste of it. I miss being able to tell time or the exact duration of time it takes to do a certain thing. By calculating time so minutely, mankind can calculate speed.”

  She looked up at him in shock again. “Say that again…”

  “I said by calculating time so minutely, mankind can calculate speed — the speed of moving bodies, if I might add — which is merely a factor of distance traveled against the time taken… I miss dates—”

  “Dates?” She turned to look up at him, confused. “There is no way you know about dates. They’re not native to this continent.”

  “Not the fruits — which I do know of. In my previous world, days had names and were grouped into seven.”

  The First Matron snorted. “That sounds erroneous.”

  “To you, maybe. To me it’s the norm. And the groups of seven were further grouped into four and some days, to make a third of a season and so on. These we called months. Days had names, like I said before — as did months, and could be noted down. That day that is noted is called a ‘date’. I could talk about it all day, but Vorthe already has a system in place which I don’t plan on trying to change. And it’s not really important right now.

  “There were so many other things humans were able to achieve in my previous world. Even without essence. There were trials and there were errors, and there was advancement in technology.”

  “I take it there weren’t many wars in this world.”

  Jerome snorted. “Oh, there was a lot. Some of which sped up the advancement of technology. But we advanced more as a civilization after those wars. We reached a certain stage in advancement and began making leaps and bounds, doing things that were thought would take decades.”

  The First Matron took a deep breath and exhaled. “Maybe Vorthe is open to dialogue,” she said, looking back as she sensed one of his teammates flying toward them. “You never know.”

  Was she testing me all this while?

  Achilleia gave him a mental shrug.

  Csala dropped out of the sky as the Matron walked away and took to the air. Jerome looked at Ash who was still enjoying her flight, oblivious to the fact that the test had ended. He smiled to himself, enjoying the beauty of her flight patterns in the air. Her laughter and excitement was contagious, and it took away the weight of the responsibilities on his shoulders for a moment.

  Csala walked up to him with a sly smile on her face.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in battle?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  She smiled sweetly at him. “You know, we never did start that show you wanted before the Alignment.” Her long red coat covered her from neck to boots but her words brought back the memory of their time right before the Alignment in Terra Praeta. “What was it you said, you’d love to, ‘peel off every layer of cloth on me just to see’...” She opened and closed the coat, flashing him with a beautiful picture of her nakedness.

  Jerome picked her up and Csala laughed, her laughter like the tinkling of bells in the summer breeze. The smell of her lush red hair stirred his loins and he hardened in moments. He shot upward, headed for the tower they were staying in.

  “Hey!” Ash called out. “Where are you headed to?”

  “Back to the tower, Ash!”