Chapter 129. The Trip Begins
The next morning, I am entirely reinvigorated and ready for whatever may come. In our case, a whole morning of packing. I'm not too ruffled about possibly forgetting something, given the availability of teleporting, but I'm guessing this line of thought is just too novel for people to jump onto. Therefore, the whole mess with filling up my airship with the stuff we will ostensibly need for a month-long cruise across the not-Europe.
For once, I just take the backseat on everything and entrust the decisions to my wives and family. I'm just feeling really lazy right now. No specific reason, I'm just struck with an inexplicable urge to sit and watch people run around. It's soothing. Oh, I'm also sorta programming in the background? Sort of. Porting, I guess. I did promise Cy Doom and Carmageddon on the tablets, so...
By the dinner, I am more or less done, and so are the porters packing the stuff into the airship. Bridgit took advantage of the layover to completely strip out every single linen and blanket and replace them with freshly laundered ones. Thoughtful of her. A similar kind of deal went for the larder - leftovers out, fresh food in. What else? Hm. It seems like we're actually all set to depart in the afternoon. And this notion does not arouse any objections. It would have in the past - when you travel by horse and carriage, leaving after midday is rather silly, given the inconvenience of guiding horses in the dark and the lack of decent light sources. Magic does help somewhat in that regard, but until my introductions, the best on offer was a sort of magical torch that was essentially a clump of quartz on a stick with a bunch of loops for flowers to attach to it. On one hand, it was low-powered enough to make the type of flower largely irrelevant, so it could be resupplied simply by plucking any random flower on the field, no matter the alignment. On the other, it provided exactly as much light as one would expect from an actual torch, if without the accompanying smoke. Meaning it was all but useless in the rain and did not permit better speed than a leisurely trot even in calm weather.
Dwarves are all over the headlamps I designed for them a while back, tho. Does require a little getting used to, but they were already familiar with the idea of "wear a skullcap when mining for safety", so all I had to do was pitch the idea of attaching a lantern to it. Looking into reinforcement spells was very useful for this, as the enchantment I have ultimately settled on used the bobbing of the miner's head to store up the mana in a simple coil, feeding into formulae etched into a flat button at the bottom of a half-spherical cup of polished metal capped with a slab of glass to keep it nice and reflective. All of that riveted to the iron skullcap with padding. Much to my relief, dwarves accepted the moniker of "miner's helmet" without any problem. I guess it was in a big part ensured by the fact none of them needed to question what the name actually means. See, I did learn from the disaster that was naming the new roads. Which, much to my chagrin, will probably remain "tar roads" for the foreseeable future because even the most simple to explain "blacktop" just didn't catch up.
Speaking of tar roads, the teams graciously provided by the kingdoms of Champagne and Kraut are going at it full-tilt, and I expect the Kraut side will be ready for my intervention within the week because in accordance with the plans I provided, they are building a road up to a cliff near the caldera blocking the way further into the Ashenvale. My plan is simple. The old tract, insofar as I could ascertain, winds up over the southern edge of the caldera and then downwards into it, and exits through the crack between two cliffs. This path is now not traversable due to the crack in question being partially filled with stones. Which on its own would be annoying, but fairly trivial to dismantle, if not for the thousands upon thousands tons of ash behind this barrier. Attempts to dismantle the barrier have been made before, as can be seen in the league-long scar of scoured land extending from it. The attempt was made shortly after the eruption when the ash was still hot, and according to the accounts of the resulting ash avalanche, only a tenth of workers survived the wave of ash that eradicated all life in a fan of black and grey. What few trees were girthy enough not to burn off outright became bizarre outcroppings of coal sticking out of the pumice layer. Since then, it was "common knowledge" in Kraut that trying to break open the "Dwarven tomb" was to court quick and inevitable death.
I doubt it would be easy to get the locals to buck the tradition, and it is not needed anyway. Instead, I intend to bore a tunnel that would connect an elevated spot through about two arpents of cliff rocks straight to the point where the old tract is about to begin a descent into caldera, thus circumventing the whole ash pit entirely. A number of dwarves had departed earlier soon after my demonstration of cement mixing to set up a camp at the mouth of Ashenvale from Champagne side. They come with a big supply of preserves and hunting implements and pre-made girders and timbers in order to quickly dig in and establish a point of arrival for the road. There is an unfortunate truth that all the road construction is heavily dependent on snowfall, and while light dusting is not that much of a problem, a serious snowstorm would halt the progression of all road crews in the area for a good while, potentially all the way to spring. Magic helps, but there is only so much magic that can be brought to bear when a significant chunk of your workforce is convicts.
The good news is, the road to Ashenvale itself is pretty well-established and extremely well-used, even though the years since the eruption had significantly lowered traffic on it in the eastern part. So the crews have much less work to do with it than one would expect and can move much more quickly along it. It also helps that with Abe's tacit approval, I have shifted all the work crews that could be reasonably moved into the area on time to pave that road. Once it's done or once the snow hits it so bad nothing else can be done, the crews will be distributed back to the neighboring lands to further their infrastructures... Except for those who will be retained for work in Ashenvale itself. For this, dwarves who are establishing the head camp are provided with several different versions of protective clothing and gear with instructions to test them in Ashenvale conditions and report on it. By the time we're ready to de-ash the old tract, I expect a basic hazmat suit ready for use, as well as some basic work-up to supplement the workers with dry cement and cement-pebble blocks to construct the road with. Ashenvale stretch will have elevation and parapets to ensure the road is not covered in ash. The stretches most likely to be ashed up will get full-sized walls to keep the ash at bay. Of course, those places will be also the first spots where we will be taking ash from for the cement once the head camp at the mouth of Ashenvale grows into the cement factory I have envisioned.
Pursuant to that, the last task that dwarves in the head camp had was to locate the most convenient deposits of limestone to exploit. I have been assured by them that limestone is relatively abundant in the mountains throughout the range and that it's a given there would be many different deposits for use within the Ashenvale, as they WERE used by dwarves prior to the explosion, but limestone is relatively weak and I had no clue just how badly the deposits within the vale would be damaged by heat and ash contamination. Best locate some deposits outside of vale but close to the camp, simply to make it easy to keep the proportions before a more advanced cement-mixing setup can be built and calibrated to handle the ash contamination.
___
"Alyssa." - well, that seems to be an... interesting conversation my father's about to start, given the mood and inflection - "We need to talk."
"Mm? What's wrong?" - I offer languidly, as I push aside the last report from the dwarves I've been doublechecking.
"You're slipping." - he says bluntly - "And I am not sure why."
"Slipping?" - I echo.
Dad winces. "I.. WE were aware you have... a special connection with magic." - he proceeds - "I have done my best to downplay and trivialize those issues, but... It's still showing. I am not certain why. Maybe you are simply losing control of your magic because you keep running yourself ragged. Or maybe it's your magic bursting at the seams and making you manic about putting all that you have glimpsed beyond to record..."
He pauses, sighs, then soldiers on - "Anyway, well... I want you to pay attention to what shape you are when you talk to other people. Particularly so, our allies. In a way, we are lucky that la Vallieres have been our friends for generations by now. Most other people would have called Inquisition on you. Who would have found nothing objectionable, I dare hazard a guess, given how friendly you are with sir Malachi, but call an Inquisition they would. As it stands, I had no choice but to tell Carolus about your, ahem... childhood foibles, let's call them so."
"Huh. Alright? But why?" - I am a little puzzled, to be honest.
"Because having an inborn penchant for shapeshifting magic that you worked hard on controlling is more palatable than having no explanation at all as to why you would suddenly sprout scales." - he proffers with a deep sigh - "Gods help me, Alyssa, I love you with all my heart, but do you ever make it hard being your parent sometimes."
Huh. Yeah, he actually has a point. I'm making things harder for him than they should be.
"...Sorry." - I offer after some consideration - "You are right, though I am not certain if there actually is a good way to solve this. Because I would wager that being randomly dragon is just a tip of an iceberg insofar as my oddities go, no?"
"Only ever so slightly, my dear." - he snarks.
___
"Final check, ladies." - I offer lazily - "Everyone who goes aboard, everyone who stays on the ground? Good, good. In that case, we have liftoff."
And we do. If I charted the route right, we're going to very briefly stop over at Berlinger in the morning so I could give Alphonse an update on the Ashenvale and notify him of certain financial... updates. While insofar, I am decisively coming on top of every altercation with Klaus that I have, I do plan to register my disapproval of his tactics in a manner every king pays attention to - by raising the prices. Not by much, this is a token gesture, but over the bulk orders it would quickly add up. I have intentionally targeted luxuries and military goods to make it blatantly obvious who's pocket I'm punching. I do wonder, however, what will be the conclusions Alphonse makes from that message? He does not strike me as a man who would pander to his vanity in spite of common sense, but then again, Klaus is supposed to be a master spy. Which is not something I'm really seeing here, given his bumbling. Do I really have THAT much of an advantage over your ordinary noble, or there is something wonky going on with Klaus? Maybe whatever it is he does to come back from the dead is not perfect... Hrm. Something to mention when I'm talking to Hiram next time, I guess.
"What do you want for supper, Alyssa?" - Bridgit jolts me out of political scheming with a surprisingly mundane question.
"A, uh... Did anyone else ask for anything yet?" - I fumble for some answer.
Bridgit shakes her head lightly. "Other than Cy wanting micropizzas, whatever that is... not so much." - she offers.
"Oh. Well, why don't we make pizzas, then?" - I go with the suggestion, such as it is, as I turn around and start towards the kitchen, making Bridgit snort and follow me.
"You know, one would think that one of the perks of having a maid is not needing to cook personally..." - she teases.
"But I like cooking." - I object matter of factly - "Especially with my maid."
Given how she blushes, I guess I got that one out right.
___
Upon hearing the reasons for me wanting to stop over in Berlinger, my harem (and daughter) had all voted for departing as soon as I'm done talking to Alphonse. I counteroffer to simply send off an instance to land at the castle once we are flying over the Berlinger, which is the plan of action we all end up being in agreement with. And so, I split off an instance, goose it up and toss myself out of the zeppelin window. Good times.
I am... a little bit cavalier about such things recently, come to think of it. On one hand, I did overhear enough to understand that my little quirks are not quite as little as I have thought, but thankfully for me, everyone who noticed (aside from my harem and daughter, obviously) are all explaining it as consequences of defilement. Explains the conversation I had with dad before departing, come to think of it. I really need to reel it back a little. My family indulges me quite a lot in that regard, so if they are voicing their concerns, then maybe I should put some effort and attention into being less blatantly inhumane.
With that in mind, I find a good spot slightly outside the castle to land, shuffle out of possible view and scan the surroundings for potential witnesses before inflating into a human shape. Alright, covert injection is a go. Let's see... Huh. On one hand, I am tempted to randomly show up within the castle to spook Alphonse up. On the other, I really shouldn't be spooking him up THAT much. Seriously spooked kings tend to give less than ideal orders. So I simply approach the gate along with a selection of other people. It might be that he has no room in his schedule for me, in which case I will simply leave him a letter.
"...Pardon me, fraulein, but are you perchance of the house Gillespie?" - one of the gate knights asks in Albish. His accent is funny, come to think of it. Nothing even close to usual Kraut. Considering his olive skin tone and thin features, I surmise he was born somewhere in Pharos. Wonder how'd he ended up a knight in Kraut kingdom.
"Alyssa Gillespie, yes." - I confirm. No real reason not to.
"Ah!" - and suddenly I find myself shuffled out of the crowd and towards the gatehouse. Politely, mind you. Wonder what's up.
"We were informed you might be visiting incognito." - the guy from before proffers - "What can we do for you?"
Oh. Abe must've warned Alphonse I have a habit of just showing up at the gates when I have something to show. Well, no reason for him not to, they are related and all that jazz.
"Well, I do have an update for his highness regarding the progress of the Ashenvale tract and the latest price list." - I explain - "Since we talked last, Grand Forge had mastered new products. Some of the old wares are priced differently now, as well. I would like to speak to his highness if he has the time, otherwise I will just leave the papers for his perusal whenever convenient."
"I see. If it pleases you, I will call the servants to show you in and notify his highness about your visit. They will inform you if there is time for an audience right now or not." - he proffers after a moment of consideration. Works for me.
Chapter 129. The Trip Begins
The next morning, I am entirely reinvigorated and ready for whatever may come. In our case, a whole morning of packing. I'm not too ruffled about possibly forgetting something, given the availability of teleporting, but I'm guessing this line of thought is just too novel for people to jump onto. Therefore, the whole mess with filling up my airship with the stuff we will ostensibly need for a month-long cruise across the not-Europe.
For once, I just take the backseat on everything and entrust the decisions to my wives and family. I'm just feeling really lazy right now. No specific reason, I'm just struck with an inexplicable urge to sit and watch people run around. It's soothing. Oh, I'm also sorta programming in the background? Sort of. Porting, I guess. I did promise Cy Doom and Carmageddon on the tablets, so...
By the dinner, I am more or less done, and so are the porters packing the stuff into the airship. Bridgit took advantage of the layover to completely strip out every single linen and blanket and replace them with freshly laundered ones. Thoughtful of her. A similar kind of deal went for the larder - leftovers out, fresh food in. What else? Hm. It seems like we're actually all set to depart in the afternoon. And this notion does not arouse any objections. It would have in the past - when you travel by horse and carriage, leaving after midday is rather silly, given the inconvenience of guiding horses in the dark and the lack of decent light sources. Magic does help somewhat in that regard, but until my introductions, the best on offer was a sort of magical torch that was essentially a clump of quartz on a stick with a bunch of loops for flowers to attach to it. On one hand, it was low-powered enough to make the type of flower largely irrelevant, so it could be resupplied simply by plucking any random flower on the field, no matter the alignment. On the other, it provided exactly as much light as one would expect from an actual torch, if without the accompanying smoke. Meaning it was all but useless in the rain and did not permit better speed than a leisurely trot even in calm weather.
Dwarves are all over the headlamps I designed for them a while back, tho. Does require a little getting used to, but they were already familiar with the idea of "wear a skullcap when mining for safety", so all I had to do was pitch the idea of attaching a lantern to it. Looking into reinforcement spells was very useful for this, as the enchantment I have ultimately settled on used the bobbing of the miner's head to store up the mana in a simple coil, feeding into formulae etched into a flat button at the bottom of a half-spherical cup of polished metal capped with a slab of glass to keep it nice and reflective. All of that riveted to the iron skullcap with padding. Much to my relief, dwarves accepted the moniker of "miner's helmet" without any problem. I guess it was in a big part ensured by the fact none of them needed to question what the name actually means. See, I did learn from the disaster that was naming the new roads. Which, much to my chagrin, will probably remain "tar roads" for the foreseeable future because even the most simple to explain "blacktop" just didn't catch up.
Speaking of tar roads, the teams graciously provided by the kingdoms of Champagne and Kraut are going at it full-tilt, and I expect the Kraut side will be ready for my intervention within the week because in accordance with the plans I provided, they are building a road up to a cliff near the caldera blocking the way further into the Ashenvale. My plan is simple. The old tract, insofar as I could ascertain, winds up over the southern edge of the caldera and then downwards into it, and exits through the crack between two cliffs. This path is now not traversable due to the crack in question being partially filled with stones. Which on its own would be annoying, but fairly trivial to dismantle, if not for the thousands upon thousands tons of ash behind this barrier. Attempts to dismantle the barrier have been made before, as can be seen in the league-long scar of scoured land extending from it. The attempt was made shortly after the eruption when the ash was still hot, and according to the accounts of the resulting ash avalanche, only a tenth of workers survived the wave of ash that eradicated all life in a fan of black and grey. What few trees were girthy enough not to burn off outright became bizarre outcroppings of coal sticking out of the pumice layer. Since then, it was "common knowledge" in Kraut that trying to break open the "Dwarven tomb" was to court quick and inevitable death.
I doubt it would be easy to get the locals to buck the tradition, and it is not needed anyway. Instead, I intend to bore a tunnel that would connect an elevated spot through about two arpents of cliff rocks straight to the point where the old tract is about to begin a descent into caldera, thus circumventing the whole ash pit entirely. A number of dwarves had departed earlier soon after my demonstration of cement mixing to set up a camp at the mouth of Ashenvale from Champagne side. They come with a big supply of preserves and hunting implements and pre-made girders and timbers in order to quickly dig in and establish a point of arrival for the road. There is an unfortunate truth that all the road construction is heavily dependent on snowfall, and while light dusting is not that much of a problem, a serious snowstorm would halt the progression of all road crews in the area for a good while, potentially all the way to spring. Magic helps, but there is only so much magic that can be brought to bear when a significant chunk of your workforce is convicts.
The good news is, the road to Ashenvale itself is pretty well-established and extremely well-used, even though the years since the eruption had significantly lowered traffic on it in the eastern part. So the crews have much less work to do with it than one would expect and can move much more quickly along it. It also helps that with Abe's tacit approval, I have shifted all the work crews that could be reasonably moved into the area on time to pave that road. Once it's done or once the snow hits it so bad nothing else can be done, the crews will be distributed back to the neighboring lands to further their infrastructures... Except for those who will be retained for work in Ashenvale itself. For this, dwarves who are establishing the head camp are provided with several different versions of protective clothing and gear with instructions to test them in Ashenvale conditions and report on it. By the time we're ready to de-ash the old tract, I expect a basic hazmat suit ready for use, as well as some basic work-up to supplement the workers with dry cement and cement-pebble blocks to construct the road with. Ashenvale stretch will have elevation and parapets to ensure the road is not covered in ash. The stretches most likely to be ashed up will get full-sized walls to keep the ash at bay. Of course, those places will be also the first spots where we will be taking ash from for the cement once the head camp at the mouth of Ashenvale grows into the cement factory I have envisioned.
Pursuant to that, the last task that dwarves in the head camp had was to locate the most convenient deposits of limestone to exploit. I have been assured by them that limestone is relatively abundant in the mountains throughout the range and that it's a given there would be many different deposits for use within the Ashenvale, as they WERE used by dwarves prior to the explosion, but limestone is relatively weak and I had no clue just how badly the deposits within the vale would be damaged by heat and ash contamination. Best locate some deposits outside of vale but close to the camp, simply to make it easy to keep the proportions before a more advanced cement-mixing setup can be built and calibrated to handle the ash contamination.
___
"Alyssa." - well, that seems to be an... interesting conversation my father's about to start, given the mood and inflection - "We need to talk."
"Mm? What's wrong?" - I offer languidly, as I push aside the last report from the dwarves I've been doublechecking.
"You're slipping." - he says bluntly - "And I am not sure why."
"Slipping?" - I echo.
Dad winces. "I.. WE were aware you have... a special connection with magic." - he proceeds - "I have done my best to downplay and trivialize those issues, but... It's still showing. I am not certain why. Maybe you are simply losing control of your magic because you keep running yourself ragged. Or maybe it's your magic bursting at the seams and making you manic about putting all that you have glimpsed beyond to record..."
He pauses, sighs, then soldiers on - "Anyway, well... I want you to pay attention to what shape you are when you talk to other people. Particularly so, our allies. In a way, we are lucky that la Vallieres have been our friends for generations by now. Most other people would have called Inquisition on you. Who would have found nothing objectionable, I dare hazard a guess, given how friendly you are with sir Malachi, but call an Inquisition they would. As it stands, I had no choice but to tell Carolus about your, ahem... childhood foibles, let's call them so."
"Huh. Alright? But why?" - I am a little puzzled, to be honest.
"Because having an inborn penchant for shapeshifting magic that you worked hard on controlling is more palatable than having no explanation at all as to why you would suddenly sprout scales." - he proffers with a deep sigh - "Gods help me, Alyssa, I love you with all my heart, but do you ever make it hard being your parent sometimes."
Huh. Yeah, he actually has a point. I'm making things harder for him than they should be.
"...Sorry." - I offer after some consideration - "You are right, though I am not certain if there actually is a good way to solve this. Because I would wager that being randomly dragon is just a tip of an iceberg insofar as my oddities go, no?"
"Only ever so slightly, my dear." - he snarks.
___
"Final check, ladies." - I offer lazily - "Everyone who goes aboard, everyone who stays on the ground? Good, good. In that case, we have liftoff."
And we do. If I charted the route right, we're going to very briefly stop over at Berlinger in the morning so I could give Alphonse an update on the Ashenvale and notify him of certain financial... updates. While insofar, I am decisively coming on top of every altercation with Klaus that I have, I do plan to register my disapproval of his tactics in a manner every king pays attention to - by raising the prices. Not by much, this is a token gesture, but over the bulk orders it would quickly add up. I have intentionally targeted luxuries and military goods to make it blatantly obvious who's pocket I'm punching. I do wonder, however, what will be the conclusions Alphonse makes from that message? He does not strike me as a man who would pander to his vanity in spite of common sense, but then again, Klaus is supposed to be a master spy. Which is not something I'm really seeing here, given his bumbling. Do I really have THAT much of an advantage over your ordinary noble, or there is something wonky going on with Klaus? Maybe whatever it is he does to come back from the dead is not perfect... Hrm. Something to mention when I'm talking to Hiram next time, I guess.
"What do you want for supper, Alyssa?" - Bridgit jolts me out of political scheming with a surprisingly mundane question.
"A, uh... Did anyone else ask for anything yet?" - I fumble for some answer.
Bridgit shakes her head lightly. "Other than Cy wanting micropizzas, whatever that is... not so much." - she offers.
"Oh. Well, why don't we make pizzas, then?" - I go with the suggestion, such as it is, as I turn around and start towards the kitchen, making Bridgit snort and follow me.
"You know, one would think that one of the perks of having a maid is not needing to cook personally..." - she teases.
"But I like cooking." - I object matter of factly - "Especially with my maid."
Given how she blushes, I guess I got that one out right.
___
Upon hearing the reasons for me wanting to stop over in Berlinger, my harem (and daughter) had all voted for departing as soon as I'm done talking to Alphonse. I counteroffer to simply send off an instance to land at the castle once we are flying over the Berlinger, which is the plan of action we all end up being in agreement with. And so, I split off an instance, goose it up and toss myself out of the zeppelin window. Good times.
I am... a little bit cavalier about such things recently, come to think of it. On one hand, I did overhear enough to understand that my little quirks are not quite as little as I have thought, but thankfully for me, everyone who noticed (aside from my harem and daughter, obviously) are all explaining it as consequences of defilement. Explains the conversation I had with dad before departing, come to think of it. I really need to reel it back a little. My family indulges me quite a lot in that regard, so if they are voicing their concerns, then maybe I should put some effort and attention into being less blatantly inhumane.
With that in mind, I find a good spot slightly outside the castle to land, shuffle out of possible view and scan the surroundings for potential witnesses before inflating into a human shape. Alright, covert injection is a go. Let's see... Huh. On one hand, I am tempted to randomly show up within the castle to spook Alphonse up. On the other, I really shouldn't be spooking him up THAT much. Seriously spooked kings tend to give less than ideal orders. So I simply approach the gate along with a selection of other people. It might be that he has no room in his schedule for me, in which case I will simply leave him a letter.
"...Pardon me, fraulein, but are you perchance of the house Gillespie?" - one of the gate knights asks in Albish. His accent is funny, come to think of it. Nothing even close to usual Kraut. Considering his olive skin tone and thin features, I surmise he was born somewhere in Pharos. Wonder how'd he ended up a knight in Kraut kingdom.
"Alyssa Gillespie, yes." - I confirm. No real reason not to.
"Ah!" - and suddenly I find myself shuffled out of the crowd and towards the gatehouse. Politely, mind you. Wonder what's up.
"We were informed you might be visiting incognito." - the guy from before proffers - "What can we do for you?"
Oh. Abe must've warned Alphonse I have a habit of just showing up at the gates when I have something to show. Well, no reason for him not to, they are related and all that jazz.
"Well, I do have an update for his highness regarding the progress of the Ashenvale tract and the latest price list." - I explain - "Since we talked last, Grand Forge had mastered new products. Some of the old wares are priced differently now, as well. I would like to speak to his highness if he has the time, otherwise I will just leave the papers for his perusal whenever convenient."
"I see. If it pleases you, I will call the servants to show you in and notify his highness about your visit. They will inform you if there is time for an audience right now or not." - he proffers after a moment of consideration. Works for me.
