Chapter 317: The Things that spark Joy (Patreon)

Chapter 317: The Things that spark Joy

Daryel, Itsu, Mercury, Zyl and Juno sat at a table in a garden. The chairs were the kind that had a gap between the seat and the backrest, so that Itsu had room for her tails when sitting. The kitsune was so delighted with their visit, drinking sweetened tea, hr white-and-red tails dancing in the air.

Mercury, for his part, had taken a more mellow tea. It was a softly herbal one, one made from herbs that the old wizard grew. The two of them were still an odd pairing - Daryel was old, wrinkled, wearing white robes. Her hair was still dark, but with streaks of grey and purple, remnants of her magic threading in.

In comparison, Itsu looked young. The kitsune seemed no older than thirty, with fair skin, and an elegant dress fashioned from leaf-green and rust-red cloth that matched her fur. Her long hair flowed down to her waist in elegant curls, with flowers decorating it. Her face had faint freckles, underneath mischievous eyes.

And yet, the two of them leaned against each other with the familiarity of old lovers. Daryel had grown old long ago, back hunched, and walking with a cane, and yet, she had stolen that sly fox’s heart. It was cute to see, Mercury thought.

Daryel brought the cup of tea to her lips elegantly, her motions graceful and practiced. They sat on a small terrace, with the trees around them providing shade. Next to them there was a small pond, with a handful of koi fish in it, and a frog or three croaking in tune with the birds.

Mercury, for once, felt safe. It had been the first thing they agreed on. Daryel made a simple promise: as long as he was with them, she’d happily shoo away anyone who came here to harass him. And he knew the old woman meant it - only because of the passive effect of his crown, born from <Itinerant>, was he able to avoid the many, many gravitational traps she placed on the walk here.

A single misstep could have launched him dozens, hundreds of meters back into the distance. It was almost funny how paranoid Daryel was, but after the shenanigans with the fae, he understood that the old wizard wanted little to do with the outside world, and was rather wary of visitors.

And despite that, they had received him and his companions very kindly. Mercury smiled at the thought, drank some tea, then dipped his head again. “Thank you for having us,” he said.

Daryel smiled faintly and waved him off, while Itsu sprouted a much bigger grin. “Oh? If you’re grateful, then surely you’ll do us a favor!”

Snickering softly, Mercury returned her smile. “If you ask to pet me, I’m afraid I’ll decline.”

Laughing in a way that showed she was entirely unoffended, the kitsune flicker her tails. “Shame! Shame on you, for having such fluffy fur and depriving me of it!” 

Daryel ruffled her wife’s hair affectionately. “Now, now,” the old lady chided. “Settle down, will you? You knew what he’d answer, anyway.”

Unrepentant, Itsu bobbed her head side to side. “I did!” she admitted easily. “But look at his grumpy ‘lil face!”

For a moment, Zyl snickered, then withered under Mercury’s gaze. “My face is not grumpy.”

“Sure is right now,” Itsu said happily. The kitsune had no dang tact!

“Only when people threaten to get into my personal space. I can see that you want to squish my cheeks, and I will very much bite you. Painfully,” Mercury said. The kitsune gave a surprised expression, then looked at her own, outstretched hands as if they were traitors, and drew them back to herself.

Despite the evident silliness and implied attacks on his dignity, no one had actually touched Mercury. Daryel and Itsu remained respectful. He could tell it was harder for the kitsune, hearing her heartbeat speed up. She was, to some degree, a creature that got where she was by eating internal organs, so he knew that Zyl’s and his heartbeat were giving her trouble.

If she didn’t like them so much, Mercury imagined she’d leap for their livers with little hesitation. Juno was the only one who seemed not to affect her, which Mercury imagined was because the wolf sat perfectly silently, like a statue. And also allowed the kitsune to brush her fur. The grey-blue mane that the sneaky wolf wore was practically gleaming, really.

Despite the long stretches of quiet, Mercury found it comfortable. Of course, there were also awkward moments. In fact, given Daryel’s mournful look at her empty teacup, he was rather convinced another one was coming up.

Sure enough, the old lady placed down the clay cup and raised her eyes to meet his. “So. Why have you come to meet us?”

“Do I need a reason to visit my friends?”

The old lady raised her eyebrow. “Yes, you do, when you look like you’ve been through hell three times over. I remember you making it through the fae realm with little more than mild complaints and a handful naps.”

Mercury sighed softly, and nodded. He laid his head down on the table. It was an entirely undignified motion, but then again, he was friends with them. If that didn’t afford him some slights to polite society, then why even bother? So, he indulged himself. “I’m tired of the martial world.”

And that was all he needed to say. Daryel’s eyes went from mirthful to mournful. “Ah,” she hummed, looking out from the shaded spot into the forest, and the mountain behind it. There was an enormous crater in it, that had since overgrown with trees, but it did look like some titanic giant had simply taken a bite out of the landscape.

Softly twirling her walking cane slash wizard staff in her hands, Daryel wistfully looked out there. “I understand that,” she said. “The martial world is brutal. Far, far more brutal than even the fae, in some ways.” She gave a deep sigh. “You’re welcome to rest here until you wish to venture out again.”

Mercury smiled happily. By ‘here’, he knew that the woman didn’t just mean their house - though that was certainly included - but the entire mountain. There weren’t many other cultivators around here. Perhaps, occasionally, one or two might pass through, making it past the traps by coincidence, good luck, or karma, but for the most part it was a perfectly mundane place. 

A perfectly mundane place he was dead set on enjoying to its fullest.

- - -

Time flew by in a heartbeat. First, Mercury spent some time sleeping. It was a single, extended nap of about twenty hours. 

In that time, for a brief moment, he appeared in his dreamscape. And there, Illuhm tried to pester him, the god hanging about in a vastly reduced form, only to be promptly kicked to the curb by Mercury. “Not today,” he said. “We’re not talking.” 

And then it was just him and the respectful silence that was left in that place. And for the first time in a while, he slept there, too. His mind, all pieces of it, closed their eyes, came together in one, and slept. 

For a long time, Mercury just decided that he had enough of the world and needed to take a deep breath. He slept on tatami mats, with blankets faintly draped over him, the room warm even in the cold night from Zyl’s heartbeat. 

When the mopaaw finally stirred, it was to the late afternoon sunrays filtering in through small windows, covered with sheets of translucent paper. There was a piece of chilled cake on a small table in the middle of the room. Mercury was, for the first time in a while, truly alone.

Zyl was outside, painting, and Juno was most likely assisting around the house. Mercury took it slow. He pulled the blanket off himself with his own paws, consciously taking care not to use any Skills. He rose, stretched for a long moment, and bathed in the sunlight on his skin. 

He took a deep breath, walked up to the table, let himself rest on the pillow in front of it. The table was so low that he could still easily see over it, even as he laid. In fact, it was almost certainly sized for him, with the legs having recently been shortened. He could still smell the faint hint of gravity-based slicing magic on it.

Shaking his head softly, he took a tiny lick at the cake. His <Worldsense> lay dormant. He didn’t look at the tapestry, or into the fabric of the world. There weren’t even other people around, whose auras he might have tracked.

For once, he gave up his eternal vigilance, simply letting himself exist. Eating a piece of cake in front of a plate slowly, bite by bite. It was made with a cream from wild raspberries or something similar, and a fluffy bottom that tasted faintly of chocolate. A few pieces of fruit were mixed into the cream.

It was delightful. He thoroughly enjoyed it. Then, after eating it, he gently pushed the place aside, and laid his head down, and closed his eyes. He rested, letting the world drift by for a few more moments. He didn’t need to sleep or be tired, but he allowed his mind to remain in an addled state.

All the while, he felt his crown tugging at him. Its passive effects wanted him to be awake, to constantly peer into the secrets of the universe, and Mercury loved that. But he was clocked out right now. His reality-warping nine-to-five could wait another little while.

So, no matter how much the Skill whined, he brushed it off. It still remained around, though, like a mosquito buzzing in his brain. “Appy?” he requested quietly, tiredly.

[Yes, dum-dum?]

“Could you please suppress the crown’s protests?”

[Processing request.]

[Acceptable. Assistance granted.]

The buzzing in his mind shut off. He breathed in, then out for a long moment. There was no need for him to understand and unmake everything in front of him. He could remain in a cozy room at his friends’ place. 

After another half hour or somesuch, Mercury finally decided to go outside. For a long moment, he stared at the sliding door, then brought up a paw and batted it aside. The wood rattled faintly as it was carried aside by momentum, and Mercury traipsed outside into the hallway.

It was a minimalistically decorated home, with only a few vases, filled with branches and flowers and flowering branches. Mercury took long moments to look at each of them. At the scuff marks in the walls, the way much of the wood was well-worn. This was an old house, with the damage that came from decades of use. The floors were a little worn out, the sliding doors creaked…

Mercury smiled. It had so much life. But he could also see that neither Daryel nor Itsu had a lot of experience with crafting. Any repairs were either shoddy or too-perfect. He walked through a hallway of worn floors and more worn walls, then down a staircase of immaculate wood that could not have been older than a year or two. 

When he stepped into the common room on the ground floor, Daryel was preparing tea. He had a feeling she did as much often. She was also cutting out another piece of cake, to place on a plate at the table, where Itsu was giggling and smiling and happily devouring the last crumbs still left in front of her.

He had a feeling that was how many days went. Itsu had the look of a woman who absolutely loved life, but was probably not to be trusted around a stove or an open fire. In fact… yes, if he looked closely, there were old scorch marks on the wall. He smiled to himself, and Daryel returned it. 

“Want me to fix that?” he asked.

It was a simple question, one that came out almost on reflex. It was just something he liked to do. If there was a problem, he wanted to fix it, if possible. He liked helping and improving things, in the same way that he liked relaxation and living slowly.

Mercury enjoyed making and repairing and ensuring that things functioned well. He wanted people to live decently, and comfortably. If he could help that, he enjoyed it. He liked smithing for that reason, and it was why he’d picked up woodworking. Much of this house was made from wood and woven reeds and small bits of metal.

Daryel smiled a little, and nodded. “Certainly. Neither of us are particularly great craftswomen, and this place has seen some use. It’s home, though, so please, don’t change things too much.” 

The old lady must have been very used to their house these days, and yes, Mercury didn’t want to ruin that. The traces of having been lived in were important, after all. Fixes, messy ones, were personal too. 

He smiled. “I’ll happily listen to any requests. Letting me take part in your living is already kind enough.”

At that, Itsu waved him off. “Oh shush! You’re offering to repair our decrepit house!” 

“D-decrepit?” Daryel stuttered, looking around. “It’s homely!”

“The walls are drafty, silly. You know how cold it gets in winter.”

“Well, I can’t deny that…” the mage conceded with a bit of a grumble. “Still, though.”

Mercury smiled. “I agree that treating things as valuable is important. I’ll do my best to repair things, not replace them.”

At that, both of the women seemed happy and gave him a nod. Daryel handed him another plate with a slice of cake - a plate that, Mercury recognized, was no longer the pristine white it had been. Zyl had evidently drawn on it, and then dried the paint with a quick application of fire.

It wasn’t anything too complex; the dragon had only brought so many paints after all. This one was mostly floral-looking decorations in green. The mopaaw smiled, took his cake, and gently levitated the plate next to him. Using up to two ghost-hand still seemed reasonable, even when he was on relaxation duty. 

Who was he kidding? The fact that he hadn’t used magic for five minutes was a miracle. He loved magic. So, he held the plate with <Force of the Hecatoncheires>, and walked outside to Zyl. 

The dragon was sitting at the edge of the lake, kneeling on a small stone plate in the grass, hunched over a mortar and some plants. Mercury strolled next to him, watching the man’s hair sway in the faint breeze. “What’cha doing?” he asked.

Zyl gave a quick turn of his head, and his concentrated expression bloomed into a frustrated smile. “Hey Mer. Trying to get some paint out of this dang grass,” he said, giving a frustrated wave in the general direction of the messy paste he’d made. 

Giving a look at it, Mercury smiled. It was… not even close to paint. It had flakes of grass all inside it, not properly ground up or anything. A poor attempt, really. But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he walked over. “Want help?” he asked.

Rolling his eyes for a moment, Zyl laughed. “Sasasa. Yes, please. I’m almost out.”

Out of the two of them, the dragon was the better gardener, and the better painter. Mercury, however, was just a tiny bit more practiced at dealing with materials. He used <Seeker of Secrets> to ask Appy for the general process on how to extract paint from the leaves, then nodded.

With a smile, he sat down in front of the mortal. He put more grass inside it, ground it carefully, and then treated it with just a little bit of magic. He solidified his mana into a sandlike consistency, creating tiny crystalline grains and adding them to the mixture. That thickened it, but also made it an abrasive, which helped separate materials.

Then he passed it through a cloth. Of course, he simply made the cloth from his Raiment, the cloudmatter turning into a thin robe, allowing only liquids and the particulate dissolved in them through. That left mercury with a watery, greenish paste, free from particulates.

He discarded the ground up bits under Zyl’s watchful eye, then used his <Magic> to gently request the water give up the pigment. It took two seconds for the two to split, and the clean water was returned to the pond. Mercury was left with a green powder.

“Now we need oil,” he told Zyl with a smile. The dragon blinked, then laughed.

“You made that look easy! That’s unfair!”

Grinning smugly, Mercury retorted, “I’m a wizard, Zyl. It’s what we do.”

“Paint-wizard. Dummy.” Despite the rough words, Zyl gratefully ruffled Mercury’s fur, and the lazy mopaaw laid down. With his oversized emotional support cat next to him, Zyl took out a bottle of oil for preparing paints. Adding it to the prepared pigment made it easy to get the paint done, and the dragon went back to his canvas.

He was using a lot of green, given that he was painting the forest scene in front of them. Mercury could see the blue of the pond, and dots of colour in it that were approximating fish. It was fun to see a painting come together, how Zyl went to work on the different areas bit by bit. 

For a long time, Mercury just watched, enjoying his second slice of cake. It was a quiet, calm life like this. Mercury enjoyed it. When the sun began to set, going from late afternoon to evening, he eventually took his log out of his inventory. Inside Logston was his smithy after all. Little Pandora, given to him by Yasashiku.

And in there, he also kept his woodworking tools, the ones he’d made himself. Thin blades crafted from cold iron and spiritsteel that he had… legally and rightfully acquired as polite gifts from cultivators. If they didn’t want him to keep the metal, they shouldn’t have tried to stab- deposit it inside his body.

Smiling at his own antics, Mercury took out the tools, and then got to work. Repairing things wasn’t that simple. He’d need wood, but didn’t want to destroy the forest in front of him, so he had to take it from his inner world. Luckily, Kim had grown many trees - some of them crossbreeds or experiments that needed removal anyway.

Mercury was able to source supremely ethical lumber from those, at only a minor need to change reality so that they could go from his dream-realm to the real world. Then, he dried them out by absorbing all moisture in them with the Storm’s Raiment, quickly making sure that the lumber was workable.

Finally, once he had the trees ready to work with… he set about just that.

<Carve>, luckily, was a weapon Skill, too. It made all his tools work that much better, seeming to understand his vision and actively work towards it. Anything he didn’t have he either simulated with the Dream of Starvation, made a temporary version from <Mercury> or the Storm’s Raiment or just crafted it. 

Frankly, when it came to getting tools ready, Mercury had more options than problems. He started by making himself a work-surface. Picking a slightly more distant spot, where he could somewhat trample the grass without trouble. 

He loved it.

Setting up a workbench, a sawbench, getting his chisels and planes ready, looking at the house and studying its joinery with his wide array of magical senses. He looked at the plants around him, the mountain, and thought about where he might find the things he needed to replace stuff. 

Juno appeared from the shadow by his side late in the evening. They talked, a little, about what she had been up to.

“The idyllic life is comfortable,” the wolf admitted, “but I enjoy keeping busy. I practice stealth in the forest. I have been experimenting with qi and shadow. It is comfortable. I enjoy the silence.” 

Her words were clipped and short, but Mercury enjoyed hearing them anyway. As she spoke, he smiled and nodded along. “I’m glad you’re having fun, Juno. Hobbies are important to have. If yours is taking walks and sneaking a bit, then that’s lovely. I’m happy for you, really.”

That bit of encouragement seemed to break her tough shell, and she squeezed her flank against Mercury for a moment, giving him the equivalent of a hug. “I am glad, then, that I get to pursue the things I wish. And that you get to do so as well.”

Mercury tilted his head for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I’ll have fun with this.”

He looked at the house he would fix over the next two weeks. The way that much of the wood had gotten wet, some of it was attacked by worms. The insulation and where it broke down, the way that the roof had a few minor leaks. He wouldn’t call the house run-down, but it showed wear. And he could see it.

Spotting the intent of the building, and where things were done a little haphazardly, and what he could learn from… It was nice. He wasn’t good at woodworking yet, but, well. 

Maybe in a few pages’ time he would be.