CoESC Book 18-14.1: Sagebright Archipelago (Patreon)

By the time they docked the Sea Sage, the fires were still being fought. The Brosmore firefighters were fighting the spread of the flames that were consuming the buildings, and they were hampered by rubble, stray ‘kippers, and broken or damaged equipment. Yuriko didn’t know how she could help, especially considering how the plane pressed down on her at the moment. 

Unlike the sensation when she was alone in Rakkisgrad, or while the Sea Sage was at sea, she could feel the restriction against casting. Well, it was more accurate to say that her Animakinesis felt the pressure keenly. Her aura was dispersed into a perception pattern, but normally, it was easy to shift it to active kinesis. Irisvaile exerted pressure on her Anima that prevented that transition, though the pressure was less on the Sea Sage. Normally, she wouldn’t feel the restrictions at all unless she tried kinesis, but here, she could feel the suppression even if she wasn’t attempting kinesis. She frowned as she attempted to buckle the pressure, and it increased to the point where she could feel cracks beginning to form. 

It was a pity she wasn’t here in her true body, but then again, the pressure would be too weak in that case. Either way, she had briefly thought to use the bolt spell with the water Element to aid the firefighters, and while she wasn’t actively prevented from actually doing it, she knew from lectures over the past week that doing so out in the open would provoke planar backlash. She wasn’t quite eager to find out what that meant.

Still, she was stronger than the average person, so she could help in other ways. Like help evacuate trapped people, perhaps? She was just about to jump over the railings when the captain yelled out from the pilot cabin, “Everyone stay on board!” 

Yuriko turned to look at the man, and he grunted in irritation. “They have it well in hand. Need to watch if there’s more ‘kippers.” 

She sighed and nodded, then turned to help those she could, namely, Nemeo and the others. Come to think of it, if she left, only Elaine was in any shape to protect the yacht. Well, the magus, the captain, and the two deckhands. And the cook, probably. 

Hours passed in this manner, and it was already sunset by the time the fires were put out. The volcano had ceased rumbling, and the smoke pillar had diminished, but the eruption had not finished, as far as she could tell. She’d been forced into idleness, so she simply returned to working on her Truths. Forging her Sword Seals was more complicated than she anticipated, especially as it grew larger. The need to crunch all back down complicated the complex arrays she had to make in order to represent that part of her Truth. In contrast, the Satellite Swords were so much simpler. Everything was already laid out, and there was no need to continue crunching them down. The complexity of the satellites didn’t lie in their initial construction but in how she balanced them against each other and the core. Her true self had the advantage there, of course, as Radiance was on a higher tier than the Sword. It meant she didn’t need that precise a balance point to handle the satellite swords. Indeed, her true body already held hundreds of them within the core as opposed to the three she had at the moment. 

Her Sword Seal was already at the sixth layer, and was halfway done with the seventh. Unfortunately, she found out that the design she had used for the first six layers wouldn’t work for the seventh. She felt she could force it, but afterwards she wouldn’t be able to construct an eighth layer. That was troubling, as she felt that she could only safely build a fourth Satellite Sword once she had seven layers, and a vague inkling that she’d need more than two additional layers to build a fifth. 

She sighed at the limitations, but then she considered how her Astorian incarnation was limited in the same way. Actually, her Astorian self had not converted her Truth forging quite yet, and had simply made a Satellite Sword to keep in her core. Swordlight weaving was limited in a different way than Sword Seal forging in that longer and longer Swordlight strands were needed to increase the core’s progression. She didn’t have the specifics of her other incarnation’s design as the true body had limited the sharing of such information between each body. All the better to innovate without cross-contamination. She wasn’t sure what to think of it as the synchronisation schedule had changed. Also, this incarnation only synchronised with the true body rather than all three of them at once. 

At the very least, it still happened at dawn, and on days divisible by five since the last contact. She usually spent an hour going through varied memories and experiences, and while this incarnation of hers gave everything to the true self, the reverse didn’t quite happen. Specifically, she had no idea what her other incarnation was up to. She knew why, however, and was satisfied with it. 

Only when the harbour town had stopped burning did the ship’s bursar and cook come out from the galley. Leonard Corriveau was a tall, thin, almost gaunt really, man who served as the ship’s steward, bursar, and chef. He also had a no-nonsense attitude and a keen understanding of how much young magi needed to eat to function and grow. As it were, supplies that would have lasted the crew the entire sixty-day journey barely lasted a sixth of that time. She heard him grumbling about the inconvenience of meeting his contacts and suppliers over the troubles in town.

“Do you need help?” Yuriko offered as he made his way to the gangplank. 

The austere man eyed her contemplatively, then shook his head, “I will be fine, child.”

Yuriko accepted that and didn’t insist. While her true self might have done so, some of Amalia’s instincts actually had to do with seeing how much she could push other people’s buttons, and she knew when someone wouldn’t be cajoled from their intent. 

She did stay on deck until the man returned a couple of hours later. His severe face looked sour, though there was resignation there as well. 

She wasn’t sure what the resolution had been, but instead of leaving the next day, the Sea Sage would remain berthed for a couple more days. Yuriko decided to explore the island the next day and said as much at breakfast. 

“Perhaps it would be better to further your studies instead?” Elaine pointed out. 

“No.” 

The older woman shrugged, then added, “Well, stay out of trouble.”

Lucian looked like he wanted to protest, but Yuriko shot him a quelling look, and he subsided. It wasn’t as if she could leave the island on another ship anyway. 

There was a thin plume of smoke rising from the volcano that morning, and Yuriko was interested in getting a closer look. She still wondered at the coincidence of the thing erupting right as the Mudkippers attacked. It had been the talk of the town that she couldn’t help overhear. 

Contrary to what she expected, she couldn’t actually get to the volcano simply because it was actually on another island half a longstride from Brosmore’s eastern shore. There might have been an isthmus connecting the two islands a while back, but there was none now. 

The water was nice and warm, not just from the eruption but the actual current, and she supposed, the season. A few hours meditating on the beach while in front of the volcano gave her some ideas with her forging pattern, and perhaps she was halfway into designing the next layer. The trouble was that she had to abandon the energies she’d already infused in her previous attempt, and she would need to start from the beginning, which meant it would take several weeks to finish the seventh layer. Afterwards, she’d work on the fourth Satellite Sword. 

In the meantime, she’d practically ignored Arcana Weaving. Even the local variant wasn’t all that useful, if not for the fact that their set of basic Reinforcement spells could stack indefinitely. She couldn’t see the particulars, of course, and that was probably the only gain she’d get from attending Bellemer. Still, anything that helped her design interlocking seals could help. 

Her thoughts turned to her actual mission. Her children. One in the northeast, and another in the southeast. Her meditations turned to feeling them out, but the emotions were stunted. They would not normally be her responsibilities, considering her only contribution to their birth was her blood, forcibly taken in combat, but she couldn’t help the connection. That and they would no doubt lead to retribution against the one who engineered all of this. She wondered if this incarnation would be forced to return to Bresia to confront them, or if her other incarnation must do it. She didn’t see her true body would have enough time to return. 

Then, she wondered if she could actually face foes at that level with her current, meagre power. That was rather frustrating, and she also wondered if her children were accompanied by that empire’s forces. It would make sense, since children had no way to take care of themselves at that age. Speaking of age…how long had they lived in this time-accelerated plane? How old would they be when she saw them? 

That shouldn't have troubled her, but it did. She spent a bit more than three hours in meditation to settle her emotions. By the time she opened her eyes, the Sun was just about to set, and the shadows covered the sands. 

Idly, she stretched her perception into the waves, then frowned when she caught something at the edge. She switched her aura from a sphere to a cone, and while it caught the creature within her range, its own resistance to being scanned by perception aura spooked it. 

Sploosh!

Since it was near the surface of the water, a bit of its tail and fins surfaced as it retreated. Yuriko noted the long, serpentine body, covered in scales almost the same colour as the water. The ridge on its spine wasn’t that pronounced, but still noticeable. Moments later, it was out of range. 

Curious. 

Yuriko sighed. It ran, though, rather than confront her. She wondered if it was an animal rather than a sapient being, but discarded that notion easily. Beasts weren’t normally scared of her perception aura, and unless they were of a certain level of power or enlightenment, they wouldn’t even notice. That it reacted meant it was intelligent. Possibly hostile, possibly just curious. This was also something that she couldn’t do anything about. Her Animakinesis was still locked within her body, and while she may be able to push it out enough to envelop her so she could make herself waterproof, it would still be a strain. So no underwater adventures for now. Ah, there might be spells for that. Her true self didn’t know any, but perhaps she could learn in Bellemer. 

Ah, that was one reason to take the academy seriously. Their spell library should be extensive. She could shore up the gaps in her Arcana Weaving knowledge there. Still, she couldn’t linger too long, and she’d give the entire thing a few months. Probably a Season. 

She returned to Brosmore town, circling the fire-damaged areas. The buildings actually had stone walls rather than wood, which somewhat limited the spread of the flames to the quarter where it started. 

Once back in the Sea Sage, she spent the rest of her evening, and most of the next day studying, and extrapolating her seventh-layer Seal. By the time the yacht was ready to leave, the Seal design was ready for testing.