Chapter: 521 Bonus - Townsfolk (Patreon)

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Donavin meticulously worked over the ridges and vanes across the top-deck of Sunnydale. The fine-tuning was done with complex magics that he and his ilk had no hope of ever truly understanding, but those complex magics worked by manipulating these physical features of the town, and so if they weren’t well maintained, the town wouldn’t keep flying as they wished.

His fingers held on with sure strength as he clambered around the outside of the top half of the town. He hoped to prove himself once again, to earn the right to be allowed back on the underbelly.

He knew that it was his own fault. He’d worked himself too hard and had actually fallen asleep while hanging from the lowest deck, and only his safety equipment had kept him from plummeting to his death.

Unfortunately, that usage had taken power that he couldn’t replace himself, so he was forced to earn its value once again.

That’s how the certification worked. Underbelly work paid far better, and a part of earning that place—aside from proving competence in general—was buying enough power for his safety gear to activate and keep him alive.

It was his own fault that he hadn’t done as his mentor had suggested and bought twice the required amount as soon as he could afford it.

He’d spent the money on luxuries for himself and his family, which, in retrospect, weren’t worth this delay in returning to higher paying work.

He didn’t begrudge those who had relegated him to the upper decks once more. He didn’t have the safety equipment. It would be deeply unkind for them to allow him to put himself at risk just to try to earn a bit more money.

More than that, his skill was such that he was able to do more of the upper-deck work than most, so he ended up being paid more than the journeymen, even if not as much as he would be making once he was on the underbelly once again.

But all of that was just underpinning his current task.

He pulled his utility knife from its sheath and worked it down through a gap between the sky-stone panels, cleaning out the buildup that had accrued since the last cleaning of this section.

His other hand—and the cleats on his boots—held him with ridiculous ease on the side of the town. He could be there for hours without difficulty.

He didn’t need hours.

With three practiced strokes of his knife—a gift from his father when he’d chosen this profession—he did the work a journeyman would take ten minutes to accomplish.

His knife didn’t skip or skate.

He had no fear of marring the sky-stone, and he had the strength to force the blade where it needed to go. He trusted the steel of his tool, and knew its limits as well as he knew his own body, better even as he was getting older, and the knife was as good as the day he was given it.

As he moved to the next flange that needed to be scraped clean, he glanced toward the right.

His relegation topside wasn’t all bad. His eldest, Danvan, had followed him into this trade, even while the other kids had been satisfied with hold work.

The young man was still just an apprentice, but he was picking up the skills with a rapidity that made Donavin proud.

He might even earn journeyman soon after I get back to the underbelly.

A flash of light off of steel brought another smile to his lips as Danvan used the knife that Donavin had gifted his own son, following the tradition set forth by his father, and his father before him back for uncounted generations.

They were Sunnydale men, and they helped keep the town in tip top shape up there in the sky.

It wasn’t glamorous work, but the work was good.

Life was good.

  *

Jinrac was grateful—with the subconscious trust of one long accustomed to the safety—for the straps that held her down on her seat tightly as she swept out and around the cloud elementals of her herd. The silent glider moved at her will as she controlled it without having to consider the controls that were long since second-nature to her.

It was invisible, made out of the refined cloud elemental fleece that she and her fellows harvested. That made it easier for them to work near the banks, as well as providing natural lift and a basis for the maneuverability.

The particular elemental bank was all stirred up, moving toward a storm, though most of that was concentrated around the alpha.

Not every cloud had elementals in it—not even every storm did—but most of those in the north seemed to have them.

She couldn’t claim to actually own these particular elementals, but she had been cultivating them and shearing them for the last decade or so, herding them along in Sunnydale’s wake with her partners and colleagues.

As the elementals swirled, fought, danced, mated, and played, they watched for tendrils of their substance which would occasionally extend beyond the main bodies.

As soon as one such tendril was spotted, it was flagged and the nearest of them would swoop in, shearing it off and bolting for the distance as the elemental that had been shorn raged, often throwing lightning in a fit of pique.

The creatures were never in pain, Jinrac had learned that early on. It was more in offense that something that they’d thought was theirs had been taken away.

The elemental ranchers also worked to break up fights that escalated to the level of actually harming the elementals in a permanent fashion. The great magical beasts—each thousands of cubic feet of indeterminate matter—weren’t very intelligent, and herds of them would often simply consume their own, and their environment, to the point of dying out entirely.

Jinrac and her cohort kept that from happening.

Sunnydale accumulated moisture in a myriad ways, and as it shed the droplets, they worked to help keep that moisture contained enough to draw the herd on.

A rolling thunder echoed from Cumuno—currently the largest of the elementals—flickers of lightning sparking within his slowly darkening majesty.

Jinrac sighed.

He was posturing, trying to gain space to split, so that the new little elementals wouldn’t be immediately swarmed and slain.

That wouldn’t happen under her watch, but the instincts ran deep in the cloud elementals.

Cumuno’s display did cause the rest of the herd to draw back and away, pulling closer to Sunnydale from underneath, though they were still well below the town and still within the ranch’s cloaking field.

The internal lightning strikes picked up pace as the cloudmatter darkened over the next hours.

It was near sunset when a particularly thunderous boom shook the sky, sending her sky-skimmer skipping sideways.

The clouds were painted ruddy hues in the failing light, but as Jinrac headed back for Sunnydale—waving at her replacement for the night shift—she glanced back to see two cloud elementals drifting apart from where Cumuno had been, each a bit less than half the size of their progenitor.

They would now be the smallest of the herd, the bottom of the pecking order, but they would grow.

Cumuno was gone, but the essence of who he had been lived on.

Jinrac smiled, looking down on the alien—but familiar—landscape below.

She’d never set foot on the ground, and she never planned to.

Why would she want to?

Her life was in the sky, with her elementals.

And it was a good life.

  *

Heather wedged herself deeper into the paradox that she lived in every day.

Her lithe gnomish frame barely fit between the completely transparent walls and the magical mechanisms she was working on.

She was on the edge of claustrophobia, even with her experience and small stature, while at the same time she could see for miles in almost every direction.

It was a beautiful paradox.

Her nimble fingers worked to realign the various pieces and pull out the parts that her concept let her know were spent.

They could have had magically self-repairing equipment, but the result would have been for her and those like her to become unemployed. Additionally, there would have been an even greater demand on the town's magical resources, and that was not a safe way to operate.

It was a balancing act, where they did the things that couldn’t be done without magic first, and then allocated the excess to ease the burden across the whole of the town in a way that wouldn’t destroy any sector's ability to continue if the supply of magic was reduced.

The town couldn’t allow itself to become too dependant on power, not when the availability of that resource fluctuated so much over the years.

But that wasn’t really her concern.

She liked her work, and these levitation engines were a joy to work on.

They were much too cumbersome and hard to maintain for smaller settlements to use them, but they had the benefit of gaining much greater lift and stability from the same amount of magic in trade for the finickiness.

She snorted at her own thoughts as she brought a tool to bear to pull a more stubborn component free.

Finicky was hardly extreme enough for her to think it an accurate description, given they had four such engines and it took a miracle for more than two to ever be operational at the same time.

A burst of power-rich fuel splattered across her face and chest, seeping into her clothing and roiling off her protective coveralls.

Covermosts is more like it…

She wasn’t sure how the fuel was created, but she didn’t need that knowledge to do her work. It was part of how the engines were so efficient though, so she would put up with it, regardless. Thankfully, it wasn’t toxic, and that’s all that really mattered in the moment.

After tucking the last of the spent parts into a pouch, she pulled out the replacement and worked it into place with a satisfying click.

Closing her eyes, she felt along the component before activating her concept with a minimal amount of power.

It’s… sound? No issues?

Heather let out a bark of laughter before wriggling back out of the tight confines.

She was no Montgomery, but if she was right?

She laughed again before calling out. “Jamison! Final checks. The was the last issue I could find.”

A dwarvish head poked out, looking down the gap toward her. “Truly Heather? You got it?”

“I think I did. I don’t want to come out before you verify, though.”

Her concept was great for checking physical integrity, while Jamison’s was perfect for verifying that a mechanism would work.

Together, the two of them covered most issues that could arise.

She felt his power radiate through the engine and a moment later, he called down. His voice sounded a bit defeated. “It’s all good, save a missing pin on the eighth compressor.”

Heather groaned. The eighth compressor was in the center of the engine. How could she have missed that?

The answer was simple. The pin was missing, not broken. There was no damage for her to have detected.

Still, her magics could fix the issue…

“Hey, Jamison?”

The dwarf poked his head over the edge. “Yeah?”

“I think after my session in that Ironhold place I have the efficiency to replace the pin with magic. We still have above fifty percent of what was allocated, yeah?”

He scrunched his face and scratched his braided beard. “We do… Are you sure? We only have a small allocation of power to get this done, and we’ve used almost half with the scans already.”

She gave a slow nod, remembering the insights she gained while bathed in Honored level power. “Yeah. I can be far more targeted. Do we have the pin?”

“We do.” He held it out over the drop. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

He dropped it, and she caught it with ease. “Thanks.”

She clambered up a bit more until she was at the right level, referencing her memories of the schematics to be sure.

Right… there.

She then wiggled and wriggled until she was as deep into the engine as she could go.

If it turned on now, she wouldn’t even know something had gone wrong before she was crushed, sheared, and torn to bits.

That was irrelevant, however.

She closed her eyes, focusing her concept like she’d rarely been able to before. Everything intact and in its right place.

Now that the pin was in the engine, she could tell it wasn’t where it should be. She could also feel exactly where it should be.

With a push of power, the pin zipped from her hand, not even pinging off the surrounding parts as it snicked into place, the far end deforming as if they’d properly peened it into place.

She exhaled, opening her eyes.

She felt at her power reserves and let out another barked laugh. She hadn’t used more than they had in reserve. She could refill back to the level she’d been at before the work began, and she might even be able to take in a bit more in the split with the dwarf.

Even as she wriggled backwards she called out. “Jamison! Call me a miracle, because this beauty’s ready to go.”

The dwarf barked a laugh even as they both did targeted checks, using up almost all of the remainder of their allocated power. Anything they used beyond that would be at their own expense, any extra was theirs, but a failure? That fix would come from their pocket entirely.

“Green!”

Jamison called back at almost the same time. “Green!”

She clambered up, out of the access hatch and into the main work room for this engine. “Do we have authorization to fire it up?”

Jamison was watching the signal panel, and a moment later it flickered through a vibrant series of colors and shapes. “We’re approved. We are to fire it up to one third capacity.”

They shared a triumphant grin. By getting it online earlier than expected, they would reduce the strain on the other engines, and in theory, they would all work for longer without needing deep overhauls.

“Would you like to do the honors?”

Heather shook her head. “Go ahead, good sir.”

He chuckled and moved through the firing sequence.

The engine gave a bark before settling into a floor-rumbling purr that was almost immediately lost among the standard sounds and feel of the town.

Nothing broke, nothing went sideways, and Heather watched as the gauges for the other levitation engines showed them slowly ramping down to balance out the load with theirs as it came online to the requested output.

The signal panel flickered again, causing Heather to beam.

They were getting a bonus for quick, efficient work.

The resources she’d spent on the magic immersion with the strange travelers had been so worth it.

It was a good day indeed, and things were only looking up.

  *

Gretha sang to herself as she grabbed the power intake handles. Her simple inscriptions just channeling the majority of her power out into Astraya’s reserves.

She’d done this literally every day of her life, though the early years had been with something akin to a baby rattle.

It had been required so that her body didn’t acclimatize to the higher levels of power enjoyed by gated. If her parents had let that happen, selling her power would have made her feel sick. Now, she felt amazing whenever she wasn’t selling her power, and just normal when she was.

It was a delicate balance, where she had to sell her power for much of each day or her body would acclimatize regardless—that was a one way change—but that was fine.

The portable power feeds were less efficient, and caused her to retain a higher percentage of her throughput, but they accomplished mostly the same dampening of the acclimatization.

Those around her in the power refill station chatted quietly, or joined her in song here and there. It was a simple life, a good life.

The leaders of their town, Astraya, had a standing offer for any of them to get other inscriptions, to pursue the path of a combat Greater, but Gretha had no interest in that life.

Here she could read, sing, chat, and be with friends and family, and her daily wages were generally as much as skilled workers made in multiple days of hard labor, once their expenses were factored in.

But her desire to follow this path was about more than money; she wanted to be able to remain for her descendants.

Her own ancestors helped pay for all that her family enjoyed—including her own upbringing and training—their lifetime of giving power had imprinted those magics on their very souls to such an extent that even in death they could continue to bless those they cared for.

She looked out through the large bay window beside her chosen station. She didn’t always want to see the swaying landscape, but it was always there, ready for her to enjoy. On many days with such good weather they opened the windows and simply enjoyed the breeze and scents of the surrounding plains.

She shifted, bringing her knees in contact with the lower donation plate even as she seamlessly switched where she sent her power. That change established, she released the handles with her hands without disrupting the flow in the slightest. That allowed her to take up the lunch plate that Martha handed her way. “Thank you, Martha.”

She inhaled slowly, savoring the myriad wonderful smells.

“This smells absolutely excellent.”

Martha gave a gratified smile and bowed. “Of course, Greater. Can I get you anything while I’m here?”

“No, thank you.”

“Good day, Greater.” Martha bobbed another bow and went to get the next meal for her next charge.

Few enjoyed such wonderful food, and Gretha’s mind was free to explore through her own imagination, through books, or through the entertainers who were brought in for them on occasion.

Truly, she lived a life of ease, a life of purpose, a blessed life.

  *

Dar moved in controlled patterns, coaxing the stone, granting it greater resilience even as he repaired minor cracks before they could grow.

His mother, a mole-kin, had given a subtlety to his concept even while his father, a badger-kin, had given strength and stability to all he did.

Dar didn’t mind being a half-breed, no matter how rare such were.

His parents had never expected to be able to have children, so he’d been a pleasant surprise late in their lives. Now, he used his concept, his ancestral gifts, to provide for them in their old age.

He was the chief officer in charge of maintaining Astraya’s great legs, and it was a profession to stand tall in pride for.

He chuckled to himself, despite how far he’d had to stretch for the pun.

He would outlive basically everyone he worked with, his Revered body and magic able to make his every task effortless. The power followed and obeyed the smooth turning and twisting movements of his body, the ancient martial art—made by his parents combining each of their own inheritances—provided all the guidance the power needed as his mind rested and his soul found peace.

He’d never needed inscriptions, and he never would.

The magic—the very stone and earth—was his to use, to bend to his will.

He had no desire nor need to fight, and he should never have to.

Truly, few -kin ever found such a peaceful life.

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