Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 69 - An Important Beginning (Patreon)

“Why didn’t you get it done there?”

Elijah shook his head.  “Because I’d just destroyed half of Agora and almost killed a couple of people,” he admitted.  “Didn’t seem quite right to just ask for another appraisal.”

Carmen shrugged, taking the bundled cloak.  “Damage was already done.  Should’ve just gotten what you went there for.”

“Can you do it?”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully, unfurling the Cloak of the Wild Revenant.  A bunch of dust came free, all that was left of the Mantle of the Chimera.  She shook it out, adding, “It’s pretty.”

Elijah could also feel that it had grown more powerful.  One of the benefits of his increasingly powerful cultivation, his work in Avatar of the Storms and its predecessor, and his recent specialization was that his sense for ethera had become much more effective.  It didn’t tell him details of how the cloak had improved, but it was obvious that it had.

To him, at least.

But he needed details, so he said, “I’ve literally seen you identify things.  Why can’t you do the same with this?”

“Only my creations,” Carmen said, acting like she was trying it on and giving it a twirl.  Considering that she was half-covered in soot from the forge, sweaty, and with her hair in disarray, the image was extremely incongruent.  “Anything else, it doesn’t work.  I can force it sometimes with raw materials and the like, but not with something like this.”

Elijah sighed.  “Are you really going to make me yank it out of you?”

“Yup.”

“Is there anyone here that can identify it?” he asked.  It was odd that he’d never even asked, but only until Elijah realized that he often used item appraisal as an excuse to visit Argos.  And to see Atticus.  Otherwise, there wasn’t a lot of reason to go there.

Could he have visited just because he wanted?  Certainly.  But with his often busy schedule, he found it difficult to justify a special trip.  Which was ridiculous, but that was just how his mind tended to work.

“Oh, sure.  We’ve got an entire wing of Appraisers.”

“Can you show me where?”

“Me?  I’m a very busy woman.  Important, too.  You know they call me the Forgemaster, right?”

Elijah ran his hand through his hair.  “Carmen…”

She punched him in the shoulder.  “Just messin’ with you, idiot.  Of course I’ll show you,” she said. 

“Ow.”

“Oh, shut up.  You know that didn’t hurt.”

“I have feelings.”

“Debatable.  Come on,” she said, tossing the Cloak of the Wild Revenant back to him. 

Elijah caught it, and with another shake of his head, followed her away from the forge.  The second they stepped through the door, the intense heat of the smithy faded to nothing, replaced by frigid air from its climate control system.  In isolation, it wouldn’t have been uncomfortable, but after spending the past few minutes next to Carmen’s active forge, it hit Elijah like a solid wall.

It was just one more feature that came with the Forge of Creation that established it not only as a wonder of the new world, but a functional facility that had turned Ironshore into the crafting hub that it had become. 

Elijah was reminded of that as he followed Carmen through the compound, which had spread hundreds of yards in every direction.  Including the vertical axis.  Thankfully, they didn’t need to go down, but rather up. Apparently, there was an entire wing meant to be the customer-facing leg of the operation, complete with Merchants and Appraisers.  Many were on loan from Agora, with which the Forge of Creation had partnered, but there were Hartwood Grove representatives there as well.

Thankfully, Carmen took him to one of the grove members.  Along the way, Elijah saw many display cases filled with the Forge’s amazing creations, including one that showed the armor set Carmen had built for the Iron Legion.  When Elijah stopped in front of it, she pointed out that it was only the second-generation version, and that she had gone through eleven others since then. 

“Mostly small improvements.  It looks the same, but the system is a lot more efficient with the new iterations,” she added.  It was clear that she was tired of working on the armor.  Elijah could understand it, too.  When building something new, it felt less like a job.  But constantly iterating on the same armor system?  She probably felt stifled by the monotony, even if she could understand the need for constant improvement.

Not long after, Elijah found himself standing before a young Appraiser who was equal parts terrified and in awe of him.  The sea elf started trembling the second he walked through the door, and she didn’t stop until he left.  For her sake, Elijah chose not to stick around longer than absolutely necessary. 

“We don’t have Agora’s fancy tables,” Carmen remarked as they left the girl behind.  “We have a few that can create crystals, but mostly, we just use paper.”

Elijah held one such paper.  Or more accurately, vellum.  Elijah suspected that the original skin had come from a pig, but after it had been so thoroughly processed, he couldn’t say for certain.  Clearly, it was not an Ironshore product, though.  The city lacked any real livestock farming operations.  There were a few chicken farms on the outskirts, but most of Ironshore’s meat came either from fishing – mostly whale, but they had operations meant to catch other fish – or from imports. 

And one thing was certain – it was impossible to make vellum from whale skin. 

When he asked about it, Carmen confirmed that it was an imported resource.  “We were going to just make regular paper, but your grove objected to using trees for that,” she said.  “So, we found other means.  If we could find a decent crystal mine, we could save quite a lot of money.”

Elijah didn’t need an explanation to understand why the grove had objected to mass producing paper.  It was one thing to grow a few trees for special purposes, but making paper at scale was an extremely destructive practice.  Not only would the grove struggle to provide enough trees for that, but the whole idea just left a bad taste in Elijah’s mouth. 

He wasn’t certain why, but he suspected that most of the other grove members felt the same.  He approved of their refusal to make paper, even if it created more work and more expense for the Forge of Creation.  By comparison, vellum could be created from the skin of animals that were already destined for the butcher.  They were already going to die, so using the skins for a productive purpose was acceptable.

Either way, after they returned to Carmen’s office – which was blessedly cool, even if it sat next to her smithy – Elijah unfurled the vellum readout.  Unfortunately, the cloak itself wasn’t where the new trait or attributes had ended up.  Or not completely.

Elijah read the descriptions, one after another, immediately establishing that the attributes had been split between every item in the set.  Two points each, which was actually a little better than the twenty percent that the other Appraiser had promised.  Still, not a huge deal. 

The trait was much more important.

That ended up on the Antlers of the Wild Revenant.

Antlers of the Wild Revenant

Overall Grade: Miraculous (Mid)

Enchantment Grade: A

Description:  The Antlers of the Wild Revenant are only one piece of the Wild Revenant Raiment, once worn by the leader of a sect of groveless Druids.  It is as much a symbol of authority as it is a useful piece of equipment.

Attribute Bonuses:

+27 Regeneration, +25 Etehra

Traits:

Crown of Authority: Manifest a visible sign of your power.

False Grove: Create a pool of ethera from which you may draw power. 

Plain Sight:  See past attempts at obfuscation and resist attempts at mental control.

Hidden Authority: Will the helm into a separate space, making it imperceptible to all senses. 

Chimeric Shielding: Adapts to any elemental attack, temporarily increasing the wearer’s resistance to that school of magic. 

The second trait ended up attached to his pants.

Chausses of the Wild Revenant

Overall Grade: Miraculous (Low)

Enchantment Grade: A

Description:  The Chausses of the Wild Revenant is only one piece of the Wild Revenant Raiment, once worn by the leader of a sect of groveless Druids.  The item is as much a symbol of authority as it is a useful piece of equipment.

Attribute Bonuses:

+ 45 Strength, +25 Dexterity, +25 Constitution, +17 Regeneration, +15 Ethera

Traits:

Nature’s Shell: Creates a weak, but passive barrier against damage. 

Clean: Use to sanitize all currently equipped items. 

Summon Water: Use to summon a full waterskin.

Adaptive Regeneration: Upon taking damage, the wearer’s Regeneration attribute will increase by 7 points with each sustained attack.  Maximum: 1000.

There was also a note at the end of each description, proclaiming that the extra traits, attributes, and grades were dependent on being equipped in conjunction with the Cloak of the Wild Revenant.  If he didn’t wear it, then he didn’t get the bonuses. 

“I don’t know how this works,” Carmen admitted when she read the descriptions.  She shook her head.  “It shouldn’t work.”

“System nonsense,” Elijah provided.

“There are supposed to be rules, though.”

“I’m sure there are.  You just don’t know all of them,” Elijah stated.  “I find new stuff just about every day.  The only way to stay sane is to accept that you don’t know everything and to integrate new information when it comes.”

Carmen clearly didn’t like that – not a surprising turn of events.  She preferred when everything fit neatly together.  And the system provided that.  However, things rarely behaved the way anyone expected.

“I was thinking about something,” Elijah said after they’d processed the information.  “I don’t know if you’d be willing…”

“Just ask,” Carmen prompted, lying on her cushy loveseat.  The leather had been burned in multiple places, and it looked like it had done double duty as a bed on more than one occasion.  Well-worn was an understatement.

The same was true of the chair in which Elijah sat.  Or the rest of the office, which sported a massive chalk board, a metal desk, and a bunch of half-finished weapon prototypes leaning against the walls. 

A few had been twisted beyond all recognition, probably in various fits of frustration.

“So, you know I’m going back to Orveth Kaal, right?”

“You said as much, yeah.”

“Well, there’s this giant fortress we made from a mountain.  I have no idea how to work it,” he explained.  “I don’t know if you would want to, but –”

“Yes.”

“Huh?”

“The answer is yes.  I’ve already started putting together a team of Engineers, Builders, and other Tradesmen,” she explained.  “I also sent a message to Miguel to get him to come back.  He’ll lead the Hartwood Sentries that will come.  Nara wants to send the other two demigod Druids as well.”

She tapped her chin, then added, “Oh, and Biggle’s coming.”

“I don’t…I don’t know if I can take that many.”

“It’s only a thousand or so people, Elijah.  All demigods, though most of them are barely into the tier.  Same with me,” she added.  “Leveling gets incredibly difficult on Earth once you pass that threshold.”

“This is a deity trial.”

“So?”

“People are going to die if they come in as demigods.”

“And?”

“Carmen…”

“We’re suffocating here,” she stated.  “The Primal Realms aren’t high enough level.  The towers haven’t kept up with the world’s ethereal density.  They’re still okay for leveling, but they’re far from ideal.  We need new challenges, or the world is going to stagnate.”

Elijah frowned.  He hadn’t even considered how different his situation was than most on Earth.  As far as he could tell, once people reached demigod, their leveling speed fell to almost nothing.  Largely, that was because of the factors Carmen had mentioned.  Earth was still growing, in terms of ethera, but it would take a few more centuries for it to reach its potential.  That was especially true given that Elijah suspected that the only reason it had grown as strong as it had was because of bleed-off from his grove.  Even with that, the process of empowerment was a slow one.

As a result, only a handful of demigods had progressed past the first stages. 

Sadie was one of them.  Most of Elijah’s friends were in that same range, though Ron had fallen behind.  Either way, the point was that Earth’s demigods had already outgrown their planet.  They needed something more.

And Orveth Kaal might just give them what they needed.

Sure, it would be dangerous.  And getting people ready would take a few months.  However, Elijah had to admit that hijacking the Vengeance and using it as a hub for Earth’s presence in the ancestral world held a certain appeal.

“Okay.  But there are issues we need to solve before we commit.”

“So, you’re okay with it?”

“Okay might be a stretch,” Elijah admitted.  “If we can solve a couple of problems, and you can prove that I’m not sending people there to die, then yeah.  I’m okay with it.”