Chapter 278 – To Xeroph

The small fleet under Silvia’s command flies free of the Phos Jump Gate without running into any issues. They change their course in open space, creating some distance before they leap back to speeds beyond light.

Emily and Silvia leave The Blade’s bridge together the moment they have a predicted arrival time to meet up with the rest of the crew. They head straight back to Emily’s room to enter her Factory, but the moment they step into her quarters, they find Mensacus and Silica standing, alert, with their backs facing their door.

Mensacus glances over his shoulder, sensing his mother’s arrival, and a single glance communicates more than words ever could. There’s caution and confusion swimming in his gaze, but no real concern.

Emily’s mana sweeps through the room as she opens her mouth to speak, and any tension left in her shoulders slips away when she senses what they’re staring at on the bed.

“What’s up?”

“Mama!” Silica yips, turning around and bolting over to nip at Emily’s hand, pulling her towards the bed. “Sky delivery.”

There’s a spherical rock in the centre of the bed, emanating a faint magical signature, and the runes carved into its surface hold the familiar touch of Phyllie.

“Sky delivery, huh?” Emily hums with fond amusement, stepping forward and reaching for the skull-sized rock.

“It fell in through a crack in space,” Mensacus adds, staring at her meaningfully. “I recognised the magical signature faintly.”

“You felt my departure yesterday?”

He nods.

Silvia looks between them with a raised brow but stays silent for now.

The moment Emily touches the dark, bumpy rock, it splits down the centre, cracking along a single neat line. The two halves part to reveal a chamber seeped in time mana, filled with nearly thirty assorted crystals, some loose, and some growing from the chamber’s walls.

“Are those time crystals?” Silvia hisses in utter disbelief, unable to hold back at the sight of the small gems. “Who the hell gave you those?”

“My teacher,” Emily explains, lifting one of the finger-sized crystals from the geode and carefully inspecting it, finding it’s dense enough to count as a greater crystal. “She happened to find our fleet yesterday and took an interest in me due to a particular affinity I possess. She taught me some magical theory, and it looks like she decided to leave a parting gift for me to continue practising alone.”

“Someone found our fleet and boarded at lightspeed without me noticing?” Silvia asks, her brow furrowed in concern. “Who?”

“Phyllie Phospherian.” Silvia draws in a sharp breath. “So, I wouldn’t worry too much. She’s gone already, and she offered me her support and backing, so she’s not a threat.”

“She offered you backing? Just like that?”

“Yep, said I can invoke her name if any of her peers attempt to pressure me too.”

“Crazy,” Silvia shakes her head, letting out a long breath and lifting a hand to massage her brows. “You broke your home planet’s mortal barrier less than a year ago, and you’re already a student of The Queen of Gems. Well, I guess this only benefits us. Make sure you keep those well-hidden: time crystals are worth a small fortune.”

“I’d guessed that, given their rarity, but how much are they actually worth?” Emily asks, keeping only the gem in her hand to inspect as she sends the rest into her belt.

“That greater crystal would sell for as much as a mid-grade essence: about five thousand creds, maybe even more.”

“Damn,” Emily mutters, letting out an appreciative whistle before flicking the gem up and snatching it out of the air, sending it into her storage before opening a doorway into one of Elisime’s workshops and leading the way in. “I’ll have to find a project worth using them in then. For now, though, I believe it’s about time we discussed our plans for meeting up with the rest of the crew.”

Silvia nods in agreement, grabbing a nearby stool and sliding it out from under a workbench to drop down into, gesturing to the room around them in the same motion. “I take it this place is fully protected against external observation?”

“I didn’t leave an exit open this time, so if anyone below ninth circle can even catch a glimpse into this Factory without my permission, I’d happily give them this ship,” Emily states confidently, her chin raised.

“Haha, fair enough. Now, as for when we arrive in Xeroph, I have the basis of a plan, but I’d be glad for any suggestions you may have.”

Emily nods, silently urging her to explain.

“To start with, we encourage Yorn to take part in the territory war. Once the crew has signed on to the conflict, we’ll split to cover several smaller skirmishes, given our size, and that should give us an opportunity to isolate groups of the remaining crew to confirm their loyalties. You and your son will be in charge of this, given your ability to make sure news of the checks doesn’t spread, and if people prove more loyal to Yorn than to us? You can start building a name for Elivarus by claiming their bounties.”

“Will it not be suspicious that the mercenary group was created in a station this crew was visiting, only to pop up a few months later fighting on the other side of Guild space in the same conflict?”

“Nah, no one will care enough to look into your group’s history, and even if they did, territory wars like this are frequent and always draw new groups looking to make a name for themselves.”

“Okay, good. What about Elwaine and Perinith? Confirming their loyalties should be top of our to-do list, but I’m not confident in confronting either alone and keeping it quiet.”

“That will prove more challenging, but we’ll manage. Elwaine mentioned rumours of a new dungeon, but even if there isn’t one presently, if we’re patient, there’ll likely be at least one that pops up before the conflict’s done. You should be able to isolate them inside and seal off their ability to reach outside to keep them quiet, and I’m certain you can create a device of some form that will allow you to warp me over to help in an instant if it’s needed.”

“You’re that confident in my abilities?” Emily questions with amusement.

“Of course I am,” Silvia chuckles. “I watched you throw a world-eater’s attack right back in its face; a little teleportation within a dungeon should be nothing to you.”

“True.” Emily smiles, projecting a screen of light above the workbench beside her and rapidly putting together a new spatial-anchor design with a few purposeful waves of her fingers. “Now, how confident are you that Elwaine can be persuaded to our side?”

“I’d put it at about seventy per cent…”

***

The remainder of the flight to meet up with the rest of the crew is uneventful, with only a brief pause at a station midway to restock on fuel and materials for the cafeteria’s food fabricators. Emily spends the vast majority of the trip in her Factory, working on a mixture of weapons and utility devices, discovering a variety of uses for the many parts they harvested from the world-eater serpent. The first time she leaves her room after the Phos Jump Gates is over a month later, when Silvia finally loses patience simply watching and invites her to spar again.

They take over The Blade’s training room, much smaller than the one they occupied in The Mothership, and trade blows for a few hours every few days. Not much is different to their prior engagements, but Emily can feel the minute changes in her opponent as they flow through their usual song and dance, a fraction more certainty and comfort behind each of her moves.

Eventually, though, their uninterrupted flight through space comes to an end as the ship drops from lightspeed without warning. Emily and Silvia pause their movements halfway through a friendly match when they feel the telltale shudder of the ship’s thrusters switching out of their high-speed mode.

Silvia releases the hand wrapped around Emily’s left wrist, holding her plasma-filled palm harmlessly towards the floor, and Emily removes her finger from the trigger of a small acid-spitting pistol in her right hand, pulling its barrel away from Silvia’s ribs.

“We aren’t due to arrive for another six hours. What’s going on?” Silvia asks as they disengage, not bothering to check her Terminal.

Emily sends a stream of machina into the training room’s floor, reaching out to the bridge to forward the question to Lethia and checking the ship’s scanners in the process anyway.

“We’ve hit an interdiction zone around Xeroph 5: looks like they’re trying to keep track of everyone entering the galaxy to take part in the fun,” she explains. “We won’t be able to re-enter lightspeed for the next three hours, then we should be just over five hours off the meeting point.”

Silvia whistles an impressed tone, dropping back into a combat stance and gesturing for them to continue. “They’ve got a galaxy-wide speed-block? They really are serious this time.”

“Did the others find out why the war kicked off?” Emily asks, firing off a shot of plasma and dodging the blade of qi that’s sent back in return. “They’ve had a while.”

“Yorn wouldn’t have us believe so, given his lack of communication,” Silvia answers with more disregard than genuine bite. “But they did stop off in Xeroph 3a to check in with one of Elwaine’s contacts. He sent me a message and confirmed that it is, in fact, a new dungeon in the area that sparked it. All information about the dungeon beyond its existence has been locked down in Xeroph 5, though, so we’ll have to wait to find out if we have a chance of getting in.”

“There’s a chance I’ll get to use some of my new toys, then.” Emily ducks under a kick, unleashing a spell that sprouts four metal blades from her spine to slice at the passing limb.

“Did you make anything fun for me?” Silvia asks with a grin, deflecting four of the three sudden blades with responding bursts of qi.

She misses the last by a fraction of a beat, only shattering it after it digs into her skin: just enough to draw blood.

“You’re expecting gifts now?” Emily twists, narrowly dodging as a needle of blood shoots from Silvia’s wound.

It still nicks her, cutting a thin line into her cheek, parting the top layer of flesh but not the armour beneath.

“It never hurts to ask,” Silvia responds with a light chuckle, before wincing and letting out a sudden huff.

She glances down, having felt a blow but never sensed or seen it coming. In that fleeting moment she’s distracted, Emily throws out her metal fist, letting out a flood of lime-green mana and wrapping it in a complex spell before it lands. It slams into Silvia’s sternum, and all the force behind the impact vanishes like a lie.

Emily immediately follows through with a rising blow from her right, aiming to catch Silvia’s lowered head, but the vampire recovers and leans back, letting it sail past. Silvia turns her head and opens her mouth to take a bite from the limb a few hairs from her face, but Emily’s left hand snaps up to catch her rising right fist, killing its momentum and letting her drive her lightning-coated right elbow in a sharp angle towards Silvia’s chest with oppressive force.

“Damn,” Silvia leaps back, propelling herself away with a burst of qi before the strike can land and regarding Emily with cautious excitement. “Was that time magic?”

“Yep. I sent the blow back half a second to create the opening to land it.”

“That’s… so unfair.”

Silvia grins as she complains, falling back into a fighting stance and flooding her fingertips with qi to grow out her vicious claws.

“It has its drawbacks.” Emily shrugs, not mentioning the possible paradox and subsequent backlash the spell can spawn as she reaches into her belt instead of preparing to continue. She pulls out a small ring and throws it over to her opponent. “As compensation, there’s your gift.”

“You really did make something for me!” Silvia beams, letting out a laugh and inspecting the seemingly ordinary silver band studded with somehow-stable, fractured shards of a greater space crystal.

“It’s a unique spatial anchor. If you wear it, I can use its twin as a catalyst in a spell to pull you to my location at any time.” Emily raises her right hand, showing an identical ring sitting on her little finger. “They’re made from the same space stone, and each is enchanted with part of the spell to complete it, which should hopefully let their link pass through most barriers, including those within a dungeon.”

“Wow,” Silvia purrs, dispersing the qi weapons wrapping her fingers and slipping the ring on instead, “and you’re making us matching rings already.”

Emily raises a silent brow at her amusement, and Silvia’s grin only widens when she sees her lack of understanding.

“How does marriage work on Ulea?”

Emily blinks, baffled by the random question, but answers without missing a beat anyway: “Well, it varies across the planet and based on belief. In Modo, my home country, if a couple are believers, they’re meant to kneel before the night sky and ask the Goddess for her blessings, before vowing to be together till death after both individually seeing something they believe to be a sign. If they aren’t believers, it’s still customary to ask each other and come to an agreement at night, before saying their vows under the open sky.”

“That’s beautiful, certainly one of the more meaningful methods I’ve heard of.” Silvia raises her hand, mirroring Emily a few moments earlier, showing off the ring now sitting on her little finger as well. “But in quite a few cultures across the universe, especially human ones, the traditional method of proposal is presenting your partner with a set of matching rings.”

“It is?” Emily raises a brow, immediately scanning through the database she built from The Net in her mind for any related data. “Well, I’ll have to remember that.”

She drops back into a fighting stance, activating her fire and water connections and setting her left and right eyes alight in blue and red. She presses her hands together, generating heat and water in equal parts and letting a hissing veil of steam billow out to fill the room.

“So, how does proposal work in the greater vampiric races?”

A flurry of bloody slashes cleaves through the mist, kicking Emily into motion to stay whole.

“An equal exchange of blood,” Silvia replies, her voice coming through as a whisper across the back of Emily’s neck despite her being able to sense the vampire still standing on the other side of the training room through the mana-filled mist. “Proposal is initiated by willingly offering to let your partner drink from you and sealed through your partner offering the same in turn.”

“Fascinating.” Emily fires a superheated stream of water, forced to stay liquid despite being well past boiling, from the nozzle formed by her clamped hands, slicing through Silvia’s position as she feels her slip out of the way. “I’ll have to remember that.”

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.