Fyre Fly: Chapter 49 - Epilogue

“That should do it,” Dizzi says, straightening up as she claps dust off her hands and plants them on her hips. She looks critically at the spell circle beneath her. “We’ve double and triple checked all the circles by now. We’ve learned as much as we can from arcana books from the surface. There’s nothing more we can do to prepare. I’m ninety-nine percent sure this will work.”

“That’s very confident,” I remark.

“Okay, seventy-five percent confident it will work,” she says with a grin. “I was being hyperbolic.”

Seventy-five percent is both more realistic and more concerning. But we have no reason not to try it.

Apart from it potentially doing something completely different from what we intend.

“Let’s give it a go,” I say, heading for the balcony. “The others are waiting in the throne room.”

“I’ll stay here,” Dizzi says. “Keep an eye on the circle. Also, I want to see what it looks like outside.”

“Fair enough.” I hop up on the railing. “Report back once the test is complete.”

I Jet away from the watchtower and head back to the palace. There are open air passages designed for harpies to fly into and even navigate a good portion of the building before requiring one to land. I make it back to the throne room in under a minute, where Mirzayael, Nek, and Torim are waiting for me.

“We’re all set,” I tell them. “Ollie, have you landed yet?”

“YEP,” he says. “I’M ON THE BLUE PAVILION. DO YOU THINK IT WILL LOOK COOL?”

“We’re about to find out.”

I gesture for Mirzayael to take a seat on the throne. “I’ll keep an eye on the spell circles through the Dungeon Core to make sure everything goes smoothly. But it will be important for all present to know how to operate the spell network in case of an emergency.”

Mirzayael awkwardly takes a seat, and the throne adjusts to her height, the stone visor sliding down over her eyes. She sucks in a breath, gripping the armrests.

“Are you alright?” Nek asks, hovering nervously nearby.

“Yes,” she says. “It’s just very strange. There are so many spells here to sort through. How are you able to handle all this at once?”

“I’m not,” I admit. “The Dungeon Core does most of the heavy lifting. But for this, you only need to focus on the Watchtower spells. Can you find them?”

After a moment of tense quiet, Mirzayael says, “Yes. I think so.”

“Alright then.” I try not to betray my nerves. “Let’s fire it up.”

I watch the spell network through the Dungeon Core. The fourth tower comes online, then one and three. We don’t need the second tower for this—at least, not today.

“It’s working,” Mirzayael reports. “Towers One and Three are feeding into Tower Four’s architecture. It just requires input parameters now.”

“Let’s go with age again,” I suggest. I’ve tried to get it to operate on Levels, but the magic didn’t understand what I meant. It’s not connected to the System, it seems.

I watch Mirzayael set the exclusion parameter to anyone over three hundred years old. Immediately, the Fortress’s mana starts rapidly ticking down. Not enough to be concerning, given the amount of endless magic we have access to.

“Alright,” she says. “I believe it’s ready to activate.”

“Do it,” I say, my stomach fluttering with anticipation.

The spell activates. I switch over to Ollie’s senses, looking through his eyes as the dome of magic spreads across the sky. In a matter of seconds, the faint, orange shell has completely encompassed the Fortress.

“OOOOOH,” Ollie thinks. “PRETTY!”

“It’s up,” I say, switching back to metaphorically peer over Mirzayael’s shoulder. The spell is consuming an enormous amount of mana. Not enough to drain our supply today, but enough to wring us dry eventually. That’s alright. We can start saving up now.

“Does it work?” Torim asks.

I check the spell network Mirzayael assembled.

Watchtower Four contained a strange spell circle that took Dizzi and her crew significantly longer to puzzle out. It turns out that its function was to combine the uses of the other Watchtower spell circles, creating new and interesting applications. Whatever was in Watchtower Five has been destroyed, but the other three are already powerful enough on their own.

Watchtower One has the spell which creates a defensive dome over the city. Watchtower Three contains the surveillance spell. When combined, we’re able to program certain conditions into the dome based on what is observed from the surveillance spell. For instance, we can set the dome up such that anyone can pass through it—unless you’re over three hundred years old.

In other words, it’s an anti-god shield.

“There’s no way to know for sure,” I admit. And hopefully we won’t have to test it anytime soon. “But the numbers look good.”

“I think it will work,” Mirzayael says. “I can… feel that it will do what we intended. This is a powerful asset.”

Which itself is an understatement. I wonder if Fyreneth ever had the opportunity to use it, or if she was caught off guard before her designs were complete.

Either way, it will serve to protect her people. Across all this time, she’s still finding a way to help us.

“Let’s power it down for now,” I say. “The longer we can keep this combination spell off, the more mana we’ll have for when we need it. In the meantime, we still have the detection spell going; we’ll be alerted if we need to activate the barrier.”

“Fine by me,” Nek says, who still appears nervous with Mirzayael operating the Fortress’s magic.

I feel the spell circle deactivate, and then Mirzayael retracts the visor and stands up. “That was a fun experience.” She looks at Nek. “Now you. Let’s ensure that by the end of today, every council member can operate it.”

Nek looks significantly less excited to stick his head into the magic Fortress-controlling throne, but he makes it through the exercise anyway. Torim and Dizzi also take turns, and no one has any trouble with the spells.

“Oh,” I say, briefly startled as Dizzi is operating the spells with practiced ease.

Mirzayael tenses. “What is it?”

“My Role Range,” I say. “With this spell on, my range is over one-hundred-thousand percent.”

“What?” Dizzi cries.

Mirzayael frowns. “What does that mean?”

“It means my range is basically as big as the entire planet,” I say, watching it in awe. Dizzi shuts off the circle, and my range decreases, but not as low as I would have thought. It would still cover over half the planet’s surface. Just setting this spell circle up and linking it into the spell network, ready to flip on at a moment’s notice, has vastly increased the range. I bet when we create more combinations, that will add to the range, too.

Not to mention, simply landing the Fortress on the Drifting Isles already added significant range.

Relief washes over me. If the range is a metric of how well protected the Fortress is, then this tells me my personal contribution to their safety is growing more obsolete. The Fyrethians will be able to protect themselves independent from me and the Dungeon Core.

Good. This is exactly what I’d been hoping for. It’s not complete security, but I’d guess Fyreneth’s Fortress just became the most protected city on the planet.

And I don’t intend to stop here.

The other councilors retire as Mirzayael and I move to the red room to discuss where to go from here. Its transformation from a war room to a cozy office has been remarkable. It’s so comfortable, with all the padded chairs and desks overflowing with maps and books, that I’ve actually started to relax in here even outside of our regular meeting times.

“Captain Marlowe sent a letter than he’s garnering interest in our city in Valenia.” Mirzayael gestures to the desk as she sprawls on one of the arachnoid-designed chairs, rather like a beanbag. “He’ll likely return with new potential trade partners in the next few weeks.”

I find the letter and glance over it myself. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of company before then.” And still so much to do. There’s been discussions about extending the Drifting Isles’ base layer out beyond the cloud cover, so we will be more easily identifiable. We could also add airship docks out there.

The other option is to work with Attiru on controlling who has access to their tracking maps. They warned us that once it’s known how accessible the Drifting Isles has become, we’re likely to attract unscrupulous folk looking to plunder the Ruins. We’ll have to keep a better eye on the rest of the Isles going forward. I’d rather not develop all the land in the Ruins, allowing as much of the local flora and fauna to continue to live undisturbed as possible. But we’ll at least have to scout the land close to the city and set up some protection for the physical ruins themselves.

I chuckle, remembering when I’d thought we’d have some downtime after we finally landed the city. It was a nice thought, anyway.

The Greater Detection spell abruptly activates.

This time I’m awake when it happens, and I notice the change in the spell circles immediately. I stiffen, diving into the Dungeon Core in an effort to find where it was tripped. At the same time, my mind hovers over the god barrier—I hadn’t anticipated we’d need to use it so soon.

“What is it?” Mirzayael asks, noticing the change in my demeanor.

“The alarm tripped,” I think, keeping our conversation private. I had no idea where they were or how far their hearing could reach. “It’s a god or a Champion.”

Mirzayael stands up. Her hand brushed against the base of her spear, strapped across her back. “Should we…”

“Hello, Fyre.”

Mirzayael snaps her spear from her back as a figure steps from the room’s only doorway. I reach for my spells—then stop when I see who it is. I don’t relax, exactly, but I am relieved.

Blair’s gaze shifts over to Mirzayael. “I apologize for startling you. Though I doubt any entrance I could have made would have put you at ease.”

Mirzayael withdraws from her fighting stance, but doesn’t put her spear away.

“Blair,” I say, deactivating the Greater Alarm Spell. I’ll activate it again once she’s gone so I don’t have to have it buzzing in my head the entire time. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Displeasure,” Mirzayael mentally grumbles.

“I realize it’s been some time,” Blair says, still standing at the doorway. “But I found someone I believe you would like to meet. Another Traveler.”

I brighten. “Really? And you brought them to me?”

“I will not be making a habit of it,” Blair replies, “but this is a special case. He also has a remnant. A rather strong one. He understands the risks of meeting you, and was quite insistent that I ensure you are aware of the risks as well. So this is me informing you: the encounter will likely be more tense than what you experienced with Sandro. Should you consent, I will bring him to meet you.”

Mirzayael and I exchange a puzzled look. This is so abrupt. And what exactly does she mean by ‘a rather strong’ remnant? Like the Dungeon Core?

“This sounds dangerous,” Mirzayael warns me, and I’m prone to agree.

But I’m the one who wants to take in more Travelers. This could be a good test of what I might experience without warning in the future.

Besides, I’m terribly curious to meet someone Blair describes as ‘a special case.’

“Alright,” I say. “I’d like to meet him. When should we set up a time?”

“I have him now,” Blair says, stepping back out of the doorframe.

Mirzayael and I are both raising objections when Blair simply vanishes, as if slipping beneath the surface of the water. The door is abruptly empty.

Mirzayael swears. “You should have led with ‘let’s establish a time and place first’ before you told her you’d like to meet him.”

“Sorry,” I say, staring at the empty door. “I didn’t realize she meant now. Well. I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it. Be ready for anything.”

“I always am,” Mirzayael says.

Silence stretches. Longer than I would have expected. With each passing second, I can feel Mirzayael’s tension winding ever tighter. Then, nearly a minute later, Blair reappears, rippling back into existence. A man steps out behind her, also materializing in the doorway.

At least, I think he’s a man.

He’s wearing a long coat which covers most of his body, but his hands appear to be made of glass—and stranger yet, in place of his head is a floating, inverted, glass prism.

“Okay,” Mirzayael thinks. “I wasn’t ready for that.”

“Fyre,” Blair says, gesturing to the figure. “I’d like for you to meet Kanin, the first Traveler.”