A Sky Full of Tropes [Reincarnated Psychic Child LitRPG]

"Where should we start?" Anise asks.

"First things first, I'm going to put a sigil lock on my blasted boat," I say. "I don't feel good about parking it anywhere knowing some dumb kid can just make off with it anytime. You know, like how we got it in the first place."

"That sounds like a solid plan," Basalt says.

"I didn't spot a book that included it in Corwen's library, nor did I run across a lot of sigil books in Amroth, though. So we're heading to Dolwen. I want to see what I'll need to do to sign up for school there anyway."

With the repairs complete, the skyboat's sigils stay lit up when activated this time. I put a hand on the tiller, and the Celestial Duck takes to the air shakily. [Vehicle Diagnosis] indicates that everything isn't quite at 100%, but we're skyworthy enough even if our skills are low. No way am I taking us on a trip to another domain before making sure we'll make it, though, especially without having higher level adventurers along to bail us out.

Another summer storm brews up around us and thoroughly tests whether my ink is dry. Our flight shakes and a couple of sigils flicker ominously.

[Blast it, I think they're going to need some touch-ups, but I can't do it in this weather,] I send my crew telepathically over the howling wind. [If Tempest decides to destroy my boat immediately after we got it fixed, I'm just going to take it as a sign that I ought to build a new boat already.]

With how fast the storm is building, I decide to tuck in at the next docking tower. There's a village up ahead, but I'm not sure offhand which one it is. It feels like we've been in the air for just a few minutes before weather forced us to stop.

"I'll stay here and guard the ship," Anise says, pulling soaked dark hair out of her face.

"That's very brave of you, but you sure about that?" Basalt asks, a crack of lightning punctuating his question.

"It'll be fine!" Anise says brightly. "I can practice my Sorcery a bit while I'm guarding the ship from miscreants."

"If you say so," Rowan says, and we no longer care to argue with my lunatic mother and just get inside out of the rain.

We duck into the guest house, dripping water all over the floor. An old woman comes up and waves a broom, drying both the floor and us with what has to be some sort of cleaning Invocation.

"Well, look what the storm blew in," says the witch, introducing herself and confirming that my [Naming] skill pegged her name correctly. "Do you need rooms for the night? Who knows how long Tempest will decide to rain on us?"

Over 63 years old but only Elite? Not the most successful life, though I doubt the activities of her relatives helped much. She, at least, probably didn't have much to do with throwing their enemies into a mushroom dungeon.

"I've got a pot of hot mushroom soup on the hearth if you'd like some bowls, too," Yarrow goes on.

I cough involuntarily and hesitate. "Um… sure."

"I assure you there's nothing weird about my mushrooms," Yarrow says with a sigh. "Whatever you heard about what my nephews were getting up to, we don't do that anymore."

"What happened?" Amethyst asks. "I just started existing two weeks ago. I was a boulder before then. My name is Amethyst Hebron Tempest Tiganna."

"Can't say I've met a baby dwarf before," Yarrow says with a chuckle. "Welcome. I heard a rumor about a lost dwarf Hearth in Tempest being discovered. I suppose that's you? I hope you can get a better first impression of my Hearth than you might have gotten a few months ago. A couple of my nephews were involved with some foreign criminal group. I told those boys it would bring them to no good, but did they listen?"

The [Elder Barwitch] passes out bowls of soup around the table and offers some spoons.

Yarrow sighs and goes on, "Of course they didn't, and paid for it with their lives when adventurers found out what they were doing. An Epic-rank party came after they'd kidnapped the niece of one of its members. They killed our highest leveled members and subjugated the core. At least they left alone those of us who stayed out of their way and didn't do a full purge. Can't say I'd have even blamed them if they'd killed me. I helped cover up their crimes, too. You have to support family, after all. Up until someone two ranks higher than you comes looking for revenge, and I can only be thankful that they didn't kill the poor girl or they might not have spared me and let me keep running my bar."

"I regret asking," Amethyst says. "I'm just a Brewer. Hopefully you'll be selling my wine soon!"

Yarrow has to smile a bit at that. "I hope so too. Here's to the next generation being less dumb. Can I get you some beer in the meantime?"

"Yes, and the Sorcerer who stayed on the boat would probably like one too," Amethyst says.

"Someone's out there in this weather?" Yarrow asks.

"She's... communing with Tempest," Rowan says generously.

"Right then. I'll take her some beer and soup straight-away."

When she departs, I muse telepathically to my party, [I hadn't really intended to stop at Halkyn, but if Tempest is determined that we go somewhere, I might as well not whine about it. We're probably here for a reason or it wouldn't have been so insistent about that storm.]

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We finish our bowls, and Yarrow shortly returns with a man I've seen before.

"Drake?" Vervain says. "I remember you. You were the psychic kid the Daring Edgewalkers had with them in the Mushroom Garden. The one who found us. This must be your regular party? Welcome to Halkyn. Our guest house, school, and workshop are open to you should you need them."

"I would like to see your library," I say. "I'm interested in Invocation and Wizardry."

Vervain shows me to the school building once we're done eating, as it's still raining and we have nothing better to do for the moment. Several other children of varying ages are inside, reading, writing, and playing board games. [Empathy] picks up stress and sorrow from their auras as well. I don't stop to introduce myself and just go to look through the books in the library for anything of interest.

It turns out that we don't need to fly all the way to Dolwen to put a lock on my boat. The Halkyns have a book on sigil locks right here. I'm not sure whether to be thankful to Tempest or be annoyed anyway. Eh, I suppose there isn't really a point in being annoyed at the weather, even if I know there's a sapient force behind it.

"Hey, kid," says the voice of a young man not letting me just read in peace.

I glance up at him reluctantly. He looks to be about eighteen, with scruffy brown hair and a valiant but vain attempt at growing a beard that just makes him look a bit like a rat.

He introduces himself and starts asking all the obvious questions. Who am I, where did I come from, why am I loitering in their library trying to read about sigil locks, and so forth. I don't exactly blame him for wondering who this strange kid who just walked in is, but it is annoying.

"I'm Drake," I say. "I flew in on a skyboat. I'm just reading until the storm clears."

"What kind of boat?" Hemlock wonders. "Who's the captain? Are they looking for crew?"

"Hemlock, quit interrogating the poor kid and let him read," a girl butts in.

"What are you reading?" Hemlock asks, peering over my shoulder. "Sigil locks? What do you need to know about those for?"

"Because another kid stole and crashed my boat and it's still not fully repaired. Do you mind?"

It's then that I notice with Clairvoyance the frozen lightning indicating a quest shimmering insistently on the edge of Hemlock's aura, and realize why he's being so pushy. Halkyn wants this guy to be my friend. I sigh aloud. Stupid meddling cores trying to thrust party members on me.

I absently have to wonder whether Corwen would have given me a quest to ask Hemlock to join my party if hadn't decided not to give me quests at all. Halkyn, however, hasn't given me a quest.

Didn't Barwitch Yarrow say that Uncle Hawk subjugated the core? Halkyn, are you listening to me? If you want this guy in my party, why haven't you given me a quest to accept him?

[You do not receive quests,] Halkyn replies.

That hasn't stopped other cores from offering me challenges. Don't be obtuse. If you want to make me come down to the core room myself, I will do so.

I tuck the sigil book into my bag and stand up, and stride out into the rain without a word to Hemlock or Vervain. As I approach the door to the Hearth, tension builds in their auras.

"Is he allowed to go in there?" Hemlock asks quietly.

"We're vassals of his Hearth now, nephew," Vervain replies. "He can go where he wants."

I open the door and step inside, into the dry warmth of Halkyn Hearth. Several women and more children are inside. If there's any surviving adult men other than Vervain, they're not in here right now. I don't ask. I don't care. If this was a war, it was a fairly civilized one on a deserving target.

How much of it was driven by quests, though? I don't ask where the door to the core room is. [Aether Sense] leads me right to it, a hatch in a pantry. People are staring at me and asking questions, but I don't stop to explain my behavior. No one stops me.

The aether core of Halkyn shines yellow in a basement exactly like the one in Corwen. I walk right up and touch the golf ball-sized crystal sphere.

[What the… Pumpkin Pirate? You have a class, and it's… Okay. Okay. You're the clan of the failed Pumpkin Pirates and the survivors are working for my clan now, right?]

I play up my position as a conquerer for the sake of this inanimate chunk of magic rock, deliberately trying to make myself sound more into the role of someone who would have bested some pirates in a grand battle. If that's what it wants, then I will play its game. For pay. Halkyn is secretly thrilled. It knows that playing along will benefit it more.

[I want to know, why did you start using the Mushroom Garden to neutralize your enemies? Surely you had to have known someone would eventually figure out what you were doing.]

[Of course,] Halkyn replies. [I was waiting for it. The greater the buildup, the greater the payoff. Your side won, and Tempest now has a Legendary Guardian to protect it that it otherwise would not have gotten. And as is tradition, I offer one of my clan's sons to your service.]

[You going to offer me anything else for taking him?] I press. [I will not be cheated here, just because you think you've found a cute loophole in not giving me a quest for this.]

[I can offer a quest to Anise to accept training from him,] Halkyn offers. [Is that acceptable?]

I sigh. [Very well. If he's obnoxious, I'm bringing him back. If he betrays me, I'm yeeting him into the Void.]

[I would expect no less.]

Another skill? I'm not sure how that differs from [Diplomacy], but fine, I can't complain. There's skills for every nuance I suppose. I climb out of the core room and gesture to Hemlock along the way to follow me back to the guest house to meet up with my party.

"Hey guys. This here's Hemlock. He'll be flying with us. He's a little annoying but his core bribed me to take him and he probably already knows the ropes."

Hemlock deflates a little at the way I worded it but doesn't protest. "I'm an [Apprentice Aethernaut]. I've flown skyboats before. But my uncle's skyship got stolen while I was… luckily grounded for painting a prank sigil on my cousin's door."

This young man has apparently decided to go the route of embarrassingly absolute honesty.

"Lucky you," Jade says. "Now you get to join the fun crew."

Basalt asks me telepathically, [Did we just adopt the nephew of the guy we helped murder?]

[I feel bad for him. If he starts to go all Wesley Crusher, just tell him to shut up.]

[Wesley was usually right, though,] Basalt points out. [Anyway, this kid needs a Dad, and we're the only ones here who think the situation is in any way awkward.]