Not (Just) A Mage Lord Isekai

We ended up finishing our conversation with Henri with an agreement to meet again in three days. I'd offered to give this Tillan a tour of our lands, swearing to his safety on my oath as a Magus Protectus, to hopefully prove that we weren't the threat he thought we were.

For a moment, I considered not showing him Keeper and what I suspected were the other bound devils… but I was pretty sure that would backfire.

There was one massive positive to the meeting with Henri. I'd barely thought about the fact Tamrie would be leaving the entire conversation.

Now that it was over, that fact came thundering back harder than ever.

"Shall we depart, Percival?" Arizar asked, hand brushing my shoulder as she nodded towards our gliders.

"Yeah. Sorry, just… thinking," I said, following her to the glider.

Bevel had already managed to get into hers and had thrown herself off the side of the mountain to chase after one of the eagle riders.

I narrowed my eyes as I saw the young rider on the eagle laugh, both of them weaving through the air.

"She is at that age," Arizar said, voice wistful. "Have you talked to her about it?"

"Think she really wants 'the talk' from me?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. "Her sister said she'd talked to her. And Tamrie let her know she was available if she had any questions… though I guess that won't be true much longer."

"Perhaps, if you are not bothered by the idea, I can speak to her. While I may not have the most experience in such affairs, I've been known to turn an eye or two," Arizar said, flashing a smile.

"For the other stuff… yeah. Not sure she needs any help catching people's attention though," I said, chuckling while putting my arm through the last of my loops.

"Perhaps not," Arizar admitted. "Shall we join her?"

"Let's," I agreed, nudging my glider upward. "And Ari, yeah. That'd be great. Thanks."

"You are quite welcome, Perry." Ari replied after a second's pause, her voice warm.

After returning to Mount Aeternia, I was surprised to find Tamrie waiting, rocking back and forth on her feet. She ran right up to me before I'd even finished landing, throwing her arms around my neck and smothering me in kisses.

Before I could get an explanation, Nexxa walked up, eyebrow raised. "Hate to interrupt the happy couple but was hoping to borrow my brother for a bit."

"Not interrupting, if'n I'm coming with," Tamrie said with a giant smile on her face.

"Uh. Sure, why not," Nexxa said, raising an eyebrow as she looked in my direction.

"It's… I'll explain on the way. What did you need?"

"Got a mana well you can tap, and was hoping you'd throw up some buildings for me. Heard from your assistant you didn't have anything for the rest of the day, so…"

"Sure. Tamrie's right though. She can definitely keep me company if all I'm doing is throwing up a few walls," I replied, gesturing towards the stairs leading down from the peak.

"I believe Bevel and I shall work on our own projects in the meantime," Ari said, hand on Bevel's shoulder before she could volunteer to join as well.

Nexxa raised her eyebrow again but otherwise didn't comment.

After using the Waygates to travel to the swamp, the closest to her domain, the three of us made our way to where she'd set up camp. Other than my trip with Bevel, I hadn't visited Nexxa's territory much. Even as our gliders passed over, it was easy to see how much less mountainous it was than my own. There were still plenty of mountains and valleys, though the peaks were lower and valleys much wider. Those valleys were mostly choked with thick vegetation, Nexxa having nearly a dozen small waterways leading through her territory, most emptying directly into the ocean over towering waterfalls.

There was a single line of smooth stone leading from the edge of my territory that we followed. The road I'd laid back during the Howling season that ran along the coast before moving inward.

Already, there were signs of tracks being laid. Stone lines merged directly into the stone of the road beneath. It was a slow process, since the ambient mana was so low, but it was being completed by regular untrained and unawakened refugees, so it wasn't costing us much. As I understood it, almost all our non-ensouled labor received nearly double the wages they would in Spellford, which already paid their non-ensouled well.

Each of the devices cost more in materials than the refugees would've made in a year, if they were working a job in Spellford. Due to the incredibly specific nature of the enchantments, there wasn't any reason for them to steal it.

Not that someone hadn't tried to take the shiny bits already. Vendil had brought their case to me and I'd promoted them to an investigator for railworks security, along with a pay raise and a brief visit by the new cells we were installing beneath the Waygate Nexus.

If it worked, it worked.

Not long after we spotted the first work crew, we arrived at the location Nexxa had chosen for her main city. Then we flew past it, heading towards what seemed to be a new mana-well. It hadn't been on our initial survey, at the very least.

It was a hole in the ground, one that stretched down several hundred feet, with green stubbornly clinging to life along the edges despite the constant wind buffeting everything that grew there.

"It's only rank one, but its close enough to the road I figured this would be a perfect spot," Nexxa said, landing with a relatively soft crack of lightning going up around her.

"Did it just show up? How come it didn't show on your beacon?"

"There was a nasty little centipede parked right atop it, sucking up all the mana. Apparently they muddled each other up, 'cause the scan didn't show the bug or the well," Nexxa said, shaking her head. "I'm sending teams to check with their own damn eyeballs but it's gonna take months."

"Huh. Should've guessed something like that was possible. Pretty sure we would've spotted something like that though," I said, shaking my head.

"Not if it was like this Fronting bug. Was half buried when one of my people stumbled across it. Looked like a boulder," Nexxa said, shaking her head. "If not for one of them deciding to relieve themselves on it, we might never have known it was there."

"Whoops. They make it out okay?"

"Yeah, he's quick on his feet. Anyway, this is what I was thinking," Nexxa said before throwing up a crackling outline all around us, filling the space around the wind pit with the rough shape of a small outpost.

"Guess that works better than a few pictures on a page," I said, grunting my amusement.

"Right fancy, it is," Tamrie said, reaching out to touch one of the sparking lines only to snatch her hand back a second later, shaking it. "Bit ornery too."

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I chuckled softly, pulling her close and giving her a quick kiss atop her head. Then I activated Mana Draw and got to work.

It was a relaxing afternoon, and by the time I was done, I'd built the rough equivalent of four twelve-story skyscrapers around the mana-well, with stepped shorter buildings around them and wide clear spaces between each corner.

"Thanks, Per Per," Nexxa said as we gathered around a campfire for dinner. "Gonna be getting a lot of use out of that mana well. Air might not be a perfect fit, but it's a lot better than nothing."

"Would love to have even that much. Mistvale's got mana, but it's all ate up by the local flora and fauna," I said, shaking my head. "And they're too valuable to cull just to get a little mist mana."

"Too bad you've got all those fish poking their noses about or you could use the ocean. It's pretty thick, isn't it?"

"It can be. We just started doing tests but turns out it depletes fast and then takes a while to recover. The water carries it well enough, but wherever the mana is coming from, it's not close," I said, accepting a bowl of flash fried meat and greens from Hash as he took a seat beside me.

"Might be I'll know the truth of it soon enough," Tamrie said, smiling. Then it faded. "Not that it'll do you no good."

"Oh? Are you investigating the ocean?" Nexxa asked with what I realized was her indulgent voice.

Instead of calling her out, I let Tamrie enjoy the attention.

"I'm a Caller of the Deeps!" Tamrie said, sitting up proudly. Only to slump ever so slightly when Nexxa didn't recognize what she was talking about. "Means I'm meant to work with the leviathans."

That earned some appreciative sounds from Nexxa's gathered crew.

"Powerful call, to work big fish. Strange good. Travel much, you do?" Hash asked, chewing around his

"Yeah. I… I'll be gone for most of the year. I'll only be back for about a week or so," Tamrie admitted.

While Hash continued his casual butchery of Elinder in the guise of asking Tamrie more questions about her calling, Nexxa stared at me over the fire.

'She's leaving you?' the subtle motions of her eyebrows seemed to ask. 'Just like that?'

'It's not like she had a choice,' I replied with a narrowing of my shoulders and slight grimace.

'Always a choice Per Per,' her face said as it slackened slightly, her head shaking nearly imperceptibly.

I ended the imagined conversation by sliding my arm around Tamrie and pulling her into my side. She only paused for half a word, snuggling closer before continuing her explanation of everything she hoped to see as part of the leviathan's pod.

It was a reminder of how little she'd traveled. Spellford and Cape Aeternia were the sum total of the places she'd ever visited. It was going to be quite the experience for her, as she traveled the coasts.

There was a small part of me that whispered that I could go with her. That we could all pack up in Aeternia's Shield, and go flying off into the sunset, oath be damned. Other Magus Domini had done it and been fine.

Wasn't even a real thought, though. Couldn't be. Went against everything I believed.

Not that I wouldn't try to find a way to follow her with my Worlds magic. The Waygates already allowed us to achieve what most of the world considered impossible. Who was to say what would happen as our understanding grew.

Eventually, the evening came to an end, and instead of going back to Mount Aeternia, Tamrie and I chose to spend an evening beneath the stars atop one of the four buildings I'd created.

We both stared up at the expansive skyscape above, with her held in my arms. "If you were anyone else, I'd ask ya to come with me," Tamrie said.

"If I were anyone else, you never would've stumbled into my life," I said, setting my chin atop her head. "Or fallen for me."

"Might've just," Tamrie said, laughing softly. "But we've reeled our catch. No use complaining 'bout it now."

"I'm not complaining about the time we've had," I said. "Even if I wish we had more, I'm glad for it."

We sat silently for a while after that, neither of us speaking.

Finally, Tamrie let out a long sigh. "Not how I imagined life going. Mum's gonna die o' shock."

"Can I give her the news?"

"Ha," Tamrie laughed out, shaking her head. "Sorry."

"For?"

"For… all this. I been thinking. And… it wouldn't be fair, keeping you waiting. Only seeing me for a week, every year. Not when…" Tamrie trailed off.

"Not when?" I asked, squeezing her tighter.

"Nothing. Not tonight. Tonight, you're still mine," Tamrie said, turning, her eyes capturing mine.

And then she proved her point. That night, I was hers, and no one else in the world mattered.

…MLI…

The next morning, I spent a little while fixing up the buildings I'd done for Nexxa, just a few little touches I'd noticed during dinner the night before.

After, Tamrie and I returned to Mount Aeternia where I made myself a new catalyst.

"Not much point of it," Tamrie said when I offered to make a new one for her. "From how you said, wasn't doing much but making me hate every step."

I nodded. She wasn't wrong but I still wanted to make something for her.

As I looked at the hairpin, I knew I had to make her a proper parting gift.

With the new catalyst in hand, we went to the trial together. Even if she wasn't going to get much benefit from it, she still wanted to walk the path with me.

It was a little bit trickier though, since now we were walking the tier-2 version of the path. A lot of it was similar, but it now including moving parts, such as swaying trees, shifting snakes woven among the swinging vines and random thorns shot by a sort of spitter plant that looked like a tulip but with blood red leaves.

Either way, we made it to the end successfully and went to join Ari outside. Except she hadn't finished her trial yet.

Almost half an hour later, she stumbled out of her trial with a smile on her face. "Got it," she said, stumbling forward.

Tamrie and I moved together, each of us catching an elbow as we helped Ari sit down, Bevel rushing over from where she'd been playing with a group of forest-raptors.

"Thank you, all of you, I'm fine," Ari said, lifting her arm with a lovely giggle as she let Bevel slide under.

Tamrie shook her head, letting out a wry chuckle. "Least you'll be able to keep Perry company once I'm gone."

Both Ari and I blushed at the casual comment, which only got Tamrie going harder on her teasing. "Ah ha, I knew it. You've both been thinking 'bout how good a tumble the other is."

I'd been successfully not thinking of Ari that way for a while. The six months aboard the Dauntless had really helped with that. It had put everything in perspective.

And until Tamrie's comments, I hadn't even considered what might come after. Wasn't an entirely comfortable thought, though Tamrie's teasing kinda helped.

Tamrie elbowed me before leaning forward to pat Ari's hand. "S'okay to be curious, not like you can put your thoughts in a bucket. Even if you could, doubt it'd leave you right."

Ari and I happened to glance at each other at the same time, then just as quickly glanced away. Which set Tamrie to cackling madly.

Even as I pulled my mad lover closer, I shook my head. Why had I ever been concerned about what she'd have thought if she knew I'd been attracted to Ari? Then again… maybe this was a way for her to feel better about leaving. Looking down at her, I couldn't help but smile. She met mine with a grin of her own.

Soon Ari had recovered enough to stand and we proceeded with our day.

I'd offloaded the sentry balloon designs to the Shaper's guild, and a couple of the cadres had come through, providing working templates.

Unfortunately, none of them wanted to do the repetitive enchantments after they'd figured out the prototypes. It really felt like they were a collection of spoiled kids at times.

What I needed was one of those layered enchantment printers. Except the enchantments for the balloons needed to be on cloth.

Which, when I thought about it, was easier to arrange. After tracking down Stand, I set his cadre to the task of designing a sewing machine, based on the designs I remembered from Earth.

To my surprise, this got the attention of the rest of the cadres, and we had dozens of ideas by the end of the day. So, once more, we put them to the test in a competition.

Tresla got to reign over them as the judge.

The winning design ended up reminding me of Neta, as it actively animated the thread itself, then plunged several threads in at once.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the sewing machines, at least as we were using them, had to be designed for every enchantment we wanted to use them for. They also had pretty harsh limits on how complex the design could be.

Even so, a few days later the first of the sentry balloons rose.

There was some polite clapping, and even a cheer from one of the Shapers whose design we'd used for the sewing machine, but the event was largely overshadowed by everyone's focus on another big project.

The line to Southport - whose name seemed like it was going to stick, despite my best efforts - was finished, and the train engine that we were planning to use for the line nearly was as well.

Hundreds of people were running back and forth, testing things, loading cargo, offering refreshments and playing music.

It was a very festival sort of feeling, which the sentry balloons ended up adding to, as their colorful while and silver forms rose into the sky. As they did, Tethered swooped about, grabbing a balloon or three, taking them out to where they'd be anchored.

The days had passed quickly, and before I knew it, a week had gone by since Tamrie and I had discovered the news.

I'd avoided going back to the trials. Nor had I spent much time in my Memory Palace, except to work on the design of her gift. Being separated from her right before she left, drawing it out… no, better the trials waited.

Taking advantage of the festive mood, Tamrie and I snuck off to the Golden Halls for a quiet date. Very few people came out to the transparent dome under the ocean. Mostly because almost no one had the spellcode.

After an hour or so simply enjoying the view and each other's company, Tamrie laid her hand against the stone, communing with the ocean again.

This time when she pulled her hand back, there were tears beading in her eyes. "I… I was wrong."

"About what?" I asked, pulling her close.

"About how long they'd be. The reason the Sahevin are gone… the leviathans chased them away. The pod will be here tomorrow."