Odyssey of the Guardian Emperor

Alaric rubbed gentle strokes through Dara'k's feathers upon seeing the large pellet he'd just coughed up. The object was easily thrice the size of any pellet Alaric had ever seen, which explained the eagle's tired state.

Par'al crouched down next to the pellet and sighed, "You know, Dara'k. This is an anomaly, and that's putting it mildly. There's no way you can make a Storm Orb from this… or anything else you've been spitting out the last few weeks, for that matter."

Dar'ak shrugged, "I don't need Storm Orbs. I need clothes. Spinmasters like larger pellets, don't they?"

The green-haired demihuman furrowed his eyebrows, "You're thinking of evolving? How can you be so sure that it will happen? We've barely seen an evolution in fifteen years. Rail'ak won't let us forget it."

"In the past three weeks, I've made more progress with my core than I have in five years. And now, I'm close. I can feel it," Dara'k responded.

Alaric had pretended to be nonchalant and absent-minded through their conversation, but he was screaming inside. Not only were pellets glowing orbs that came out of a storm sac, but they were also the first stage in what would later become a Storm Orb. 'This wasn't in the Almanac.'

{ Do you want to log your findings? } The monotone voice of the Keeper's Almanac reverberated through his mind.

'Yes.' The silver orb hummed from inside his Storage Bracelet, taking note of what Alaric had just discovered.

{ Records of the Keeper Candidate Alaric have been marked by the 13th day of the Month of the Seer. }

LionHeart was standing off at the side with Aslan, weapon drawn in case any of the downed eagles decided to attack again. Oddly enough, they all either flew away or stared at the group with envious eyes.

Par'al approached the large pellet only for Dara'k to grunt, "Hands off, wannabe Stormrunner. That pellet is going in a different cart."

Par'al paused, looked between Dara'k and a surprised Alaric before shaking his head, "Fine. Have you spoken to a Spinmaster yet, regarding clothes? I could get one of the girls to help you."

"Morn'ak offered to help me," Dara'k responded, then turned to Alaric, "Mind loading that up?"

The boy jerked into motion and approached the glowing blue stone. It was warm to the touch and pulsed with more aether than he was used to, like a charged aether crystal.

Gently, he carried it to his cart and placed it in with a curious expression, "How… How do these help in making Storm Orbs?"

"That's a secret," Par'al growled, walking off.

"So is the demiplane, but you don't see anyone complaining," Alaric countered.

Dara'k chuckled, "Pellets form inside the Storm sac whenever we fly into chaotic winds. It's the reason we can fly through storms without being affected. All that chaotic wind and power in the storm gets converted into aether that condenses into pellets. When they are big enough, we spit them out and put them in our nests. They're not as strong as Storm Orbs, but they continue to collect that energy during storms. As time passes, they change and grow until they eventually transform into Storm Orbs."

"How long does it take for the pellet to become a Storm Orb?"

"The shortest time I've ever heard of was a year. Normally, it takes five to ten years. Anomalies like that big one will either shatter during the process or take up to twenty years," Dara'k explained, "Even then, the Storm Orb you get from them can have any number of abnormalities."

Dara'k finished explaining and stood up, rejuvenated, "Come. I'll help you gather more pellets and feathers. Mind telling me what they are for?"

All through this explanation, Alaric had felt the Keeper's Almanac humming constantly. He was interested in seeing what it had recorded, but that was a task for later.

Two hours passed during which Alaric managed to get half a cart full of pellets and feathers. As it turned out, pellets were a lot harder to find than feathers. Only defective pellets were to be taken from nests and those were pellets that were either too small, too big, or deformed. Alaric had to learn the differences between them.

He also had to pick feathers. As it so happened, the gold accents in feathers were responsible for gold thread while the white accents were responsible for the white thread. That said, Alaric had no idea what the pellets were for. It came as no surprise that the carts were enchanted to keep the chaotic feathers at bay.

Each feather was loaded with powerful wind magic capable of creating small twisters just by waving it a little. By the end of this, they found themselves back at the starting point, next to the billowing wall of the never-ending hurricane-like storm.

There was a lot they hadn't said to each other. Alaric still had the whole battle to narrate, and Dara'k was training a lot more than he remembered. The changes were evident, too. The glowing golden rays in his feathers were proof of that. Alaric could hardly believe this was the same eagle he'd wrestled back then.

Time, however, wasn't on their side. Alaric would have to go back to the demiplane, where he had a lot to attend to, while Dara'k would have to return to his routine of challenging the Storm and grow stronger still.

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The large eagle didn't dare mention how much this change had disrupted his life in the Barren Mountains, going as far as to cost him all his friendships. He didn't mention how many of the Heaven-Crested Eagles were either losing the gold in their feathers or gaining it faster, with almost none of them remaining the same.

Alaric's presence had turned their whole community upside down, and Dara'k was getting alienated as the biggest anomaly out of all of them.

The large eagle stared at the dark storm with a sigh, then turned to Alaric, "Will you be here until I'm done evolving?"

Alaric shrugged, "I don't know. I'm here for a Tempering Ritual to become Stone Rank. I've heard it can take about four months, but that all depends on the person doing it. It might even take longer. I can't make any promises."

The Eagle nodded gently before Alaric tackled him into a hug. His feathers rose, his heart thundering like a drum in his chest with shock.

During the short time they'd spent together, Alaric had learnt more from what he didn't say than what he did.

The way the Eagle's muscles tensed, the tone of his voice, the flow of his aether—all were indicators that told Alaric a lot. Dara'k was hiding a lot from him, and he was probably struggling in silence. "How about I visit you every day?"

Dara'k's heartbeat slowed down for the first time in days, and he lowered his massive head around the boy's smaller body, a chuckle rumbling through his chest, "I would love that."

……………………

Alaric hurled the cart to a stop outside Morn'ak's shop, breathing heavily as he set it down, "This thing was so light when I started… but by the end..."

LionHeart rolled his eyes beside him, "That's what you get for rejecting help."

Morn'ak, the old cheerful Spinmaster, emerged from the shop to take a look at what they'd brought, "Part of me thought you'd turn back at the Storm wall." She laughed as she gently parted the feathers and checked the pellets, "My! This is a big one," she said when she came across Dara'k's pellet, "You met the Storm challenger."

"Yes. Dara'k's gotten more powerful since I last saw him," Alaric mentioned.

"Yes, he has," the woman responded, "His growth is unprecedented. At this rate, he'll become a Higher One in months. On the bright side, pellets this size make the best threads."

"I don't understand how the threads can be made from these pellets," Alaric responded.

"Stand back and watch, but don't use your eyes alone. Use your senses and enchant your vision. Observe the whole process and tell me what you've noticed once I'm done spinning the first ball of yarn," the woman ordered.

She took a feather out and got the large machine he'd seen on the first day to jump to life, humming with aether. In a peculiar slot he hadn't noticed earlier, she placed a pellet and started working. Aether flew from her hands and into the feather, cutting the barbs off cleanly like tiny scissors. Hundreds of aether-like tentacles pushed the barbs into the first opening of the machine.

The feather, loaded with so much aether, repelled all that the woman was doing, only for its aether to be sucked into the pellet before it could mess up her work. Even then, Alaric noticed how much she fought the initial resistance that the pellet wasn't able to mitigate.

It was a process Morn'ak handled with finesse, never once looking stressed by the delicate process.

How did Alaric know that this process was delicate? Because he saw hundreds of aether-like tentacles stretch from the woman's fingertips and fly through the machine, tending to the hundreds of barbs, merging them and binding them to each other, twisting them whilst imbuing them with strengthening qualities.

The machine helped as well, with each nozzle casting an enchantment of its own upon the fibres going into it. By the time the barbs had made it to the sixth column of the loom, they were starting to look like actual thread, refining further as the thread went down fourteen other columns before latching onto a short wooden stick at the end. Gradually, the thread spun around the stick until it was a growing ball of white thread, spinning in fast, tight patterns.

Alaric was both mesmerised by what he was watching and completely dumbfounded by it. He took the time to extend the aether in his system out of his fingers and wave it around. To his best effort, he saw some uneven glob of aether shooting out of them.

LionHeart tried the same, then made a fist and returned his eyes to the marvel happening right before their eyes, "That's impossible."

"That's what most say when they see it for the first time." The woman chuckled humbly, "What do you hope to gain from learning these techniques, dear Protector?"

Alaric was still too stunned when the question registered, and it remained that way even when he tried to think about it, "I don't know. I needed something to pass the time, and I chose this. I don't have a specific reason, though. Just a hunch that there is a lot I'm not seeing."

"That's vague," she smiled, "Try again."

Alaric breathed, digging deeper. It didn't take long before a memory bloomed in his mind, "The… statue in the Pantheon courtyard. It shows a woman channelling multiple strings into a ball of yarn like you just did."

"Ah, that is the statue of the first Spinmaster," the woman answered, "She could spin anything into thread."

Morn'ak had already sent five feathers into the system when she stopped picking out more. The threads latched themselves onto the growing ball of yarn until the machine was empty. The aether grew quiet, and the ball floated down onto a tray set under it.

Morn'ak stood up from her seat and turned to the shop behind her, "Follow me."

Alaric followed the woman inside her shop, where he'd seen lots of clothes through a window. Inside, he saw all kinds of attire. Gowns, shirts, trousers, shorts, dresses, cloaks and many more, most in hues of white and gold. A few were dyed by that was beside the point. Spinning thread from feathers was only the start of a long process.

"What do you see?"

"Clothes?" Alaric asked.

"Oh, you can do better than that."

Alaric sighed, then turned back to the clothes. Closest to him was a feminine croptop with golden accents spelling the word 'never' on the chest in a stylish font. Alaric reached for the shirt and felt the fabric between his fingers. It was silky and comfortable, if only a little stretchy.

'Stretchy?' he wondered, 'I didn't know the thread was stretchy.'

Then again, the clothes in his room back at the Pantheon weren't all stretchy, which left only one explanation: "They are enchanted."

"Exactly," the woman responded, "Spinmasters are skilled at making clothes, but what makes them most powerful is their ability to enchant. I can decide how I want the threads to behave, how strong I want them to be, and so much more. You can even make clothes that allow the wearer to fly if you want… and that's barely scratching the surface."

Alaric's eyes sparked with amusement and, above all, curiosity. This changed a lot, "Does that mean you can make clothes like armour?"

"Yes, you can," the woman responded.

Alaric's mind didn't stop there, though. "The Dance of the Spider."

LionHeart chuckled, "There is a Dance variation that works with thread?"

"I'm not so sure yet, but I think I can learn about it from here," Alaric responded. A few moments later, they were outside again, and this time, Alaric was the one in front of the machine, not ready to operate it.

Morn'ak thought otherwise.