Book 4 Chapter 36: Capital Gains

++Bountiful Oil has proven the worth of the whole industry. Gods knew how Vornholt got in so fast, some tip from her Demigod perhaps, but we can’t waste any more time in delaying ourselves. If the Vorets don’t get in on this as well then our fortune will dwindle by comparison.++

- A memo passed through the Voret family, to and from whom is not specifically known.

I did not enjoy my flight back to Garamon, but I at least did not have to worry about any semblance of subtlety and drag myself along the jungle floor. Now that I had made contact with Shuo Meg, and confirmed that there was no greater force than her in the area, detection was no problem at all. So we all took to the skies.

Once we were past the jungle and truly accelerating over the ocean, I was treated to a new experience; flying on a glider with Blakely while having him not be the most panicked occupant. Apparently professor Johns was not a nervous flier as much as he was generally distasteful of breaking the sound barrier.

Fortunately, I did not hear his protests. For obvious reasons.

My first stop was Garamon rather than Poloira, just to drop my rat bastard siblings off at the mansion. I slowed the vehicle to a crawl as we neared it, preparing to land. Then I had a better idea.

“Victoria, you are still wearing my amulet, yes?” I asked my sister.

“Y…Yes,” she replied, now that we were slow enough for her to speak. Actually not that much faster than a horse, even.

“Good,” I told her. “You can keep it.”

I tilted the craft, bringing up bands of aether to pin my bodyguard and the professor in place as the vehicle deposited Victoria and Qaigor to drop the final sixty feet down into the mansion’s garden.

They would be fine. Qaigor’s connective tissue was roughly as strong as solid brass cabling at this point, and his skeleton was several times sturdier than an equivalent volume of steel. Even his internal organs would be more akin to yielding boulders than soft flesh, utterly unfazed by hitting the ground at a mere few dozen miles per hour.

Victoria, on the other hand, was still a fragile human, but my shield amulet worked wonders on mitigating G-forces and impact velocity too. If it could protect me all the times some enemy magician had sent me flying with a magic missile, it would soak up this impact just fine.

Of course, neither of my siblings knew that. No, I imagined that, for the handful of moments it took them to impact the ground, they were both left to think very carefully about just how furious I must have been to drop them so unceremoniously to their deaths. That was the terribly amusing thing about young magicians and warriors, they had not yet overcome the natural fears of their bodies.

Johns stared at me as we slowly accelerated away from the mansion. “Are they dead?!” he asked.

“No,” I told him, while Blakely cackled next to me. Kept cackling, actually. I did not think I had ever seen Blakely laugh at anything so much as he was laughing at this.

The professor was rather less amused, and said nothing right up until the moment we went supersonic once more and removed any ability to communicate entirely.

It is always enjoyable to see a person’s reaction to how fast I can move when I truly let my magic loose. In theory, my flying sled could have been replicated by many magicians of Garamon. In theory.

In practice, the thing was just too complex for them. One needed a perfectly deft touch with magic to simultaneously feel each and every potential point of failure, smoothing over the aether and strengthening it when needed. While doing this, they also had to provide the sort of acceleration that would be difficult to replicate with a stick of dynamite and a hole in the ground.

Not only could few magicians replicate this, but few people, even those relatively familiar with magic, were at all used to anything like it. Professor Johns may have been courageous when it came to avoiding hails of darts or fleeing from giant, rolling boulders, but the prospect of flying at these speeds activated some deep part of the human psyche that understood nothing at all, but feared everything.

He could not have been safer than with me, of course. I was very precise and knew that we had not even the slightest risks of crashing. And, given that he was a warrior of some magnitude, I was confident that he would even be safe from the risk of sudden perforation if he were to swallow a bug.

Blakely, on the other hand, might have been quite wounded by that. I kept a wind shield up to avoid any inconvenient aerial debris from wounding my companions as we made our way along the continent to the professor’s university. By the time we touched down I feared he had most of his nerves shaken loose. The man was a warrior of the second order and could surely have walked while carrying half a dozen of himself without breaking a sweat, but his first step off the sled was tentative and fearful.

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“I’m never riding on one of those things again,” he growled, glaring at the vehicle like it had personally insulted him. Blakely snickered.

“Yeah, lots of people just don’t have the guts for it,” my bodyguard grinned, apparently content to go without mentioning his own early reactions to flying at speed. I decided not to chime in with them, just bidding the professor farewell.

“I may need your services again,” I told him. “May I call on you?”

“Sure,” he grunted. “If you pay as well as you did this time. And if you remember our agreement about the artifact.”

Of course. He wanted it in a museum once I was done with it, and I was fine with that in theory. I would just need to be careful not to make any additional agreements that would conflict with this one.

Or at the very least to remember which museum it was positioned in. After all, I had made no promise at all about directing others to procure it for themselves after the fact.

Blakely and I flew back to the refinery, streaking through the air like a meteor. I was actually starting to approach the speed at which I would need to take atmospheric heating into consideration. Not just yet, but it was not so far away. Of course my drag-cancelling magic would prevent it in theory, but I would have to keep the possibility in mind that it would make for a very gripping entrance, in the right circumstances.

We touched down at the refinery and Blakely promptly disappeared with all the alacrity of a startled rat. I had expected this and did not pay it much heed, and was in any case rather eager to head back into work with my refinery. Or, rather, to find out how much fruit the week or so I had spent travelling had yielded.

As was so often the case, the first thing I received when I approached Alira was a report and a message.

“Income is up,” she told me. “But that’s no surprise, income’s always up. The industry’s getting bigger by the month and we’re constantly expanding as you said.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “And the message?”

“The message is from the Vorets,” she told me.

There was always another message from the Vorets, it seemed. “I will get to it later,” I replied.

Alira winced. “The message included a warning that if you don’t respond within twenty four hours of them sending it, they’ll assume you’re just screwing them around about the marriage proposal and cut off the arrangement entirely.” She trailed off at that, like she was uncertain about what she was about to say. “Are you…really planning on marrying into them? I mean I know you talked about it but are you seriously going to go down that route?”

“They are powerful,” I shrugged.

I noted that Alira had no problem with the prospect when she thought it would secure her future, but I did not see any point in giving voice to that thought.

“I will have to see them then,” I sighed. Vorets were really starting to annoy me once more. And to concern me. That they were giving me this ultimatum was, itself, a bad sign that they were getting too big for their britches. I would need to whip them back into line at some point.

The problem with that of course was that I currently lacked the power to do so. The gap between myself and Aravon Voret had gotten smaller since our bout, but he was still far above me in raw power and likely would be for several years. My economic influence was growing all the time, and yet it still fell short of the Vorets, who I estimated were Garamon’s third or fourth foremost fortune collectively. And that was to say nothing of their political connections among the magician class.

For the time being, I had to humour them. At least a little while longer.

“Very well then,” I sighed. “I would tell you to have a telegram sent informing them I am on my way, but…”

“...You’re faster than a telegram,” Alira grinned. “Yeah, I figured. I’ll hold things down for another day or two while you head there.” I started for the door before she halted me again with another word.

“Oh, and, uh, Isabel…Congratulations on making your first hundred million,” Alira was grinning from ear to ear.

As for me, well I just felt dully satisfied. One hundred million crowns was a considerable sum, and if it was still not close to the vast amounts controlled by Earl Elqarth…well, I would be satisfied, at least for a short time, in being among Garamon’s five greatest fortunes.

I headed outside and took to the air, flying all the faster now that I did not have to haul others along with me. I could have brought Blakely, but I decided against it. For one thing, I very much doubted a physical attack would come from the Vorets—they were still, fortunately, labouring under the assumption that I had direct protection from the Demigod Aryqatan.

For another, I did not want my bodyguard anywhere near such a delicate political situation as this was likely to turn into. Blakely was unmatched as an asset when others brought violence to me, but when there was no existing violence…well, he had an unfortunate tendency to supply it himself.

The ocean screamed by beneath me, and I occupied myself by burning all the excess mana I could to turn the flight into a training session. A few more vis all the time, adding up as the days turned to months, to years. I once again marvelled at the progress this new Vessel of mine was making compared to the old one. Was I half again as powerful as Dread had been at the same age? Twice?

I could not be sure. My talent now was equal, that much I knew, but it was unhindered. Like a champion weightlifter whose past records had all been done with a broken rib, finally receiving treatment and realising for the first time what the full mobility of his torso was.

Just a few short years and I would be able to stare Aravon Voret down and know I was his superior in direct combat. Maybe a decade at most. Another decade still and he would be the one shying away from me.

I flew to Garamon and set foot in Laugrey with a smile on my face.