"Make me into an ensouled," Tamrie repeated, though it was as much a question as anything. Her brow was furrowed and I was grateful that we didn’t have anything urgent to attend to that morning. I figured she was going to need time to process the idea.

"Yes! If you're an ensouled too, then there wouldn't be this massive power difference between us. And I just…" I trailed off, unsure of what to make of her expression.

While the way she was biting her lip was cute, it also wasn’t exactly an ‘that’s an amazing idea’ sort of reaction.

"Am I… am I not good enough for you?" Tamrie finally asked, her grip on my arm tightening.

"What? No, that's not-"

"Then why you want to go and make me into one of those golem girls?"

"I… what? That's not what ensouled means," I said, rubbing at my shoulder. "It means making you into a Shaper. Well, kinda."

"Oh! Well, why didn't you just say that then instead of going on about souls and rock?" Tamrie asked, patting my arm.

I squinted for a second before realizing that ensouled in Elinder, at least with Tamrie’s accent, did kinda sound like rock-souled. "That's… what they're called, at least in the City on the Water," I clarified, casting Restore Form to ease the bruising on my arm. She could squeeze pretty tight.

"Oh. Well, that's my fault, it is," Tamrie said, shaking her head. "So… you can make Shapers now? Didn't know that was a thing you could do."

"I mean… honestly, I shouldn't have gotten your hopes up. It's just a theory right now. And it'll probably be a while, but… yeah," I shrugged. Cause it was a thing I did want to do. And everything I'd learned from Keeper and Balthum indicated it was definitely possible.

"So… you like me soooo much, that you're gonna break all the rules of reason and sense, and make me a Shaper?" Tamrie asked, pulling me to a stop and running a hand along her brow, her fingers lingering against her hairpin. "That's what you're saying, ain't it?"

"I… yeah, I guess it is."

"Huh. Guess this fake relationship's a good bit more real than I'd been hoping," Tamrie said, pulling me forward by my arm. "Though don't you think I'm gonna give up my position on the council so's I can go off to join the Shaper’s Guild or that I'll stay home and wash your knickers."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I said, unable to keep the smile off my face.

"Good. Now, you've been gone all week, and there's a right lot of stuff you need to get sorted. First, that Esbee girl's been on about getting her inn shaped out, but I told her ain't no one approving those plans but you," Tamrie said, her notebook suddenly in her hand, her pencil joining it a second later. "And, as for us, there is one matter of note we need to address, afore we get ahead of ourselves."

"Oh?" I asked.

Tamrie pulled me to a stop right at the landing atop the shallow stairs leading into the main entrance hall. There were only three steps and I'd only put them there cause it felt wrong not to. There wasn’t anyone in the room, but it still felt like we were on display as she stood facing me, once more adjusting my robe.

"Well, I can't have you tearing down all the rules what make the world what it is for little old me, if we ain't even seen if we've got it."

"It?" I started to ask. But then Tamrie was going up on her toes, her eyes closed as her lips approached mine. If not for the quiver of the pencil in her right hand, I'd have thought she wasn't nervous.

For a second, I just about backed away. But if it was really that important to her, I figured I'd best return the kiss.

It was… well, it didn't send fireworks to the tips of my toes or cause me to zoom around the room. Did cause my belly to do that weird fluttering thing though. Even Lindsey hadn't done that to me and we'd done a lot more than kiss.

"Huh. Okay," Tamrie said, going back down on her feet.

Ouch. Only okay. It’d been better than okay, least on my end.

"Definitely worth a little risk," Tamrie said, looping her arm in mine again and pulling me close. Then she glanced up at me, biting her cheek for a second. "And a whole lotta waiting, unless I'm misunderstanding."

"I… uh, yeah, there'll be some waiting," I said, letting her lead me forward as I did some waiting of my own. Waiting for my stomach to settle down, that was.

Over, the next couple days, with her position firmly established… nothing really changed, other than Tamrie wanting to schedule a little bit of personal time together every couple days. Considering how much time we already spent together, I barely noticed. Other than the occasional butterfly, of course.

My time was split between getting more information on mana-bodies from Keeper and working with Inertia on a vehicle that would help ferry Nexxa's people quicker.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Ultimately, Inertia and I decided on an airship.

Partially, that was because the high roads still weren’t intact, and partially it was ‘cause… well, mostly…

It was because Inertia and I both really wanted to build one.

The tier 3 Granitas material I'd retrieved from Balthum's enchanting workshop would let us cheat a fair bit, since it could alter the subjective mass of everything in its area of effect.

Even without it, Inertia had figured out how to combine the filter enchantments with Air enchantments to create as much lift as I could ever want, long as I didn’t want to go much above the peak of Mount Aeternia. That said, her balloons weren't very aerodynamic. Not when using the fabric on its own. We also didn’t have a huge supply of lightweight material. So the Granitas’s area of effect became a major factor.

In theory, proper enchanting would allow us to shape its effect, but considering its value, I didn’t want anyone to even know we had it. And my own enchanting skills weren’t remotely up to the task.

We ran through dozens of iterations of airship, building and testing smaller designs within the confines of her lab. Most of them used secondary enchantments that were actually carved into large slabs to the side of the room, and only linked to the prototypes via engraved cable.

An idea her apprentice Nail had suggested after Inertia had complained about not being able to retrieve enchantments.

I still had to do a few minor enchantments on each prototype, but they were just the output segments. The cable did make the enchantments much less efficient mana-wise, but the time saved more than made up for it.

By the time we were ready to build, Inertia and I had six different designs we thought were viable. Which meant we'd gone with the one that we liked the most. For once, something we were building wouldn't look like it was made out of monster parts.

It would be, but at least it wouldn't look like it.

Instead, the design looked like a sloped crescent, almost like a donut with one end smushed down and a bit torn out of it. Except instead of dough, it would be made of armored wooden segments. The empty section in the middle should increase control, speed and lift due to some weird interactions of the filtration enchantments and the anti-gravity effects of the Granitas engine we were designing.

A design we wanted to get refined by Conflict.

Which meant Calbern and I needed to go back.

First though, Inertia and I went through the full airship design again. We were planning to enclose the hull entirely, with walkways and storage running the entire inner length. The balloon envelope would be hidden within sheets of wood peeled carefully from the great trees we'd harvested the heartwood from. The material was incredibly light with high compressive and tensile strength. And that meant it was an excellent choice for our air bladders.

Not as good as the enchanted cloth for weight to lift but the extra durability would be useful in the hostile skies of Ro’an.

A test proved that I could reshape the wood into the shapes we needed, though only the excess mana from the perpetual storm would allow me to process it in a reasonable amount of time. The trees were incredibly resistant, even to spells meant for cutting lumber, such as the Forester’s All-cut which I'd bought from Keeper. Their resilience would worked out well when repurposing their layers for the airship, though it would make it harder to shape them.

Thankfully, Shape Tool pulled its weight, letting us position the panels in the precise shapes we wanted on the prototypes before we heat dried the wood, at which point an eighth of an inch sheet was stiffer than inch-thick steel. Held up to the stress tests better too, bending instead of snapping until ridiculous pressure was applied. The entire sheets did have a tendency to disintegrate all at once if that did happen though.

Which just meant we’d have more self contained pods.

Even with all of that, I expected it take us three weeks before we even had the frame assembled. With that sort of schedule, I half-expected Nexxa to get to us before we were done.

Depending on the help we could get from Conflict, we might be able to speed that up a bit.

Of course, while the airship did eat up a lot of my time, it wasn't my only project. Tamrie and the other council members were doing an incredible job of handling most of the minor problems, though they did get me to step in a couple times to remind people that she and Xoth both had the authority to handle things. No one ever questioned Selvi, and Alister never felt the need to instruct people directly, mostly serving as an adviser for the other council members.

When he wasn’t doing in depth audits of our supplies or tracking everyone who’d interacted with the death-pact bound attackers. He promised that he’d have a report on who the most likely sponsors from Spellford were before Howling season was over.

After the latest reminder that, yes, Xoth could assign them to hauling the rotting slop up from the end of the chasm, I waved a pair of young men off to work. They’d gotten into a fight with each other while trying to impress Xelinda via her father, which seemed like the least logical approach the two Tethered could’ve taken. Shaking my head with a wistful smile, I went to work on Esbee's tavern.

Esbee excitedly handed me the designs to look over the moment I arrived while she thudded her way into the back to grab me some lunch.

Somehow the project had morphed into a full on resort, if I was reading the designs correctly.

"This is three stories," I said, flipping through the pages. "And it's got enough rooms for everyone in Tetherfall to sleep over. You know that's gonna be a lot to clean, right?"

"That's the expansion phase," Esbee said, pulling the sheets from me and setting them on the table. "See here, we're just making sure there's gonna be room in the future, since you've got so much going on. These lines here show the initial construction."

"Oh, that's… much more reasonable," I said. It was still three stories, but the third story was just a storage closet for the moment. And… yeah, it had three separate expansion phases, which was kind of neat. It also meant I could work on it whenever I had spare mana to burn, once I had the initial building finished. It was a great design. "Did you come up with these yourself?"

"I wish," Esbee said, letting out a long huff of air. "Was that Alister guy and Vetrov that did most of it, though a whole bunch of other people hopped aboard. That's why it got so whacked out. Your assistant kept reminding us that you were gonna be busy most of the time, which is why we did the phases thing. She said it'd help."

"She wasn't wrong," I said, nodding as I looked over the plans. "And you're ready for me to do the first phase?"

"That's why everyone cleared out," Esbee said, gesturing to the empty room. "Usually someone would be here keeping me company."

"Right. Don't spend much time here," I said, giving her a soft chuckle.

"Be a bit weird if you did. You're one of those get up and go types if I ever saw one," Esbee said with a shrug. "Not that you're not welcome, I just know your type doesn't like to sit still much."

I just smiled. Technically, I sat still a lot. Was just usually doing enchanting or researching something or studying spells or… well, she wasn't wrong about me preferring to keep busy.

“So… since no one’s here,” Esbee said, suddenly taking the seat across from me, weaving her fingers together. “If you… still want to talk about Earth… well, guess I’ve got questions too.”