While the design was simple, each of the sentry balloons was only part of a much bigger network. One that would allow us to keep an eye on most of Cape Aeternia from a central location.

Unfortunately, a lot of what would make them work was reliant on me and Bevel. Apparently Inertia and my adopted daughter had spent the time I’d been with Arizar and Tamrie talking over how the Waygate network worked.

It’d been enough for Inertia to combine the idea with one she’d put to the side, though she obviously needed my expertise to make it work.

“This would be great,” I said as I looked it over. “But it’s not going to be easy. We’re going to need to modify each of the Waygates to act as relays. Plus, we’d need to use Worlds materials on each of the balloons. Not sure that’s worth it.”

Inertia nodded, tilting her head as she leaned closer, quickly flipping through the pages I was holding to one further in the stack.

Pulling it out, she had a list of different methods she and Bevel had jotted down as possible replacements. Entirely different designs based on what they’d each observed from seeing other enchantments at work.

None of them were viable on their own, but there might be a way to use a combination of arcane and nature materials that I wrote some notes for. Maybe something with Water instead of arcane, though that seemed iffy.

They’d each require testing but if we could get working sentry balloons, that’d make it a lot easier to keep the Sahevin from digging in when we weren’t watching. And as long as they were invading, it wasn’t like we were going to have a shortage of water affinity materials.

While I was writing down notes of my own, Bevel returned, having apparently gone off for food, judging by the smoothie and bowl of crispy roots she flew in with.

“Hey, busy afternoon, huh?” I asked, holding the pages up towards her.

Bevel started, apparently not having noticed me until I spoke. Then she broke into a grin. “Yep. Thought it was stupid, us always getting people to run around looking for the savvy men when we could get something to do the looking for us.”

“It’s a good idea,” I said, looking down at the notes again. “And we’ll work on it. I was going to ask if you wanted to help me figure out how to aim a Waygate, but if you’d rather-”

“Yes!” Bevel said even as she started shuffling things around on the table where she’d set her food. Then she turned back, holding up a contraption that looked like a sphere with a dozen little arms hanging off it.

“What… is that?”

Inertia let out a whistle-hiss of laughter.

Bevel rolled her eyes, waving at Inertia. “Of course Papa doesn’t recognize it, you never taught him how to make one.”

Another set of rattling hisses escaped Inertia, who shrugged and turned back to her work on the armor.

“Still haven’t told me what it is,” I said teasingly.

“Right. It’s a detector,” Bevel said, gesturing towards the contraption, each of the arms swaying with the motion.

“For detecting… what, exactly?”

“Whatever you hook it up to. Uh, that is, the matching affinity of any mana materials. Won’t detect more smoothie if you plunge it in,” Bevel said, giving me a sheepish grin. Then she shook her head, holding it out. “You just hook it to this part here.”

She held up the bottom, where a pair of clamps were mounted.

“Sure, we can try it out,” I said, pulling out a wind affinity material. A bone from… according to the label, a gryhawk. Some sort of cousin of the gryphon. They were basically the same, except the gryhawk was smaller and aggressive to the point of suicide. And they had brilliant red plumage.

Bevel was rubbing her hands together as I strapped the bone in place. For a second, the arms whirred back and forth, and the sphere started filling with a rough image of the surrounding workshop.

Then a puff of air shot out the side. A fraction of a second later, the entire thing shot out of Bevel’s hands, smashing into the workshop’s ceiling.

“Oops,” Bevel said, catching the falling parts.

“Guess it’s not quite ready.”

“Not quite,” Bevel agreed. Then she flashed me a smile. “Redesign.”

“Sure. But not now,” I said, chuckling. “Selvi would like that Waygate fixed.”

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“This’ll help with that!” Bevel said, holding up the central rod, only three of the arms still attached. “Well, if we get it working,” she amended quickly.

“Inertia, how long do you think it’ll take us to fix this?” I asked, waiting for Bevel to translate.

“She says about an hour. I swear it’ll make it easier to aim the Waygate. It’ll let us measure the local density, and combined with your mapping spell, that one that you picked up with Recall, we can…” She trailed off as I held up a hand.

“Sure. Let’s give it a shot. Not like I’ve got a better place to start,” I said. A small lie, since I did have a few good ideas on how to reroute the Waygate. But this would tie in well enough that it wasn’t a huge loss.

It turned out to work as advertised the second time, though we ended up making it so it was single purpose instead of multi-use, at least for the moment. Turned out the clamps she’d used didn’t isolate the original material enough to use as a clean sample.

With a working mana detector, we bid farewell to Inertia, working on the Waygate. The calculations turned out to be pretty easy, though we didn’t have time to actually build the new Waygate before evening rolled around.

Alongside an oversized snack, we returned to our exploration under the crystal chamber. This time we made much better progress, Bevel having developed a more efficient combo for the smashing while I was getting better at only Sculpting the absolute minimum for us to squeeze through to the next area.

Just before we were about to turn in for the night, we found our first prize.

“What is it?” Bevel asked, leaning over the small broken box.

“I think it was an old knowledge repository,” I replied. I’d seen something similar in one of the memories Keeper had me replay. The person in the memory had used it to access a limited database. “I think it’s busted though.”

“Aww,” Bevel said, crossing her arms. “Think I wanna finish for today. Blowing up the bone babies is starting to get boring.”

“Little bit,” I agreed, ruffling her hair. “But this is a good sign. It means we’re reaching territory that hasn’t been stripped clean by others.”

Bevel perked up at that, attitude flipping liking a coin. “So, we’re gonna keep going?”

I chuckled. “Sure, we can do one more room.”

Barely waiting for me, Bevel skipped forward.

The next room only had more broken equipment. This time Bevel was more excited, since, more stuff meant more chances for good loot.

Despite them being busted, we packed back two of the broken repositories and a chair that had once been enchanted to float at a desk. Not that there was any trace of the enchantment left on any of it.

Bevel had insisted on carrying one of the repositories personally. Well, with her magic, but to her that was one and the same.

When we’d shown them to Inertia the next morning, she’d been pleased with the unusual design, already taking one apart to see how they’d been built.

The next few days passed working on assorted research, classes with Tamrie and Arizar, and exploring the depths with Bevel. All while devising new ways to deal with the Sahevin and learning more about the Unclean clans.

Bevel and I completed the Waygate for Selvi, though it wasn’t quite as fortified as I would’ve preferred, barely hidden away inside a dark cave with a single spellcoded door to secure it. Still, it meant an easier time for them, and less time flying back and forth from Mount Aeternia.

Vexna arrived along with the rest of the Vox Knights and their equipment a full week after Vexith had shown up, pulling into our new port. Which I’d heard someone refer to as Southport. Not wanting to have that as the name of one of our communities, I got Esbee to organize another naming contest, hoping it wasn’t too late for the name to stick.

And while we were at it, I got her to keep a list of the runners up for other new settlements.

Having the Vox Knights join us turned out to be more of a boon than I’d been expecting. Despite not hiring them to clear the Sahevin, Vexith had approached me about doing exactly that the day after Vexna had arrived.

“It shall prove an excellent exercise for the new trainees,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Golden Halls. The Sahevin had abandoned most other approaches and were concentrating in the area.

It had made several of our kill zones useless, since they weren’t even testing them. And we had the opposite problem at the Golden Halls, since they’d literally just throw themselves at a trap until it was overwhelmed.

“Sure. Do you need me to do anything?”

“No. The march will be good for discipline,” Vexith replied clapping me on the shoulder. “Though perhaps you can fly over a few times, reminding them of the heights they may one day reach, should they prove themselves loyal. Ha! To offer ensoulment to your trusted men. Such a reward is not offered anywhere else the company has served.”

“No one else is capable of ensoulment?” I asked, looking over the men unloading heavy crates with the assistance of long spindly enchanted frameworks that lowered down around the crate then raised itself into the air before walking along like a spider.

“Oh, there are a couple places that are capable of it. None where a man would want to serve. They do not give such to free men. Only to soul-bound or those who were bound in other, darker ways,” Vexith said, a lot of his cheer disappearing.

“Darker than soul-bonds?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Aye. Enslaving the family is what the Forgotten Six do. They only elevate those with a strong connection to their families. And they are among the least horrible of the Free Hills. Dark methods all,” Vexith said, lowering his head and pressing his fingers to his head.

“Gonna get a list of those places off you, if you don’t mind,” I said, shaking my head. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they took exception with our way of doing things. Need to make sure we’re ready for them.”

“Most of ‘em are further west, in the Free Hills,” Vexith said. “So, bit of a buffer, what with the Howling Wastes and Terra Vista both between.”

“Long way from here,” I said, glancing over at the assembled Vox Knights walking past, each of them clad in thick leather jackets and pants, but little else for armor or uniform. “Other side of the continent. How’d the Vox Knights get to Spellford?”

“The Vox Knights go wherever they’re paid to go,” Vexith replied. “And there are plenty of Djinn-souled who’ll pay Gate rates for a chapter of Kinya users.”

“Thozgar brought you out?”

“Ha! No, that old man never hired the Vox Knights. Never needed us. Has talent tripping over themselves to serve in his guards,” Vexith said, shaking his head. “His generosity saves him more money than any miser.”

“Yeah, it’s funny how that works,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Anyway, gotta get back to it.”

He nodded, returning the gesture with twice the force. Then he was jogging off. Off to slay Sahevin in the name of training.

I was excited to see him off, ‘cause with him dealt with, I got to join in on the main event of the day.

The launch of the new airship.