723

Inside were half a dozen maidens, though two looked on the verge of retiring and becoming elders.
One of the older maidens noticed us enter and when she saw the other move to approach us, she turned back to the younger maidens, who sat in rune circles, hands outstretched, chanting, as a strange green light with swirls of translucent energy extended from their hands into the basin. The older maiden began the walk around the basin.
As the second older maiden approached us, I watched in awe as new growth from the very tree emerged from the water and began to form. The elves weren’t so much building a ship as they were growing one! The interior wood was shaped and grew slowly without bark. Well, slowly for some things, but I guess comparing it to watching grass grow, it was blazing fast. I’d guess, it was about two millimeters per minute.
“Holy shit.” I breathed.
“Greetings!” The older maiden greeted us. “You must be Master Thomas and his lucky matrons.”
“Indeed, sister.” Tavorwen acknowledged. “We were just coming to see the process and see if we couldn’t learn an estimate of when the vessel would be complete.”
The maiden nodded, “It is a wondrous process. I think of it like giving birth to the children I was never selected to have… but seeing a vessel take shape before your very eyes is a beautiful and intimate feeling.”
I watched the wood continue to grow and take shape, growing slowly in all directions.
“How long will it take?” I asked. “To grow the whole ship that is.”
“If we get the support we were promised… Five days for the main ship. Two more for the components and assembly.” She stated.
A week. They could GROW a fucking ship in a week.
“Why haven’t you got a navy then?” I demanded.
She looked at me intrigued. “A navy? Is that like an armada?”
“More or less.” I accepted. I wasn’t going to argue the nuance.
“Well, first of all… because we live far from the shores. There are rivers we used to take our ships to the sea, but it was simply impractical.” She declared. “And secondly… the seas are just too dangerous. A ship may take a week to make, but a crew of twenty maidens? If they are lost to one of the various dangers of the deep, it is far too much.”
Oh, right. Audriul had mentioned leviathans, krakens, megalodons, and sea dragons. I was guessing that wasn’t a complete list. I knew what two of those were, or at least thought I did. There were enough shark movies about megalodons that I at least had the idea. Big fucking shark. Krakens, I had a friend who loved a stupid card game, Magic the something or other, and he’d shown me pictures of his Kraken deck. If I had it right they were like big fucking octopi or squids. Maybe even like that Cthulhu thing that people were always going on about, whatever it was. Leviathans… I had no idea. I’d have to ask my matrons later.
“So how hard will it be to steer?” I wondered. “Like, the ring thing is going to have an elemental… what is that?”
I got stares from my matrons and the maiden with the hair turning white.
“Oh, wait! You told me about those! They’re like bunches of fire or shit, but they’re alive!” I remembered turning to Tavorwin.
“Yes…” The shipwright agreed. “So a wind elemental would appear to you as a whirlwind or a cloud, though you might be able to discern eyes and some form of a mouth. Their language is hard for even those educated to speak or understand.”
Cool, so like from that movie Hercules, I’d watched years ago with Jacob and his family… where there was the tornado monster thing… TITANS! That’s what they’d called them. I think my history professor had said the movie was shit compared to the actual myths, but I guess I’d gotten at least something out of it… Maybe the ice thing had been like an ice elemental and the lava thing was a lava elemental. My brain could go from there and start to think about what other elementals might look like.
“It can be tricky to control an elementally powered vessel. You need proper elemental attunement. You need will. And you need endurance.” She cautioned.
I nodded, “Okay, so the elemental attunement… how does that work?”
She blinked. “That’s the one you are worried about?”
“Our Master is…. Gifted… in many regards.” Tavorwen informed her.
“But lacks a formal, magical education.” Sevrina clarified.
“Well, you can practice elemental attunement with a tuning crystal over here.” The shipwright declared, seemingly unconcerned.
“Don’t worry, Master. All mages learn magical attunement in our second lyceum on magical application.” Sevrina assured me. “I can explain it to you, and as quickly as you learn, you are sure to pick it up quickly.”
I was nervous… but she had a point. I didn’t know what it was about me, but I had, in fact, picked up on most magical things I’d tried pretty quickly. If this went the same way, then I’d be good to go in short order.
The tuning crystal was a round crystal ball that sat on a pedestal in one of the alcoves around the basin. It was dusty and looked like it hadn’t seen much use in a long time. Unsurprising considering how long it had been since a ship had been built… or this sector of the city had been populated. I blew the dust off and then, had an idea before it inevitably clogged all of our lungs and made us cough. I thought of a breeze and waved my hand, making a gust to blow the dust away.
These boons were freaking convenient.
“Now, the concept is simple,” Sevrina assured me. She opened a little drawer under the crystal and a larger drawer lower in the pedestal. Inside the larger drawer were ten marbles, each a different color. She picked up the red crystal and slipped it into the smaller drawer beneath the crystal ball. “Each elemental key tilts the elemental balance of the crystal toward a given element.” The crystal turned slowly red and orange. “Like now, it is tilted towards fire.”
She put a hand on the crystal. “You begin by channeling your will into the crystal. The crystal will not resist, so there is no need to exhaust yourself with excessive force of will. That will likely not be the case with the elemental, but now you are simply learning the trick of proper elemental alignment.” She closed her eyes and the red and orange energy swirling in the crystal danced and shimmered chaotically for a bit, then settled into a pattern of regular bands, and the crystal began to glow more brightly. “As your will intermingles with the energy you will feel its nature, often described as a mood, a leaning, or a tilt. You can either attempt to match it, as I am now, with your will for a complementary attunement, or you can attempt to reach the opposite nature, known as a dissonant attunement.”
Her brow furrowed for a moment, as the crystal ball stopped glowing, and the energy went back into chaos, then it seemed to shrink until it was a guttering flame in the center of the ball.
With a sigh, she removed her hand from the crystal and it returned to its original state of getting filled with slowly changing red and orange lights.
“The complementary attunement is far easier and is what you will require,” Sevrina explained. “Once you have mastered attuning, it is a skill that is returned to with ease.”
“Like riding a bicycle,” I muttered.
“What is a bicycle?” Tavorwen wondered.
“I’ll tell you later,” I assured her, then reached for the crystal. It felt warm under my hand, but not quite uncomfortably warm.
Okay, just a little bit of will, I thought. I took a thread of the golden light I always imagined my will as and fed it into the crystal.
I immediately saw what Sevrina had been talking about. I could feel the energy, and how it was… Spicy? Angry? Leaned forward? Somehow it was all of those things and none of those things, and… Explaining it is weird. When you try it, you’ll understand.
Now, matching that energy with mine was… hard. I tried for several minutes to just force my will to be… that…. And it just didn’t work. My will was… me. As I went to give up, I thought, come on, fire, work!
“You finally got it!” Sevrina called.
I opened an eye to glare, it was certainly not… the brightly glowing crystal filled my vision. I swear my will wasn’t right, but the fire still worked.
[You called?] A tiny voice from inside the crystal trickled through the will I was feeding into the crystal.
[Um, yeah. I’m trying to learn how to attune.] I thought, kinda just imagining the thoughts getting tossed at the crystal.
No need to shout. The voice replied. It’s been a long time since I talked to anyone… but you want to learn how to temper your will? That’s not it at all… No, it’s like this.”
I felt the energy guide me, and my mind relaxed. When it was done, my will felt like the energy around it.
“A second attunement? How is that possible?” Sevrina gasped.
That’s better. I’m going back to sleep. Good luck! And as quickly as the voice had come, it was gone.
“Master, how did you do that?” Sevrina begged. “I’ve never even heard of a two-level attunement!”
“Well, I was just… a… talking to the um… fire,” I admitted.
“Talking to the… Master Thomas, do you speak Infernian?” The shipwright demanded, walking over after overhearing.
“Um… no idea. Not sure how the magical translation worked there.” I admitted.
“That’s right! Master Thomas does not even speak elven, the magic simply translates his words for us!” Nauveir noted.
“Interesting… so, perhaps… you could tell me how good my Zephyrin is…?” She asked curiously.
“Well, I’m happy to try,” I told her.
She cleared her throat and I admit, it creeped me out. Normally, yes, it was a little like watching a TV show with subtitles, but only if the actors had pre-recorded themselves reading the subtitles in the new language. So the voice matched the individual, but the lip and tongue movements didn’t match the words. I wasn’t much of a lip reader, so it hadn’t bothered me until recently. The Shipwright however looked like she was trying to sing opera, and the words I heard were brief and abrupt.
“Fuck you, I want to go home.” Her voice declared.
I blinked.
“Did it work?” She asked. “Did you hear the wind and breezes of Zephyrin or your own tongue?”
“Heard what I think you were saying… but what did you think you were saying?” I asked carefully.
“We believe that to be Zephyrin for ‘Greetings, how may I serve’.” She announced.
“… Not even close,” I informed her. “What you said was, ‘Fuck you, I want to go home’.”
She blinked. Then again.
“That means… what? Please say it again.” She pleaded.
“It means ‘Fuck you. I want to go home’. Or at least that’s what I heard.” I reiterated.