Rise of the Archmage Alister

After reworking the schedule on which the servants would walk or ride in their carriages due to the new addition of their staff, the group moved on to Fornafoss in relatively quick order. As composed as he seemed, the situation with the rails and public unrest stressed Blas greatly, as he explained on the ride. He even opted to walk for a bit to collect his thoughts, despite the protest of the guard who took his place in the wagon.

After another day or two of travel at the walking pace the caravan maintained, they reached the rival and competitor of Bernoth, the city of Fornafoss. It was somewhat smaller than Bernoth, though not by a large margin. Just like the prior city, they focused on bone mining, in this case, the northern half of the ribs and spine instead of the southern. However, one thing that Fornafoss had that was lacked by Bernoth was something that caught Alister’s eye immediately, and silenced his persistent requests to go see the bones up close and “study it for persistent magical resonance” or whatever similar research he could think up. Wisteria agreed, but mostly because she thought the idea of a skeleton that huge was really cool, though she too was quieted by this latest fascination.

A train. The long-awaited construct that had composed many of Alister’s idle fantasies since he first heard about this train line back in his hometown. The pestering began anew, with Alliana reminding Alister that he couldn’t go inside the drivers compartment, but could be allowed to study the engine from outside, an opportunity that he took with relish.

The front of the train, the engine Alister recalled, was a large cylinder surrounded on both sides by large, blocky, n-shaped pistons, with one end coming into the cylinder and the other operating huge wheels that appeared to run with the momentum generated. After pestering the first engineer he could find to explain the technology in detail, and chastising the dwarven engineer repeatedly for dumbing it down, it seemed as though there were systems inside the cylinder that moved liquids through the pistons via magical heating and cooling, turning the wheels, which generated electricity. This revelation was followed by another attempt to gain access to the operator’s cabin, a large square room on the back of the cylinder. His request was stymied by a gentle bop on the forehead via a fan; as firm a “no” as could be given by his mother. Enough so to make even the emphatic boy give up on his quest to see the controls.

The station itself, though more mundane, was definitely magnificent in its own right. It had two large platforms made of black marble and granite, with a fine, polished wood structure that constituted a couple of broad arches over the tracks, with the space in between filled with shiny white bricks of some magical material or other. Every ten feet or so there were small, floating mage lights keeping the whole area well lit, even at night, without the need for flames that would have dirtied the beautiful structure.

Speaking of magic, the whole area was positively abuzz with it; there were apparently professional “living batteries”, or mages that spent a large amount of time providing energy to the systems that powered the whole station. It was no small job to do, either. There were all kinds of magical gizmos about; this entire place was clearly meant to be a bastion of magical innovation, meant to show off the great strides made in magitech over the years that might be missed outside of the capital by the genteel upper-class that would actually frequent the location.

They would be in the town for a number of days as they waited on the arrival of another set of family members. As fascinating as the station was, it eventually lost its hold of fascination on the two children and Morgan, and they shortly began pestering once again to head over to the one thing that held the attention of the entire region; the grand skeleton that defined local industry. Without a word, Ode and Jacob reluctantly accompanied them. They weren’t particularly interested in the skeleton… but after the whole fiasco with the dragon, Ode had become protective of the child, more than just because he was her student.

Neither of these were a surprise to the Duke and Duchess, but there was one surprising member of the group that opted to go see the skeleton.

The naga, who had some time ago introduced themselves as Neth’rehxis, or just Neth, came forward of his own volition. This surprised everyone as they organized to go, but no one told them to do otherwise. “Apologiess for interrupting. I wondered if, perhapss, you had room to bring me along? I would quite like to ssee the boness,” he requested after greeting them with a peculiar bow composed of folding their lower arms across their hips with wrist touching, their left upper arm with palm flat on the chest, and their right arm straight out to their side. His speech was clipped and short, aside from the obvious S.

Alister stepped forward, assuming himself the unofficial “leader” of the party in question, as he tended to do. “Of course you can. We’d be happy to have you with us!” he said, pleased that one of the slaves they’d acquired was so willing to buck their station. The others were still meek and quiet, unwilling to step up and speak unless spoken to in the first place. It was very upsetting to everyone involved, showing the traumas they had been through… though it certainly didn’t help that the person they were “purchased” by was someone of such a powerful position in the first place.

But that did make Neth’s willingness to act in their presence all the more surprising. The jade-scaled serpent-man’s tail flicked excitedly, something that Alister didn’t know Naga did.

Even back in his time, the Naga were a fairly secretive lot; they lived out their lives underground for the most part, and as Raalin he had heard tales of grand settlements right beneath his feet when he wandered the dunes of the lands now known as Mitania and Garim’Ves. There was more rumor about them than fact, even now, as few outsiders ever saw their homelands… which has been proven to go deep into human territory, some ancient naga cities found under the very capital of Edros that maintained a small population still, holdouts from some subterranean war between unseen nations.

Truth be told, Alister was very pleased that they managed to bring Neth’rehxis along for free; the fact that they had jade scales and were from such an elusive species would have been rather costly, even for his father… a sale that no doubt would have led to the acquisition of even more free peoples. If Neth was from a free settlement, there was much that could be learned, were the naga willing to talk about their home.

The naga held the attention of the two children and Morgan as they travelled, whom had endless questions. They weren’t sure where a line lay, and they knew that being a slave, they could have a great deal of trauma that was undealt with and they didn’t want to trigger a negative response.

It took an hour to reach the bones on foot. For once, attention was turned away from their new curiosity and to the grand skeleton before them. It was strange seeing bones so large that one could see the pores thereupon clearly, large enough that someone the size of Alister could probably climb inside one, even if it would be quite a snug fit. It was almost like a sponge, in a sense. Even stranger was to see people mining said bone as if it were some kind of precious metal or stone. They seemed to be mining it for the powder, with a large number of people running about and collecting the dust fastidiously.

Ode and Jacob began to become interested in it then but had the good sense to not disturb the workers overmuch. At the end of the day, they couldn’t just take some of the dust to study since it was a valuable resource, and there was little they could do without bothering the people trying to make a living. Instead, they opted to go somewhere less busy and gather a sample of their own of the mysterious substance that had only in recent years found a use. As they moved away from the more processed region, the porous material began to be covered by a hard shell of solid bone.

But Alister began to feel odd as they left the populated area, slowly becoming uneasy.