B3 – Chapter 7: The Undermount – Unseal!

Spinning his essence crucible, Tristan returned to his and Felicity’s room. Appearing outside of the door, she warped right next time him a second later. Tristan tapped his pin to the door frame and it unlocked. Going inside, Felicity flapped in after him and landed on the bed, curling up into a small ball on the pillows. “I’m going to nap while you spin your essence crucible to get us back to the Fey Realm.” She sounded sleepy, and yawned before tucking her head into the crux between two pillows.

Tristan gently pulled the wooden writing desk down, sat on the bed, and grabbed some of the paper and one of the ink pens. I have twenty ingots, he wrote, all varying metals from across different Realms. Glancing back at Felicity, he saw her unmoving save for the slight rise and fall of her torso. Eating all that food must’ve tired her out, he thought. He’d seen times like that, where they would be at a feast and some people would eat to the point of bursting and then take a nap on one of the many lounging couches around the exterior of the room.

Returning to his task, he began charting out his plan. Get to the Fey Realm, and use my gloves with Plant Shaping to make a bunch of boxes. We’ll put soil in them, and then plant trees for these different metals. He had no idea if the metal-infusion of trees would work, but he did not want to take any chances of the foreign substance spreading beyond a contained area. We also have to move some of the other crafting stations further from the smithing area to allow for the new tree growth.

He began listing out each ingot. Each one of them had a unique property because of the place they came from, but the Orc sales woman he bought them from only had the notation in shorthand – and he wanted a nice, neat list. Those properties ranged from lighter weight, to more flexibility, to a stronger cutting edge, to even conducting electricity. So many different uses, but I think the most important two I’ll be using are the Aegisium from the Heavenly Realms for a new suit of armor using grandfather’s design, and the Wild Steel from the Wild Realm for a new sword.

The former had a very interesting property, in that it was slightly flexible until struck, at which point it would harden with the impact. That would mean more maneuverability whilst obtaining a more protective suit. Whereas the latter would create a blade without equal.

Well, for metals he had acquired. According to the Orc merchant when he asked her about it, she had described an ancient, legendary metal known as Prime Steel, which is what some of the greatest weapons in bygone eras were made from. Artifacts lost to the ages.

Finishing up his transcribing, he felt the ring full up and ready for activation. Stopping his crucible spinning, he put up the wooden writing desk, grabbed the sack of ingots, and picked Felicity.

“Fwah?” she yawned as she woke up.

“We’re heading to the Fey Realm,” Tristan replied as he activated the ring, ensuring that he focused on not bringing the bed or parts of the room along with him like the stalagmite he had accidentally returned from the cave with on a prior occasion.

Appearing in the Fey Realm, he immediately set to work, going to the trees on the edges of the Queen’s Wood and using his gloves’ artificed spell to shave off slivers from each. Merging those into planter boxes, he instructed fairy dragons to move the crafting stations further from the metal-infused trees and the gem-infused bushes.

Setting each box down, he both-direction spun his essence crucible while fairy dragons came over, filling them with dirt. He put the ingots at the bottom of a small indentation, and they planted saplings atop them. Using a finger with the gloves, he engraved the name of each type of metal into the boxes.

Tristan took a deep breath as he stepped away from the cluster of saplings in dirt-laden boxes. Here we go. Funneling the essence of the Realm through his being, he felt suffused with vitality. His heart was beating in time with the surging ebb and flow of essence that seemed to match his breathing. The trees swayed towards him on inhale, and away on exhale.

The Realm was his to command, and he raised his palms. “Käsken teitä kasvamaan ja omaksumaan juuriinne haudatun aineen piirteet.” (I command you to grow, and take on the traits of the substance buried at your roots).

All at once, the essence surged out from his palms – a silver glow tinged with streams of light blue, sparking gold, crackling crimson, and writhing black. The power flowed into the saplings, and within seconds they began to shake, shudder, and grow. Less than a minute later, Tristan released the flow of essence and saw the trees had all taken various hues of the different metals. A grove of foreign substances, all grown into a new, easy-to-harvest form.

He heard tremendous flapping and looked skyward, spotting The Matriarch as she flew down to join him. Felicity atop his head just waved lazily, “Hi mom.”

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The Matriarch shifted to her Elfanoid form and glanced at Felicity for a moment, giving her a curt nod, before looking at the grove. “Interesting, Lord Tristan. New metals?”

“Yes,” Tristan replied as he walked over to the Aegisium tree and used the gloves to take a few small branches. Shaping them with his palms, he formed them into rough rectangle ingots, and set those on the smithing workbench. He did the same for the Wildsteel, but instead grabbed a slightly larger branch and kept it as a singular, larger ingot for the weapon he wanted. “I need a good smith.”

“There are few better than the Gnomes. Squat Elfanoids who would come up to your hip in height, with slightly tapered heads and short, pointed ears. They are some of the finest crafters you could find.” She pointed out to the distant hill that Tristan had first arrived at when he chased Felicity to this place. “You could always go and unseal that part of the Fey Realm. But…we do not know what happened in that sealed away section.”

Tristan looked over at his grandfather’s weapon and armor on their racks near the smithing area. The blade was far larger than he was comfortable with using, and instead he drifted his gaze towards an Adamant Wood rapier. Walking over to it, he grabbed the item and turned back to The Matriarch. “How long before we must break the other seals?”