Chapter Twenty-Nine – Wenthe’s Boredom

  Terraday - Mareday, 13-20 Tamihr, Year of Folivor the Restful Sloth, 489 years AWA

  Aboard The Danrorr’s Fury, Matalis Ocean

  On the fourth day of training, while helping with the rigging, Wenthe paused in her work to ask the sailor beside her: "If the wildshards affect magical energy in an area, could someone use Alter Winds at the boundary between affected and unaffected zones to create a sort of... magical pressure differential? Like opening a door between two rooms with different temperatures?"

  The sailor actually paused, considering. "That's... that's an interesting thought, miss. I don't know enough about magic to say."

  Thydek, overhearing from his position near the mainmast, looked impressed. "Not a bad question, lassie."

  But then Wenthe, energized by the positive response and her mind finally engaged with something interesting, started rapid-firing follow-up questions without waiting for answers: "And what about using Control Weather to compress the wildshard effects? Or could you layer multiple Alter Winds spells? What's the maximum altitude where wind magic still affects a ship? Do different types of wildshards respond differently to the same spell? Has anyone tried using Soften Earth and Stone on crystallized wildshards to—"

  "Miss Quickclaws." Captain Rasharo's voice cut through her torrent of words. "If you could save the theoretical discussions for when you're not supposed to be working."

  Wenthe's ears flattened slightly, and she returned to the task at hand. For about ten minutes, she managed to stay focused. Then the questions started again—these ones more scattered, about wind patterns and wave motion and whether anyone had ever tried to magically chart the wildshard locations—and the distraction was too much for the crew members trying to work around her.

  Captain Rasharo ordered her bluntly to shut up for the rest of the day.

  Wenthe's tail lashed with frustration, but she bit back her questions and worked in sullen silence. This lasted perhaps ten minutes before she muttered to the sailor next to her, "But don't you think it would be useful to know if—"

  "Back to your quarters, Miss Quickclaws," the captain said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Now."

  Wenthe muttered peevishly to herself about this, but returned to her quarters as ordered. However, without even Sondil—who was at the moment working on the main deck despite his nausea—to keep her company, she soon took to prowling the lower decks, looking for something—anything—to keep her mind occupied. She had blown through her paltry stores of alchemy supplies on the first day, so not even her new Cauldron of Brewing was any help alleviating her boredom. She vowed to do a lot of shopping once the party arrived on Takatari, so she'd have plenty of mental stimulation for the return voyage.

  In a storage area near the bilges—where she'd briefly considered whether she could tolerate bilge-work before deciding absolutely not—she noticed something odd. Water stains marked some of the lower crates, but the pattern didn't match the ship's normal water line. The discoloration suggested water had come up from below rather than splashing down from above. The wood showed signs of old salt damage, but also something else—a faint crystalline residue that caught the light strangely when she angled her alchemist's eye toward it.

  Curious now, Wenthe scraped a tiny sample into one of her empty vials. She had plenty of those, having blown through her actual alchemical supplies already. It wasn't enough to identify without proper examination and reagents, but it was... unusual. The residue had an almost iridescent quality, shifting between translucent and faintly purple depending on the angle.

  She considered mentioning it to someone, then decided it was probably nothing—just old salt deposits with some mineral content or maybe algae. She pocketed the vial and continued her prowling, but found nothing else of interest. The ship was depressingly devoid of anything intellectually stimulating when you weren't actively working.

  When lunchtime came—Wenthe didn't think she could ever get used to calling it "nooning"—she dominated all conversation to the point of earning glares from Neric and Kere, while Monoffa gave her a wry look, and Jenna raised an eyebrow at her. Her pent-up energy and need for engagement spilled out in a flood of words and questions and observations that left little room for anyone else.

  Finally, Perx pulled her to the side and began talking to her about wind and wave magic, clearly recognizing her need for intellectual stimulation. Since that was more in the realm of Kere's magic than his own, he dragged the Half-Aquatic-Elf druid into the conversation, peppering her with constant questions about how magic theory applied to this spell or the other one.

  "Perx," Kere laughed, "I'm no theoretician. I'm happy if I can just cast a spell and make it do what I want. I'm a practical girl at heart."

  Perx gave her a disappointed look and sighed. "Pity."

  Kere then told Wenthe, "About the only spells I'm aware of that can affect how a ship might move are Alter Winds, Control Winds, and Control Weather. At my current level, I can only cast Alter Winds."

  "As can I," added Perx.

  "I'm pretty sure Monoffa has a wand of Alter Winds, too," said Wenthe, feeling rather disappointed that the conversation was already reaching its limits. "Aren't there a lot of weather-related spells, though?"

  "There are," agreed Kere, "but most of them are either for use in combat, like Call Lightning, or for some practical purpose, like Obscuring Mist or Wind Wall. The intent of most weather spells aside from the three I listed is not to actually change the weather—they change the weather for some other purpose.”

  Perx added, "Unless you want the effect of a spell like Sleet Storm or Obscuring Mist for weather-related reasons and not merely as a means of concealment."

  "I could see Obscuring Mist being used to provide an eerie effect," observed Wenthe thoughtfully, her mind already working through the theatrical possibilities.

  "Mere theatrics," muttered Kere with a slight downward curl of her lip. "Strikes me as still being utilitarian in nature, if more aesthetic than your average utility spell."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "So," crowed Perx gleefully, "it could create aesthetic weather!"

  Wenthe giggled while Kere rolled her eyes.

  Lunchtime ended all too rapidly for Wenthe's peace of mind. She didn't remember the trips she had taken with Monoffa before she wound up in Andovarra being this boring, but then she reminded herself that she had had Monoffa to talk to then, and they'd been doing interesting things—exploring new places, conducting alchemical experiments, getting into and out of trouble. Now Monoffa was busy on deck learning to sail, and Wenthe was stuck with nothing to occupy her restless mind.

  Sondil decided not to go back up on the main deck after lunch, and Wenthe happily followed the King's son back to his quarters. However, the young man just lay in his hammock and told her he wanted to take a nap, and could she please be quiet for a while or else leave.

  "I'll come find you once I wake up," he told her, but when he did wake, he wound up back on deck for the rest of the day, gamely attempting more sail work despite his queasy stomach.

  That night, as Wenthe was lamenting her lack of anything to do to anyone who would listen, Kere reminded her with infinite patience, "Sondil enjoys Andovarran history. Maybe you should ask him some questions about that. And maybe he even knows a little Tamandran history."

  History was far from Wenthe's favorite subject—all those dates and dead people and events that didn't involve explosions or interesting chemical reactions. But when she asked Sondil to tell her about some interesting events from Andovarran history the following day, she had to admit that his enthusiasm for the subject made it more interesting to her than it otherwise might have been. And it was much, much better than being bored out of her skull with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

  They were in his quarters during the afternoon, Sondil having retreated there after his stomach rebelled once again. Wenthe sat cross-legged on the floor while he reclined in his hammock, his color gradually returning as he talked.

  "So the Territorial Wars of 287 AWA," he began, his face lighting up with the excitement he always showed when discussing history, "officially they were about taxation and trade rights. That's what all the documents say, what the historians recorded. But the fascinating part is that it wasn't actually about any of that—those were just the public complaints."

  "Then what was it really about?" Wenthe's ears perked forward, her attention caught despite herself.

  "Access to a newly-discovered wildshard site that produced consistent temporal effects." Sondil leaned forward slightly, his nausea apparently forgotten in his enthusiasm. "Imagine being able to age wine or cure meats in a fraction of the time. The province that controlled that site would have an enormous economic advantage."

  Wenthe's pupils dilated with interest. "Wait, temporal effects? Like actual time distortion?"

  "Exactly! The wildshard created a stable zone where time moved approximately three times faster than normal. It's carefully controlled now—there's a whole guild that manages access and makes sure nobody does anything too stupid with it. But back then, three provinces nearly broke away from the crown fighting over control of it."

  "So what happened?"

  "King Aldric the Mediator—that's what history calls him now—brokered a compromise. The site would remain under crown control, but all provinces would have equal access for commercial purposes, with strict regulations about what could and couldn't be done there." Sondil's expression turned thoughtful. "It's actually one of the foundations of our current economic system. My family's warehouse in Turistil is built near a minor temporal site—nothing as dramatic as the original, just a small zone where time moves about twenty percent faster. We can cure and age goods faster than our competitors."

  "So you're literally using magic to cheat at business," Wenthe said, delighted by the practical application.

  "It's not cheating if everyone knows we're doing it and simply can't replicate it," Sondil replied primly, though his eyes twinkled with amusement. "It's called 'competitive advantage.'"

  Wenthe laughed, and the conversation continued, ranging across various interesting historical events—the Great Andovarran Fire of 312 AWA that destroyed half of the capital before a weather mage finally contained it, the infamous Pirate Queen Sarella who'd terrorized shipping lanes for fifteen years before being captured, the mystery of the Vanishing Fleet that had sailed out one day and simply never returned.

  But eventually the conversation turned more serious. Sondil, perhaps sensing something in Wenthe's careful attention to stories of freedom and escape, asked gently about her own past.

  "You mentioned once that you were an escaped slave," he said. "From the Drow on Aleru. That must have been... difficult."

  Wenthe's tail went still. She didn't talk about this often—most people either pitied her or didn't want to hear about it. But something in Sondil's genuine curiosity, his historian's interest in understanding rather than judging, made her willing to share.

  "Monoffa and I were enslaved when we were young—about nine years ago now," she said quietly. "We were the only two Catfolk slaves close to the same age, so we gravitated toward each other pretty quickly. Became friends when there weren't many reasons to have friends."

  Sondil's face had gone still, his earlier enthusiasm replaced by attentive sympathy.

  "I learned alchemy from my father before..." Wenthe's voice caught slightly. "Before. But I got better working for the Drow. They had me working with spores that had catalytic properties—I could tell when they were about to explode, which they found quite useful. Kept their actual Drow alchemists from getting blown up, I suppose."

  "And Monoffa?"

  "She was a light scout." Wenthe's whiskers twitched with something like pride. "The Drow are masters of darkness, but they needed someone who could map light gradients in the wildshard-affected areas. Some of the luminescence gets too intense even for their adapted eyes. Monoffa could identify those zones, tell them where it was safe to go."

  "How did you escape?"

  Wenthe's expression shifted—became almost sly. "We worked for a place called the Luminous Path Monastery. There was a greenhouse with a dome seal that had structural weaknesses. My boss..." She paused, her tail flicking thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure he was secretly against slavery. He dropped enough hints that Monoffa and I figured out how to enlarge the flaw over several weeks. When there was a period of low activity, we slipped out."

  "Just like that?"

  "Well, we had to get over the jungle canopy to a hidden cove, light a signal fire that was only visible from the sea, and then hide in fish barrels for two days while a Tabaxi smuggler sailed us to safety." Wenthe's nose wrinkled. "I still can't eat smoked herring because of it. But yes—just like that. Two years ago now."

  "A Tabaxi smuggler?" Sondil's eyebrows rose with interest.

  "Mero. He's based out of Takatari, actually. Maybe we'll see him while we're there." Wenthe's expression softened. "He took a real risk picking us up. We owe him more than we can ever repay."

  Sondil nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like you and Monoffa have been through a great deal together. Seven years of slavery, two years of freedom, and now you're adventurers strong enough to escort the King's son across the ocean."

  "We're not strong enough yet," Wenthe said, her tail flicking with something between determination and frustration. "Not for what we want to do eventually. But we're getting there."

  "And Monoffa has been with you through all of it."

  "She's a good friend," Wenthe said quietly. "The best."

  "She is," Sondil agreed.

  "The best." Wenthe's tail began to move again, a slow contented swish.

  "She doesn't ask a lot of questions about the past. She just accepts that I am who I am now."

  They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the ship creaking gently around them.

  "Thank you for telling me," Sondil said finally. "And for what it's worth, I'm glad you got out. The world is better for having you in it—even if you do ask entirely too many questions when people are trying to work."

  Wenthe laughed, the dark moment passing. "I can't help it if everyone else thinks too slowly."

  Sondil's voice grew weary then, all the talking having taken its toll, and he asked her about her alchemy interests and her current projects. His genuine curiosity about her work, his thoughtful questions about the techniques she used and the effects she could create, created a real connection between them—the lonely second son who'd rather be in archives than meeting rooms, and the escaped slave who couldn't stop her mind from racing ahead to the next interesting question.

  When Sondil finally drifted off to sleep mid-conversation, exhausted by his ongoing battle with seasickness, Wenthe quietly let herself out of his quarters. She felt... better. Less restless, even though she still had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.

  Maybe having people to talk to—really talk to, about interesting things—was enough. At least for today.