Chapter 407: Chapter 407 - Foundations of Flow & Deceptions
The grinding sound of the modified core sampling construct as it bored its way through solid rock echoed across the exclave’s upper plateau. Elua stood at the edge of what would become the main water distribution hub, watching her creations work with the small satisfaction of an artisan seeing their project move through steps.
She’d expanded its capabilities dramatically for this drilling project. The spinning diamond-edged apparatus now carved perfect cylinders almost a foot and a half in diameter. An energy wasteful ritual that fractured the bottom now targeted six feet, leaving giant pieces of rock to deal with.
’If I could build a real deep drilling apparatus, I could automate it even more. But this will be enough to do it all... with a little arm strength.’
She also added features to let it attach sigil carved eyelets to each chunk of stone, which it then hooked itself to before the lengths of a fairly thin but extremely long chain - which of course had been meticulously stamped with strengthening sigils - pulled it slowly from the earth.
The ancient and knowledgeable cultivator had considered building a winch, but the time it would take to get all the parts designed right to actually work at the eventual eighteen hundred foot depth didn’t calculate for her. Hand over hand, humming all the while, the heiress worked the engineering project manually like no heiress of their continent had done before.
"That noise is going to drive me insane..."
Once the noise cut out for another period of hauling up, Sevra made the complaint from her position near the stone forest. She was hauling the chunks of copper bearing ores that a few other semi-autonomous little golems had freed from the confines of the stone. Veins which Elua had requested mapped and catalogued in a list by the Astral Walker for their actual seeming metal content first, then chosen out of that through more aesthetic eyes.
The number of small crumbles of the mineral eventually outweighed the large looking clusters while maintaining a lot of the same natural look as the landscape already had. Which was important to the girl, as the area was going to be part of the hidden estate’s gardens.
"Once the main shaft reaches close enough to the water table for me to chuck this rock down in it, I’ll switch to cutting my way from the other side."
The stone in question was a quartz heavy piece with the brunette’s spirit fragment lodged inside - and some rituals that were meant to boost its discoverability at range. She would use it to align the pipeline much more gracefully underwater.
"I still don’t understand why you didn’t just start from down there in the first place."
"Well, I’m pretty good at math and calculations, but I’m not really as much of a whiz at it as you seem to think. Also, as much as I love to swim, I’d rather be up here for hours and hours on end than down deep below the water line catching stone."
"But Madrigil said that the rock would just slide out that way. What would you even need to be down there for?"
"Like I just said, to catch and haul it up here. Do you think I’m just taking every one of these out and stacking it over there for no reason?"
The scout chose not to answer that, she just picked up another basket of ore to be smelted someday for purposes she didn’t understand, all for a Goltbred who was getting better and better at giving her scathing looks. The ancient cultivator who didn’t understand what was not to like about core samples!
So far, it felt like a lot of negative emotions were being ’finalized’ while she was around... and it made the Shadow Whisker member feel terrible. Of course, she did not know that it took more muscle control to smile than it did to frown - and that this was the natural and primary reason that this result was occuring!
"Yes, don’t answer that. Just pretend I don’t know that you think I make silly choices regularly. Honestly, I can’t win with you. I’m either perfect and a terrible terror in your mind or faulty and disappointingly mundane~"
Eventually, the little Ogre Fairy had hauled this chunk up over the course of about ten minutes. That being the case, she estimated that she was two thirds of the way down the eighteen-hundred feet she was going for. Continuing on from here would likely be double the amount of time she had already spent just in dragging a ton and a half length of chain and stone upwards.
And that didn’t even include the other steps, like lowering the construct back down, the maintenance on it, or just taking a break to eat and sleep. Altogether, she had spent two and a half days on this project so far. But it was key for her blueprint and needed done first.
’Well, we might be close enough?’
Putting the little quartz bearing stone in a tiny reed basket and sealing the lid, she then dropped the whole thing down the shaft. The plant matter was part to help further identify she had the right stone - she’d been tricked before, once, by an artifact in the shape of a stone that most definitely was not *her* spirit fragment bearing rock - and part to cushion any tumbles as it fell.
"Another change of pace?"
Madrigil emerged from between two towering spires of calcareous rock as this next cylinder was neatly deposited in a growing pile. As of yet, her construct had not run across any particularly important seeming geology... and the pile would later be broken down and repurposed for her construction materials.
To the little artisan... they would make good bases for thin stone benches, troughs, or little sculptures in some cases. Elua finally turned away from the boring operation, mint eyes bright with a kind of enthusiasm that usually preceded her more ambitious explanations. She gestured toward the stone forest with its veins of green and blue running through ancient weathered spires.
"The garden paths I want threading through these formations will have their natural beauty preserved and enhanced once I can get to making the flowing irrigation channels that match the area’s look. However, everything else I intend to build first also depends on having reliable, clean water flowing where we need it and when we need it."
"You mentioned that you have a ritual in mind... can I see it?"
Truthfully, the heiress was surprised it had taken him this long. He’d passed through in one of his rare times of wanting to be helpful, back when she was first redesigning the construct... and had seemed intrigued but never asked much more about it. A small flourish of the silver dress wearing girl showed an expanded example.
"The sigils for this will be the real achievement, providing the suction force and therefore pressure that actually turns it into a functional water pipeline. Otherwise it’s just a hole straight down."
"Fascinating. But won’t it just keep flowing up and overflowing? I don’t recall any particular plans to have any excess falling back over the cliff."
From time to time, the noble asked to see the blueprint of the area she planned. She was pretty sure he didn’t care that much about architecture, but was certainly trying to figure something out from her choices.
"That’s why an array on the lakeside entrance will be linked with the topside pressurization sigils. Backpressure will alter the flow rate and keep a consistent availability of water for everything I intend, with the ability to increase or decrease it as needed."
"What about waste management?"
"Oh, I know a thing or two about that as well. You see here, I plan to use a form of this composting ritual I developed that-"
⟠ ⟠ ⟠
Ondua returned from changing his youngest daughter and the moment he sat her down on the floor, the little girl seemed more than content to wobble off on her feet. She plopped down and began to play quietly with a collection of large-but-light, smooth painted wood shapes that Gehxel - the youth at the fort she had been stuck at - had given her.
She stacked them, pushed some through each other, and arranged them in patterns that made perfect sense to her while babbling explanations and discoveries that made perfect sense to no one else in the room. The nursemaid especially was troubled by how upset the girl got when the servant couldn’t provide the right response to what was being ’asked’.
While she did so, the brunette settled into the chair of his study... his daughter-in-law having been asked to join them inside for more talk. Yatrel had peppered the swordswoman with small, detailed questions about how she had been raised. He sighed with a heaviness that had nothing to do with physical fatigue.
"Speaking of too much and not enough honesty between family members, there’s something we should have told you weeks ago, but..."
"We didn’t want to burden you while you while you were on your first campaign, dear. But I can’t exactly keep ignoring what you asked earlier."
His wife finished for him, the still warm fury in her heart coming through loud and clear. Qatrand had asked her why there were still so many people on the estate grounds, especially what appeared to be Void Defense Society officials busily combing through everything. While the blonde knew it had to do with whatever investigation was ongoing, it felt to her like that should be through by now.
"...What is it?"
"There’s an official investigation into our family’s wartime resource management. Financial auditors, Guild inspectors, Continental Army supply officers - they’ve been examining every record they can get to - at this point in time - for weeks now... to ferret everything they can out."
"Resource allocation, supply purchasing, storage protocols at the distant holdings during the pre-Descent period. More than routine wartime auditing. Every major family and Guild gets examined eventually to ensure supplies are being distributed properly rather than hoarded, but they are going the extra mile with this."
Listening to her mother and father-in-law, the teenager frowned and her hand gripped to steady herself on her heavy sword hilt. The last messages she got said that it was being handled, but didn’t have all that many details to it. Both the one from Klaytei and the one from her relative.
"Has Lirades not helped you be cleared of any wrongdoing yet? Someone planted false evidence... right?"
Yatrel’s fists clenched as she watched Onya stack her blocks with innocent concentration. The details of what she’d been told still simmered - and it was everything she could do to not storm the Yecine estate and batter that gate until it fell for good. She would even cheat and attack the walls around it this time!
"We didn’t want to tell you because you had enough to worry about without adding these family problems to the list. But the investigation keeps expanding and the evidence keeps pointing toward your father as the saboteur."
"And the faction of elders that were involved in forming me."
Qatrand’s low voice added, immediately. Not because she’d already known... but because she knew Anper enough to know he didn’t make such large movements without the weight of at least part of the family firmly behind him. She could even start connecting some dots, especially over one of her biggest confusions.
’He never seemed to like El... or me. But he never posed any objections formally. And his relationship with Ondua is still strained. Then...’
"They are making use of the fact that I married your daughter, aren’t they? I’m part of their plan..."