2971 Rescue Mission (Part 1)

The baby girl was happy to see her mother. All those big words and the repeated shapeshifting had worked her up an appetite. Elysia turned into a Tiamat for better mobility and went for Kamila's chest.

"Bad Elysia!" Kamila said as the baby pulled her shirt open, exposing her bosom.

"That's my girl!" Lith said with pride.

***

Ernas Household, a few hours later.

A regional holiday had been declared for the whole week to celebrate the news of Quylla's twins. Jirni and Orion had arranged for festivals to be held in every city and village, providing as much food as the recent end of the famine allowed for.

So Lith wasn't surprised when he walked through the private Gate of their mansion and found every wall, curtain, and piece of furniture decorated with blue and pink ribbons.

Even the portraits of Orion's ancestors wore one on the lapels of their painted jackets and their expressions looked more smug than usual.

'It's all in your head.' Solus said. 'I remember what they looked like and no one altered the paintings.'

'If you say so.' Seeing the usually polite and reserved house staff smile from ear to ear was so creepy that Lith pondered if Mogar had its own clown prince of crime who had filled the mansion with lethal laughing gas.

When they reached Orion's Forgemastery lab, they almost couldn't recognize it. It was filled with cribs, blankets, and everything one would expect from a children's shop, not the research quarters of a powerful mage.

"Welcome, Lith! Hi, Solus!" Orion shoved a cigar in Lith's mouth, gifted a small bottle of perfume to Solus, and handed a glass of Dragon Water to both. "Come on in, we were just getting started."

"Hi, guys. Please, tell me you've come here on a rescue mission." Nalrond was in his Agni form.

He had three cigars in his maw and one bucket-sized glass filled with liquor in each clawed hand.

Orion was supposed to take Nalrond's new measurements for a new armor, but he had been otherwise occupied.

"What a guy! He has a killer sense of humor." Orion laughed, creeping everyone out. "Don't worry, we'll be done soon and you'll be free to go back to Friya."

The nudges and winks left no doubt that Orion was fishing for more grandchildren.

"Sort of." Lith had walked many miles in Nalrond's current shoes.

His parents had been pushy even before he met Kamila and only Elysia's birth had made them relent from their demands for grandchildren. For a while.

"I bring good news and lots of stuff." Lith opened his pocket dimension, dropping the materials from Nalrond's old Featherwalker armor that he had recycled with Creation Magic.

"Did you ask Salaark or…" Orion asked with greed.

Even the happiness of the moment couldn't make him forget his own personal war.

His lab was full of failed prototypes and the vaults of the Ernas Household were cluttered with old artifacts that Creation Magic could turn into materials for weapons of destruction.

"Both." Lith raised his hands in surrender. "As in, I tried, failed, and Grandma stepped in before everything blew to bits. Sorry, Orion, but your creations are still too complex for me. Maybe if you gave me the schematics of your cloaking runes-"

"Over my dead body!" Not even his personal war could make Orion forget his pride as Forgemaster. "Then you would steal every secret of my bloodline's legacy and the Ernas would de facto be reduced to a branch of the Verhen family."

"I was just saying." Lith didn't even try to deny Orion's on-point allegations. "How is it going?"

"Before, good. Now it's much better." Orion said.

The violet crystals were expensive, but the real issue was getting his hands on enough Adamant to make a proper armor for Nalrond's new and even bigger body. Getting back the Adamant of the Featherwalker made things much easier.

"This guy is a Forgemaster's dream." Orion pressed a few nerves, triggering the retractable blade spikes on the forearms and knees.

"I have a name and I'm not a toy. Stop doing that!" Nalrond said.

Then, he saw the hurt in Orion's eyes and remembered how much the Ernas were doing for him. How even after seeing him in his new form they hadn't batted an eye at his diminished humanity.

"Please."

"I'm sorry, Nalrond. I'm just too happy." Orion said.

In his Agni form, his son-in-law would be a formidable ally. Nalrond had already learned and practiced Spirit Magic during Faluel's lessons with the help of her silvery wand.

The first three tiers of magic were just a matter of power so he only needed to practice tiers four and five to become a Spirit Master. Also, Nalrond had already started to teach Friya Light Mastery.

Even though there wasn't much time, Orion believed that every bit he could snatch from those lessons would help. Last, but not least, between his already deep violet core and his armored body, the Agni was a force to be reckoned with.

"Why is Nalrond's new body relevant to Forgemastery?" Solus asked in curiosity.

"It's actually a niche branch, but a very useful one." Orion explained. "You see, normally an armor's focus is just defense. You can add things like bladed wings or claws, but those are last-ditch resorts.

"Adding more metal for including weapons is not the problem since the weight-reducing spells take care of it. The issue is that you can't give an artifact more than one power core.

"Adding the specifics for a weapon also means wasting runes to set its shape, edge, and measurements, or the self-repair spells won't work. You also have to specify where the blade comes out of how.

"For Nalrond, there's no such problem. I just have to enchant the armor with the simple 'cover your owner' spell to give him what he needs." Orion pointed at the bone spikes on his body and the retractable blades.

"With Nalrond's external shell giving shape to the armor, I simply have to choose for the power core spells that can work both as offense and defense. I can focus on the enchantments and their efficiency instead of wasting runes on diagrams."

'This is interesting.' Lith pondered. 'The horns in my Tiamat form are too short to be useful except as a last resort but my tail is another story entirely. Maybe it's time to put the bone spear at its end to good use.'

'Sure.' Solus replied, blushing in embarrassment as memories about the tail that weren't her own flashed in her mind.

"I'm going on a mission for a while. If you guys need me for anything, please let Kamila know. I might not be able to answer my amulet until I'm done."

"Thanks, Lith. You have no idea how much this means to me." With the Ernas paying for the mansion, the marriage, and even Nalrond's equipment, he felt greatly indebted to them.

Recycling the old armor helped lessen the expenses for the new one but that wasn't enough.

'Light Mastery is my bloodline legacy and the Ernas are my new tribe. I guess that I'll follow Morok's lead and share with my in-law everything I know.' He thought, unaware that he was being manipulated into doing this for months now.