Chapter 35: A Call Away

“First time doing a video conference since the pandemic.” I tapped the mirror once; the small screen wasn’t made for this.

Electra laughed, leaning over my shoulder to get a better view of the mirror. “Used to have a call every Tuesday.”

“God, don’t remind me.”

“My Lady?” Rel’s face peeked in from out of frame. “What is the ‘video conference’?” Her voice was partially blocked out by the sound of rain, but I could make it out clearly enough.

“Something I will not be recreating in this world, if at all possible.” I shook my head. “An utterly awful outgrowth of self-important middle managers.”

“I know right?” Electra scrunched her nose. “You wind up in a fantasy world and the best future you can come up with is generic capitalism?”

“Another staple of your Isekai not-novels?” I cupped my chin. “Imagination should never end where experience does. Now, show me what our imagination has accomplished.”

At that, I managed to get a small smile from Relia. “As you wish.” She pulled back, shifting the mirror so that she was holding it in front of her, face pointed outwards.

“Trippy. Kinda like a wide angle lens,” Electra said.

“How a mirror sees the world…” It was clearer than I thought, even with the occasional droplet fogging the glass. These mirrors were flat as I’d been able to make them, so the light came through clear enough to see Dee, Dum, and Ishanti standing next to the new facility that I’d designed. The walls still looked rough, and the path leading up to the door was yet unpaved.

But my little town had finished building it in record time.

“You’re grinning, Em.”

I took a breath. “So what if I am.” I pushed Electra back. “And the interior? Was Maarin able to enchant all of the structures it needed?”

Ishanti stepped forward. “It looked as though he would fall short, but late last night he had a burst of inspiration, to hear him say it.”

“Incredible.” I was still smiling. “Three days, and in the pouring rain no less.”

“Aww, we’re used to it, boss,” Dum said. “An’ we had a nice dry spell yesterday where near everyone pitched in to get it done.”

I shook my head. “Where did you find all the lumber?”

“We stopped building ships.” Rel tilted the mirror back, revealing the large, antenna-like pole rising from the top of the building, made of…

“Is that a mast?”

“Four, actually,” Rel replied. “While you were overtaxing yourself, you told the shipyard to make too many. They served perfectly here.”

I squinted. “With a crow’s nest on the top?”

“A hummingbird’s actually.” The mirror snapped back down to Ishanti as she stepped forwards. “Maarin said it would increase the connection between the mirrors. Also, the number of hummingbirds has increased rather exponentially.”

I shared a look with Electra. “Exponentially?”

“It’s mating season, boss.” Dum scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “‘S why all the beasties in the jungle are migrating in the first place.”

“And mating season means eggs, right.” I nodded. “Do they really get their venom from the flowers?”

“Indeed,” Ishanti said. “Fed with normal flowers, they are harmless—if rather aggressive—birds.”

I sighed. “It’ll keep the facility safe.”

“Been calling it the Mirror Nest, boss.”

I gave Dum my least impressed stare. “Mirror Nest and Lightning Mill, huh?”

Electra punched my shoulder. “Yeah, well, you wanted to name it ‘call facility one’.” Rel tilted the mirror back towards the ‘Mirror Nest’.

Now that I looked closer, I saw that the central mast actually had flowers set around it on small platforms going up the masts, woven inbetween metal bands covered in runes, Maarin’s work. All I cared was that the enchantments functioned. The four masts formed a pillar that was almost three stories tall, plenty of surface area for the man to use, and it gave the structure a mysterious air, shrouded as it was with rain and mist.

The rest of the building didn’t really live up to that idea. It looked like nothing so much as half an egg protruding from the rough ground. Between that and the leftover lumber and stone scattered around it, I could see why they’d started calling it a ‘nest’.

Still, form was second to function here. I just needed it to work.

“Let’s take a look inside.”

“Yes, Lady Via.”

Rel and the others shuffled into the building, revealing a wide circular room, with the four masts descending down through the ceiling to anchor solidly against the floor. The beams were set so that there was a small space between them, for a human it would have been claustrophobic, but for my tentacle friend Dave, it looked like a perfect fit.

“How are you settling in?” I asked the eyeball octopus.

From his spot between the masts, Dave waved a tentacle, eyes blinking cheerily.

“Happy as a clam.” I smiled. “Where’s Maarin?”

“Sleeping, boss.” Dee walked over to the central pillars, patting the symbols carved into the wood. “Had to put in a lot of work to get everything running right, practically collapsed after…”

I waved a hand. “Does it work?”

Dee and Dum shared a look. “Uh, Maarin says it does.”

Dave wiggled up and down, eyes blinking all at once.

“Neat, it works.”

“How, exactly?” Ishanti asked.

I grinned. “The first set of mirrors only had one connection; it was perfect for the situation we found ourselves in, but I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s unwieldy to have a new mirror for each person.”

“I keep mixing mine up,” Rel admitted.

“Now, it looks like Maarin has finally refined his proof of concept into something usable,” I said. “See the ring of disks around the central pillar?” I pointed, not that it helped. Within Dave’s reach, there was a circle of indentations in the floor, each about the size of a Petri dish. Seven small disks sat in the first of those indentations, though there were room for dozens.

“It looks like he made them from melted amber. Inside each is a hummingbird feather, and each mirror is linked to one of those disks. If one of you could activate your new mirror?”

There was a shuffle as Dee pulled out a newer mirror, flipping it open. The leftmost disk buzzed once when it sat on the floor, and Dave swept it up.

I laughed as Dee swore, almost dropping the mirror as a host of eyes appeared in it. “Now, tell Dave who you want to talk to.”

“Uh, call my brother.”

The eyes blinked once, then Dave picked up another disk, placing them both in a slot carved into the nearest mast. Each mast had several vertical slots carved into their surface, each one big enough for two disks to be placed face to face. The moment Dave did so, Dum’s mirror buzzed in turn.

“And voila! Instant connections to any mirror on the network. The disks talk to each other directly, and the pillar ‘boosts’ the signal so that we can talk as far away as Silverwall.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Honestly, I’ll have to go over the enchantments with Maarin later. His first draft was much less refined than this.”

“Boss, he said he managed the other thing too.”

My eyes widened. “Excellent. Dave, show the boys the ‘map’, if you will.”

Dave wibbled gleefully. Taking the two disks out of their little cubby, he moved them over to the fourth mast. There, the slots were sized for just one disk, and they all connected to the same place. I couldn’t see their mirrors directly, but I knew when the connection was made.

“Uh, boss?” Dum tilted his head. “Why are we looking at the clouds?”

I rolled my eyes. “Because you’re connected to our sky whale that’s above the clouds.”

“Why do we wanna do that?”

I sighed. “I admit, not at its most useful at the moment; I conceived the idea before the monsoon rolled in. But once the clouds break, we’ll have instant oversight of any region within range of the tower.”

“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” Electra said. “But also a bit…uh.”

I waved her off. “We can talk about proper oversight later. For now, there’s only one sky whale, and only I can tell it where to go.”

“Still.” Electra shifted.

I turned to look at her. “We need every advantage we can get, El.”

She grumbled.

“Tell you what.” I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “You can write the protocol for it.”

She pulled a face. “Oh, so now you start unloading paperwork on other people.”

“Get what you pay for.” I turned back to the mirror. “Now that we have our call facility in the Nest, I need more mirrors: at least one for every squad leader and every scout. Can you do that?”

Rel shared a glance with the boys. “It should be…possible, Mistress. Now that we have a surfeit of feathers, the main bottleneck is Maarin. In the next few days, we should be able to produce at least a dozen such mirrors.”

“Good. Get it done, and get ready,” I said. “I’ve heard that as soon as the rains end, the monsters will start to move. I imagine Hawkwright will launch his attack at the same time.”

“That’s what Llen expects as well, Mistress.”

I nodded, before pausing. “The hummingbirds don’t migrate, do they?”

“No, Mistress.” Rel turned the mirror back towards herself. “They stay in their groves all year.”

“Yet they don’t get trampled, and now we have a bunch of them.” I stroked my chin. “Enough to expand that grove we’d already built, right?”

“Yes, we’ve already planted several of the flowers closer to the sea.”

“But if we could expand them...” I could still remember the first trip Electra and I had taken to the hummingbird grove, when a massive panther-like creature had died just from stumbling into the glade full of flowers. “I’ll need to talk to Llen next. There’s been a change of plans for our defenses.”

“Of course.” Rel nodded. “And now that communication has been taken care of, there is no reason—”

“Relia, you aren’t coming back to Silverwall,” I said. “My decision hasn’t changed.”

“But, Mistress!”

“Hey, boys.” I raised my voice. “Could you get back into Silverwall, now that Eloncio’s not on gate duty anymore.”

I heard them shuffle. “Probably not, boss. They barely let us out, with all the trouble you’ve been causing.”

“There you go.” I fixed Rel with a hard look. “I understand that you want to support me. That’s why I need you exactly where you are.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

She turned her head away. I sighed.

A tentacle crept up into view, wrapping around Rel’s arm and giving it a squeeze. She jolted as Dave blinked up at her, mismatched eyes squinting in sympathy.

“See? Dave agrees with me.”

“And you’re taking his word over mine?” she asked mulishly.

I shook my head. “I’m standing by my own decision.” She didn’t reply. “Relia. What Electra and I are doing right now wouldn’t benefit from just one more person. We’d need an army to tilt the scales more in our favor.”

“Then come home, Lady Via.” She looked at me, eyes wide and beseeching. “Come back to…back to us.”

Back to me, she didn’t say.

My next words caught in my throat. This time I looked away, avoiding Electra’s gaze as well. It would be so easy to say yes. All Electra and I had done was give Arlo a bloody nose. If we left now, maybe I could add to the defenses around Lady’s Port, maybe I could make a difference in the battle we all knew was coming.

But the chance. If I could just get to Hawkwright and end this entire farce…

At the end of the day, I was just bad at relationships, and this was why.

“I’m sorry, Rel,” I said, “but that’s not going to happen.”

She slumped.

I straightened my spine, taking a deep breath. “Hand the mirror off to Llen, there’s still work to be done.”

Electra placed a hand on my back. “It wouldn’t kill ya to take the easy way out for once, Em,” she said. “We could use a rest.”

I shook my head once, a single convulsive motion. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”