"You want to get married here? In the Exclave?"
Elua’s question ca with actual surprise showing on her face. Her mint eyes were wide as she looked between Nohre and Fusand. The couple had been admiring the view from the central tower mansion the last hour where her estate construction and spiritual constructs moved materials around like clockwork.
This was of course after the miles of travel and telling of stories about what their life was like at the Talcres estate to the clingy brunette... who had overshot them at first in her excitent, when descending from the sky with Gaseous Elent powered mach-speed flight.
When she landed on the ground in an explosion of dirt and bolted backward to catch up, the two teen girls then spent many minutes hugging and blubbering to each other. Both were much calr now, but the edges of their eyes were still a little red for a lot of the march to Qatrand’s estate.
"If you’d be willing to officiate for us. We uh... we actually brought a silver binding cord. It was kind of a hassle to obtain. We know it’s asking a lot, but..."
The dark haired teen’s voice trailed off as she gestured toward the landscape around them. An essence-rich atmosphere, a stone forest with its pathways under construction - but already soon to be the most impressive set of gardens she had ever seen - and the lofty spire they had just descended.
It was unlike anywhere else in existence, in their minds. But even if it had just been a pit of dull colored sand... it was their master’s present location. They could not think of anywhere they’d rather take their vows than where the person that changed their lives for the better was.
"We want you to be part of it. You brought us together with the Talcres and taught us pretty much everything we needed to know to grow stronger. No offense to them, but I don’t think they would have seen us as very special if you hadn’t taken an interest first."
Fusand picked up where his bride-to-be had left off. His voice had settled just a bit more toward a deeper tone in the more than year since Elua had seen him. That scholarly nature it usually intoned was softened by his emotion, just like when he was first asking the heiress - after their wedding day - about how she could go and marry right before a Descent.
"I think you’re selling yourself just a little short, but I won’t argue the point. Connections make connections after all. We build on what was built."
"Yes, well, after seeing what you’re building here... having their ceremony anywhere else would feel quite ’ordinary’. I knew what they were planning, but I have to admit that any reservations I had are gone."
The words ca from Zyris, who had been quietly observing the exchange while looking over the cliff. Such a geological formation was so unlikely that it would never make sense in the real world, but for a bubble of space scooped up from who knows where... it did seem about right.
Hearing them all out, Elua just stood with a hard to read expression for long monts, with her hand clutching her jaw like it might do sothing on its own if she wasn’t careful. Then, slowly - ’mischievously’ - a smirk began to curve her lips, genuinely pleased with her idea and perhaps just a little bit smug for reasons that she knew Qat would accept... but others would judge.
"I know the perfect spot."
Without another word, she took a step back. Directly off the cliff.
The drop was seventeen-hundred feet to the dark cobalt lake below, but the cultivator fell with the grace of soone for whom that pull of gravity was rely an aid and not a terrifying guarantee. Her silver dress automatically flattened around her legs as she used her Elent to slow her descent, contorting and landing with barely a splash on the water’s surface which her essence field rapidly adhered to.
’I *think* Zyris gasped in worry and those two shouted my na. Maybe I should have warned them better. I thought my dropping from the sky earlier would have made them calr. Oh well.’
Her attention was already focused on the lake itself, its mirror-smooth surface of dark cobalt depths reflecting the yellow clouds on violet sky above. Dramatically waving out her hand as she took steps closer to the center, an illusory blueprint began to construct itself as she iterated a few ideas and mories together into sothing new that she could build.
"Fabrication units."
Her voice was not spoken loudly, but it thundered at the top of the cliff from a telecommunication array carved in one of her dress’s gems. Imdiately, three of her constructs detached from their work on the estate. They were sleek things she had worked hardest on, designed for precision manufacturing of specialized parts rather than bulk construction.
Floating platforms equipped with manipulating arms, tools, and more advanced sigil inscription capabilities than her simple ’stamp chisel’ variety. Where those could get the inscription work about seventy percent done with the occasional failure that required excessive extra touch up... these units could get it ninety-five percent done eighty-three percent of the ti!
Eventually they settled onto the water near her, their weight distributed against the surface through localized Gravity manipulation. Elua had been working on her recollection of the best practices for those sigils in light of so of the rooms and defenses she intended to employ to reflect the intended occupant. And their ability to ’float’ were just one practice attempt of that nature.
"Right, jumped off without any materials. Wait one mont."
The brunette spoke to her creations and dropped her Adhesion technique. Plunging into the water imdiately and swimming to one of her hideaways near the surface. Within the hollowed out cave sat a pile of materials she’d been saving for architectural details, from so things that she personally harvested below and refined into standardized weights.
So such blocks of silver glead in the light of the Astral Exclave for the first ti in their existence when she finally shot back up to direct her automated tools.
"Frawork specifications seem right. Hexagonal platform, thirty feet diater, weight distribution wouldn’t work if I don’t do *this*, but that’s nothing. The containnt will eat more energy over ti than the actual use period... so I’ll just add this here..."
As she spoke, her hands pointed at and modified her design in real ti while handing the blocks over toward the floating constructs. The silver imdiately began to be worked into piping, reshaping themselves through very well scripted modular rituals... as each of these fabricators possessed a fragnt that was closer to an Avatar than the ’regular’, more *limited* spiritual constructs.
tal flowed into ductile shapes like liquid as the fabrication units applied heat and pressure in defined, mathematical extrusion processes. On the other end as the pieces were pushed along, the etching of sigils began simultaneously. Symbols that would govern the platform’s most crucial feature - a place to actually stand between it all..
"Gas containnt can be done in the interior of the main dais, my lovely sulfur hexafluoride, pressurized to fourteen atmospheres should be more than enough to resist the weight of cultivators walking or running across panels of it. Maybe even ’too much’ if we consider the buoyancy of the water that will be underneath?"
She was aware that the overall weight of all the silver was fairly negligible due to the surface area of the intended panels resting on the liquid. Her main concern was concentrated force on any one small section. While it was within her ideals to make various redundancies that any such ’puncture’ would ultimately not be problematic, she was also the type to make the *first* layer working on a ’problem’ as... airtight as possible!
The heavy gas she’d grown to favor would be used by the overall ritual to create invisible air pistons that would distribute weight evenly while providing the sensation of standing on... fairly solid ground. Perhaps just a little like a hardened cloud, for those that wanted to describe the visual disconnect of the ’glass’ like surface as their feet pressed a bit higher over the water itself.
Soon enough as she worked, the three who had co through the realmshard to visit made it down to the lake using the lift system that Elua had made sure to tell them about when they first arrived. Zyris was well composed, Fusand looked just a little ’defeated’, and Nohre?
"Oh, I was wondering how long you would panic up there after hearing my voice."
"YES! I panicked! Why would you do that without saying anything?!"
"Because I was inspired... and wanted to get work on your wedding altar right away."
Blinking and flapping her lips like a fish, the green-eyed teenager finally let herself take stock of what was going on. The strange automatons almost had the whole outer hexagon ready, and the vertex points had been temporarily sat down on silver ’retaining discs’ that had been applied with a micro-sigil script that allowed them to adhere to the water surface similar to how she stood on it.
Those six pieces she personally made - because using essence like a carving knife inside of objects was not sothing she could make non-sentient constructs capable of. She also considered it a much more imperfect and wasteful of a thod to use for most permanent structural purpose... at least when the object does not naturally produce an essence field of its own that would ’require’ a cultivator to stand near it.
’In fact, it would be beyond impractical if the density of it in everything here was not so high. I should probably spend more ti thinking of *inefficient seeming* things like this that can aid the construction workflows even if not ant to be part of the final product... or maybe I’ll make Madrigil do it for .’
"The pipes are pretty I guess, but...?"
"Oh, my apologies."
With a flourish and a curtsy, she made the blueprint visible to them. She had gotten used to keeping it visually affecting only herself, much like her facade used to, just so that the exiled noble was not *always* asking questions in the middle of her iterative processes. At least, while he was around and not just wondering the area like a man who could not decide what best to do with his clear head.
The illusion showed more fra that would lead to the center where the newlyweds would stand close on a Starbloom-like dais. A trio of poles would reach up higher, from which necklace-thin chains would spiral out in artful, geotric-woven patterns to serve as the ’cover’ of the floating matrimonial altar.
"It’s beautiful, but... will it float like this once all of it is done? It looks like it will be just a bit heavy."
"Oh, it will float. But only when I choose to activate it. Otherwise, I will allow it to sink into the depths to wait. The lake will look undisturbed, the view from above uncluttered by permanent shiny structures."
Elua’s response to Zyris ca with another of those pleased smirks. Because what she wasn’t telling them was that the idea of putting the altar so far *below* her labor-of-love for Qat up above felt delightfully petty to her! She paused to look up at the towering cliff above them and then back at the space she was creating for the ceremony.
’Well, I can also do so improvents there.’
"But when activated... well. Let’s just say no one will ever have a wedding quite like yours - if I ever even host another here."
User Comments
0 comments from readers