Chapter 6

Collin had talked Serpin into buying a Flatbed transporter.

The sale of several of the items they had brought back with them from the Mages cavern had brought in a tidy sum. He had found a cheap Flatbed that was being sold off as parts since it didn’t work anymore. Collin suspected it just needed some new crystals.

They had been able to use the two lankys that Serpin kept for the cart to tow it home to the barn, where Collin and Serpin tried out some of their spells on it. Serpin had been able to get the dents and scratches out of the body and redistribute the paint, so it looked like new.

Collin had played with the electrical system and he was delighted when he was able to trace and fix a couple of broken wires and the new crystals did indeed get it going again. He hoped he hadn’t added too many new ones.

He had put two big crystals on both of the batteries and two on the solar panel that was on the roof of the cab. He had even tried out a repair spell. He was delighted when the odd sounds the motors made disappeared and the brakes also worked better. He added protection and anti-theft wards as well.

The Flatbed had a simple flat tray and they built a tough but lightweight frame and added sheeting, a set of rear doors and a sliding side door. Collin was able to mix a white pigment into the sheeting he made and was delighted with the effect. He even got artistic and painted signs on the sides advertising their smithy.

The others thought it was cute and the Flatbed sure made delivering their decorative wrought iron gates and other products a lot faster and easier, as well as bringing the raw materials home. The men had several new commissions they were working on so Serpin and Collin taking the Flatbed for a week or so to deliver the sword wasn’t a real problem.

Rockslide was close to four hundred klicks away. They decided they could stop along the way for a night in Fortune. They would spend a couple of days selling off some of the more collectable items they had found in the cavern and still had. They planned to do some shopping in Rockslide and then they would head home.

Collin had only been to Rockslide once with his father, but they had just been there a day or so before heading south. He was interested in how people lived in other cities on this Island. They had not spent any real time in the ports they had stopped at on that trip.

Serpin also planned to pick up iron and other consumables since they were making the trip. There was a huge ironworks, which they often used to buy rods and strips of iron from, for their business. Several mines also sold raw material they could buy in the bigger cities.

In the four months that Collin had been living with Serpin, they had spent a month just getting the mix they wanted for the swords, correct. They had spent as long again, playing with how to get the swords and dirks into the shapes they were after.

They had made a template for the slim, flat, double-edged blades that were sixty centimetres long and four centimetres at their widest near the hilt. It included the fifteen-centimetre long tang, which fitted into the hilt. The second template was for the twenty-five-centimetre long dirk with its tang.

Once they were happy with the shape and weight, they melted the prototypes, made a new mix and formed six sets. They had spent the rest of the time getting the items hardened, tempered, sharpened and finished. Collin had played with several designs for the hilts and by the time they had finished the Prince’s commission, they had made six exceptionally fine sets.

Down each flat side of the blades shimmered a Slider that seemed to move under the surface of the metal as the light danced over it. Collin was delighted with the effect he had spelled into the blades. It looked like the Slider was racing down the blade to strike at you.

He and Serpin both wore a matching set. Serpin loved the way Collin’s design had inlaid two slim, twisting, platinum coated Sliders over yellow Boa wood to form the hilts. To form the guard, a larger, flatter Slider wrapped its thin tail around the neck of the other two. It then arched over to lay part of its body along the top ten centimetres of the blade, so its head rested on the edge.

She’d had fun forming them with him. The scaly effect he created looked marvellous and ensured a good grip. For hers, he had added emeralds for the eyes on the slider for the guard. The two heads that formed the pommel had amethyst for one and yellow diamonds for the other. The sliders on the hilt held a small egg-shaped crystal in their mouths and the one on the guard held a black pearl.

On his, he used the gems that matched his disciplines. Rubies were on the guard, and green flecked opals and tangerine quartz were on the other sliders. He had also added the gems and the Quaz crystals to the dirks. All of the gems came from the jewellery box they had found with the Mages vambraces.

The dirk’s three small sliders were fashioned around their yellow boa wood handle so that one head and the two tails became the pommel and the upper bodies and the heads of the other two became the two protective guards behind the double-edged blade. They had the crystals and the pearl was in the pommel Sliders mouth.

The Prince had requested four different gems to be put on his and he wanted gold on the handle. He had left it up to Serpin to come up with a design for him, but he had asked for something to do with sliders.

So, they formed a double guard on the sword using two sliders. On the dirk, they had put in the extra slider, so that its head added to the pommel. He followed the same placement of gems and crystals. They had coated the sliders in the gold as per the Prince’s request.

They had made a matching set to the Prince’s set using a pink gold. They had not added any gems for the eyes, only the Quaz crystals and the pearl. Collin suggested that they get the Prince to choose the gems and they would add them. He had also used the pinker wood from a boa tree as part of the handle.

The other two sets had the three-slider design. On one, Collin had added diamonds for the eyes on the slider used as the guard, to hold the spells. Then he put some small turquoise and rose quartz gems for the eyes on the pommels and added the pearl and other Quaz crystals in the mouths of the sliders. On the other, he swapped the diamonds and the turquoise gems.

He wasn’t sure why he had decided on this design, just that it felt right to make them as he had. He had also used silver for the coating and the red boa wood in the handles. Serpin didn’t mind, as she said they all looked fantastic. He thought the gems went well with the red handles of this set.

Collin had also made new scabbards and belts to hold the six sets of weapons with Dalia’s help, as she had prepared the leather for him. The Prince’s sets were made from a bleached white leather, theirs from yellow leather and the other two were dyed a dark red. They had finished their swords a month before they finished the others and had found time each day to practice.

Serpin wasn’t as skilled as Collin was and he had fun teaching her the finer points of fighting with a sword and a dirk. He told her that what she lacked in finesse, she made up for in sheer speed, strength and cunning.

He told her that she fought like a slider and she had laughingly agreed with his assessment.

The couple set off on their next adventure.

For Collin, the landscape wasn’t that much different from home. While this coast was a little dryer and the trees tended to be a little more dispersed, they were basically the same except for the boa trees. What was odd about these trees was that they tended to grow in sets of three. They also twisted around each other as they grew.

Some of the older trees were massive both in height and girth. The wood from the trees was highly prized. As they aged, the colour and texture of the wood changed. They were deep dark red in the centre and once they reached about fifty years each new set of fifty years of rings was slightly lighter than the previous set.

The rings went from red to pinks to yellows and the most ancient trees were white in the outer rings. Cutting down of a living boa tree more than ten years old was punishable by death. Permission had to be sought from the crown to even harvest dead trees to ensure they were in fact dead.

The only people who were exempt from this law were the Boa-Shifters in Scale Valley. This was because they were considered the guardians of the trees. To the Boa-Shifters, cutting down a live boa tree was abhorrent. Many of them believed that spirits resided in the trees and they watched over the Island and its people. It was why they lived so long and were slow growing.

Another interesting fact was that only one of the trees formed female flowers each year and it needed to be fertilised from pollen from two male trees for them to bear fruit. The fruit was used in a lot of their medicines as it was said to have regenerative properties and to speed up healing.

Most people were also unaware that a Boa-Shifter required sperm from two males to produce young. Interestingly enough, the males didn’t need to be Boas. Because of the Shifter gene that the Boas had acquired from the ancestor’s, human sperm was just fine.

The Boa-Shifters could also store the sperm of four to six males for ten to fifteen years and release the sperm when they wished to have young. You didn’t get a Boa pregnant unless they wanted to be pregnant. However, they couldn’t self-impregnate.

A Boa-Shifter could also determine how many eggs she wished to release at a time and which donor sperm was used. She could also choose to gestate the child as a human baby if she was in human form or if she was in Boa form, she gave birth to live baby Boas.

Most who chose the second option only did so if they lived in Boavale, as the Boa babies can’t change form until around three years of age, just like their human counterparts. It didn’t matter which form they were born in, as once they could change, they had to want to change to any of the other forms they had acquired.

The period of gestation was determined by form and magical capability. If they were in human form, it was approximately thirty weeks if they had little magical ability. Strong magical capabilities could lower that to as few as twenty weeks.

If they gestated while in slider form, it was about ten weeks, but the babies are smaller at birth than human babies. They grow rapidly so that by the age of three they are of similar weight to a human child of the same age and looked like one when they changed.

While driving to Fortune Serpin sprung this little surprise on Collin.

The discussion had started out innocently enough.

Collin had been interested in learning more about the boa trees and the timber he had selected. He had loved working with the wood and had asked Serpin about where she had obtained it. One thing led to another and she was telling him about how she could have babies.

Collin knew that she had not been with another male before him as she had told him so. Because she felt that she was ugly, she hadn’t let a male in any form touch her. Serpin had caused quite a dilemma for him.

While he had shared women with other men in their drunken orgies in his past life and since he was sixteen, he hadn’t loved those women. He wasn’t happy with the idea of sharing Serpin with anyone. He felt that his love for her was still too new for him to want to share it.

He did expect that in time that they would have children but now that had become an interesting logistic as they would need to find a third person. He also suspected that he had better be a Shifter. He had never been inclined to use other males even if he used the female with them at the same time.

He had actually quite liked doing this. He had already worked out that Serpin was receptive to anal sex and they had done it several times. She came just as explosively in this position as she did with normal intercourse and they both still got an excellent magical boost.

He was sure that now he had his new vambrace, his seed was good. He had felt a change in how he came and just how much he ejected since he had regained his health. He swallowed and asked Serpin, “Honey, do you know if my seed is any good?”

She chuckled, “Yes, your potency has been steadily increasing for months. It is now very viable, and I have stored your seed, Collin. I can release it and replace it as often as I wish. I don’t need to store very much for it to be usable. You wouldn’t even know when I release the old or replace it, as the few millilitres I keep contain hundreds of sperm.”

“So, if something happened to me, and you found another male in the next ten to fifteen years the child could still be part of me?” he had to ask.

“Yes, my other father is a Boa called, Seth. My mother actually went back to him after she left Oliver, my human father. I have two younger sisters who are ten and twenty. They also have the same fathers as me, but they prefer to live in Boavale with mother and Seth. My older sister is mated to another Boa male and she is thirty-five.”