Chapter 31

Author’s Note: This is the final chapter of Searching for the Sky. However, by popular demand I am writing up some sexy-time scenes which I skipped over for the sake of concentrating on the story, so keep an eye out for those in the coming weeks. Once those are done then I will be hammering away at Book 3. If you would like to help me continue creating stories like this, check out the end note after the chapter.

I’m so glad you have enjoyed my story and thank you so much for reading!

-Blu

Senshu was awakened by the gorgon slipping out of the huge pile of soft, multicolored pillows that made up the lamia’s bed and walking out into the girl’s common area.

There were simply too many of the monster girls for all of them to stay inside the tower. The sword maiden, Molo the frog-girl, and the alarune, Oona, made their underground home centuries ago. They first hollowed out a large chamber to act as a common room then made their personal living spaces off that. Over so many years the girls made several improvements, what started as a dirt cavern was now comparable to the quarters of any king or queen. Gone was the dirt, replaced by tiles of marble and granite, each one hewn from the rock, smoothed, polished, and shaped by one of the three women living there. Every piece of furniture was opulent and intricately detailed. The rugs on the floor were plush and depicted various memories of the wizard who created the monster girls. The paintings on the walls were so realistic a viewer would be tempted to think they could reach into them while the tapestries would be worth a small fortune from the amazing craftsmanship. Only a few trinkets and mementos could claim to be made by someone else, everything else in their home was crafted with the women’s own hands.

With Kal’s preoccupation with finishing his flight rune, Sera became a common visitor to the sword maiden’s home. After the night Senshu spent with her and the mage, she also became a common visitor to the sword maiden’s bedchamber.

The six-armed lamia glided along the stone floor, passing through a slight dip by her room’s entrance from an eon of her softer belly-scales rubbing across it. Out in the communal area, she found Sera laying across one of the sofas Molo had made.

“What’s bothering you, beautiful?” Senshu asked, hovering over the back of the couch.

“Nothing,” the gorgon mumbled, turning her head into the fabric.

“‘Nothing’ doesn’t have you lying naked in the living room curled into a ball during the wee hours of the morning.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it, so nothing is wrong.”

“If you are going to lie to me then fine, but at least don’t lie to yourself.”

Sera peeked up at the sword maiden, giving her a sharp look.

“I know it has something to do with Kal. You’ve been like this ever since yesterday when Saph showed up.

“Kal doesn’t need me anymore, I’m worthless.”

“Say that again and I’ll slap the shit out of you, once for each hand,” snapped the lamia before swinging around the front of the sofa. “Mind explaining why you suddenly feel this way?”

“I’m holding him back. He has all these plans and I’m just a stone around his neck.”

Senshu was at a loss for words. Worse yet, she had to admit there was some truth to what the gorgon was saying. Once Kal finished the flight rune he would still be landbound until the two of them got back to his home.

“See, you know I’m right.”

“I ... I’m sorry. I want to tell you different, but I’d be lying. But that still doesn’t make you worthless. It just means you haven’t found a place yet. You need to start understanding your value beyond how useful you can be to him. If you can’t do that, then at least stop wallowing in pity and find a way to be helpful.”

“I hardly have any skills to be helpful. I can’t hunt for food without a spell to keep me from freezing to death. Teller was teaching me some things while he and Falma stayed with us but all that is useless here, nobody needs a thief.”

“Look at where you are sitting, Sera. Molo made that. Her first few attempts at making furniture resulted in little more than sticks lashed together with vines that couldn’t hold a twig much less a person. Now the things she makes would be fit for an emperor. Talk to the girls, find something that interests you, and learn from them. With a thousand years to practice, my sisters and I are masters of every craft you can imagine ... assuming we can still remember. Think about it,” said the sword maiden.

Sera was looking at the beautiful couch she was lying on and imagining the frog-girl with a mallet and chisel, carefully cutting each of the tiny grooves in the sofa’s detailing. Her thoughts were interrupted when she was scooped up by the lamia.

“Where are we going?” asked the gorgon when Senshu turned away from the door to her room.

“It’s Oona’s turn tonight and I know it’s always ‘the more the merrier!’ with those vines she has for hair.”

“What? No! They’re both probably sleeping by now!”

“Good, then we don’t need to worry about interrupting them.”

Sera flushed deep red with embarrassment when Senshu opened the door to the master bedroom and slipped inside. Seeing Kal and Oona’s heads come up off the bed with sleepy, confused looks didn’t help things. Unable to deal with their questioning stares, she hid her face in her hands.

“Is Sera okay?” Kal asked, starting to get up.

“Lay back down Kal, she’s fine. She just needs some ‘you’ time.”

“I do not!” she said from behind her hands as the silver lamia laid her between the mage and plant-woman.

Turning Sera away from him then drawing her back to his chest, Kal looked up at Senshu, “Join us? There’s enough room.”

The sword maiden smiled. “Saves me the trip back,” she said before sliding in on the other side of Oona.

“You want to what?” Senshu stared at the gorgon like she had grown a second head.

“I want to learn swordplay. That way I can help Kal when we are out on the road without using my gaze.”

“It’s only temporary, isn’t it? Why is he so against you using it?”

“Because I’ve ... broken ... people before when they were under the effects of my gaze, it’s not pretty when it wears off.”

Senshu cringed, “I imagine not. We need to find Kal, I believe there are some wooden practice swords with mending enchantments on them in the arsenal and we need his ring to get in there. They constantly repair themselves, so we don’t need to worry if we break them. With your strength, I think we will be breaking them a lot.

“Kal? Are you up here?” Sera called out. She had been to the roof but never set foot in the room below it before.

“Over here, Sera,” Kal called out, waving from behind one of the strange metal machines taking up most of the wall space.

“Kithana said you were here, but what are you doing?” she asked, stepping inside but staying by the door. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed close to the contraptions.

“Getting these machines fixed up,” he said, popping up and resting his arms on the thing in front of him. The metal box’s face was covered in dials and knobs and a bunch of other stuff the gorgon didn’t understand. “Everyone keeps saying that Prentas was a genius. If I didn’t believe them already,” he rapped his knuckles on the metal casing, “I would after tearing into one of these. They’re nothing short of amazing,” he said with a large grin. “The only problem is that he used some exceedingly rare materials to make these work. Saph said it took her and Prentas the better part of a year to gather everything when they first built them. Thankfully, she thinks it will only take about a month to collect what we need to get them running again.”

“A month? Yesterday it sounded like it would only take a couple of days to fix them.”

“As far as actual fixing, that’s true. Gathering the materials to fix them will be what takes so long.”

“All of this is just so she can ‘scan’ me?” the gorgon didn’t understand what exactly that meant but had a feeling it involved standing in the emerald-glass tube in the corner of the room.

There was a loud pop off to Kal’s right followed by, “Ouch! Dammit!” in Sapphire’s voice. A moment later a hand covered in soot and bleeding from multiple tiny cuts appeared above the machine the golem was working on. “Heals please, Kal.”

“That’s the third time this morning,” he complained. “One of these times I’m going to go grab something to eat and you are going track blood all over the tower trying to find me,” he said, holding her wrist and quickly sealing up the cuts and bruises.

“Not likely,” she said, using him to pull herself to her feet. In her other hand, a spell circle appeared for a moment before vanishing.

“Healing spell. Nice. How did that hurt you though? I’ve seen Gerda take a lot worse and not even notice.”

“We were Father’s prototypes, remember? He made some improvements to the mold after creating me.”

“Fair enough.”

Sapphire turned to the gorgon, “To answer your question: Yes. You are unique and if you get killed while out with Kal, then your information and type will be lost forever. I’m sorry to put it this way but getting a scan of you is more important than flyboy’s romantic rendezvous. No scan, no flight rune. End of story.”

Kal shrugged and looked at Sera. “Best I can hope is that I can put it all together quickly before we set out for home.”

“Sapphire, give him the rune,” said the gorgon, looking down.

“Nope, and I already explained why.”

“Give him the rune,” she said again.

There was something strange about her tone that made Kal start squeezing between Prentas’s machines.

“I said n—”

“Give him the damn rune!” she yelled.

“Sera?” Kal called out, freeing himself of the machines and crossing the large room.

When she looked up the mage could see tears running down her face. “Give him the rune,” she said more quietly, “because I’m staying.”

“What?! No, no, no!” he cried out, running the rest of the way to the gorgon and wrapping her in his arms, “No. We are leaving together, just later than planned. You don’t have to stay.”

With her enhanced strength, Kal was powerless to stop her as Sera pushed him away. “No Kal,” she said, her lips quivering and voice shaking. “If I go with you, it will be a month before you can leave. You won’t be able to use your flight rune because you will be stuck on the ground with me. You will have to make an unneeded stop at the dwarven kingdom to try to find me some mithril so I can keep my strength. Finally, you will have to babysit me to make sure I don’t freeze to death up here on the surface.” Her shoulders shook with barely contained sobs. “I woke up today determined to be as helpful to you as I could,” she said, wiping her eyes and trying to smile. “This is the best thing I can do.” Unable to hold back any longer, her face crumpled as she ran from the room, her wails of anguish echoing back up the stairwell.

“Go after her Kal, she needs you,” said Sapphire. “Fixing this will take a couple more months, but I can get it done by myself. Please don’t think I’m a heartless bitch, but she had some good points. I suggest you don’t try to talk her out of it.”

Kal wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “You want me to not think you are a heartless bitch? I think I failed already,” he said walking out the door after the gorgon.

That night they lay in bed with Kal holding Sera tightly from behind.

“You didn’t try to talk me out of it,” said the gorgon, though there was no accusation in her voice.

Kal sighed, “My heart wanted to, still wants to in fact, but my head is telling me you are right.”

“It’s okay. By the time you get back, maybe I’ll be this amazing swordsman who can protect you on your next adventure.”

“Swordswoman,” he corrected.

“Whatever,” she said, shrugging.

Kal chuckled and rolled her onto her back before positioning himself between her legs.

“Again?” she asked.

“Are you complaining?”

“Not at all,” she said, reaching down and lining him up.

He began slowly slipping inside her, “Actually, I have something else in mind besides playing with swords, if you are interested.”

Sera brought her knees up then let her legs fall to either side, relaxing as one hand idly pinched and tugged at a nipple. “What were you thinking?”

The mage began moving in and out at a leisurely pace as he spoke. “This city I’m putting in the mountain is going to need drinkable water, some way to clean the dirty water, refuse management, and a bunch of other things that a city needs to function. In the lower levels of the tower is another gigantic library full of books collected by the girls over the years, I’m sure that you could learn everything there is to know about how to plan out the city. The fact that it is on a mountain should make things extra challenging.”

She regarded him with curiosity before saying, “That ... actually sounds a lot more interesting than swinging a sword around. Enough talking, go faster.”

“As you wish.”

Once news got around that Sera was staying at the tower, Oona sent out word to the rest of the girls that they should expect the gorgon to be joining them whenever they had a turn with Kal. The only one with any objection was Ashlay, the mouse girl.

It had taken decades for the skittish and high-strung woman to get comfortable around Senshu and she was none too happy about having another snake-style monster girl. She didn’t hate Sera; she just couldn’t fight the instinctive fear that rose up whenever the gorgon got close.

It didn’t help that some of the other girls liked to set things up so the two would run into one another. Like Molo, Ashlay and many of the more ‘mundane’ monster girls based on common animal types could switch their look between a large variety of species. For some odd reason, the mouse-girl would turn bright pink when frightened, except it wasn’t just her face, her fur would turn bright pink as well. Unfortunately, her sisters took great delight in making the mouse change color.

Kal put a stop to it their second week at the tower when Sera came to him extremely upset because she and Ashlay just “happened” to run into each other downstairs with an unusually attentive audience close by. Sera already hated that the mouse was terrified of her and hearing the girls giggling as the woman’s fur turned pink while she bolted away hurt the gorgon deeply.

The mage spoke to Oona later to get the word out that Ashlay and Sera’s unfortunate dynamic was not to be considered entertainment. From the plant girl’s contrite attitude, he guessed that she had been in on this particular prank.

Sera took on Kal’s challenge to plan out the city with gusto and, to his surprise, still began learning swordplay from Senshu. Instead of learning the longsword, she took to wielding two short swords. Her idea was that if she lost her strength for whatever reason, she would still have the skills to continue fighting.

Her biggest complaint was learning all the unfamiliar words in the books Oona was giving her to read. She often compared it to when she began learning to read months ago as they left dwarven lands. Kal chuckled and told her of a similar experience he had when first learning magic.

Sapphire let the high emotions after Sera’s declaration die down for a couple of days before summoning Kal and Kithana to the library.

When they arrived, the golem was sitting in his chair holding the emerald they had retrieved from the lower levels of the tower. Despite having the emerald in hand, her attention was focused on Kal’s flight rune.

“Your girlfriend may have done you more of a favor than you think by choosing to stay,” she said without taking her eyes off the parchment.

“How so?” asked the mage.

“Look at what you have here, the wind shield, this section for gathering air at high altitudes. Over here you have your acclimation spell, then up in this corner is the logic for your ‘safety net,’ then here in the middle is where you control your direction and height. Why include all of this in a single large rune? Why not break them all up into individual spells and use them that way?”

“Because he had to? I understand that mages with my ability to manipulate the flows of magic are extremely rare. Splitting them up might work for me but perhaps he couldn’t do the same?”

“He has a point Saph, Prentas could see magic but couldn’t control it like Kal.”

“Yes, he does,” said the golem, “and I wish I had thought of that before saying anything, but there is something important Father spoke of when he was making this. He spent weeks getting everything exactly right around the central glyph, saying the rune wouldn’t work unless it was balanced properly. He had the scars to prove what happened when it was set up wrong. You had a mostly working rune but have made it into something totally different from what Father used.” The golem looked up to see that Kal was wearing an ear to ear grin. “What are you so happy about?” She hardly thought she had just given him good news.

“Because the spell is his, not Prentas’s anymore,” said Kithana. “The concept is similar, but the execution is unique.”

“That may be true, but he doesn’t have a working rune yet.” Pulling a piece of parchment from the stack in the middle of the table, Sapphire placed it in front of her. Holding a quill in one hand and the emerald in the other, she seemed to freeze in place. As Kal watched, thin slivers of magic darted across the top of the gem, starting slow then getting faster until they were whipping back and forth faster than his eyes could follow.

About a third of the way through the gem, the golem began to draw. Sapphire’s movements were disconcerting to Kal as he watched the rune take shape on the paper. Each mark on the parchment was drawn with an unusually even pace regardless of how twisted or convoluted it was. At the end of each line, her hand would then twitch with inhuman speed to the beginning of the next before the quill came down and she resumed drawing. Kal leaned over her shoulder to look more closely at her sketch and noticed both of the golem’s eyes staring blankly ahead instead of looking down at the parchment. Despite her apparent lack of attention, the quill continued moving with speed and precision across the paper. Both of her eyes were also glowing, her human eye shining a bright green that contrasted against the light from the ruby. The glow faded and she blinked a couple of times before setting the paper with the circular rune off to the side and grabbing another piece. A few seconds later, the gem golem returned to staring straight ahead as her pen flew over the parchment once again. This time a significantly larger circle began to form.

Sapphire did this a third time with the rune ending up the same size as the first one before the glow faded and she looked up at Kal and Kithana. “There it is, Gravitas,” she said, waving a hand over all three pieces of paper.

Kal was at a loss for words, he didn’t know what to think of it having three parts. A moment later, he remembered Kithana mentioning something about notes. “Were there any notes that came with it?”

“No, just the rune.”

“How come it has three parts? Why is the second one bigger? And why is it so complex?”

“This was a side project of Father’s. My sisters and I became his main concern when he figured out how to make us. I didn’t even know he was working on this until he had me write the emerald,” she said holding up the gem, “and I worked more closely with him than anyone, even Kithana.”

Kithana spoke up, “As to your second question, you are canceling out one of the fundamental laws of nature, things like that shouldn’t be easy.”

“Canceling? I’m not following, I thought it allowed him to fly?”

“It does, but it does so by canceling out what makes us fall, that’s why you need the Motus glyph in the flight rune to move around,” said the sprite, flitting from side to side. “Without that, you just become weightless.”

Looking over the three pieces of paper, Kal shook his head. He could see hints of the featherfall and telekinesis runes as well as the telekinesis cantrip he used so often but each one was like a smaller piece of the larger structure of the Gravitas ... rune. Though it was supposed to be an element of other runes like any other glyph, it didn’t feel right lumping it in with the relatively simplistic sigils.

“Sapphire, do you have a completed version of Prentas’s flight rune on there?” the mage asked pointing at the crystal in her hand.

She grabbed another piece of parchment, “Yes, but you aren’t going to like it.”

A few minutes later Kal was groaning and rubbing his temples as he stared at the black center of the flight rune. Only in a few places here and there did the paper show through once the golem stopped drawing. Despite his frustration with the Gravitas rune, it was interesting to see the rest of Prentas’s original flight rune and its differences from his.

Instead of letting himself freefall, Prentas set his up to look at his height and adjust when the safety net would activate. It also just reduced the power to the central rune instead of cutting it off completely. Kithana suggested he do the same if he figured out how the rune worked. Prentas often complained about how much energy it took to activate and maintaining it at a low power state would keep him from wasting magic to reenergize it as he approached the ground. The ancient mage never needed to worry about such things since he would just slowly drift downward using the remainder of his power.

The part he replaced with his acclimation spell still seemed needlessly complex but Kithana explained that the Sisto glyph he used in his version of her freezing spell wasn’t available at the time. It wasn’t until a few centuries after Prentas died that a mage researched a cleric spell meant to hold people in place for a few seconds and developed the ‘stop’ glyph, with the Tardius or ‘slow’ glyph coming shortly after. Realizing the mage had nothing to go off when developing this particular rune only boosted Kal’s opinion of the man.

Not that it could go much higher, the Gravitas rune was a masterwork in the young mage’s eyes. The only problem was he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it.

Sighing, he looked down at Sapphire, “Can I have my chair? It looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me.”

Senshu and Sera ran into Kal as they were coming back to the tower a few days later. The mage was standing in the ankle-deep snow close to the black sphere, repeatedly tossing a rock into the air.

The pair watched him for a minute before Sera finally spoke up. “What are you doing Kal?”

“I’ve been reading up on this ‘Gravity’ that Prentas based his rune on. He says there is an elemental force that constantly pulls us all toward the ground, but he has no idea what it is or what causes it. I went through Ikuno’s books and a couple of other mages mention it over the years but none of them knew any more than Prentas, most of them knew a lot less.”

“What does that have to do with the rock?” asked the gorgon, the serpents making up her hair had fanned out and were bobbing as they tracked the stone.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to decipher the Gravitas rune. As much as I hate to admit this, I think it’s just too far beyond my knowledge right now.”

“That hardly explained the rock,” Senshu deadpanned.

“I’m getting to that,” he said, smiling at the six-armed lamia and failing to catch the stone. He dug it out of the snow and brushed the rock off before tossing it in the air again. “From what I know, Prentas was a mage his entire life. Intense thirst for knowledge, studying things down to the most minute detail, things I aspire to now that I’m a mage. But I wasn’t always a magic-user, most of my life I was a farmer, and farmers look at things differently.”

“You have my curiosity piqued, go on,” said Senshu.

“Farmers care more about getting things done as quickly and easily as possible and, as long as it’s done right, care less about how it gets accomplished. Gravity is a force that constantly pulls us downward, yet birds and insects can overcome it. Even I can overcome it just by throwing this rock upward or even jumping.

“Prentas’s Gravitas rune cancels out gravity, but to fly I don’t need to cancel gravity.” He tossed the rock much higher than normal then transferred a slightly larger rock and flicked it into the air so the two met as the first was coming down. There was a sharp crack as the two stones came together and they both flew off in different directions but the lighter first rock flew back up into the air before falling and disappearing beneath the snow. “I just need another force pushing or pulling me upward harder than gravity pulls me down. Harpies do this with their light bodies, wings, and a little bit of magic.”

“If you can’t even use the rune, then was this trip wasted?” asked Sera.

“Not at all,” said Kal. “Right now, the only spell I have that could do that is Greater Telekinesis and you saw how horribly inefficient that was.” Under his breath, he grumbled, “Even if it was what kept Kit from killing me.”

“What was that?” asked Senshu.

“Nothing ... at least nothing important,” he said hurriedly. “What is important is that somewhere buried within Prentas’s rune is the key I need to make a spell efficient enough to be useful. It needs to last for hours and not minutes when carrying something as heavy as me.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” the lamia asked.

“Thanks, but no. I think my eyes will be the best way to figure all of this out, so there isn’t much you could do. I just came out here to clear my head in the cold air and let my eyes rest for a while.”

“Well, we will leave you to it then, I’m starting to feel a little sluggish from the cold,” said Sera. “By the way, could I use Ria for a bit? Oona said she wouldn’t be able to help me in the lower library and an extra set of eyes would be useful when looking for books.”

“No problem,” he said before summoning the sprite.

Sera, Senshu, and Ria stepped into the bottom floor conversation area before the silver lamia spoke up.

“What’s going on, Sera? You have the acclimation spell Kal gave you and a mana crystal in your pocket so I know you aren’t cold, and Oona would come running if you needed her down in the library. Why did you lie to him?”

“Did you hear what he said about Kit?” asked the gorgon.

“No.”

“It sounded like he still resents Kithana for his trial.”

“She did mention that she put out a blatant offer awhile back and that she may as well have been talking to the wall. But he’s been with me and Molo many times since then, why not feel the same about us?”

“Because you didn’t want to kill him and neither did Molo, you both acted like you were just doing your jobs. Kit made it obvious afterward that her intention from the start was to make sure he died.”

“She’s got a point,” said Ria.

“That she does, but what do you need Ria for?”

“Because, if those two are to get over their differences they need to do it properly. Which means—”

“They gotta fuck,” Ria finished for her.

“Knowing those two? Probably,” said Senshu

“But what does that have to do with me?” asked the sprite

“He still hasn’t done anything to you while you’re small,” Sera pointed out.

“I think it creeps him out a bit.”

“If he won’t do it with someone he cares about, do you think he and Kit will ever be able to kiss and make up?”

Ria threw her hands up in the air, “Yes! That enchantment on his cock had better not fuck things up for me. I want to feel what it’s like to have his dick coming out of my throat.”

“That’s not how things normally work,” said the lamia.

“Not for you girls,” said the sprite, “but trust me, Kithana wants the same thing.”

“So, Ria first, then what?” asked Senshu. “Are you just going to walk into the library and say, ‘you two need to sleep together,’?”

“No, I’m not going to actually try to get them to have sex. I’m just removing a potential barrier if it gets to that point.”

“You hardly sound like the same mildly jealous woman who arrived weeks ago.”

Sera shrugged, “Having to share him over and over, it was hard not to worry about him finding someone better in bed or more exciting to be with. All that disappeared when I told him I was staying. The hurt in his eyes was so real ... I don’t think I will ever doubt how he feels about me again.”

Kal was still confused as he walked to the library the next morning. That Ria had demanded a night with him wasn’t a big deal but her insistence that he have sex with her in her smaller form was certainly odd. He couldn’t say he cared much for the experience. It felt like he was masturbating with a Ria-shaped cocksleeve. Her stretchy body made things interesting until the head of his prick started pushing her breasts out to either side.

Things just got weirder from there.

Ria, on the other hand, enjoyed herself immensely and was looking forward to doing it again. Kal had a request in mind whenever that happened to make herself just a little bigger with the will-o’-wisp’s power. He quite enjoyed seeing her belly bulge as she slid down his shaft, things only went bad when the sprite went from ‘stuffed’ to ‘misshapen.’