Chapter 15

Ricky was getting concerned.

They had been in the cavern for two full days, and Silver hadn’t come to see him. Time, as a medium to be a slave to, didn’t generally affect Ricky. In the cavern, however, he didn’t see daylight unless he went to his viewing screens.

When he was sixty-five, he went on a trip to the continent called Savana, which is practically due south of the Tear Islands. It is a sparsely settled land and has some really big deserts. In one of the eastern ports, He’d come across a device called a Ticker.

He knew from his grandfather’s books that it was also called a pocket timepiece or watch. The tickers had been hideously expensive, but Quaz crystals were good currency everywhere he travelled. So, he had brought two of them. One to use and one to later pull apart, so he knew how it worked.

He’d long since investigated how it worked, and over time, he’d perfected his own fairly accurate devices that were larger than his pocket variety. It had amused him that he had to learn the principles of physics as one of his grandfather’s books called the science to work out spring tensions, gear size and teeth ratios and even how to align the parts.

It had kept him fascinated for several years, but it did pay off. He could now make the tickers in a variety of sizes from very tiny to huge. He even found his new knowledge helped him with some of his magical spells.

The round ticker that was 30cm across and that hung in his kitchen in the cavern, worked the same as an analogue clock on Earth. However, it was calibrated for Tara time, with the help of a little spell.

Between the central hands and the reh (three), he’d added a small red arm that on the sax (sixth) hour pointed up at a moon symbol for nighttime and tri-queb (2 + 10 = twelve) hours later it points down at a sun symbol for daytime.

He knew (because over the years he had charted it) that the actual times of sunrise and set vary depending on the season. However, in the caverns, it was close enough for his purposes.

He’d even made a timepiece for Queen Fleur that was 50cm wide. It had green, glowing numbers and hands to make it more visible in the darker main cavern. Silver had told him later that all of the dragons found the time telling device fascinating.

The Queen had even made the guards use it to set up their rotations.

Micky had been tickled when on their second morning Ricky gave her a magical wand.

It had been sitting on the bench in his workshop when he showed it to her and asked her to see if her entity was able to claim it. He explained that Queen Fleur had given it to him many years ago when he had gotten his wand.

At the time, this wand had only the diamond and the amethysts on it. The Quaz crystals had disintegrated. The discipline of physics wasn’t a skill on his ring or medallion, so he had simply put the wand away.

The crystal on his wand had also been broken, but it still plugged the end. He had been able to remove the old pieces of crystal and emptied out the old shards and dust. Once he had replaced them, his entity had happily claimed the wand that had the same gems as his ring.

He had thought about the wand during their first night, and while he had let her sleep in, he had come and found it. He’d had little trouble filling it with fresh new shards of Quaz crystals, and the new crystal gem that he shaped with magic and placed on the end, had to his delight, adhered to the shaft.

He’d found an azure quartz gem and an emerald the same size as the gems on the wand from one of his stashes of gems. He wasn’t that surprised that they also adhered to the wand and he’d felt the wand was functional again.

He then remembered that he’d added some spells to his to wand to make it stronger and more precise when he aimed it. So, he happily found them in his old spellbook and added the spells to the wand. He and his entity both felt it was now good to go.

Micky was wrapped when she picked up the wand, she felt a surge of power. Her entity indicated that it was because the wand was now one of her three magical items. Micky knew that she was now quite powerful and couldn’t wait to learn what she could do.

She had been surprised when Ricky had asked her to present her medallion for him. The tear-cut obsidian gem was towards the top of the white-gold, rectangular medallion. The diamond-shaped hole in the middle had just cried out to him to fill it.

So, Ricky had carefully placed a rather large Quaz crystal in the hole. Ricky chuckled when Micky shuddered. He wasn’t surprised that the medallion had happily accepted the crystal. He knew that it would help Micky a lot with storing power for using in her magical spells.

The medallion was also part of her personal shield, and the fresh new crystal meant it was better able to do its job. He didn’t mention that the four symbols that matched her disciples were now easy to see on the medallion.

Ricky was pleased that Micky now had more protection.

Micky and Ricky hadn’t spent the entire two days in bed.

While they waited for Silver to show up, Micky got the cook’s tour of the cavern system that Ricky considered his. She had been amazed by Ricky’s massive workshop. Then there was the dozen or storerooms. These rooms were filled with all sorts of things.

As Micky wandered through the rooms, she had no idea what even half the stuff was supposed to do or could be used for. Ricky told her that about half of the junk was already in the storerooms when he claimed the caverns as his. He had since upgraded the preservation spell on the rooms.

Ricky had over time, simply added stuff he had invented or material that he needed for his inventions. He had to grin at Micky’s surprise when he told her that he did a lot of his shopping for parts in Energy City.

He didn’t, however, explain why Queen Angeni had shut up her transportation cavern about ninety-nine years before. He still felt a little guilty about the way he had left it, but then again, his respect for his grandmother had not improved since.