Good. He already had ten copies of this one. Not because he'd been sure it would work, just as backups, because he didn't want to lose all the work he'd done. It had taken way too long to act casually about this time.
Flying was fun, he decided and could be useful for the military or people that wanted to travel, he guessed. The average person wouldn't have a lot of use for it probably, but hey, the idea wasn't to make leisure easier, but to pass his classes. Flying people had been the assignment, and he had it ready.
Yay him.
Tor thought about it all and wondered if his initial concept of how many of these things people would need was about right? So far he hadn't gotten any money for his work, except what Rolph had paid him. That was alright. There was more than enough to buy the materials he needed for now and Tor had even splurged on a little chest to keep his money in. It wasn't as big or as nice as the one his roommate had, but it was bigger and contained more gold and silver than he'd even imagined himself as having for real.
Thinking about it he wondered if he should send some of it home? His older brother Teral had started a family the year before, and had a child on the way. They could use a little bit extra to get started. He pulled ten gold of the nearly fifty he had left and set it aside for them. How to get it to them was a problem, but he'd figure something out.
Maybe Rolph could help? He knew how to do that kind of merchanty stuff, sending packages and all. It was in his blood.
Chapter five
The warmth of the afternoon surprised Tor a little. The day before hadn't been chilly, but he hadn't needed a short sleeved tunic either. Not that he owned one, extra clothing like that was a luxury that only the wealthy had. By noon he kind of felt like he might melt. On the good side, he was pretty sure that no one else would feel any better than he did with the sudden change, if that was a positive thing at all. Shared misery was better than if it was just him, right?
That didn't feel correct, but he smiled anyway. What was, he knew, was. He couldn't control the temperature of the world after all. Rolph found him sitting in the room sweating in his undershirt, working on a new build design, and laughed for nearly a full minute before he could explain.
“Seriously? Most of the school is cool and pleasant, using a device that you designed and made… we have one right there.” Walking to the wall he pressed the sigil to activate the field, and the room's temperature dropped almost instantly. “Just remember to turn it off every hour or so or you'll freeze to death. I hear that this summer they're planning to use one in the local ice house. I wanted to send one to my parents, you know how hot the summers are in the Capital city, right? But it turns out they already got one as a gift. Pretty neat, huh? Your work being all the way down there already?
“Mom told me in her last letter that they got to see a flying demonstration too. Everyone came out for it. Oh! That reminds me, um, if you can get away, you're invited for the month break mid-summer. Everyone wants to meet you, so I kind of said you'd come already…”
Tor shrugged. He should help out at home, but that wasn't actually needed. As it was they had enough hands to bake for the whole village twice over. Three times over, Tor adjusted, having gotten a letter telling him how Tamon, his littlest sister had started working in the shop now, being four. Apparently she had a real talent for it too. With her there that meant no one had to watch her, freeing two sets of hands for the shop. They probably argued over who got to actually work. He always had as a child. Better to work than just stand around after all. It was way more interesting.
He agreed to go, not really thinking about it at the time, except that, if they were flying, he needed to come up with a device that would let them take their gear with them. That or learn to pack really light. Tor started drawing up the plans while Rolph spoke. At least his friend didn't get worked up about him doing that, working and talking at the same time. He just scribbled the ideas down now, so he'd remember it later.
“Anyway, Trice and Sara are going too, and Tovey but he really has to go for work purposes not socializing overly, but it will be cool for the rest of us. My parents have asked if you'd stay with us though, instead of with him? He offered, of course, it wasn't even a real question to him, but mom said you were almost family anyway and it would be rude to have you stay on the outskirts of the city like that… Not that you've met my parents yet, but I've mentioned you a couple of times in letters, since you know, we're best friends and all that.”
Without looking down overly he wrote that he'd need five full sets of flying gear and at least five lifts to carry stuff. Girls had a lot of things, didn't they? And Counts too probably. With Tovey it was most likely practice weapons and junk like that. So ten lifts then. Right. He had a month or so, which shouldn't be a problem. It was only a redesign of the flight field…
Of course, everything took longer than it should have. Sara's mother sent an emergency request for a water purification field device which set his plans back a bit. It was just a filter which was a common enough piece of magic, little ones for personal drinking water and the like, but apparently they needed one that could cover the aquifer of a large city. That field was harder to build than the flying one was originally, because the area it had to cover was just that huge. This time he stocked water first and a bit of food, so the six days he was locked in his room weren't as dangerous at least.
He lost weight and Kolb yelled at him for not exercising enough, but the city had clean water again wherever it was, even though a sewage line had broken into their underground water system. He made ten copies of it, so that in a few years, when the first one wore out, the city wouldn't have to come find him again. If they hadn't fixed it in twenty years, that was their problem. He made sure that Sara included that in her return note with the devices. He didn't want to be mean, but seriously, there were limits, right?
The rest of the month was rushed then and he barely had time to get the lifts ready for luggage by the time they were supposed to leave. Apparently he'd also forgotten to mention to anyone else that they were flying instead of going by wagon, or given that they were traveling with a Count, a coach.
It wasn't that big a deal, they'd all flown already and the Count actually went up daily. His personal ability to fly he assured Tor wasn't nearly as interesting or as comfortable as using a flying rig. After all, he had to be in full combat rage for it to work and only flew about five feet off the ground most of the time. Slowly. Plus it left him with a horrible headache.
Tor was glad he liked it.
With the new gear they should be able to get to the Capital much faster than if they had to go by horse or wagon. Trice asked who was flying with her three trunks, crossing her arms and raising her dark eyebrows at him. She didn't sound happy about it either.
“I guess we can put them on your shoulders, but it's going to get a little hard for you to see when we add everyone else's…” She crossed her arms as if challenging him to tell her that they couldn't take their things. Like things were important? He almost laughed at her, but handed over the lifts instead, deciding to forgo the beating that would probably incur and helped her to fix the hand size copper plates with straps to the bottom of each trunk.
“So, here's the nifty part. Use the plate on the back of your hand to activate the ones on the trunk. Do that first!” He stopped the Count from getting the order wrong, since that would involve a dark gray leather clad giant slamming around at speed. With a shield on that meant that everyone else was in greater danger than him, but still, not a fun way to start a pleasure trip. “Then just take a position about five to ten feet away from it and activate normally… like this.”