"They grow up so fast *hic*." It looks as though Susan had finished teaching/torturing Landon and had decided to stop and see the teen drama unfolding in this quiet little corner of mansion. Looking towards her Kyle could see the fake tears and mocking smile he had come to know. For Susan, Kyle was a target which must be mocked as he never reacted to her teasing and quite often turned it around on her. Seeing her chance she launched a sneak attack on his closest support hoping to create an opening.
"When"s the wedding going to be? Do I need a dress made up, oh we"ll have to organise it quickly otherwise the children will be born out of wedlock." She was saying this with a playful grin on her face as she looked at Kyle from the corner of her eye seeing what he would do.
Kyle felt the teasing was enough and he didn"t want Bruno and Alena to worry about their relations.h.i.+p so when Susan was teasing them he decided it was enough, luckily he had just the means to shut her up.
"Don"t worry about Susan she"s just jealous, the last time she had a date was before father was born."
The last part of this was said only quietly making everyone lean in to hear what Kyle was saying everyone almost fell over with the exception of Susan who took on a hurt look before she crouched down with her back to everyone.
"It"s not my fault it"s just no one can get to my standard."
"Come on everyone we"ve got work to do this means you too Susan."
Hearing Kyle everyone began moving while Susan quickly recovered her energy and bounded after them eventually catching up to Kyle although she had to walk slightly away from him as he was now covered on three sides.
"So boyo have you got any new things to discuss or elucidate for me. I know you"ve been looking into alchemy lately. While I don"t study it myself I"m interested in it never the less. Unless you"ve got more details about the ancestors?"
"I"ve got some new information for you but it"s more current than the ancestors. However I"m more interested in any news you have for me but let"s get to the library first shall we?"
So the group travelled on and eventually reached the library. When Susan saw the library she was shocked as the mechanism in the centre which was inactive before now showed signs of life with the crystal in the middle now having a greenish glow to it while it was surrounded by hazy images.
"It"s working what did you do? What does it do? Can you control it? *breathe in* More importantly can I play with it?"
"Susan this is a display tool to show the status of the connected mansions. I"m thinking of calling them something different due to a name I found in the old records."
"Oh what did the ancestors call it, no wait let me guess they called them Ethel?"
"I wonder how your brain works sometimes Susan *sigh*. No they aren"t called Ethel they used to call them Bastions and after that last comment I think we need to check you for brain damage."
"Nope I"m fighting fit my mind is like a steel trap."
"Yup a really rusty one."
"Hey that was uncalled for, so I"m a.s.suming this display shows the status of your "bastion". Can"t you find that out by connecting to your spirit thingymajig."
Kyle had already told Susan a great deal about his discoveries about the lost history of their world and his mansion. Regardless of how she acted she was very intelligent hence why she noticed the lack of necessity for Kyle to have this display.
"Yes I can connect to the spirit but others can"t in the same way. The details displayed here and more accurate, also this displays anything within the network. Also drop the quotation marks when you say bastion."
With a wave of his hand another bastion was shown. This was the second one he had reactivated and it had connected to the first with a form of a magical network. The subsequent bastions were added to this network as time went on until the display seemed to have enough power or data to activate.
"Hum yes this would be useful if you aren"t present. Does it have an alarm function so it doesn"t need constant monitoring?"
"Good question and yes it does. The function is connected to the spirit so as it comes under attack the spirit will find the highest ranking member present and draw them to the library with directed array projection."
"Clever boy but why can"t the spirit defend itself without interference?"
"Another good question, that"s two in one lifetime you"re getting better. The defence systems are controlled separately from the spirit so while it can power them they need a physical body to control them. I think this was a security feature the ancestors placed so that if the spirits gained self awareness like mine has they couldn"t just go on a rampage."
"You"re being mean again but I think you"re probably right about the security protocol. Are you planning on bypa.s.sing it and letting your spirit loose?"
"Yes once it"s grown up a bit more and is a bit more stable I"ll remove the blocks."
"Is that a good idea? Is there any chance of it betraying you?"
"There"s always that chance but I"d rather risk it than leave it chained. Oh I"ve also got a beat on the strength of the weapons the bastions are able to fire."
"Ohhh this should be good. What can they do?"
"Welllll they aren"t meant to defend within the city they are far too powerful. According to some technical details I found they are essentially anti beast horde weapons so they project outside the defensive walls."
"Really but they need line of sight to hit how can they pa.s.s the walls?"
"The walls the ancestors built were different than the ones currently around the city. We"ve done a few quiet digs and have found the ancient walls were further out from the city from the current ones and were made of the same materials as the bastions. According to what I"ve seen the weapons in the bastions use the wall as a lens strengthening their already impressive power and they pa.s.s right through annihilating whatever is on the other side."
"Okay so that was why you asked me to look for that dead city outside of the empires borders. I found what you were asking about by the way; there were signs of a city about the same size as New Grange 6 ruins in the approximate location as the bastions in yours. There were also some external walls still present but they had largely collapsed."
"Good that means my map was pretty much accurate so I know roughly where we are in relation to the maps I"ve found so far. Were any of the bastions intact or at least partially intact at least?"
"No they were all collapsed with only bits still standing."
If you haven"t guessed yet the last time Susan came around Kyle had spoken with her about various topics and one they both were interested in was the time of the ancestors. Susan had been able to conjecture their existence with evidence she had previously uncovered while Kyle had access to the library with various details of that time contained within the books present. One of these books had a rough map of the ancient empire with some of the larger cities marked, the only problem was that a lot of the landmarks were no longer present.
When he spoke to Susan about this she came up with a solution. As she was a known mad scholar it wasn"t unheard of for her to disappear into the wilderness to search for some obscure thing or another much to the consternation of the emperor and his council. Kyle was seen as being too young to go out from the city now and while his parents would be fine with it there may be questions asked. So Kyle found a likely location based on some details on the map and Susan searched for it. Now he knew the location had a city of the correct size he could approximate the location of other main cities including the ancient capital which isn"t the imperial capital.
The rest of the group had been watching the back and forth between Kyle and Susan like they were watching a tennis match while their mouths hung open, well everyone except Elena who was currently sniffing Kyle"s neck for some unknown reason.
"So Kyle what was the more current thing you wanted to discuss?"
"Well just that the current empire is a usurper and traitor. There was an empire before this one which shared their resources equally with the outer zones and only the higher level resources were s.h.i.+pped to the capital to strengthen their strongest before they were sent out to the borders to defend against the onslaught. A group of these outlying territories rebelled and killed the imperial family before taking the mantle with those who helped taking the roles of great houses."
"Why didn"t I hear about this and when did it happen?"
"About 500 years ago now and from what I"ve found the traitors purged as much information as they could but I found details within my families records as even then we were far removed so they didn"t care about us."
"Well that"s interesting why the s.h.i.+ft in resource deployment though?"
"Simple, fear if they can rebel so can anyone else so don"t let them gain strength in the first place hence out new system. But with no truly strong warriors on the border we are gradually losing ground."
"Yes just recently we lost another city to the south. If they keep cutting in the way they are it won"t be long before we"re cut off from the empire."
The demon beasts had been hitting in a straight line through the human territory in recent years and if they continued it wouldn"t be long until the northern territories were cut off. For Kyle this wouldn"t be a bad thing as he would be able to seize control without interference from the imperial army en ma.s.se.
"Kyle I was just thinking if the ancient walls are as powerful as you said and they are made from the same material as the bastions can"t you heal them in the same way?"
"I already have currently they are standing tall."
"What? I"ve just come through the gate today and there is nothing different."
"That"s because it"s hidden behind an "illusion" like the other bastions."
"This is a giant wall we"re talking about not just a building."
Kyle didn"t respond but instead walked to the large windows on the wall. Susan followed while the rest of the gang were watching with vindictive smiles. The first time they found out about the walls they were completely blown away. How could something like that be invisible to the naked eye, it wasn"t until Kyle gave them a key to the array that they could see it. This was good for all the members of the household as they could climb the wall and be hidden from view and could appear just as easily without anyone knowing how they got there.
Once they reached the window Susan was looking intently trying to get an indication of the wall being there but she could see nothing. As she looked she did notice something strange. Even in the open field people would walk around and join a line of carriages that were heading to the city in an orderly line. Why would they go around to the west when they could just go south to reach the gate? While Susan was still musing Kyle projected the array key to Susan and her eyes grew wide and her pupils dilated as she slowly looked up before she uttered.
"Holy underwear!"