"Yip."Alani groaned, slowly becoming aware of sunlight and a furry paw nudging her in the shoulder. "Is it morning already?"
Not just morning. Based on the heat and she brightness of the sun, Alani realized she"d overslept, but that everyone had simply let her sleep in today. After all, yesterday had a long, hard day.
"I"m up." Alani groggily sat up and patted the wolfcat at her side. This time it was Flare who had woken her.
Two weeks had pa.s.sed since they first landed on this island in the Midlands Sea. True to his word, Darian had put them through a mix of Psionics, martial arts, and weapons training. Juni and Jamie even learned trained with armor. Despite their earlier expectations, however, they had little part in constructing anything or evacuating any refugees. The Order of Light did that, and they did so in growing numbers. Two hundred knights at the beginning had swelled to more than twice as many by now, with more still on the way.
Them, and Alani. Unlike the others, Alani"s training also involved her learning to use her newfound strength without accidentally killing someone or demolishing a house. In the whole world, only one guy could have taught her that and sparred with her without getting killed, and he had her help out in the physical construction of the seaside rest stop and hauling supplies and airships around alongside all the knights.
Yes, Alani had carried entire airships around. Just the small ones, the Wasps that Mindy designed, but they were airships nonetheless, even if they could barely fly any more, despite any magi"s best efforts. These days, they were used more in the water than out of it.
In fact, with mana fading into nothing, a huge amount of airships were quickly adapted for the sea. Some lighter ones could be adapted to use electric motors and propellers, but there were only so many of Deepsilver"s kin to go around, and Mindy"s shipyards were already swamped with airships to adapt.
Most of them were being adapted to use a different kind of fuel, something other than the coal and oil used by Libertaria. Remian called it hydrogen, and he was going to show it off at the big Science Conference in a week and a half.
Someday, he said, girls with cold Qi might liquify the fuel for storage and usage, but for now, hydrogen was stored in balloons protected by Xiao Yan"s formations. Later, but not too much later, he hoped, they would have machines to compress or liquify hydrogen.
Speaking of Remian, Alani wondered why he hadn"t been the one to teach Psionics. He seemed to be a lot more skilled with it than even Darian and the Temple Knights. He came by to visit once, and ended up helping them re-form their Silhouettes without magic. But he hadn"t yet taught Alani and her friends any of that yet.
No, most of Alani"s training came from Darian and the Order of Light, those knights affectionately referred to as White Knights, due to the color of their tabards, as compared to the Order of Steel"s Gray Knights and the Order of Sand"s Brown Knights.
Under her tutelage, Alani had over the past two weeks, successfully improved her Psionic abilities to the point of using Small Telekinesis! She was now able to make a rock float with her mind alone!
Hey, don"t laugh. Isabella could throw fire with pyrokinesis and Siti could show you dream-like images with Guidance, but Alani herself barely made it as a Cla.s.s-4 Psionic, an entire level below them. It wasn"t that she was untalented or lazy; controlling her physical strength took up most of her time. Plus, she was also learning spear arts.
Why a spear? Because, it could also be used for fishing! But don"t tell Darian that.
At least she made it to becoming a Cla.s.s-4! Jamie and Juni could barely send telepathic messages, hardly qualifying as Cla.s.s-2"s. But of course, they also had a lot more on their plates, between armor care, bodily deflecting blows with armor, using armor in attacks, speed-training for putting on armor quickly…
They even trained with shields and maces. You"d think knights used swords all the time, but a rather large number of Temple Knights favored maces. After training with armor and sparring with people who wore armor, both Jamie and Juni opted for maces as well, though Jamie once sneakily played around with a flail, and Juni seemed interested in warhammers.
Everyone else also trained with armor, a little, but the most they had to handle was light leather armor, or thick clothes they called gambersons. They never had to handle heavy armor like Juni and Jamie.
Compared to the weapons and armor training of those two, Isabella and Siti had the least weapons training. They simply took up crossbows, and though they had a bit of practice with bows and guns as well, they mainly just stuck to using crossbows in target practice. They focused most of their time in Psionics.
Gary was somewhere in between. He had seen Darian form what they called Psi Blades, one on each hand, and from then on, he trained with twin blades. Alani often told him he should focus on Psionics if he wanted to use Psi Blades, but he still spent more time with knives than in Psionic practice. As a result, he, like Alani, was stuck at Cla.s.s-4 Psionic, barely able to muster an aura barrier, much less forge Psi Blades.
According to Darian, doing this much in two weeks was already very good. Some Temple Knights went on for years before even being able to form aura barriers. But then, they didn"t have the benefits of being surrounded by Wilds or having their Psionic abilities awoken by hearing telepathic messages from a young age.
"Reef? How come Wilds have Psionic abilities?" Alani asked once.
It was a question only the eldest of the Wilds could possibly have answered.
"We were magicked into it by the masters of the Black Ruins." Reef shrugged. "But alas, I suspect we may be the last generation of Wilds to exist in this world. As mana fades from the world, the future generations may not possess our Psionic abilities as strongly, until at last, there are Wilds no more, merely animals in the wilderness…"
"Oh no! Can"t we do something about it?" Alani spluttered.
"What can we do? Re-open the portal to the Spectres?" Reef snorted. "No, girl. If our time is up, then time is up."
"We"ll bring you away with us!" Alani decided. "When we build the Warp Gate and run away to other worlds! We"ll find a world with mana for you and all the other Wilds to live happily!"
"Really?" Reef eyed her in humor. He said nothing about how long it would take, or whether Alani herself would be alive by then. He simply smiled. "Thank you, Alani."
***
The island she was on had been renamed "Midway" since it was the refugees" main stopover from the Midlands to Fal"Herim. Even as Alani went about looking for her friends and some breakfast, another shipload of refugees arrived on the docks and let off a stream of tired, fearful people fleeing the Midlands.
Yes, it was sailing on the water, not in the air. With the Deep Emperor"s protection, naval ships in the Midlands Sea were able to ferry no less than fifteen thousand people through Midway Island in the past two weeks. It was crazy just how quickly people adapted to ships on the water instead of ships in the air. A lot of them couldn"t even move on their own power and had to be towed by some of the larger marine Wilds.
Other ships turned out to be sailed by bad people and tried to rob them or steal whole ships. Those, the Temple Knights and the Wilds gave special attention to, and they turned out to be excellent fish food.
"Thank you, Reef." Alani stroked the turtle"s sh.e.l.l softly as she saw more and more people reach safety.
"You know, I never would have done this, before." Reef yawned. "Humans were just pests to me, or otherwise, mere strangers to be wary of."
The notion that his mind shared with hers was that his feelings about humans were similar to her feelings about fish. Most of the time, she simply didn"t care, unless she wanted to eat one, or if one interesting specimen piqued her curiosity. Other than that, if she was swimming and they came close, she had to be wary, because large ones or too many small ones could cause her harm.
But if one particular fish became a good friend, eating the same kind of fish as her friend simply wouldn"t feel right any more…
Speaking of fish made Alani think about Deepsilver, and her brother who once had a job feeling that giant electric eel.
He had since forsworn ever going near an eel again. Her father had made him at least five different suits with more and more rubber each time, but Aouli still wouldn"t take the job any more. Now at Midway Island were a dozen guys all going around in rubber suits made by their father, feeding younger, smaller electric eels who power electric motors on sailing ships or the few remaining airships. Most of them were brave, trained Temple Knights who dared face suffering for the sake of their fellow man… and their own wallets.
"Well, it"s been fun on this island." Alani reflected. "We learned a good bit about how to protect ourselves. But it"s time we got back to normal life."
Except that normal life didn"t exist for them. It didn"t exist for the rest of the world either, at this point. Most of the world was in great turmoil. The Dragon Empire was steadily absorbing every other country and sovereignty in the east. Libertaria had taken over the entire north-western continent and was likely to take over the south-western one too. As for the Midlands…
Right now the strongest power in the Midlands were the Wilds of the Neutral Zone. People were killing each other in the streets out of fear, anger, desperation or sheer madness. Thousands were fleeing by any means they could, with whatever they could carry, or even nothing at all. Darian and the Order of Light had their hands full, and the non-stop exodus didn"t seem about to abate any time soon.
At this rate, the Midlands, too, would become part of the Wildlands…