by Tamryn Tamer
“Yeah,” Jericho sighed and looked around at their dismal training area. “I’m just kind of sick of practicing in a graveyard.”
“Then stop dying,” Talia smiled. “If you stop dying then we wouldn’t need to practice in a graveyard. Now, try again.”
“Okay,” Jericho said pulling himself from time again while maintaining a normal speed. “How fast?”
“We’re going to go ten times faster than time,” Talia said. “It’s a nice slow speed and then we’ll try to go back to normal speed.”
“Got it,” Jericho said quickly increasing to ten times his speed. He found it interesting how Talia could match his speed and be in the same time as him. “So, if two-time manipulators were to fight what would happen?”
“It’s a death race,” Talia answered while maintaining the increased flow with Jericho. “We’d each increase our speed until the other stopped so we could slit their throat. Except the more we increase our speed the more likely we are to die.”
“So, you just basically speed up until somebody either dies of old age or stops and gets their throat slit?” Jericho asked. “Interesting.”
“Of course, you’d have an advantage,” Talia said. “Since death doesn’t really matter to you. Time to turn around.”
“Okay,” Jericho said preparing to flip the flow. “I got it this time.”
Jericho felt the increase in speed and wanted an exact reverse of that increase. He didn’t need to stop his flow, but reverse it without ever stopping it. It was the primary concept he was struggling with because there would always be a moment that changing from forward to reverse would result in stopping.
“Dammit,” Jericho stood up in his new death robe as he walked over and looted his corpse causing it to instantly decay. “I thought I had it that time.”
“You’re doing fine,” Talia said. “As I said, you’re very talented. You can separate your time and adjust your flow. Once you master changing the flow without stopping, you’ll have pretty much mastered time magic.”
“What do you mean pretty much?” Jericho asked. “Is there something else?”
“Well,” Talia said. “There are things but they’re more things you have to experience. Like monitoring your time use. There’s a lot of math. For example, if you’re going six hundred thousand times faster than normal, how long can you maintain that before you die? What if you need to maintain that for five minutes then maintain four hundred thousand for three minutes? What if you go three days before you can reset your time? Can you keep track of how much time you’ve used and how much more you have left to use? It’s a lot of accounting.”
“Shit,” Jericho said. “I hadn’t thought of that since I reset on each death.”
“Yeah,” Talia grumbled. “Must be nice not having to worry about dying because you stopped your flow. Obviously, I had to be much more careful.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Jericho said staring at the jealous familiar. “That must have been really hard.”
“Not for me since I’m a demigoddess of time,” Talia lied. “I can go forward and backward as well as keep track of all the counting without issues.”
“Of course not,” Jericho grinned. “Anyway, our time is about up. I have other training to do and I have an alliance meeting to attend later.”
“Not to worry,” Talia smiled. “I can always increase time by a hundred and keep you with me for hours while nobody outside is the wiser.”
“Well to me it’s the same amount of time and I can only focus on training for so long,” Jericho smiled as he thought of Talia on the bloody platform doing her work without using time magic.
“Who said anything about training?” Talia grinned impishly. “But I suppose if you’re set on heading back, we can.” Talia pulled out a map and opened a portal to the manor. “You first.”
“Thanks,” Jericho said as he walked through the red portal and appeared in the backyard of the manor. Talia’s ability to craft portals was insanely useful but she hadn’t taught Jericho how to make them yet. Talia came through the portal behind him, “You still need to give me that recipe.”
“That was contingent on you catching me,” Talia smirked. “You never actually caught me. Jinx and Mirage did. And as long as I’m the only one who knows how to make them, I have the leverage to get things. I still don’t see my statue, for example.”
“It’s only been a few days,” Jericho groaned. “Give me some time.”
Jericho walked toward the house as Ariel came running outside with three dragons in tow. Ever since the redesigns, the dragons had started roaming freely between the house, their roosts, and the yard. It wasn’t so bad since Ariel made sure to keep them away from bedrooms, labs, and really anything they could potentially destroy.
“You’re back!” Ariel jumped up and down while pointing at the manor. “Everybody’s waiting for you! We’re having a meeting!”
“Meeting?” Jericho asked anxiously. “What’s going on?”
“Cynthia finished her proposal!” Ariel said. “Come on!”
“Proposal?” Jericho suddenly remembered Ariel mentioning that Cynthia had become engrossed in the geography of the surrounding area as well as the various residential maps of Dayrose. She’d even requested copies of maps of other major cities for her project.
Jericho entered the dining hall to see enormous maps sprawled over the table with Terra and all of his familiars surrounding it. He scanned the maps as he approached and quickly realized the type of project Cynthia was working on.
“Wonderful,” Cynthia smiled seductively at Jericho. He felt a shiver run up his spine as the sexy dominatrix smacked the table with a riding crop. “Now that everybody is here. I want to bring up the future of the Kingdom of Dayrose.”
“Kingdom?” Terra said. “It’s a village.”
“Look at the maps,” Jericho gestured at the dozen maps laying around. “It’s a plan for the strategic growth of Dayrose focusing on the surrounding area initially and the establishment of smaller villages and outposts.”
“How the hell could you tell that?” Terra looked them over. She glanced at Cynthia, “Is he right?”
“He is,” Cynthia grinned impishly. “You are so smart my pet.”
“Cynthia,” Ariel said nervously. “Wouldn’t this make the surrounding kingdoms mad? I’m pretty sure they won’t want another kingdom growing between them.”
“Kar Mograth was crippled by your fiery siege Ariella,” Cynthia smiled as she reminded the fairy of her command to burn everything they could. She turned to Talia, “As for Dawn. It’s my understanding that they’ve been having their own struggles since the demise of the king and several high-ranking nobles.”
“Okay,” Jericho nodded. “Let’s say we don’t care about the surrounding cities and we wish to become a power player in the region. To what end? Simply to have a kingdom?”
“There is nothing simple about it,” Cynthia said. “That’s why there are phases. There are certain necessities Dayrose lacks. We’re in the center of the forest and we don’t have a lumberyard. That’s because a lumberyard requires a large space, a warehouse, and guards to protect them from thieves. So, even adding a lumberyard requires significant growth. What about a quarry? A mine? And eventually we’ll have so many outposts we’ll need more soldiers which will require a proper barracks. And it goes on and one. One thing leads to needing another.”
“I see your point,” Jericho said. He’d played a lot of strategy games and had a good understanding of her priorities. “How does this work though? Some of the areas you have outposts on in phase three and four are owned by Kar Mograth.”
“By those phases I expect us to be opening diplomatic channels and we can negotiate purchases of those properties.” Cynthia smiled. “Kar Mograth is in dire need of funds and those lands are worth very little to them.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” Terra leaned back. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m worried,” Jericho
said looking over the map. “Not about our neighbors as much as the internal struggles and growing bureaucracy that’d be necessary to maintain it. Not to mention the corruption that goes along with it.”
“We are a monarchy ruled by Queen Ariella,” Cynthia offered. “I assume she’d look to you and me on who to promote to help run the country. Do you have so little faith in our respective abilities?”
“It’s not that,” Jericho said. “It’s just a huge amount of work and I already have so much going on.”
“We could just try out phase one,” Terra said pointing to the city expansion and establishment of some outposts. “Nobody would really question that. It creates some new businesses, properties, and improves the general quality of life.”
“I suppose,” Jericho said while looking around the table. “How do you all feel?”
“I think it’s a good idea,” Ariel said. “As long as we try to be friends with our neighbors.”
“I’m in!” Kadra said excitedly. “I want to be a royal guard! Wait, no. Captain of the guards!”
“If anybody’s going to be captain it’s going to be me,” Sirun growled.
“In your dreams runt,” Rela chimed in. “Kadra’s too stupid and you’re too small.”
“Well, it certainly won’t be you,” Avara chimed in. “Freya would probably be the captain anyway.”
“The question was how you feel, not what job do you want.” Freya sighed. “But it’s obvious where we stand.”
“I want to reach phase two. Idiots. Nitwits.” Jinx said while eyeing the mines.
“I believe it’s a good strategy,” Theia said. “If we grow strong enough, we can form an alliance with Whitespire against the Fallen.”
“If you’re worried about corruption, I can weed it out,” Mirage said. “As well as anything else that may happen behind the scenes. I have quite a bit of experience with the inner workings of nobility and governments.”
“Yeah,” Terra scoffed. “Disrupting them.”
“I don’t care either way,” Sable said. “Although if you’re going to expand on anything you should be sure to build a library. An educated populace is an effective populace. Unless you’re a poor leader in which case an educated populace is very dangerous.”
“How do we intend to pay for this?” Luna asked. “Didn’t you say the manor upgrades were nine million? You’re talking about nearly doubling the size of the village and adding guard outposts, mines, lumberyards, businesses. That can’t be cheap.”
“Shit,” Jericho glanced at Cynthia. “How much is this going to cost?”
“Phase one would cost one hundred million gold,” Cynthia answered. “But we could recoup quite a bit of that selling new property and with a growing city I imagine…”
“We don’t have a hundred million gold,” Jericho said. “How do you think we’re going to get that?”
“Clearing dungeons,” Terra smiled. “And we’ll actually be able to create a proper guild hall and get them working on farming as well. If Dayrose became a kingdom, that’d go a long way toward getting our recruitment numbers up. We could consult Raven on the logistics of everything.”
“So, it seems like you’re all in?” Jericho looked around at everybody nodding. “Where are Mai and Riseva?”
“They’ve been locked in Mai’s bedroom since the party,” Terra said. “They’ve been fucking pretty much nonstop. At this point, I’m starting to think somebody should check on them.”
“I’ll volunteer for that,” Jericho grinned lecherously. “In the meantime, I suppose we’re going to have to start grinding some gold. Let’s make a kingdom.”
The End
...Not finished! But damn this is hard! Not the writing itself but the publishing schedule. When I first promised every other week I was thinking 25k-30k books not 35k-45k books. But the more characters I add the more I seem to end up writing. I need to figure this out. In the meantime, thank you all so much for still following along! We're almost to the real end. And by real end I don't necessarily mean end. Like I really like the idea of writing holiday short stories involving the characters and little slice of life stories.
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Forbidden Arcana Series
Jinx (Book 1)
Ariel (Book 2)
Mirage (Book 3)
Theia (Book 4)
Sable (Book 5)
Luna (Book 6)
Talia (Book 7)
Morgana (Coming Soon!)
