Following a morning spent discussing “the plan”, the next few steps were clearly laid out, with Angeline somehow taking the lead without anyone noticing until it was too late.

  Not that there were any objections; the woman both seemed to relish the chance to whisk the mana crystals from under the nobles' noses and the opportunity to meet with the royal family. Both were tasks that neither David nor Niala were particularly keen on handling.

  In the end, they just secretly wanted to secure their future. Helping the Living Vault natives just happened to be a very pleasant side effect, at least as far as Niala was concerned.

  Under encouragement from her sister, Niala sent out Violet with a letter for her father, requesting the Alchemical Star once more. She felt she had been abusing the privilege of having a family airship, but Angeline did her best to trample that silly concept out of her blessed little heart.

  There was no shame in having something great and using it, after all.

  David had readily agreed, ignoring Niala's glare as he did.

  With that done, and out of curiosity more than anything, they went to ask Marshalla about mana signature resonance. They assumed that, being both a minor noble herself and one of the top manalogists of the kingdom, she could explain the process in greater detail. And she could. Extensively so.

  She also answered one question that had been brought up by Rinka and Niala: if the test could point out if three people shared a bloodline, however strenuous it might be, wouldn't it always return a positive result? After all, if you went back far enough, almost anyone would be related to everyone.

  The doctor explained that, yes, technically, that was true. The theory of the common ancestor did state as much, and it would have been the case if mana signatures didn't also carry a sort of “record” of someone's ancestor.

  This record could be “read”, with each iteration akin to words printed on a transparent page, and someone's mana signature being the entire book. When the book was opened to the first page, the entire content was visible. However, as you flipped each page, a sliver of it was peeled away.

  The trick was then to “filter out” past generations and start testing for resonance at the closest common point. In Rinka's case, since it was her brother and sister who would have carried her line, that common point would be her parents, or one page “prior” to her.

  But, explaining all that wasn't all that Marshalla could do. Among the equipment she had brought along, she had everything she needed to test for resonance.

  Again, out of curiosity, especially Niala's, and since the test didn't take very long, they asked to have it done on them; the All Brew and the Wardenfels, against Rinka.

  Both she and Marshalla agreed that there were high chances a minor resonance would be detected, as per Rinka's earlier explanation.

  That was exactly the result they got when they tested her with the All Brew sisters.

  The reign woman didn't show it, but learning that at least some of her family had survived untied a knot she'd noticed some time ago in her heart.

  By the time she was stilled, she'd already had to come to terms with losing the majority of her kin, and, while less emotional than the average person, it's not like she didn't care. She did, just... in her own way.

  It was while these thoughts occupied her mind that Marshalla tested her resonance against the Wardenfels. It was also why she didn't notice right away that the room had fallen silent.

  Once she did, and realized that all eyes were on her, she looked at the scholar. “What's wrong?”

  Marshalla blinked as the question snapped her out of her shock. “Miss... Rinka, right? The resonance test- it's giving an impossible result.”

  Rinka tilted her head. “Impossible, how?”

  The scholar glanced at the Wardenfel brothers before locking gaze with the Reign woman. “According to its strength and purity, the resonance would place the three of you as no more than four or five generations apart.”

  Rinka squinted. “That's impossible.”

  And then she snorted.

  Her curiosity piqued, Marshalla kept Rinka and the brothers for the rest of the day, running more tests and trying to figure out the anomalous result.

  The resonance's strength alone was puzzling enough; the near-perfect purity turned puzzling to impossible. Where the strength of a resonance revealed how many generations separated the individuals, purity was an indicator of how closely related those individuals were.

  Fifth-generation cousins would have a high strength, but low purity; there weren't many new “pages” between them, but most of the pages came from different books. The 100th great-grandchild's resonance with its grandparents would barely have any strength, but show a high purity.

  Rinka showed both.

  And, even more perplexing, were the other results. Marshalla had immediately “removed” Rinka's parents from the test. This meant that for this test, the first page was hers. Given that she had no descendants, at the very least, the purity should have sharply dropped, but it didn't. She somehow had a direct blood tie.

  But it was when Marshalla went back a few generations, to something around Rinka's great-grandparents, that her brain broke a little; the resonance's strength had increased. The woman's ancestors were more closely related to the Wardenfel brothers than she was.

  That made absolutely no sense.

  No amount of recalibrations, alternate tests, secondary indicators or re-testing showed any significant variances in the results.

  Marshalla was eventually forced to admit defeat; an answer to the puzzle would not come today.

  Puzzle aside, the resonance's result greatly pleased Angeline. Now, they only needed a way to prove Rinka was as ancient as they knew her to be, and they'd have another mana stone in their hand.

  They unfortunately weren't able to come up with an easy solution for this one. A combination of the pile of ancient books they had retrieved from the Archive, Jordo and #67's existence and memories, and Rinka's own knowledge and the many dead tongues she knew would have to suffice.

  And, to Angeline, that was fine. Noble's arguments were usually like slices of holed cheese; they all had many holes in them, but when you stacked them, those holes tended to get filled in.

  You just had to make sure you had a big enough stack so that no holes were visible.

  They said their goodbyes to Marshalla, who waved a hand at them, her face already burrowed into her notes from the test, and returned to Niala's shop for dinner. She invited Angeline and Isaac, with her sister accepting for both of them. In her magnanimousness, she told Niala they'd be around a little bit later, wanting to give Isaac some time to attend to the day's work that had surely piled up on his desk, and split up.

  As David, Niala and Rinka walked back home, they found #67 standing in front of the shop, holding something in his hands, his eyes slowly drifting apart as they usually did when the golem was idle.

  Niala greeted the golem, which seemed to wake up as it straightened, and walked toward them. He opened his hand and offered what he was holding to her.

  A small, intricately carved rock chicken.

  With wide eyes and pointed ears, she gently picked up the sculpture, turning it around in front of her. The details were more than impressive, with the feathers individually carved, layered over each other, giving the rock an almost organic feel.

  She looked up at #67 with awe in her eyes. “Did you do this, 67?”

  The golem's eyes dimmed several times before it spoke. “Isn't my son – useless – beautiful!?”

  She waited to see if the golem would say anything else, but it seemed content with its piece. With care, she offered the stone chicken back to the golem, but its hand remained at its side. Instead, it bent its head down to look at the sculpture, then back up at Niala, and shook its eyes left and right before turning around and walking inside.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The three of them watched it leave with raised eyebrows and unanswered questions in their eyes.

  After a while, they resumed their way inside and began preparing for dinner.

  Niala ended up keeping the little rock chicken.

  The young couple spent the next few days properly catching up with what happened in town over the past few weeks, alongside more tests with Marshalla and helping Rinka figure out what she wanted to do.

  They also spent some time talking with the construction crew working on their “compound”, making sure things were being built to their standards.

  Inevitably, the workers had soon adopted Niala as their unofficial mascot-goddess hybrid. The regular supply of fruit water and sandwiches she prepared for them probably helped speed up the adoption.

  Thankfully, their adoration remained friendly and civil. David standing nearby and staring at anyone who got too close to his wife most certainly had nothing to do with their restrained behaviour.

  Niala brewed up more potions, attended some of the training sessions with David and Leandro, while David himself spent the rest of his time working at the Old Woman brewery. During his absence, a few new employees had shown up, and the production line had expanded with the delivery of their first automated herb preparation machine.

  He was also very pleased to see the first payments coming in from his brother Luke and the increasingly large orders on his part. Large enough that, if they kept increasing, he would soon need to ask the fairies to increase their shipment and purchase a second cargo autocar. At least, until Isaac finished up the new railcar line between Riverwall and Bellharbour.

  Huh...

  They would need to remodel their backyard. If he were to have the fairies increase their deliveries, they'd need an actual warehouse very close to the Weldtree. He wondered how Niala would respond to that.

  He shrugged. Obviously, she would see the money the Old Woman was raking in, and agree it was necessary.

  No problem.

  Four days later, Violet returned, laden with two letters: an eleven-page monstrosity from Cornelius, which ended up being mostly a rant on how the house felt empty without his daughters around, and how he dreaded the day even Angeline would leave for good.

  The other letter was from Mahala, who told the sisters to be ready for Cornelius to arrive soon after Violet did, as the man had immediately ordered the Alchemical Star readied for departure after he'd read Niala's letter.

  And Cornelius did arrive, just a few bells later.

  David figured the man must have pushed his airship past its cruising speed, eating up a good portion of its emergency power mana stones...

  The man himself arrived soon after, nearly jumping out of his autocar and running at Niala, smashing into his daughter with a hug and bawled words which sounded like a continuation of his letter.

  Eventually, he calmed down and was introduced to Rinka, and then to their plans.

  Cornelius, to his credit, didn't try to pry into their reasons and managed not to explode in excitement when he was told that Niala would effectively become the co-leader of a new nation.

  No matter that it was in name only. The man's brain had latched onto that idea and wasn't letting go.

  They had to call in Angeline to control the little maniac when he started going around to hire people to start building a castle.

  They gave the Alchemical Star's crew a day of rest before the airship lifted up once more, carrying extra passengers: David, Niala, Rinka, Jordo, and Angeline. Isaac had elected to stay behind. He wasn't really involved with the entire scheme and had work to oversee in town anyway.

  Sybil and Sammie, for their part, had been firmly told to stay; the All Brew family guards would ensure their wards' safety.

  Their ultimate destination was the capital city of Amberose, specifically, the royal archives, where they wanted to compare the crests and information from the Radiant Archive to the kingdom's records. They would need to be granted the process access, for which some official noble backing was required.

  And it just so happened that one of their passenger was a member of a rather powerful family, whose estate was near Amberose.

  The trip was going to take up the best of five days at the Alchemical Star's cruising speed. A feat, for sure, but David figured he could help speed things up.

  On the first day, he had the airship's engineers set up a manual mana feed: two mana-conductive handlebars which fed directly into the manaheart. The crew were initially reticent about working on the manaheart directly, until Cornelius just told them to do what the man was asking for.

  Then, after asking how much the manaheart could handle, he planted his feet, grabbed the handles, and opened the gate.

  Up on the command deck, Captain Arnelle Plerigass stood, hands clasped behind her back and watching the instruments.

  She'd been told they would soon have all the power they wanted to push the ship to its maximum. She hadn't been told how or when exactly, though she guessed it had something to do with the bars her engineers had been asked to rig up.

  But, if that was it, then they'd probably get a limited window of time to really open up, because nobody could power the ship with their personal mana for very long. Of course, she had heard the rumours about the boy's immense reserves, but everybody had a limit.

  Still, she was rather curious... and there, the manaheart activity gauge spiked, and soon all the mana meters rose in sync. All across the board, full mana availability.

  No, more than that. The emergency overload systems had engaged, and the ship's sails and fins were flipping from collector to dissipator one by one.

  Her eyes widened as the comforting green lights recoloured red in a wave. She flung an arm out. “Tuck in the fins and furl up the sails! Close the hatches, reconfigure hull for minimum drag!”

  As her crew bolted into action and relayed her words, a small twang of anticipation gripped her heart. She was a professional, dedicated to her role as captain. It's what had landed her this posh job aboard this incredible vessel.

  And yet, ever since she had been made aware of its true capabilities, she had dreamed of unleashing the girl. This ship was hungry. More so than most people knew.

  But she was hamstrung, chained. She had the heart for it, but not enough mouth to funnel the raw mana to it. The solution: a hopper full of mana stones, to be used in emergencies, and only for short periods of time.

  Even that had a flaw; the mana-collecting fins and sails would create extra drag as they flew faster, and the ship could go fast enough for those to get ripped off. If they wanted to go faster, they had to tuck them in, but that cut their mana generation to nothing. At that point, they had to rely entirely on their mana stone reserves, which would last for even less time.

  But now, those delicate systems were pulled back into the protective carapace of the metallic hull, the plates angled, refining the ship's silhouette into something shark-like. With the mana reserve still showing full, she allowed herself to smile.

  A hungry smile, the same nature as her ship's. Unlike her accelerating heart, her voice was the eye of a storm. “Crew, thrusters to maximum.”

  The helmsman repeated the order he'd heard. “Aye aye, thrusters to full.”

  Her response was immediate. “Helmsman, I said to maximum.”

  The man stopped and turned his head, making visual contact with his captain. “Maximum?”

  She nodded. “Maximum.”

  A bead of sweat pearled down the helmsman's brow as he turned his attention back to his controls. “Ay- Aye aye, captain. Thrusters t-to maximum.” He repeated, his voice catching.

  And then his hand gripped the speed control's handle, and moved it up, slowly, gradually, hitting the first interlock; Sails and Fins breakaway speed. He called out to another officer on deck. “Bosun, sails and fins speed interlock check.”

  The bosun looked at his readings and nodded. “Sails and fins fully retracted. Opening interlock.”

  The helmsman swallowed and moved the handle further up, slowly. They had only gone this fast once before, when they tested the ship. It was simply too costly to power everything using mana stones.

  The Alchemical Star split through the air, her numerous and oversized thrusters greedily engulfing all the mana her heart could feed them, turning all that power into speed. And still, they hungered for more.

  The speed handle reached the second interlock; hull reconfiguration. This... they had never breached, only tested the process, not the speed. The helmsman called out. “Bosun, hu-hull configuration speed interlock check.”

  The officer checked his console. He checked it again. “Hull... reconfigured for maximum speed. Opening interlock.”

  The Helmsman nodded, but glanced back at his captain instead of moving the handle further.

  Arnelle dipped her head. Go.

  He swallowed once more and, tentatively, pushed the speed a little, just to make sure that the ship wasn't going to start tearing at the seams.

  A few seconds passed, and no groaning, snapping or shaking manifested. He moved the handle further up, all the way to the top. Even from inside, they could hear the roar of the wind as the prow of the ship pierced through the air at a speed he didn't even want to know.

  Someone nearby gasped. In a burst of panic, he snapped his head in the direction of the sound, only to gasp in turn as he looked out the window; the clouds... they were flying past them.

  And then his captain sealed everyone's fate.

  “Helmsman, engage overdrive.”

  Pupils dilated, he swivelled his head in her direction, mouth opening to protest.

  Her steely stare shut him up. The woman seemed to be telling him we might never get this chance again. Do as I say.

  He gulped and returned to his instruments, putting a trembling hand over a small mana-reading panel.

  The captain, walking up next to him, did the same. A button lit up under a small glass plate. He lifted the plate and hovered his thumb above it. Taking a deep breath, he pushed it.

  Below the ship, her pods of thrusters received a signal. A triple self-test was run, and came up positive. Baffles lowered over the intakes, allowing the fans to slow down and lock into position.

  Inside the thrusters, actuating levers engaged a new set of gears, ones designed to provide a much higher ratio. The locks were released, and the baffles slowly opened, letting in air once again.

  The fans spun up, almost twice as fast as before. The thrusters' exhaust ducts narrowed, compressing the air. And then, the final system triggered; industrial-strength manaburners came alive, super-heating the air, making it explode out the conical outlet into a hazy blue pillar of flame.

  The sudden extra power was felt throughout the ship, with most passengers and crew back-stepping to avoid falling over. Eyes widened as hands found the nearest hold to steady themselves. A pervasive feeling of movement washed over them.

  The Alchemical Star lived up to its name, becoming a star, shooting across the sky, leaving behind an alchemical trail of fire.

  The Captain's smile was open on a full set of teeth. Her eyes had a slight glint of mania, just enough to unnerve whoever glanced.

  They ended up reaching the Wardenfel estate within the day.