Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
The palace rafters rattled with a shuddering boom followed by a puff of acrid gray smoke—and a high-pitched shriek that may or may not have come from the hallway parrot.
Tonya Waves skidded to a stop outside the den, her nostrils flaring and her hands on her hips as smoke curled upward from under the door.
“Ashure Waves! What in the Seven Kingdoms did you blow up this time? Did Nali booby-trap another barrel of sea-bane? Or did you finally try to open that cursed lockbox Koorgan left behind?”
The door creaked open and Ashure staggered out, coughing, his hair sticking up in every direction like he’d stuck a fork in a thundercloud. A scorch mark blackened his left cheek, soot covered his coat, and the very tip of his beloved feathered hat was on fire.
He patted the tiny flame out with two fingers and grinned, his teeth bright against the ash smeared across his face. “No traps. No curses. Just… progress.”
Tonya crossed her arms. “Progress?”
“I’m having a wonderful time with the devices Amber and Jade brought,” he said proudly, gesturing back at the chaos behind him.
“Did you know that my feathers conduct elemental energy—something Nali conveniently forgot to share with me? You’ve got to see what happens when you weave a Thunderbird filament through an amplified conduction coil and drop it into a blend of shock root oil, enchanted fairy dust, a puff or two of plasma gas, and… ”
He released a low curse and turned back toward the room. “Jade! What was that last ingredient you used again?”
“Don’t bother,” Tonya interrupted, holding up a hand with an exasperated smile. “I’m not sure I want to know. Just… try not to blow up anything important.”
“Define ‘important’,” Ashure said innocently, patting the dust off his coat.
Tonya shook her head, laughter bubbling in her throat. She reached up and patted his chest affectionately. “Namely you—all of you. Dinner’s in an hour. Try to keep your eyebrows, please.”
He wiggled what was left of his scorched eyebrows in response, eliciting an eye roll, before turning with a gleam of excitement back into the den.
Inside, the air buzzed with energy—literal and otherwise.
The walls glowed with streaks of pale violet where plasma had kissed the stone, and the long table in the center of the room was covered in a glorious mess of gears, glass tubes, glittering filaments, and strange whirring devices that blinked in various hues of ‘don’t touch me if you want to live’.
Amber was crouched over a half-assembled gauntlet, goggles pushed up on her forehead. Jade was upside down in a hanging hammock-chair, furiously scribbling something into a soot-streaked journal with a glowing stylus.
“Oh! We added the thunder-filaments to the chain launcher!” Amber crowed the second she saw Ashure re-enter.
“It crackles now,” Jade said, flipping out of the chair with a catlike twist. “Instant plasma whip. Smells like burnt cinnamon—I added that because Dad is always complaining the house smells like burnt ozone.”
“Cool. I thought that might’ve been the safety fuse,” Amber muttered, frowning thoughtfully. “Or the lunch bag I left on the proton oven.”
Ashure’s grin widened. “Ladies, you are brilliant and mildly terrifying, but mostly brilliant. What’s next?” he asked, rubbing his hands together with delight.
“Oh, there's loads more to show you! Wait until you see what the Thunderbird feathers can really do,” Amber said, holding up one with reverence.
“Did you know these things store residual elemental charges like little lightning batteries? They recharge with friction, storm energy, or good ole waving them like a wand.”
“We call them ‘EVFs’ now,” Jade added. “We’re trying to combine them with a kinetic microcore that can be attached to the bottom of your boots, and boom, instant boost modules for short-range flight or zero-g jumps.”
Ashure frowned as he studied the contraption Amber was holding. “You made jet-powered shoes?”
Amber nodded proudly. “Well… jet sandals. We haven’t figured out the insulation yet. Jade’s going to need to go shopping if we use up any more of the shoes she brought.”
“It’s a good thing dragons don’t burn easily,” Jade said, wiggling her toes. They were showing through the ends of her boots—which were missing. “We just need a good fireproof coating.”
“And this,” Amber said, rummaging in the duffel bag before triumphantly holding up something that looked like a cross between a hairdryer and a scorpion. “Spider Blaster 5000. Our brother James built it.”
Ashure took a cautious step back. “Should I be worried?”
Jade grinned. “Always.”
“It shoots out tiny, robotic spiders that create spiderweb-like traps that get stickier if you struggle. You have to know the release code to get free—it’s ‘sucks to be me’, by the way.
James even added a new setting called ‘arachno-annoyed’.
We haven’t tested that one out yet,” Amber explained.
“James made the SB5000 after a spider scared him in the bathroom.”
Ashure barked a laugh. “Remind me never to scare your brother.”
“We do it all the time,” they said in unison.
He leaned in to study the Spider Blaster 5000 with a gleam in his eye. “Mind if I borrow this? I’ve got an annoying Giant I could test the arachno-annoyed on if you like.”
Amber and Jade exchanged glances.
“Just… be careful. Some of James’s inventions have exploded,” Jade warned.
“Some?” Amber snorted, looking amused.
“Ours usually do at some point, too. That’s why Mom said we can’t test our experiments on James and Leo anymore,” Jade said with a sigh.
Ashure laughed, looking at the scorch marks on his clothing and lifting his hand to finger his eyebrows. He wiggled his fingers and whispered a hair regrowth spell when he felt half the hair missing.
“This Giant is pretty resilient,” Ashure said, his eyes twinkling as he held the blaster with mock reverence.
The three of them huddled closer around the workbench, laughter mixing with the clinking of metal and the occasional zap of contained chaos.
Ashure sighed when he thought of him and Tonya having children. If they were anything like these two, he couldn’t wait. He laughed again, listening as the two girls excitedly finished each other’s sentences.
“Hey Ashure, do you have any enemies you’d like mildly-to-moderately inconvenienced?” Jade asked.
Ashure blinked, then laughed—a deep, rolling sound that echoed.
“I always have a few of those. Why?” he asked, resting one hand on the hilt of his sword.
Amber and Jade looked at each other again, then shrugged.
“We need victims to test a few of our experiments on?” they said in unison.
Ashure grinned like a man who knew he was in trouble—and might just enjoy it.
The dining room was a riot of warm light and whimsy. Ochre crystal chandeliers shaped like jellyfish dangled from the vaulted ceiling, their glowing tendrils swaying gently in the breeze from the open windows.
Delicate, shell-inlaid panels lined the curved walls, catching the flicker of the magical candelabras and turning it into soft dancing reflections.
The long table, carved from a single driftwood tree from the Isle of the Giants, bore dishes of steaming lemon-seaweed pasta, fire-pepper prawns, and exotic fruit tarts drizzled with a light syrup.
Ashure reached lazily for another tart and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully while watching the two girls across the table argue over who had the better blueprint for a pocket cannon.
“Yours would explode on loading,” Amber argued, waving her fork.
Jade snorted. “Only if you use the wrong firing sequence. I made it that way in case someone steals it, or it gets into the wrong hands. Think! The last thing you want is your weapon turned on you. Remember the guys on Dad’s ship?”
Amber nodded with a thoughtful expression. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Tonya sat beside him and smiled in bemusement as she stirred her tea. Her long, dark brown hair was pulled into a braid that hung over one shoulder. Her hazel eyes sparkled with barely hidden amusement.
“What do you think? Maybe it’s time to add to the family? Wouldn’t it be lovely to have two girls like this, arguing over which has invented the better weapon?” he suggested, cupping her hand.
Tonya raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t one overgrown child enough for me to raise?”
He chuckled and lifted her hand to his lips. “It would be fun. I wouldn’t want to be an only child.”
“Making them, yes. Raising them and you? Have you forgotten the trouble you, Orion, Drago, and Koorgan got into when you stole that Wishing Whatever-it’s-called that belonged to Nali?” she teased before shaking her head at his innocent expression.
He was about to plead his case more when a soft throat-clearing drew everyone’s attention. Dapier, his first mate, stood awkwardly in the arched doorway, his tricorn hat in his hands as he shifted from foot to foot.
The short, round-bellied pirate looked like someone’s cheerful grandfather—if said grandfather had a long braided beard, three gold earrings in one ear, and a sabre strapped to his belt that had seen more action than most navies.
Tonya perked up. “Dapier! Come on in and have dinner with us.”
Dapier flushed a deep, ruddy pink and held up his hands. “Oh, no, no, my lady. I wouldn’t want to intrude—”
“Sit, or I’ll trap you with a Spider Blaster and feed you myself,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
Dapier’s eyes widened. “Aye, well… if you twist my arm, your Majesty. I could use a wee bit of nourishment. Can’t waste away. I’d be no good to the Cap’n if I did that.”
He waddled toward the table, oblivious to the snickers of amusement, and settled into the empty chair beside Jade who immediately passed him a bowl of pasta and the platter of fire-peppered prawns.
Ashure smiled. “Is everything alright, Dapier?”