A half-hour later, Wulf stood bare-footed on the beach, squishing his toes in the sand. He didn't think he'd ever done that before.

Certainly not on a proper beach. It wasn't the Riftsea, sure, but he'd already crossed that. This ocean, the Central Tepidmere, was just as beautiful.

Its name was less so. The 'tepid lake' ocean? It was hardly a lake, but its location did make it much warmer than most. The water was still cool and refreshing, though—hardly tepid.

Oh well, he thought, stepping to the edge of the water and letting the waves splash up to his shins and swirl around his ankles. He stared out into the hazy distance. The sky might not have been perfectly blue, but today, it was clearer than most. The moons were still rising over the horizon, a few Oroniths stood offshore, guarding the facility, and a few ships sailed between them, heading to the port.

A breeze blew past, and he felt like he should be shivering. But he was a Silver, and even if he had been cold, he wouldn't have shivered. And he wasn't cold. He wore only a pair of shorts and his bracer, but no parchment in it. Irmond had tried to get him to leave it behind, but he'd settled on just the paper. It felt weird to not be wearing his means of interfacing with the Field.

After a few minutes of shifting nervously, Wulf said, "What do you think they're doing? What's taking them so long?"

"You're asking me?" Irmond shook his head. "Dunno what Seith had in mind."

"But you guys were the ones who came up with this plan!"

"Yeah, but like, I didn't press the details of how and where they were going to get changed." Irmond shrugged. "It was easy enough for us to just take some shorts from the closet in our room."

He'd wore the exact same as Wulf, except he had left his bracer behind in their room. Apparently, the shorts were made of a special material meant to go in the ocean and be light, despite being imbued with water—made of an arcane material called fishhide, though it wasn't an actual fish skin. The people here called it a swimsuit, but his first thought was on how to create something like it through transmutation.

And, despite Irmond being an elf, and being more slender than Wulf, he didn't seem nearly as pale. He'd probably gotten out more…

Wulf winced then looked down. He had an obvious tan halfway up his biceps, and halfway down his calves.

"Come on, man, we'll fix that today," Irmond said. "It's not like you haven't got the beach body."

Wulf rolled his eyes. "We're Silvers. We'd better be in good shape."

"Do you just not notice yourself becoming more and more chiselled as time goes on?"

Wulf winced. "Well, not really." He wasn't exactly the bulkiest guy anymore, and though he was wider and more muscular than Irmond, that wasn't difficult to do. He was still more lean than warrior-level buff.

"Well, someone better notice. Nevermind that as you increase your strength and durability…" Irmond shook his head. "Ah, we talked about this before. You're gonna get more physically attractive as time goes on. It's just how advancement works."

"Right…"

"Why'd you become Mr. Awkward all of a sudden?"

"You know why."

Irmond only snickered, then went back to staring out at the ocean.

After a few minutes, the world shrank. Wulf sensed a pair of presences behind him, both at the peak of Silver, and he spun around to face them.

"We're here! Finally!" Seith exclaimed. "It took us long enough…"

Wulf turned around slowly, and the first thing that ran through his head was, At least I'm not the only one with a horrible tan.

Kalee and Seith approached, jogging down the beach toward them. Seith wearing utilitarian shorts and a bandage-like chest-wrap, and Kalee in an elegant black two-piece swimsuit. She wrapped her tail around her shoulder, the way she did when she was nervous, but Seith grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her forward.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"I present! Kalee!" Seith exclaimed. Kalee delivered a small wave.

Wulf didn't know why, but he was pretty sure his face was heating up. It shouldn't have been, but… "Was this the plan?" he whispered to Irmond.

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"I don't like you very much."

"Yeah." Irmond turned to Seith. "Where'd you even find that swimsuit for her?"

"I told you, granny and I were going shopping," Seith countered.

"For the record, I told her it was a waste of money," Kalee replied. "There was really no need for any of this."

"And I told her that we had the funds," Seith said.

"Yes, my winnings from the arena fights."

"If you don't use them now, when are you ever going to use them?"

"There was no reason such a small amount of fish-hide should ever have cost this much."

"It's the craftsmanship that you're paying for!" Seith said with a laugh. "Come on, go put your feet in the water. You'll warm up eventually. Both of you."

"We're not cold," Wulf and Kalee said in unison.

"Not what she meant," Irmond whispered. "Come on, you're…what, twenty-one years old, now? You should be better than this." Then, he cleared his throat, and put on a fake, scratchy, old-man-voice. "Back in my day, kids like you were getting married at thirteen and going off to war! Damn academy students don't know that they're missing!"

Wulf stared blankly at Irmond.

"Sure, sure, bad example. Both of you have the memories of an old person but the body and soul of a twenty-one year old."

Nodding slowly, Wulf asked, "Alright, but what do we actually do?"

~ ~ ~

He shouldn't have asked that. Irmond and Seith had not come up with much of a plan beyond 'get the two past-lifers to spend time together and make it extra awkward,' so they spent the morning doing the hard part.

Probably. They found an outlook, and watched over the distant waterwheel. To pump seawater into the spirit-storage facility, for some sort of cooling mechanism, the guild had set up two massive capstans in the ocean. They lay horizontal, and had spars reaching out to the side, which each had an ocean spirit chained to it. As they swam, they spun the capstan, powering a waterwheel and some sort of pump construct.

"You think we could sneak in through there?" Wulf asked. "We could skip the whole 'front door' part of things."

"I think it's a better escape route," Kalee replied.

"But only if we can turn off the pumps. Otherwise, something tells me we'll get crushed to pieces."

"Better yet, run the pumps in reverse," Seith said. "It'll suck you down."

"Then tear us to pieces?" Irmond asked.

"We'd turn them off before it was too late," Seith said.

"Seems risky," Wulf replied. "Why not run the pumps in reverse while we steal stuff, then the pipes will be empty. We can find a down-chute and use it to get right to the ocean."

After midday, they'd scouted the storage facility enough. There was nothing more they were going to discover for the day, and Irmond warned them that they were still attracting suspicion, even if they were watching on the beach.

They had to call it for the day.

So they spend the rest of the afternoon in the waves. Apparently the locals used chunks of wood from broken down ships as floatation devices, and either rode on them standing up, or simply laid down on them and let the waves carry them ashore, until Irmond reported that the people who were following them had moved off.

"Who was following us?" Wulf asked Irmond. "Anyone strong?"

"Some Irons," Irmond replied. "Likely from the guild, though I can't say for certain. They weren't wearing any guild uniforms or badges. Now go, stop thinking about that. You're probably not going to have another chance to enjoy yourself before this is all over."

"Right. Yeah."

Once an especially large wave washed them ashore, dropping them all on their backs in the sand, and the sun began to set, Seith pointed up the shore. "Dunno about any of you, but I'm starving. We skipped lunch."

"We can go a while without eating now," Irmond said. "I don't know how long, actually, but I know we can."

"You don't have to keep reminding me. Point is, I want to eat, and these two need to."

Wulf glanced over at Kalee. Now that he'd spent a day baking in the sun, and getting tossed by the waves, and had a healthy coating of sand in his everywhere, he could breathe a little deeper. For the first time in a while, he stopped to taste the air. It was salty and briny, and there was probably a lot of seawater up his nose that was skewing it. He lowered his arms and relaxed his shoulders, and a lump of tension left his spine.

Kalee had unwrapped her tail from around her shoulder and lowered her arms, taking a more relaxed stance as well. He cast her a smile, and she returned it.

At the same time, his core trembled slightly, letting off a pulse of resonance. Something about today, just relaxing, had helped. He couldn't explain why, really, but he was pretty sure it was going to make it easier to take the spirit in.

But no more thinking about that. They still had the rest of the day before it was time to get back to work.

"How about there?" Irmond asked, pointing up the shore at a wooden restaurant with an open-air seating area and palm fronds for a roof. It was right up on the beachfront, and there were plenty of guests in casual attire and swimsuits. They'd fit right in.

"Seems like a good choice," Seith said. "Lead on."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.