TBATE - The third beginning

Chapter 8 Starting war preparations

Arthur Pov:

'What the hell is going on? Someone is shouting while an other person is shaking and slapping me. Can't they wake me up at least a bit more gentle?'

Opening my eyes and taking in the scenery with all my senses I realise that there is someone inside my room behind me. 'But why? I am still in bed so why is there someone behind me that makes no sense.' Taking in the scene again I see gramps with a cactus in his hand. His face seems to be in rage but not in just that. He also seems distraught, confused and a bit happy. Looking back I see the reason for this situation and my eyes widen.

"Tess what are you doing here? Gramps it is not how it looks like I haven't done anything. I am innocent. Tell him Tess! I didn't even know that she was here until a second ago gramps. I swear." While sweat was running down my back I could hear footsteps approaching.

"I-I... I couldn't sleep alone so I came here too-"

"Arthur what are you doing?" came a voice from the corridor. It was mother and next to her stood Nico smirking.

"You know that is not the right way to go about things Art." Commented Nico.

"You know damn well that I am innocent. And you don't have to say anything yourself you know." But before I could continue gramps intervened.

"Brat I don't care if you are a god ore an immensely powerful being. My granddaughter is of limits. Do you understand."

"I get it gramps and as I said it wasn't my idea that Tess came over to sleep next to me. I was already sleeping when she arrived. I didn't even know that she was here until you woke me up in such an uncivilised way. Can't you do it a bit more gentle in the future."

"For someone that had no idea that I was sleeping next to you, you were holding me pretty tight you know" came the sheepish reply from Tess.

Before I could stop her she said it and I could feel my head to heat up. I could swear that steam came out of my ears. But she was no better realising what she had said she looked like she could pass out at any moment. Gramps was dumbstruck and mother just started laughing while Nico decided that it was a good time to get out of the danger zone. Just then Tess decided that it was to dangerous to stay as well and tried to escape but was stopped by gramps.

"Where are you going little one?" Normally that sentence would have a lot of emotions or teasing inside it but this time it seems that Tess was frozen in place. Not long after both of us were sitting opposite from gramps and mother and had to endure a long tort- I mean lecture how it was to early for us to sleep in the same room. It was embarrassing to say the least. Normally I would stay strong through such lessons, maybe get a bit embraced but since mother was there and I seemed to behave and feel like a child in front of her the lesson was just horrible.

After what felt like days we were allowed to leave or get ready for our training. Our training in the morning started with mana manipulation, continued with elemental manipulation and finished with deviants theory. Just before lunchtime Nico and I tried to awaken my Vritra blood while he tried to strengthen his blood. At noon we trained our asuran forms. For me there was the transformation into a dragon and for Nico into a basilisk. After that we trained for some time without real progress we trained our 'battle forms'. Nico tried to create a more muscular Vritra-human appearance while I trained my realm heart. It seems that both of us are not untalented in this department but our final goal was to strengthen our body to the same extent without showing it on the outside so we still had ways to go. Nico's problem was that his horns were a extension of his mana core and it is rather dangerous to have his mana core exposed, while I didn't want to show my asuran heritage. In the afternoon or evening Nico and I were trying to create blueprints for simple defensive tools during a siege war. Like a ballista or similar tools. We also tried to come up with new designs for more or less modern weapons that were powered with magic. It seems that Nico's ingenuity hasn't gone lost over all those years. We planed to create a revolver and one other fire arm but only give them to certain people, don't publicize the blueprints and create other functions that will hinder others from copying our designs. For one there is an explosive rune written into the main part that will let the weapon explode if someone else uses the weapon since the weapon will only work with the users mana signature and the weapon will also explode if taken apart. The problem that we have now are the cleaning process and the metals that are being used. We planed to use mana created bullets or Vritra-metal bullets.

We have several other projects like swords for us three and armour similar to my Djinn armour but powered by mana. The armour should also hide our asuran bodies all the time.

Reengineering the Vritra communication artifacts is something that we let Gideon do. But we wanted something else for us. Something special. We wanted devices that allowed us to speak all the time with each other. Different than mind communication. Nico came up with the plan to integrate it into our armours but I refuted his proposition because we wont wear our armours all the time. So we opted to something like a headphone just smaller and only for one ear at the time since we would need to hear the battlefield.

At the evening we ate dinner with the royal family and got rather close to them. They told us about the progress with the creation of council and we told them that we were close to a breakthrough. After the dinner we trained even more, I honestly have no idea how we trained so much without falling down. Since I was an augmenter my training was obviously with the sword and Nico as a conjurer had more problems. He seems to use a sword as well but wasn't as proficient at it. After some brainstorming with gramps I got an idea. He could still use a sword for close quarters combat but in for any other sort of combat he could use a kusarigama. A Scythe that is connected to a chain and with his control over metal we could integrate some Vritra metal inside it to give him full control over it. He created one version only to try it out and his control was frightening. He had still some excess movements but with training he would become a heck of a close quarters combatant and we could just say that he can use metal manipulation and not conjuring if somebody is suspicious.

Time skip one year

Our progress during the last six months were not bad in some aspects. We created several artifacts. For one we created Nico's kusarigama my sword and a sword for Cecilia. The armour was nearly finished and needed only some fine tuning. The problem was the concealment. It needed to hide the presence of a powerful body and we didn't get it done until now. The other projects were similar on a stand still since the modern weapons were a secret between Nico and I we didn't get to work much on them. On the other side the war preparations and the defensive weapon blueprints were finished. I started even working during the night to create defensive strategies. The other secret project in which Tessia was involved was the creation of mana cores. We observed what happened when I helped her awaken bit by bit and took notes.

The two biggest changes were that Tessia and I got a lot closer and that Alea and Aya started acting like big sisters since we spared with them to learn deviants for me and learn to control the base elements better for Nico.

Time skip one year

Today during dinner Alduin surprised us all.

"I have something important to announce. The human royal family is coming to us for diplomatic negotiation."

"I see and I guess you want us to stay hidden during that time since we look human and see ourself as something similar?"

"Honestly it doesn't matter. I just said it since Sylvia said she wants to stay hidden. So I would recommend her staying hidden. But as I know the two of you especially you Arthur you want to test their guards." Since you two are already at the dark orange state and Tessia has awakened you could train while they are here and if the lances of Sapin come to meet you the four of you could train a bit. Or to be more precise you could test them and they could help you with your deviants."

"That sounds not so bad but doesn't it look suspicious if we are in the elven kingdom? I mean we tell everybody that we are humans."

"No not at all. It will even help us if we show them how we are already living with certain humans."

"That might work okay let's go with your plan then."

Before continuing the story I will write two side storis to show the relations between the characters. One is for the relations between Alea, Aya, Nico and Arthur. When they are training. The other one is for the relation between Tessia and Arthur. It will be written from several angels and describe a date and the meeting with Feyrith. Since I like him thinking of Arthur as his rival. Ah and Arthur and Nico are five years old. They will stay for one and a half year in Elenoir.