Ar'Kendrithyst

Platinum rain fell upon stone boxes full of sand and seeds, soaking in, turning orange dirt into browns and tans. Bright green shoots erupted from the low-quality soil, stretching into the dim light above. Storm clouds covered the sky, but sunlight still shone through to the city below, to the Gardens, and their workers.

People harvested everything they could, and replaced the plants as necessary. Some of them had been doing this sort of harvesting for months, now. Not every farmer left for the farms of the Greensoil Republic, after all. The ‘old hands’ who chose to stay guided those who had never done this before; those who wanted first pick and free food by the right of work.

Soon enough, rice and potatoes and thirty seven other types of partially processed or raw goods began to stream into the temporary markets erected near the Human District, outside the rain. Most of that food left those markets in large crates, packed full, destined for grocers and restaurants. Tomorrow, the temporary markets would open to the public.

There were quite a few logistical problems and angry words and minor fights happening all around the Gardens, simultaneously, but the goods were cheap, and plentiful, and the Guard was on duty, making sure that nothing too disruptive happened.

In the course of the first harvest, Erick made a few discoveries. The first, was that it was easy to hold his own [Exalted Storm Aura] into the shape it needed to be, in order to rain on the Garden, by itself. The second, much nicer discovery, was that he could set an Ophiel atop his house, inside the Restful air of the [Prismatic Ward], and have that Ophiel cast [Exalted Storm Aura] almost exactly as Erick had done himself.

Without Clarity, or Sculpt Spell, or Erick’s Favored Spell, or even Aurify’s radius bonus to all auras, Ophiel had a lot larger drain on his mana than Erick had on his. For Ophiel, the 1 Mana per second of [Exalted Storm Aura] was 5 Mana per second, taking into account all the necessary shapings to keep the spell in the proper formation. But at Rest, inside the dense air of the [Prismatic Ward], Ophiel regenerated 8 mana per second.

As Erick handed the spell over to Ophiel atop the roof of Erick’s mage tower, Ophiel trilled in happy violins and energized guitars. He sang at the storm above, a hundred eyes wide open across his full, three meter body, taking in all the sights around him, making sure he was casting the spell exactly as needed.

Rain on the Gardens, and nowhere else!

Erick left Ophiel to his assignment then went to speak to Calizi and Rollo about selling his own vegetables and the market prices of various foodstuffs, but the two older incani launched into an immediate argument over the price of potatoes. That was enough of that for Erick, so he went and worked in his own garden; it had gotten some unintentional platinum rain, and needed some pruning because of that.

Erick had never rained platinum across the whole Human District before today. Some problems rapidly appeared with the rain, in light of this experiment. Platinum rain slowly, but surely, collected into puddles around the not-flat-at-all Human District. Some of those puddles became minor lakes. Some of it ran into the sandy soil of Erick’s own green space, so he shored up the [Weather Ward]s around the garden and added small walls of stone at the edges, to keep the water out.

More than a few of the growing spaces out there in the Garden were experiencing the same problems. Ophiel was raining properly, but some plots were ill-designed, or near an unintentional platinum river. People scrambled to divert the rain to where it needed to go. More than a few people raced around, creating ditches, while organizers directed them from [Scry] eyes in the sky. The only council member who seemed to have made his plots well was Kip, the man with all the rice fields. His workers had already drawn ditches into the Human District to collect the rain. Those ditches were quickly connected to the new ditches, solving most of the district’s water problems with one elegant solution.

But even with all the small problems Erick saw, no one asked him to hold off on the rain, so he got down to his own business.

With a thousand telekinetic hands made of air and intent, Erick harvested potatoes, picked tomatoes, plucked carrots, unearthed onions, and grabbed everything else that looked even the slightest bit overgrown.

Eventually, hours later, a blushing young orangescale girl interrupted him from the side of his garden, while he was still deep in the herbs and listening to Ophiel sing. It was past noon; he could stop now. Erick nodded to the girl and had Ophiel stop. The winged [Familiar] squawked at being interrupted, but he cut the rain anyway, then gladly trilled in violins as Erick offered up his shoulder as a perch. As Ophiel turned tiny and took his spot, Erick offered the girl some vegetables from his garden, but she silently shook her head and took off running, back to the edge of town.

Poi stood to the side this whole time, under his own [Weather Ward], silent, and observant.

Erick stepped out of the herbs, to stand by his fresh harvest. He asked, “Grilled veggies for dinner?”

“As you wish.” Poi said, “I’d prefer fish, but the lake is not yet carved and it won’t be stable enough to harvest for months, anyway. I think I will miss that part of Oceanside, most of all.”

Erick smiled. “That reminds me. It’s time to start trying to recreate [Teleport].”

As the clouds above wisped away on the northern winds, Poi frowned.

Erick noticed. “It’s not going to be that bad.”

“There will be explosions.” Poi added, “There’s always explosions.”

Erick laughed, as he telekinetically picked up his produce, and said, “Not always!”

- - - -

In one of the larger rooms on the third floor, where no one lived and nothing was stored and the occasional lesson was taught via conjured blackboards, Erick played around with [Lightwalk].