Once they had reached Bo and Ned, quickly explaining they had succeeded as far as they knew, they started driving back to the palace.

There was no easy way of determining how much they had really accomplished. For all Rory knew, the Revenants might have other exits they’d use to get out of their dungeon to invade the surface. They might be able to get past the sealing concrete and the Frozen Lightning traps. Rory had no real measure of the extent of their powers. Not after seeing that gargantuan monster.

That was what really worried him. What had that creature been doing there? Why hadn’t it started coming out yet? Maybe he ought to have been thankful for the fact that it wasn’t stomping around Hillhard, but its silence still disquieted him.

But then, he was suffering under the assumption that it wanted to come out and wreak havoc. Rory thought it was related to the Revenants they had fought, but what if it wasn’t? That seemed unlikely, almost to the point of wishful thinking, but he decided not to worry about something he couldn’t affect. He’d just have to take the necessary precautions.

They received a tremendously warm welcome when they reached the palace. Along the drive, Rory had called the palace again and told them all the whole story. The relief and happiness pouring out through the call made him smile like nothing else.

“You did it,” Evelyn said. Rory didn’t think he’d seen her smile like that since the day they had learned about the death of her family. She looked around them all, beaming brightly. “I knew we could count on you.”

“Of course, we could.” Dez clapped Ned and Bo on their backs. “We always can.”

Rory understood why everyone was extra happy. This was their new home, and after the devastation the Thunderclaw Knight had wrought, they were warier than ever of losing it. That wasn’t something any of them wanted to contemplate.

“It’s not over,” Rory cautioned them. He had explained about what they’d seen in the sewer dungeon, everything from the Revenants’ intention to attack, to the Imp supplying their efforts, to that gargantuan monster’s head rising out of the watery depths. “We’ll still need to stay as careful as we can.” He smiled though. “But yes, I’m proud of everyone.”

“Yeah,” Ned said. “And now we need a good bath. Everything stinks.”

Several of them laughed, though Rory did grimace along with his smile. Ned wasn’t wrong. The flood might not be burgeoning anymore, but there was still a lot of water all over the palace grounds, and the areas that had been cleared of the water were covered in muck and dirt. They had a lot of work ahead of them.

“Clear up some area so we can have some food.” Rory looked up, noticing that the sun was past its zenith. “Once we’ve rested up and refreshed ourselves, then we’re going to get to working to get our palace back to its tip top shape.”

They got busy. Much of the main hall had been cleaned up, so getting a place to eat wasn’t difficult. It was just harder to bring things in from their stores because of the water or its leavings. At least they had new, more delicious fare from their latest grocery trip. Rory enjoyed the new food a lot.

But once eating was done, they had to focus on cleaning. Rory soon realized there was no easy way to clean the much and filth from everywhere. What few cleaning equipment they had wasn’t up to par on cleaning muck from the ground.

“What appliances do we have?” Rory asked. “Anything that can help with cleaning?”

He, Viv, Evelyn, April, and Dez had gathered in a small group to discuss how best they could speed up the process of cleaning the palace.

“We don’t have a lot of stuff,” Dez said. “With the electricity out, I didn’t think to grab a lot of appliances. But we have them now, so it would make sense to get some.”

“What we need is lots of brooms, mops, dustpans, buckets, cleaning fluids, and lots of paper towels,” April said.

Viv nodded. “And a place to throw them all to.”

“Or,” Rory said. “A Sigil that can do all that for us.”

April looked at him sharply. “What are you thinking? A Sigil of Cleaning?”

“That could be a fun one if I can actually Weave it into existence.”

“That sounds… too broad,” Viv said. “Vague. To me, Sigils have always felt like they embodied a specific action, rather than the result of several smaller actions.”

“Cleaning is a concept. I should be able to get one. It’s just a matter of finding the right… or, hmm. Do we have a vacuum cleaner?”

They all stared at him, perhaps a little surprised at his change in direction.

“I’m not sure,” Dez said. “Let me go look.”

“If we don’t, we need to figure out how we can get one,” Rory said.

Dez raised a hand acknowledging that he had heard Rory. It didn’t take long for him to reappear. Rory was wondering what he would do if there was no vacuum when Dez proved the thought unnecessary. He had returned with an honest-to-goodness vacuum cleaner that looked like it hadn’t been used for a few centuries.

“Where in the world did you find that thing?” Rory asked.

“Must have got it during one of the salvaging trips,” Dez said with a grin.

“Will it work for what you need?” Viv asked.

Rory approached the vacuum cleaner after Dez set it down. “Let’s find out.”

The model was old and dusty, and Rory was pretty sure even plugging it back into an electric outlet was going to help. But he didn’t need it to run. All he needed was its concept. He used his Weaving on the vacuum cleaner, focusing on the idea of creating a vacuum to draw in objects. White lines burst from his hand and landed on the old cleaner, dissolving it into a Sigil.

Rory grinned. The light red crystal coin showed the image of a vacuum cleaner’s flat head, grey lines indicating the suction into its duct.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Vacuum. Little pockets of nothingness sound like just the thing you need some days. Nothing is more peaceful than a vacuum.

[Cerulean VIII] allows a 0.18-meter vacuum with a pulling radius of 9 meters.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VIII [0%]

Efficiency: High [53%]

“There,” he said, showing them the new Sigil. “Now our cleaning should be a lot easier.”

April, Viv, and Dez looked at the new Sigil with great appreciation. The problem with the new Sigil was that its combat abilities would be harder to figure out. While the range of the vacuum wasn’t bad, its size meant that its pulling force might not be that great.

“Who wants to take it in?” Rory asked, going on to explain his misgivings. “Though now that I think about it, no one really needs to take it in if we can Ward it into something.”

Viv smiled at him, a little mockingly. “So… you’re just going to make your own vacuum cleaner?”

“A much-improved vacuum cleaner, yes!”

Dez shoved the actual vacuum cleaner he had brought over at Rory. “Why not just use that?”

“Well, it’s kind of bulky and not easy to use. I never actually liked how you have to mess around with long tubes and wires. So unwieldy and inconvenient. Let’s see if we can find something better wherever you put all the salvaged junk.”

Rory allowed Dez to lead him to their backup storage area. This was away from the tower, which was the main Storage according to the Zonal Configuration Rory had been able to do a while ago. The problem was that there weren’t a lot of junk at all. Dez had been very circumspect about what he had brought over.

“Maybe we don’t need to find something else,” Viv said. She was staring at the lack of things to Ward the new Sigil into with disappointment. “We can just have Trish make us something with her Sigil of Permanence.”

Rory clapped a closed fist into the palm of his other hand. “Oh, that’s an amazing idea.”

They changed tack, heading over to where Trish was mopping the water out of the east wing of the palace. Malcolm, Allen, and some of the former Neophytes were busy helping her. There was a tension in the air, what with Malcolm and Arie’s group occupying the same area, but Rory approved of their attempt at working together in harmony.

“What’s up?” Tris asked. “You look like I’m your saviour or something.”

Rory found himself grinning along as the others laughed. “You might very well be, in a way.”

He quickly explained his idea about using the Sigil of Vacuum to speed up their cleaning. Trish looked on with avid interest, especially as she learned about her role.

She nodded when Rory was done. “What do you want me to make?”

“I’m not sure.” Rory tried to think about it. “Something that’s easily usable by everyone, not just you and your Warrior-enhanced strength.”

“Makes sense. Hmmm…”

“Why don’t we figure out how exactly the Sigil would work?” Viv suggested. “I’m thinking we can make it like a pipe, have the vacuum be inside it so that everything we want to remove is drawn into one end and exits the other. This other end can hold a bag or something.”

“So, essentially, a vacuum cleaner,” April said with a grin.

Viv scowled at her, but Rory flashed her a friendly grin.

“Not a bad idea,” Rory said. “If it doesn’t work that way, I can always use my Weaving to get the Sigil out and try something new.”

They decided to attempt Viv’s idea. Trish made a short steel pipe which Rory Warded the Sigil of Vacuum into, while Dez brought back a trash bag and securely attached it to one end of the pipe. Then he squeezed it to empty out all the air inside. Good idea.

“Here goes nothing,” April said. She was the only one among them besides Rory who had a Sigil of Wielding.

She held out the pipe with the bag crinkling and dangling awkwardly, using her Wielding to activate the Warded Sigil. Its image glowed on the pipe’s outer surface, shining brightly. Nothing seemed to happen for a while except for the bag crinkling some more. But then April waved it around and the surrounding muck started to move. When she was a couple of feet away, dust started floating off the ground and into the pipe.

“Are you controlling where the vacuum is forming?” Rory asked.

April looked unsure. “I… think so? At least, I thought about the vacuum forming farther inside the pipe near the end.”

Good idea. That meant once they turned off the vacuum, the gathered dust and dirt would fall back into the bag.

But unfortunately, it looked like the vacuum’s pulling power was still weak. Rory wasn’t sure why. It was at Cerulean VIII. That was a pretty high Tier, as he thought of it.

“Look at that.” April pointed to the pipe’s exterior. “There’s a lot of dirt there.”

She was right. They’d been so focused on checking if the target of their vacuuming was coming through the end of the pipe or not that they hadn’t checked the rest of the pipe. Now that Rory looked, it seemed that all the dirt that he had expected to gather inside had grouped up outside instead.

“Rory, what did the Sigil’s description say?” Viv asked.

Rory told her what he remembered. As he did so, the reason behind the strange occurrence became apparent to him. “It’s the radius.”

The glimmer in Viv’s eyes showed that she agreed about the assessment. “I think so too. We might need a pipe that has a bigger diameter.”

“But that might make it too thick.” Trish brought her hands close together without touching as though she was measuring an invisible pipe. “0.18 meters… that’s about 20 centimetres. Pretty thick, yeah.”

“Another option is changing the vacuum’s shape,” Rory said. “We’d need a Sigil to do that, of course. Not sure how we’d get something like that, however…”

He tried to think what applied here. To change something’s shape, they’d need a Sigil that could control shapes. A Sigil of Change, or to be more exact, Shape Transformation, if such a thing was obtainable somehow. But the question, as ever, was how.

“We need something that can change shape,” Viv said when Rory confided what he thought they required. “Or something that can make other things change shape.”

“Playdough,” April said.

They all looked at her.

“What?” Rory asked.

“Leo and Leanne used to love it when they were kids. I just remembered. But now I also remember we can use it for this purpose too. You can make basically any shape you want with them, which is the same thing we need here.”

Rory grunted. “So, we just need to find some playdough somewhere.”

“Well, dough in general,” Viv said. “That might be easier to get. I think we have some flour in latest batch of groceries we got.”

“We do,” Dez said, excitement flooding his voice. “I remember packing some. I’ll go get it.”

“We’re going to need more than just flour,” Viv said. “I’ll go with you.”

April followed them. “I’ll come too.”

Rory, and Trish, and the others didn’t have to wait for long until the dough was ready. Viv carried in a big bowl of it, her hands caked white with flour.

“Here you go,” she said, setting it down before Rory. “Try to use your Weaving on it.”

“Hmm, it might help if one of you moved it around,” he said.

Viv did so, stirring the dough around with her hand. Rory used his Weaving on it, focusing on the white malleable mixture, thinking specifically of its ability to take any shapes they wanted it. Soon enough, much of the dough had disappeared to grant Rory a white Sigil with the image of shapeless blob.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Shaping. For all your neat and tidy organizers out there, you can now fit everything together by changing their shape.

[Cerulean VIII] allows a reshaping of up to 1.8-meter radius objects.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VIII [0%]

Efficiency: High [61%]

Excited, Rory used his Weaving on the Trish’s pipe. He obtained the Sigil of Vacuum, then continued to use his Weaving to combine the two Sigils in his hand.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Vacuum Control. Turn your vacuum into any shape you want. Simple control isn’t enough for you. Now you can make your vacuum subject conform to your sense of being as well.

[Cerulean VIII] allows a 0.18-meter vacuum in any shape with a pulling radius of 9 meters.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VIII [0%]

Efficiency: High [58%]

Interesting to note that the Sigil’s efficiency had risen a fraction. Rory had Trish create another pipe, then quickly Warded the new Sigil into the pipe.

“Check it if it works,” Rory said.

Trish used the pipe again. This time, it worked. There was actual dirt coming through the pipe, forming a thick stream that picked up all the surrounding dirt.

“We can still improve it, I think,” Rory said. “But it’s working.”

Trish grinned at them. “It sure is.”

Rory breathed out a little sigh of relief. They had a better way of taking care of the muck now. He couldn’t wait to see the palace cleaned up.