The Way Ahead

Edwin didn’t see much of Inion over the weeks he spent in Panastalis. She would drop in every so often to see how he was, but she was usually doing… something off in the Verdant. Whenever Edwin prodded her about it, she refused to elaborate, which was… well, it was slightly annoying. He wanted to know what was up with his best friend by default, but she was entitled to her privacy just as much as he was.

“Ahem.”

“Whaaaat? I wanna know the details!”

“Privacy, Inion. I was just talking about that.”

“Gah, privacy schmivacy. Tell me all about this! I can’t believe you’ve been skipping out on all the fun stuff!”

“There’s no details to tell! We don’t even like each other! Besides, I am distinctly not interested in avior.”

“Oh, so if she wasn’t an avior, then you’d be interested?”

“No! That’s not what…” Edwin buried his head in his hands, “There’s no winning with you, is there?”

“Nope!”

“It wasn’t anything even noteworthy! It had just been a really long day and she offered to fly me down as a way to stretch her wings is all. That’s it!”

“Oh, you were in her grasp? Trusting her with your life? How special.” Inion waggled her eyebrows at him, which Edwin responded to with a flat stare.

“If you count ‘immensely uncomfortable and an experience I never want to repeat ever again’ as ‘special,’ I guess. Avior talons are pokey. My arms will be sore for the rest of the night, I know already. Heck, I’d rather reveal my ‘potion of flight’ than get another ride up to or down from the workshop.”

Inion patted his head, earning a halfhearted glare and swat from Edwin in response.

“Honestly!” he complained, “Who even started the trend of building workshops in the tree’s branches anyway? You can’t even see them from the ground, and they could probably set fire to the whole thing if they aren’t careful. I mean, I get why so many buildings are built into it, the sap is super useful or whatever, but come on. There’s like five staircases that lead to the top, and if you can’t fly it’s such a pain. Why, just why would they do that to us?”

He fell back onto his bed and buried his face in Inion’s arm, “Just… is basic convenience or an automated elevator too much to ask for?”

“So if you don’t like avior, well, didn’t you say there was a human girl in your group? Rhita, wasn’t? What’s she like?”

Edwin raised his head to glare at the fey, “You are the absolute worst.”

Well, Edwin noted, at least Inion has a nice laugh.

Joriah, or at least Panastalis, didn’t really seem to have the concept of a dedicated ‘weekend.’ Oh sure, they had days of rest- even endurance-type Skills could only get you so far, and were far from universal anyway- but there was no coordinated ‘five days working, then the same two days everyone gets off.’ Instead, it was much more variable depending on the class (and thus occupation) of the individual in question. For alchemists, the typical cycle was two days off every twelve, but when those days were taken wasn’t defined, being not quite random, but it usually didn’t line up between his fellow teammates. Thoril took his in four-day blocks, using up nearly a month of weekends all at once. Wendell took his two together, in the middle of the cycle. Everyone else, Edwin included, took one day off after five days of work, though not all at the same time.

Granted, he didn’t really need to take time off for general exhaustion. His time spent training with Inion, and college before then, didn’t really give days off, and he was… okay, perhaps not exactly adapted to it, but at least accustomed to it. His Sleeping skill helped a lot, but while it fought off exhaustion, and even mental fatigue to a certain level, it didn’t help with being under constant pressure to perform.

Now, taking one day off of work every once in a while didn’t really fix that either, but it was still nice to occasionally crash in his room and do nothing too productive. Heck, thanks to Survival, he didn’t even need to eat those days… not that he had much of a consistent food schedule anyway. In his defence, most people tended to eat once a day at most anyway, with Eating more than sufficient to keep them satisfied.

Mainly, though, it was just the break from being around people. His social fatigue was slowly setting in despite his best efforts, but taking breaks every so often certainly helped delay it. Mostly, though, a share of peace and quiet- along with a good book- was just what he needed.

Which was why he was so annoyed to be pulled out of his reading- a volume on the history of the Empire, as he was still waiting for access to more alchemy-oriented texts- by a pounding on his door.

“Who is it?” he called out, grumpily sitting up and setting his book off to the side.

“The kiln went out!” a voice called out in response. It wasn’t Cope, Rhita, or Fissath, that was sure, but he couldn’t recognize it beyond that without…

Identify.

Alchemeister-Scrivener

Wendell (PanastalisWendell)

He’s the really annoying guy who’s Cope’s personal assistant. Back in Panastalis. Was an Alchemeister-Scrivener last time. Easily frustrated. Really nosy. Mostly toothless, though. Safe to ignore.

“Go away, Wendell! It’s my day off, and why can’t Fissath help you?”

“She’s gone too! Get out here, you slacker, or there’ll be consequences, just you wait!”

“Wendell,” Edwin yelled back, “I do not care one iota what troubles you have when I’m not there. It’s my day off, I thought Fissath was in the lab, figure out the kiln on your own! It’s not that hard, and not my problem anyway.”

“You- you what? Get out here, you errant, or you’ll regret it!”

Oh hey, pun. Probably wasn’t his goal, though. Polyglot had resulted in a few awkward instances where he’d thought someone was making a joke, only to find out it was the result of an amusing translation instead of intentional wit.

“Do paperwork or something! I don’t care if you can’t figure out how to burn arycal! You should have more than just me and Fissath trained on how to run it anyway!”

The banging resumed and intensified, “Get out here this instant, you ungrateful adventurer!”

Edwin started at the insult, then recovered from his surprise. Wendell didn’t have even the slightest clue as to Edwin’s status insofar as he knew, he was just trying to insult Edwin generically. He’d used it on others before, anyway, so he presumed that was what was going on.

He sighed and floated to his feet, approaching the door and dismissing the Apparatus blocks he used to keep other people out. Mid-knock, he unlatched and swung the door open. Wendell stumbled slightly as his knock felt no resistance, and he assessed Edwin.

“What kind of an alchemist’s outfit is that?” he scoffed.

“One who has a day off.” Edwin wryly replied. He was wearing his most comfortable and clean tunic over his cleanest pants- there was no noticeable difference in comfort there- and was barefoot on the wooden floor, “And who is very annoyed at suddenly not having one. Let me get this straight, if you make me step past this door, I am going up to the lab and getting the kiln started. Then,” he forestalled Wendell with a hand. The man ignored it, naturally, but Edwin just talked over him, “Then, I will be returning here, finishing my book, and not coming in to the lab tomorrow, because today was not my day off, and you get to explain to Cope why.”

“Hm. I knew you would see reason eventually. I hope you aren’t planning on wearing that to the lab, though.”

Edwin glared at the man hard enough he half expected to get a ‘death stare’ Skill offered- he didn’t, he checked- before finally spitting out, “I see. Well, I’ll be up once I get into appropriate attire, then.”

“Good! You can’t keep showing up as such a slob, we have an-“

Edwin slammed the door in the man’s face.

“Seriously?” Edwin complained, “You really, actually just needed me to light the kiln?”

“That is what I told you, yes. Why, were you expecting more?”

“Honestly? Kind of, yeah. Once I gave it more than a couple seconds of thought, I expected that I was in for some kind of surprise, be it Othniel’s sabotage of the week, a kidnapping attempt, or just some kind of prank.”

“Please. As though we would be so juvenile.”

Edwin responded with a level glare, “Rhita and Keir are right over there.”

“…You have a point.”

“Course I do. Remember, you’re responsible for explaining to Cope why I’m not in tomorrow.”

“Please. As though-”

“Wendell?”

“What?”

“You’re not an avior.”

“And that is relevant for what reason?”

“We are very high up in this tree. The edge of the branch is right over there. You know I can lift you with a single hand. And I want to get back to my book, which you pulled me away from. Think very carefully before you finish that sentence.”

“I’ll tell the boss if he asks.”

“Great! Was that really so hard? Don’t answer that.”

Most of Edwin’s experiments with glass had been met with ‘failure,’ to no real surprise. He only had three real areas to experiment with: biological material other than bone, minerals and miscellaneous rocks, and metals.

Biological stuff almost invariably burned up in the intense heat of the kiln, leaving nothing but soot and ash. In some cases, that resulted in slight coloration changes, but usually just meant he had to deal with a brownish-black block of dirty glass he would need to Purify before reusing the silica.

They didn’t have very many distinct metals, to Edwin’s partial surprise. Oh sure, they had loads of different kinds of metals, but they were usually alloys of various kinds. He didn’t really need to test five different types of bronze to officially determine it wasn’t the right path to be taking with his porcelain research, after all.

Alchemists’ analysis helped somewhat there, for sure. He could use it to make sure he wasn’t doubling up too much, but at the same time it wasn’t reliable enough to tell if he was dealing with similar but distinct mixtures of metal.

Generally, using metals just produced different colors of glass. Pretty, but not particularly earth-shattering given Fissath’s Skills which allowed her to do pretty much exactly that already, but with way more precision and variety. Magnesium was an interesting additive, when he was able to sprinkle in a tiny amount of the stuff, as with each heating it underwent, the color it turned the glass changed.

The one which garnered the most attention, though, was when he added lead. The resulting glass was a heavy, brilliant crystal with a high refractive index. Cope had been thrilled by the finding, and claimed it reminded him of true diamonds when he swooped in to grab it. Edwin tried to give a bit of a warning not to use the leaded glass in anything pertaining to food or with regular contact from people, but Cope seemed disinclined to listen or care, as typical.

The minerals were occasionally interesting, despite, like the metals, frequently being ‘glass coloring x’ and little more, but given it included a couple of actually, genuinely magical materials for his experiments, it wasn’t completely boring.

Edwin had found that even when he Infused his added materials- always done subtly, under the guise of him adding a special material of his own devising, which was close enough to the truth- the results were rarely too fascinating, basic mana-infused glass and its invisibility to mana notwithstanding.

Something Edwin did find interesting in his experiments, though, was that pure metals took an absolutely staggering amount of mana to fully Infuse. Using Numeracy, he found that it was at least a dozen and sometimes as much as a hundred times as much as something with comparable mass which wasn’t pure metal. Even substances that Edwin knew had metal atoms in their molecular composition didn’t take as much as a comparable amount of metal separate from their bonds. It must have been something to do with the metallic bonds, perhaps? It was the first clue he’d gotten as to how his Infusion worked on a physical level, and he was thrilled, if still stuck. It clearly had to have something to do with electrons, but the how or why eluded him.

While his attempts to make magical ingredients may not have turned out the most interesting, and indeed, most of the naturally magical substances he tested weren’t that special either, there were a couple that had shocked him when he first made them. In one case, even literally.