Solo Fire and Fleet and Forgelight

[Alses]

Timestamp: 40th Day of Spring, 513 A.V.

Lhavit was cloaked in gray, a fulminating mist of drizzling rain that obscured the soaring buildings and filled the streets with a diffuse shine from the gently-glowing skyglass, reflecting in a billion suspended droplets.

The temperature wasn't actually cold as per se, indeed, it was quite mild for a mountain spring, but the ever-present breezes and the sogginess which perfused even the most determinedly-shielded citizen about their business made Lhavit's wide streets and meandering boulevards, its restful courtyards and sudden, dramatic amphitheatres unpleasant, to say the least.

The first leaves were out, fluttering pale and uncertain in the winds, and as they danced they concentrated the dancing raindrops onto the heads of anyone fool enough to be out, a deeper thunder to the continual hissing splash of rain against skyglass. 'Anyone fool enough to be out' mostly constituted the ever-vigilant Shinya guard – bundled into their skyglass plate for extra warmth and a bit more protection against the invidious water – staring implacably out into the rain-wreathed city with the stolid expressions of people who could see into infinity.

It was something about the training, she'd decided, that made them capable of that. Alses had tried to cultivate the same thousand-mile stare, the ability to be in one place and looking at nothing in particular for bell upon empty bell, but had found it impossible to achieve, constantly chasing butterfly thoughts around the vaults of her brain which motivated her to move, to act, to do something rather than nothing.

There was the occasional citizen, admittedly, out on essential business, wrapped in layer upon layer of mantling cloth and wool, all of it cocooned in the thick robe so characteristic of Kalea, a heavily-padded, quilted thing of many fabrics and with lacing drawstrings to tie it tight about the body, coupled with a heavy hood that could be pulled tight to conserve every last shred of warmth.

Alses didn't have one, and so it was a waif-like and soaking Ethaefal who dragged herself up the shallow flights of steps – leaving a trail of water – of the Dusk Tower, clothes plastered to her figure and hair hanging down in wet rat-tails between the curves and arcs of her crown-of-horns.

Mr. Secretary, bless his bureaucratic heart-of-gold, had taken note of the weather, and out of concern for his courier staff, the fire was roaring, leaping flames bright and warmly welcoming, making the circle of firelight positively tropical, whilst a slightly-open window kept his working area at a more bearable temperature.

“Good morning,” Alses murmured, turning slowly as she dried out.

Mr. Secretary pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed at his eyes, tiredness evident in every movement.

“Late night?” Alses asked, without turning – that was one of the benefits of her auristics and of regular social interaction too; she was finding it easier and easier to observe all the niceties that greased the wheels of conversation without having to think so hard about it all. When she first began here, she'd never have dreamed of asking how someone else was feeling, or of really showing concern, an Ethaefal with her head and heart both in the clouds, yearning with every fibre of her being for the Goldenlands once more.

“Just a little,” came the weary reply. “His Excellency wasn't happy with something in the eightday report, and it took-” he stifled a yawn expertly “-rather a long time to sort it out to satisfaction.”

“Something?”

“Ah ah, you know I can't tell you that, Alses,” he replied with a smile. There was no heat there, nor was there any in her acceptance of the fact; there were lines that shouldn't be crossed, and it was best to respect them when possible.

It saved friction all around, and making unwelcome waves in her teachers' home wasn't on her list of 'ways to make a splash in Lhavit', to say the least.

“Do you have anything for me to deliver, then, Mr. Secretary?” Alses asked calmly, mostly dry now. She wasn't looking forward to venturing out into the clinging dampness, of course, but work had to be done to earn her daily bread.

Well. Apart from the fact that she didn't eat. Kina still slipped through her fingers, though, on treats and other experiences, on tea and a few little luxuries each season.

When he didn't immediately respond, Alses turned for the first time, quizzical, to where he was leaned back comfortably in his clerkly chair, monocle glinting smugly in its orbit as he watched her.

“Do I have something on my face?” she asked tentatively when he didn't speak for several chimes; his response surprised her.

“Why are you still a courier, Alses?” he asked, voice almost paternal in its tones as he fiddled with a few papers on his desk, arranging them into a slightly more pleasing form even as his eyes remained more-or-less locked on hers.

“What do you mean, Mr. Secretary? We need to live whilst we're an apprentice here, after all, and helping the Tower is preferable to many of the alternatives.” Alses thought back, with a slight shudder, to the offers Madame Belladonna had made in the past. All right for some, she was sure, but decidedly not her cup of tea. Perhaps it was pride, or vanity; the Chosen of a god, even a fallen Chosen, shouldn't have to open her legs to anyone to survive.

Mr. Secretary raised a razor-thin eyebrow. “You're the fastest-rising Apprentice in the Tower right now – if apprentice is even the right word any more. I'm no aurist myself, of course, but I hear many things: you, my girl, have the attention of some very powerful people. You breezed, breezed through lessons and challenges that should have taken you years to master in mere seasons, and you've stayed remarkably sane and grounded through it all. Why do you think you were given a solo tutor so early? Why do you think Lady Chiona took you under her wing? The Patriarch knows your name – and not just because of the artifact you made; the Dusks recognize talent when it rears its unpredictable head. Have you considered asking for a more fitting job?”

Alses blinked, stupefied, for several long moments at him. Perhaps misinterpreting her shocked silence, Mr. Secretary hurriedly added: “Not that you're not an excellent courier for me, of course, and I'd be sorry to see you go, but it's just something to think about. A powerful aurist shouldn't really be running messages.”

Recovering somewhat, Alses waved a hand in dismissal. “We were just shocked, Mr. Secretary. It never occurred to us we'd be good for anything else.” He spluttered at that, even as she continued: “Besides which, couriering is so very flexible. The pay isn't much, we grant you, but we have few responsibilities and – to an extent, anyway – we can keep our own bells.”

To take the edge off her words, she smiled. “Still, it is something I shall think about – and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for bringing it up. Now,” she said, clapping her hands briskly. “Messages, missives, instructions, orders, boxes?”

[Alses]

There were messages. Really, this was no surprise – there were always messages; the Dusk Tower generated a truly prodigious amount of correspondence. Some of it was personal, letters from Family to friends in the city, but the vast majority of it took on a rather more official tone; instructions to various executors of Dusk Tower interests in the city, requests for this commodity or that to the many traders in the Azure Market, occasional missives to ship-captains down at Port Tranquil, for exotics that couldn't easily be sourced, most likely, letters to tenants – it had surprised Alses to learn the Tower still held (or perhaps had reacquired) substantial property in Lhavit, although in retrospect it really shouldn't have. Family fortunes only stretched so far, after all, and there had to be some way of keeping the coffers topped off.

Alses' particular slice of the burden was generally in the form of the ornate message-boxes preferred for serious and weighty communication between powerful people, however; the Towers, the Temples, the city government and so forth – there was evidently some social cachet to having an Ethaefal deliver a message, although no-one would be so rude or indiscreet as to come out and admit it.

Mr. Secretary – bless his heart – did realise the drag of carting endless shiny, pointy, heavy boxes everywhere (since by Lhavitian custom and tradition they generally came with a little gift to the recipient, a sign of recognition and courtesy both) and so in spite of orders from on high he generally tried to include at least one or two of the lighter messages in every batch of boxes, partly to relieve the tedium of visiting the same places again and again but also to give her aching back a bit of a rest. Envelopes weighed so much less than inlaid cherrywood, so it was a relief to get rid of them all and then positively skip to an envelope's destination, delighting in the unaccustomed freedom from a heavy backpack.

Her feet splashed through forming puddles as the skyglass walls of the city beaded with condensation from the drizzle and all-pervading mist, heading for the warren of dripping passages that were the Azure Market, any resident's destination of choice for the many necessities of life. The Surya Plaza and its surrounds were perhaps the more obvious market, but they catered to visitors and transients and the occasional newcomer who didn't know any better.

As Alses ducked under the half-concealed archway and into the labyrinth of passages that made up the Market proper, the atmosphere became a little more bearable; the overhead banners and canopies, strung between great chains, concentrated and caught the tumbling mists and shielded the narrow passages below, concentrating the rain on their fabric. Of course, this meant that rather more substantial waterfalls then poured onto the streets, but with care a cautious person could avoid most of the spray.

Then, too, it was warmer there – this was still fairly early spring, after all, and the creeping mist chilled even the most well-wrapped of people to the bone. In the Market, though, the philterers whose gleaming glass-stocked stalls lined several of the squares had been hard at work and their braziers burned cheerfully in spite of the cold and damp, each one surrounded by a flaring, spitting halo.

Alses moved softly from one oasis of heat and light to another, a zig-zagging diagonal path that wove around streams of water pouring down from on high, skirted stalls and knots of those braving the foul weather and blessed all of Lhavit for its courtesy and consideration as the citizens uncomplainingly moved out of her way, even if that meant they were pressed up against dripping walls or the stalls themselves.

Sometimes Alses felt just a little guilty about that – but then again, she'd never asked them to make way; it just sort of happened, the numinous spirit of Lhavit seeming to have decided, a long time ago, to give way to the Ethaefal.

Some traders called out to her as she passed in a swirl of rain-sodden red, a mixing charivari of greetings and blandishments to stop and look at their goods. The metal of the Dusk Tower crest was heavy at her throat, however – she had deliveries to make.


A


The first stop was the Starry Chalice, and the lily scent the shop used to cover up the unpleasant reek of many philtering reactions put a smile on Alses' face as it rolled down the street, guiding her unerringly to its bottle-stacked frontage.

Tian J'net was reclining magisterially in her usual armchair – perfectly positioned to see both the shop and the expansive philtering laboratory behind it, but upon seeing the shining Ethaefal at her door, she rose with a wide smile, making her way with the consummate ease of long practice and absolute familiarity with her surrounds to stand by the long counter in the approximate centre of the shop, groaning under the weight of thousands of glass bottles.

“Foul morning, Alses!” Tian boomed, and she had to fight to keep from clapping her hands over her ears. When she was cheerful, her voice could do sterling duty as a foghorn and would probably need quite a thickness of cork to muffle. Perhaps it was for the best that she wasn't involved in anything secretive or underhanded, beyond the usual allowances of business.

“Absolutely awful,” Alses agreed readily, shaking herself slightly in the warmth of the shop. Tian sailed majestically around the island of wood with one hand imperiously extended for her message; her sharp, dark eyes had caught sight of the Dusk Tower crest pinned prominently at her neck, a sign to all and sundry that here was a courier about their official business. “What have you got for me, Alses, hmm? Another order from the Dusk Tower, a congratulations, a request from the Respite you're slipping into your official business? Or is this a social call on your own behalf?”

With a wry smile, Alses patted her backpack, resulting in the dull thunk of wood from message-boxes stacked high behind canvas. “I fear we're far too busy for a social call, alas. Not that we don't enjoy your company, but we still need to support ourself. It's an order from the Tower.” She proffered the message-box with a sigh of relief – one fewer to weigh her back down – and watched with interest as Tian flipped it open without ceremony.

There was a flash of gold and a mild grunt of appreciation as she removed the gift – Alses wasn't at quite the right angle to see it properly, and in any case it was locked in a cage of flesh a split-second after Tian lifted it from its resting place in the box, then secreted and squirreled away in her voluminous apron in very short order.

Her dark, intelligent eyes scanned quickly over the missive, flicking up several times to rest on Alses as she gazed about, a child in a sweetshop.

[Alses]

“Zintila above, this is going to be fun,” Tian grumbled as she read; Alses' head snapped around and she asked:

“Is there something wrong, Tian?”

The philterer flapped one banana hand. “Not as such. 'Tis just inconvenient, that's all. Your precious Tower's asking for oil of vitriol by the carboy – and Zintila above do they want a lot of those - and at just the wrong time to boot. I've had an enormous batch of orders in for – oh, all sorts of things – tincture of midnight, oil of glory, aquafortis, quicksilver solution – and all my apprentices and I are going to be working nonstop to keep up.” She hit the paper with a resounding smack of annoyance – more at herself than the message itself, Alses guessed – and continued: “And now this!”

This felt like the right time to ask a question. “What is oil of vitriol?” Alses asked, curious. Evidently a philtred compound, but what was it for, and why could the Tower need – or rather, want – so much of it?

Tian blinked stupidly at her for a moment and then laughed shortly. “Been far too long since we had a lesson together, you and I. Oil of vitriol's a powerful caustic agent, one of the most useful compounds a philterer can make. Not so much for what it is – although oil of vitriol's useful on its own – but for what it can be turned into; you can make all sorts of other chemicals with it, some dyes need it, for example, and it makes an excellent enrichment philtre when properly processed.”

She pursed her ample lips in thought. “Given they're asking for oil of vitriol on its own, and considering how much they're wanting, my guess is it's for cleaning purposes. Eats up all the rubbish that builds up in privy pipes, rainwater drains and the like, rots it down into nothing so's it can all be washed away nice and easily.”

Alses pulled a face; Tian grinned in mischievous response, waving the Dusk Tower missive theatrically in the air. “Now, don't you go pulling faces. This stuff makes up a good portion of my livelihood. It isn't all magic potions and things to make you perform better in bed, you know.”

Once again, the Ethaefal was subjected to the laser-like regard of Tian J'net, head tilted to one side as she thought about – well, something.

“Think it's time you learned a bit more about the philterer's discipline, if you're going to be at the Respite for the long haul,” she said eventually. “V tells me you plan to stay there for some time?”

The question mark was hung with such delicacy even as Tian's voice tailed off. Alses, however, was more concerned with who 'V' was than the actual subject of the question.

“V? Who's V?”

Tian laughed, loud and long enough to make some of her apprentices – who surely were used to the noise by now; in Alses' experience Tian J'net laughed loudly and long at the drop of the proverbial hat – turn. “Zintila, he really wasn't joking about that. I'd thought it was a rumour, that he was pulling my leg, but you really are bad with names, aren't you?” Eyes sparkling with mischief, clearly enjoying Alses' discomfort, she continued:

“Tell me, is it true that you call the Dusk Tower's secretary 'Mr. Secretary?'”

Alses squirmed. “He told me his name once, and we forgot it. Now he won't give it to me again and we think he's got a little sign or something he puts up on his desk when I'm not there, because no-one else will tell me his name either. Even visitors to the Tower! We think he's amused by it all, and to be honest I couldn't really imagine calling him anything else now.” She paused. “But we're still all at sea about who V is...”

Shaking her head and dabbing at her eyes, Tian took several chimes to compose herself; the apprentices who were always close at hand looked suspiciously mirthful, too. “V's what I shorten the name of your head chef, up at the Respite, to. It's just the first letter of his name, not very imaginative I know, but then again 'Mr. Secretary' is hardly original. At least you know my name – I suppose I should be grateful for the honour, no?”

Alses blinked, nonplussed. “Er...That is, I mean-”

Tian took pity on her in short order. “I'm just playing with you, Alses. Are you planning on staying at the Respite for much longer?”

“For the foreseeable future, I think so. It's central, handy for all the Towers, and I'm getting rather attached to my room, you know.”

Tian nodded, still considering. “I see. Well, see if you can get out of couriering tomorrow and come here instead. I think it's high time you learned the joys of vitriol, and maybe a few other things as well.”

Alses bowed in thanks. “I'm honoured – but doesn't this threaten your own livelihood?” she asked. “Not that I wish to be ungrateful or anything, but-”

“Rubbish,” Tian countered easily. “If you ever set yourself up as a philterer and manage to lure some of my customers away – which is unlikely, especially since you're a sorceress through and through by your own admission – all it'll do is give me more time to work on the difficult philtres. I've got all these apprentices, and to be honest I could do with about two dozen more. It's a versatile discipline, and one everyone can see the uses for.” She grinned happily, gesturing about with one grand hand.

“If I'd a mind, I could show you me office, and let you see that I've got a cabinet full of orders from the tanners, another one from the farmers on the mountain terraces, another from the farmers down on the floodplains, another three chests full of requests from the respective households of the Towers, let's not even get into what the Temples want and that's all before we consider the general customers or the special requests you've got a habit of bringing me.”

She patted Alses' shoulder gently and quickly. “You won't put me out of business, and if I choose to pass on a little bit of knowledge, that's my affair. Your job is to sit there and look stupid, listening to everything I say and watching everything I do until your brain is stuffed with usefulness.” She smiled. “Not that I don't appreciate the concern, however. Now be off with you; I've got a diagnostic philtre for the Shinyama Pavilion steeping and I'm about ready to process it. If you make me miss the time that's two days' work up the spout! See you here tomorrow, ninth bell of the morning and no later!”

The redoubtable philterer turned and vanished into the fume-obscured depths of her laboratory, leaving Alses little recourse but to continue on her way, more than mildly bemused and not a little gratified as she made her way out between the close-packed lacquer shelves of the Starry Chalice and back onto the street.

[Alses]

Splashing through the dripping streets, Alses forged towards one of the only islands of light and warmth in the rain-cloaked city. Red-orange light spilled from the substantial building, its many chimneys pouring black smoke laced with a thousand dancing sparks up into the heavens, the streets around it ringing to the sound of hammers on metal.

Heavy dray carts, pulled by the fierce little ponies the same general shape and disposition as a barrel of smoke powder rumbled in and out of its storage yard, unloading piles of charcoal, ore and in some cases ingots in an orderly stream. All this activity was incidental to the main business of the place, however, fuelling and feeding the fires that were the centrepiece, the lifeblood, the veritable beating heart of the whole establishment.

This, then – as the discreet metalworked sign forming an arch over the main entrance indicated – was A Touch of Fire, Lhavit's premier metalworking emporium. Alses didn't know a great deal about the place, to tell the truth – which was a bit of an oversight, really, since the place would undoubtedly produce a great many of the prospective artifacts for her magecrafting, should she ever actually get sufficiently established.

Getting a feel for the place, for the owner, for the type of goods that poured out from the furnaces and anvils, would be a useful side-effect of this particular visit – although it had to be said that Alses was mostly looking forward to the dry heat of the forges.

Inside was an Aladdin's cave on a theme of metalwork; examples of it were absolutely everywhere. Serried ranks of pots and pans of various sizes, styles and even materials – from black iron to rosy copper glowing like the setting sun – were hung on the walls, interspersed with examples of truly fearsome agricultural implements. Alses recognized scythes and sickles from the tools at the Respite, but there her expertise ran out and she gazed in confusion at the profusion of intricate metalwork whose purpose was as evident to her as the reason for wasps.

There were ploughshares, heavy shovels, spades, picks, augers, hammers of various sizes and some truly frightening mauls filling out two of the three walls seemingly given over to civilian metalwork, with cabinets and shelves and display stands holding up examples of trowels and screwdrivers and hand-borers, knives in dizzying array, pliers and spanners, saws, chisels, iron dogs, pulley arrangements and much else – essentially, anything which involved in any capacity the forging and shaping of metal.

Barrels and boxes, too, were much in evidence, piled high with nails and screws and bolts to fulfil almost any possible requirement – or so it seemed to Alses, wandering around slightly lost in this palace of smithery.

The blades and other weapons, in contrast to the complexity of the civilian goods on offer, were simple and elegant, directed to one singular purpose that they doubtless did with ruthless efficiency. The polished, sharpened lengths of metal gleamed, deadly, in the reddish furnace-light spilling into the shop through the open doors into what seemed to be the actual works area of the place, a cavernous place lined with forges and all the other paraphernalia of blacksmithery.

It was a glimpse into the bowels of the planet, if one was of a whimsical turn of mind, at least until the eye adjusted. The room was cavernous, the upper reaches lost in gloom and darkened by soot, and the sullen red glows of the forges were pools of lava, the somersaulting sparks and the ring of hammers on metal echoing the groaning, snarling earth as it moved and shifted.

Then the eye grew used to the sight and a paradigm shift ensued; the titanic statues of raw rock became apprentice smiths about their duties, limned in furnace-flame, the rocky sides of the cavern turned into the vertiginous scree-slopes of charcoal and coal, and the lava pools resolved themselves into the forges at the heart of any blacksmith's domain. The volcanic citadel at the far end of the forge-room was – Alses learned later – an ingot caster, pouring molten metal into sand moulds to produce bar stock and, occasionally, ingots of precious metal for various customers, the Towers and Koten Temple being the most prominent and regular.

Alses wandered, aimless, through from the shop to the workshop proper, drinking in the incomprehensible sights all around. Some things were explicable, true – like the piles of shiny black rock mounded high in metal bunkers along one side of the building, for example – coal and charcoal for the fires – but what was all the sand and clay for? This wasn't a sculptor's or glassmaker's, surely? Fortunately for all concerned, she didn't get far, only just past the threshold, before one of the apprentice smiths noticed the intruder and moved to intercept the shining Ethaefal.

“You shouldn't really be in here, blessed one,” he said loudly, voice booming out across the roar of the forges and the rhythmic pounding of the hammers. Alses took notice of the apprentice beside her for the first time. He was lean and corded with muscle, probably from handling the hammers and bar stock and whatever else it was an apprentice smith was required to do, and his face – where it wasn't blackened with smuts from the fires – was burned red and glistening with pearls and rivulets of perspiration. A wide band of cloth held his tousled brown hair out of his eyes – they were weary but full of fire nonetheless.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked, discreetly trying to edge her back into the cleaner air of the shop proper. It didn't work; Alses was far more interested in watching the goings-on behind the scenes, especially as a fresh knot of shouting developed around a cart at the far end and she was interested to see its outcome.

“Hmm?” Alses replied, focusing in on the developing contretemps – but just as things appeared to reach flashpoint a figure strode out of the shadows and the tight knot broke apart – after a brief discussion the cart continued on its way to one of the bunkers on the left, dumping its load of coal without incident and then heading back out into Lhavit.

A hand waved in front of her face; she snapped her gaze sideways once more. “What?”

“Can I help you with anything?” the apprentice repeated, less patiently. “Only I've got a bit of stock on heat and if I don't get back to it Aska will have my head...”

“Aska?”

The apprentice looked at her as though she'd grown a third head. “Aska Terras. Lhavit's blacksmith? She owns this shop. You've come to the right place, haven't you?” he looked more ready to bolt than anything.

“Oh! Oh, yes.” Alses fumbled in her hitherto-unregarded backpack for a moment and produced a stiff envelope along with her Tower crest. Its metal flashed in the red light for a second, and Alses could almost hear the reappraisal in her companion's brain, a ratcheting back of assumptions and a reassessment of circumstances and character both.

“I bear a message from the Dusk Tower to the proprietor of A Touch of Fire," she intoned formally. "May we see her and deliver our missive?” Alses asked, pleasantly enough.

The apprentice smith blinked stupidly at her for several long moments, his brain evidently still processing the request and her crest both. What had he expected her to be there for? She answered herself with a wry, self-deprecating smile: 'A blade to cut the heavens, probably. Or some other impossibility.'

[Alses]

He recovered fairly quickly though, wiping his forehead with a sigh. “I'll take it,” he said, holding out an expectant hand even as Alses shook her head.

“The job was to deliver to A Touch of Fire's proprietor, and no other,” she replied, with a pleasant and utterly meaningless smile on her face. “Unless we're very much mistaken, you are not she. Of course, I'm happy to accept correction if you are.”

Her apprentice interlocutor sighed hugely and looked away and around, blinking about the gloomy interior, evidentlylooking for someone. He found his target in fairly short order, or so it seemed, issuing a rather brusque: “This way,” to Alses, and she bobbed along behind his striding form, fascinated by everything.

Off to the left, someone was pouring liquid light from a long-handled crucible spoon; cascades of sparks and gobbets of molten metal flew in all directions as the thick liquid sluiced into the runnels and channels of a mould. To the right, a team of shovellers were hard at work, stripped to the waist and blacker than sin, hurling fuel into the belching mouth of a furnace that never seemed to be satisfied, always roaring for more with grasping fingers of dirty orange flame.

The noise was a constant battering ram with an almost physical force, against which they had to strive and struggle – or at least, Alses did. Her companion surfed through the shrieking tides with consummate ease, though, evidently used to forging through it all. The hammers drummed an unceasing toccata over the bass roar and thump of the flames, the bellows sang contralto counterpoint as they opened and shut and there was a soprano chime from whining pulley systems as they strained with various loads barely visible in the darkness.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Alses asked of the world in general, straining to penetrate the murk.

“Heat,” her guide replied briefly, his teeth flashing in a smile for just a moment. “Light equals heat in th'human mind, so we keep it dark.”

Alses blinked: that was a novel explanation. She'd been expecting something about cost, or soot, but that it was a purposeful choice to make working conditions better was a new one on her.

“Most illuminating,” she replied wryly, but there was no time for further chatter as her shadow darted forward for a few whispered words with a figure silhouetted against one of the larger forges.

Alses used the time to inspect her surrounds once more, interested in what was going on all around, from apprentices shaping sand and clay into moulds to someone painstakingly drawing red-hot lines of metal through a plate of sorts – making wire, she realised with a jolt, in one continuous, flowing motion, threading it through smaller and smaller holes until they were finally satisfied.

Her fingers twitched involuntarily, a reflex action as she thought about how useful wire was in magic, especially when Glyphed to produce D-wire. Alses knew about the required conduction sigils and runes, but actually engraving a D-wire finishing well to the required precision and style necessary for stable infusion of magical conductivity was a task she wasn't sure she was up to, having only mastered scrollwork to any sort of acceptable degree relatively recently.

Her attention was swiftly brought back to the here-and-now, though, by the emergence of a powerful figure in front of her. Powerful truly was the word, too – her aura was broad and clear, a shout in the cluttered atmosphere of the workshop, red and gold and vibrantly reflecting confidence and efficiency both. It was a little more difficult, through the mantling flare of auristic power that covered everything, to see her physical form, but she looked lean and direct and corded with muscle, like most blacksmiths the world over. Despite her powerful aura, she was short of stature – but Alses had long ago learned not to associate mental fortitude or a persuasive presence, auristically speaking, with physical features

Really, the only oddity was her arm, looking stone-like even in the fairly poor light of the forges and with veins of silvery metal, almost, running through it. Which was madness – it still acted exactly like a proper arm should – Alses could see her fingers flexing and moving perfectly normally, and no-one else around seemed to consider it even remotely odd.

“Looked your fill?” came a voice, terse and clipped but not hostile, exactly, just impatient.

“We're sorry, I've-”

“Never seen an Isur before? Gathered that. Aska Terras, owner of A Touch of Fire. You are?”

Alses blinked at the short, clipped sentences, every word fired off in rapid succession from a mobile mouth set under dark, intelligent eyes. “Ah, Alses. I'm a courier from the Dusk Tower, ma'am, here on business...” She tailed off under the hard gaze, until an impatient gesture saw her continue.

She proffered the stiff envelope with numb fingers and fought not to wince as smuts and soot marred the once-pristine paper. Aska Terras seemed not to notice, as she slit open the letter and unfolded it impatiently, squinting to read the dense script.

Looking around with interest again – this time at an apprentice turning a lump of metal into a sword-blade with rhythmic pounding and turning motions – she was brought back with a sharp question: “Looking for anything in particular, Courier?”

Flustered, Alses waved her hands in a flurry of demurral. “No, no, we've just got what you might call a professional interest.”

A raised eyebrow. “Thought you were a courier? Or failing that, a mage. You don't strike me as a blacksmith, miner or charcoaler.”

“I'm a magesmith,” Alses replied. “We can take your apron and make it able to reflect a warhammer's blows, if we've a mind, or make a plough water the ground behind it as it moves. In many cases, I enhance what's already there; I've got a vested interest in seeing the processes behind my items.”

A snort. “Well, you'll have no luck as a blacksmith with your head in the clouds. Metal needs attention and care, or else it'll fracture, break, burn you, warp, distemper or any one of a hundred other problems. You need focus to turn bar stock into ploughshares or t'pour ingots for later use or storage.”

Aska waved the letter in her normal hand. “Message received. Tell your master I'll have his order done in seven days as a priority measure. Good day, courier – mind you don't trip over anything on the way out.”

END

[Elysium]

Alses

XP:
Observation +5
Auristics +2
Rhetoric +1

Lore:
How to Earn the Admiration of a Superior
Lhavit: A Touch of Fire
Aska Terras, the Isur Smith
Glyphing: D-wire

Notes: This was a very insightful solo. I can only hope it is the precursor to more of the same! If I missed anything, please let me know.

and so, the journey continues...