Ember of Invention

Now it was Lindle’s turn to wait for his Mom to answer, shifting as anxiety started to bubble up immediately after he closed his mouth.

Pushing the path was a saying that applied to people who were before all else, working towards advancement in the system, there were a few variations on the phrase, Soarians called it wayfaring, but the meaning was the same. The obvious example was adventurers, who worked to put themselves in new and challenging situations such as dungeons to reach the highest tiers to gain the best classes the system had to offer, but the method was technically irrelevant, as long as their intent was to push the limits of what was possible for them to achieve.

Almost everyone grew up entertaining fantasies of becoming an unstoppable level 100 warrior, or an archmage with tier 10 spells that could reshape reality, but as people grew up, the harsh reality of life set in. Eventually, it became too dangerous to earn enough XP to level up in any reasonable amount of time. People had lives and responsibilities outside hunting down monsters or conducting crazy experiments, jobs, and families that were for the most part routine. People would still earn XP as they lived according to their class but the flow would slow as they grew up.

The Apprentice tier period of someone’s life passed by easily enough, but Journeyman was where things really slowed down. The vast majority of people lived for decades slowly accruing levels in their Journeyman class. Rosato and the others had all been adventurers for years, leveling up at a rate tens of times faster than average and yet they were all still in their journeymen classes, though as far as Lindle’s could tell, they could be close to crossing over into Veteran.

Lindle had always figured he would be happy doing things the traditional way, apprenticing under his mother until he either inherited or opened an apothecary of his own, just as long as he got to do it under his own merit. But now, with his curiosity about what exactly he could be capable of, what he could learn or discover, he couldn’t imagine spending decades waiting. Maybe it was just the novelty, or the adventurers had rubbed off on him, or maybe he was just looking for a new goal after spending so long on the previous one, but Lindle wanted to see where he could go with this.

Eventually, his Mom smiled and sighed to herself, shaking her head. “You let them out on their own just once, I swear. If that’s what you want Lindle, then I expect big things. Just promise me you won’t run off out into the Reach or to the big city with a ragtag group of wannabee adventurers as soon as you turn 15.”

Lindle blushed. “Yeah of course! I mean… honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to go about it.” He shrugged. “It’s still a crafting class, I might just focus on getting strong enough to go back to that dungeon with everyone else, if there’s as much to find down there as they think then it’s a really good opportunity for me.”

“I’m sure,” his Mom smiled again, but softer this time. “but after?”

“…Yeah, after.” He repeated. When it came down to it, Lindle doubted that he would be able to find any other chances for real growth as an Artificer in a place like Glacerhine. When it came to crafter classes, Lindle’s mom was the highest one he knew of for a reason, it simply wasn’t as suited to or valued as highly in the harsh and resource-sparse environment of the Reach. She had gotten the majority of her levels before joining Glacerhine.

“My son, suddenly so ambitious,” she teased. “Well I suppose that doesn’t change the plan for now, so after will need to wait for after, you got some shopping to do, and I need to open the shop.”

And that was that. Following the list they had made, Lindle found the market and started making purchases. It took a while to find some merchant potters to sell him their extra pieces of equipment, it wouldn’t be much, but it would be enough to practice with. He probably bought all the clay they had brought south with them, it wasn’t exactly a commonly used resource by the locals considering the climate.

After securing that, Lindle started buying samples of various reagents. He only bought one of each, he wasn’t going to use them for his alchemy, but instead to train his Ethos sense. A Steampine, a Iceshell pangolins scale, Woodstalker root. He aimed to buy items that each would have distinct elemental affinities for him to practice distinguishing, water, ice, wood, things such as that. Sadly anything fire-related was notoriously hard to find.

Purchasing the scale, Lindle remembered the dungeon variant’s crystals he picked up, still in his pack. He’d have to add them to the list for sensory practice. Magical monster parts and herbs were more expensive, but since nothing he was buying was anything he intended to use for ingredients or ritual components he was able to haggle for the worst or smallest parts of each batch. Even being armed with a healthy amount of gold pieces wasn’t an excuse to not be efficient, his instincts after years of assisting his Mother during working hours wouldn’t allow it.

Lugging everything home, he realized he’d need somewhere to practice. Luckily this was also something money could solve. Space was at a premium in Glacerhine considering they had to fit everyone inside the cold-repelling border of the grove, but considering his home doubled as his Mom’s storefront it was large enough that it had enough free room behind it that he could hire one of the shamans to create a small extension to the house out of ice for him to use.

The rest of the day was spent with him setting everything up to turn the extension into a workshop. Adding another small fireplace allowed him to move Nothing into it, and they directed him to where to place everything.

This feels familiar now

Nothing looked over the new workshop, eyeing all the pieces of equipment placed together, especially the kiln.

“You’re picking up Helvetician quickly.”

Haven’t had much else to focus on. Your mom spoke to me some even though she couldn’t understand me, I also listened in on her while she sold to her customers. She’s nice, kept my fire warm.

“Yeah, that’s her. Did you get enough to follow when they talked?”

Give me another few days. I should know the language as well as you can by then. Maybe I’ll try to learn to write next so I can communicate with her more directly.

Nothing’s gaze didn’t shift, and Lindle looked at the kiln too. “Is this okay? I don’t want to give you any unpleasant memories, being trapped for hundreds of years in the dark… I can take you back to the other fireplace.”

It’s fine. Like I said, I was asleep for most of it, so deeply I didn’t even dream. Besides, I was supposed to be a homunculus, a workshop, even a small one like this, is where I feel at home the most.

Lindle felt a cozy comfortable feeling through his bond with Nothing. They settled in the flames, wrapping some of their body around the firewood without smothering any of it, the flames didn’t even seem to register their presence.

This is good, it’s a reminder that I’m finally going to be finished and get to fulfill my purpose to be a crafters companion.

Lindle felt slightly conflicted at that last statement. “Purpose? You don’t have any other wants? You don’t need to be my companion if you don’t want to you know, you’ve already helped me a lot.”

Nothing sent him amusement.

One of the first conversations I had with my maker was a lecture on the nature of free will. I was made to be perfectly content by the act of fulfilling my purpose and I can choose to be happy in doing so. This is what I want, and I don’t have any notions of being restricted by that, so please do not worry.

“Huh… that sounds like a good idea. I wouldn’t have thought to do that.”

It’s okay, I would have told you about the process when you start making other fabled creatures. You’re quite a while away from having to worry about being able to do that though.

Making fabled creatures… Lindle didn’t know how he felt about being able to create more life like Nothing, but they were probably right, he was just getting ahead of himself.

He picked up the iceshell scale from the storage shelf. “So how does this work? I focus on the Ethos in this and try to pick out the bits that mean ice?”

Essentially. Almost nothing in nature is purely defined by one concept, the Ethos you wish to harvest will always be interwoven with all the other concepts present in the material. This scale is attuned to the ice element, but it will also have concepts of protection, life, growth, or any other number of imperceptibly small concepts. You can choose to use or ignore them, but being able to perceive the difference is vital to not corrupt your creations with unintended ideas.

Lindle concentrated, activating his feat and focusing on the scale in his hand. He felt the swirl of Ethos in what Nothing had said made this scale Fabled. He took the idea of scale into his mind, trying to bring only one facet of the Ethos to his attention at a time, but it was difficult, they all melded together and constantly shifted. Lindle could clearly sense the ice aspect in the Ethos, it was one of the dominant traits, but he couldn’t separate it from the others, the other aspects kept shifting to his attention just to dart away again. Compared to his Aura or Mana, Ethos wasn’t cleanly separated into individual points of energy, and he couldn’t frame his state of mind into controlling his own personal Ethos either this time.

He couldn’t tell how much time it took until he finally let go of the sense, sighing in frustration as he put away the scale. Looking outside, the moonlight had faded completely as night had fallen.

It’s okay, we have time. You can’t expect to master something like this in just a few hours. I’ve been told lots of Artificers spent months training to develop the feat in the first place.

Lindle shrugged. “I apparently got it after just a few minutes of trying, so I guess I was hoping this would have been similar.”

I still don’t understand how you did that in the first place. Are you sure you’ve never heard of Ethos before? No weird encounters with anything like it before coming to the dungeon?

“Nope,” he shrugged again. “It’s like I said, I’ve never heard of it before, and neither had my mom or the adventurers. I wasn’t even really in control of myself when I used the door the first time, I just tried copying the feeling to do it again. I… “ Lindle paused, that didn’t feel entirely true. Even when he opened the door the first time, he had a strange feeling of deja vu when he did so, but he didn’t know why.

He shrugged again.

That is a shame. Perhaps your first few levels in Artificer will help, your Intelligence stat may just be too low to recall it.

“Hey! My Intelligence is fine!”

Nothing sent him another bout of amusement.