Ember of Invention

Thalia and Lindle spent a while shooting off spells through the Lotus Thorn. He tried to record some notes about how much the wand amplified Thalia’s spells, but she was a lot less precise with her spells and Mana than his mother, so he wasn’t able to lock down any exact numbers.

So far he wasn’t able to find matching numbers either between his various crafted items when it came to their effects and the language describing their effects in their statuses. Words such as small, slight, or minor were common, but they didn’t correlate to any consistent percentages as far as he could tell from one item to another. Perhaps it was just a case of his own control when crafting them.

Still, it was fun to watch Thalia fire off various spells, all of her spells when using the wand had a small increase in their power for sure, but when it came to casting spells that involved plants, he would have sworn that a mage several levels higher than Thalia was must have cast them.

“You know,” Thalia said as she swapped from her normal focus, a small knobbly wand, to Lotus Thorn, “you might have done too good of a job making this. If I use this during lessons it’s going to seem like I improved so much that they’re going to have questions.” She cast a spell at the tree in the living room.

Turns out there weren’t that many spells that druids learned that involved getting rid of trees, most revolved around growing them, and Thalia couldn’t cast any of the more dangerous withering or blight spells. So Thalia was making do with a wood-shaping spell to cut off the branches and shave off pieces so they could get rid of it or carry it out in more manageable pieces later. What was once a small tree was now mostly a stump of peeled-apart wood.

Lindle tried to repress a smug grin at the compliment as he tossed a few branches into the fireplace. “Couldn’t you hold back?”

He was pretty sure he hadn’t been able to suppress the pride in his voice in its entirety because Thalia rolled her eyes. “Yes, I could, but then I wouldn’t really be pushing myself and getting better, you know, the entire point of taking lessons?”

Lindle frowned. “Oh, huh. Sorry? Wait, why did you want something to make your magic more impressive in the first place if you don’t want to slack off?”

Thalia sighed and fiddled with the wand. “It’s a bit silly, I know I’m doing decent enough, but Narem’s been taking every opportunity they can to outperform me, and it’s getting on my nerves.”

Lindle made a noise of understanding, Narem had definitely been the most talented druid applicant of their cycle. They were the son of one of the Elders in the circle, and between naturally high stats for spellcasting, a well-optimized set of feats, and early training in spells, they were a shoo-in for the circle. None of which would have been reasons to dislike him, it was expected that parents pass down their skills should their children want to follow in their footsteps, except for the fact that Narem was a major show-off and had endlessly gloated about it, thinking his talent gave him some kind of authority over the other kids in the cycle.

Even Lindle, who had barely interacted with the boy growing up, was painfully aware of Narem’s accomplishments, if only because he wouldn’t shut up about them. In some ways, Narem made Lindle glad that alchemy and other crafting disciplines were so rare in Glacerhine, if he had someone like Narem to compare himself to as a crafter growing up it would have been infuriating. Aside from occasionally proving his superiority when they were forcibly paired up, they just ignored each other. He could only imagine what it would be like for Thalia to have to constantly compete with him even after gaining her class.

He shot Thalia with a sympathetic look. “I haven’t thought about Narem in months. I’m sorry you’ve got to still deal with him.”

Thalia groaned and flopped over on his couch, burying her face in the furs. “He’s just so smug about everything. Every new spell we learn he just gives me a look when he gets a hang of it faster or makes it stronger than mine. I would love to wipe it off his face just once.”

“Maybe I could… I dunno, try making the wand weaker?” He hadn’t done anything like that before, but maybe he could just re-harvest the Ethos from the wand and try to make its effects more subtle. It would have to wait until his Ethos was less strained though.

“No!” Thalia sat up and held Lotus Thorn away from him defensively. “I can still use it to cast non-plant spells in class without attracting attention to it, it should even us up.” She glared at him and Lindle held up his hands in surrender.

Once she looked sure he wasn’t going to take Lotus Thorn away from her, Thalia relaxed. “Besides, it’s not like I’m only going to use this for something as dumb as showing off in class. No way I’m going to turn down a boost like this to my spells, it’s way too useful.” She cast at the tree again, shaving off another chunk of wood, now a pile of logs and branches. “Really, everyone would love something like this, enchanted items are so tough to get all the way out here, even adventurers would want some. You would make a ton of money selling these things. Maybe you could do it anonymously? Hide your identity or sell through someone else?”

Lindle shook his head. “How would I keep something like that a secret? Glacerhine is too small for items as weird as mine won’t be known throughout the entire village. It wouldn’t be hard for people to make a guess that new magic items showing up in the market that none of the merchants recall bringing with them on Wolven Caravan might have something to do with the weird giant kid who is the only person to gain a class in the last year that everyone knows was obsessed with getting a crafting class.”

“You’re not that weird.” They both blew out a small laugh before she continued. “But you got a point, still a shame though. What are you going to do with all the items you make then? Just let them pile up in your house until you ship off?”

“I didn’t think about that… huh.” Lindle did plan on using his items for himself of course, and sharing them with his mom, probably the adventurers too if they had turned out to be strong enough for them to bother with. The way the heartroot ring worked did give him hope that at least some of his items would scale to their user's abilities in a way that they would. If he was going to make things for Thalia then he probably should let Humphrey in on his class too. Even between making items for all his friends and family, as he leveled up Lindle would still end up making more than they would need, especially as he got better and replaced old items with better ones. Most crafters simply sold everything they didn’t use as they ascended through the Apprentice and Journeyman tiers.

Eventually, Lindle shrugged. “I don’t know. I have plenty of time to figure it out though, it’s still just my birthday after all.”

Thalia paused for a few seconds. “I forgot that it’s your birthday somehow even though it’s your level 1 day. I guess I’m just used to everyone’s taking place during cycle season.” She looked at Lotus Thorn and groaned. “Now I feel even worse about accepting this, you’re basically giving me a gift on your own birthday.”

“Not bad enough to let me take it back though.” Lindle cracked, laughing as Thalia held the wand closer to herself and narrowed her eyes at him for a second before she could stop herself. “Seriously, don’t worry about it.”

“Fine, but you’re not spending the rest of your birthday cooped up in your house. We can go out, find Humphrey, and do something fun.” She hesitated for a second. “Are you telling Humphrey about your class?”

“Well, yeah, I don’t see why not. I told you, and it’s not like Humphrey is going to tell any Soarians about it.” Thalia nodded in agreement at that. “I don’t need to tell him about how it relates to the dungeon and the raid though right?”

Thalia raised an eyebrow. “Probably should, no point in sharing your class with him if you’re going to lie to him about something else.”

Lindle sighed but reluctantly agreed. They cleaned up the rest of the tree, piling up all the logs to use as firewood for the next couple of days and getting rid of the leaves before they went over to the side of the house to enter the back of the apothecary store.

Lindle could see his mom at the counter talking with Mr. Valdison, the leatherworker seeing them first and pointing them out to his mom.

“Hey Miss Kyte, me and Lindle are heading out,” Thalia called out. “I’m going to borrow him for a bit for his birthday, going to see Humphrey too.”

His mom smiled. “That sounds wonderful Thalia, have fun you two.”

They approached behind the counter and his mom gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Sure it’s alright?” Lindle asked his mom.

“Don’t worry, I got enough of your time this morning, the store won’t be anything to worry about either.” She chuckled and added in a whisper. “It’s really just been people just wanting to wish you well about your first level, I’ve been mostly just convincing them to buy things while they’re here.”

Lindle laughed as well and they broke off the hug.

As Lindle and Thalia started to leave the store Mr. Valdison called out to him. “Congratulations young man. Have a good birthday.” The leatherworker said that in an odd tone and gave him a strangely sage-looking nod.

Lindle raised an eyebrow with slight confusion, glancing to Thalia next to him, who gave a small shrug, but he thanked him and they exited out the door. Before they jogged away down the path he heard his mom laugh loudly at something Mr. Valdison said that he didn’t catch.