"First, we need to refine the slime cores into Base Ether Crystal," Noah said. "Amanda, get the biggest black box you can carry from the pile over there. When you pick one, tell Robert the number on the side. Robert, bring me a ball with the same number as the box."
Amanda picked a number seventeen box, and Robert rolled a massive ball toward the platform. The box lid, once locked in place, could be pushed into the box, sliding over grooves on the sides.
"Here you go!" Amanda said as she reached the platform. She turned and teased Robert. "Come on slowpoke!"
"I bet this ball weighs a thousand times more than the stupid box," Robert grumbled. The ball reached up to his stomach.
"I can't hear you!" Amanda giggled.
Noah paid their teasing no mind. "Amanda, do you see the two grooves on the side of the anvil? There are matching notches at the bottom of the box, they slide together to fix the box in place. See if you can attach the two together."
"Sure thing!"
She had to try a few times to slide the box in place. With a loud click, it got stuck on top of the anvil. Try as she might, the box didn't move.
"Good," Noah said after he gave the box a good shake to confirm it was in the right place. "Now take this bag and start filling it with slime cores."
Robert arrived with the massive ball. "Where does this go?"
"On that groove," Noah answered. "You will find a spot where the groove has a depression, the ball will stop there. You will hear a click."
Robert rolled the ball up a groove in the platform, then pushed it until it dipped slowly by two inches. A mechanism inside the platform clicked. The ball needed to pass the depression to keep going to the hole by the anvil and unless something lifted it, it wasn't going to happen.
Amanda finished filling the box. In fact, she filled it too much. The lid wouldn't slide back.
"Remove some cores. We don't have to fill it to the point of bursting," Noah advised.
Once no more cores were in the way of the lid, Amanda slid it back in place and dropped a metal flap to stop the lid from opening. She pushed it down just to see if it would and the lid worked perfectly.
“All done here!” Amanda reported.
“Good. Let’s get to forging!” Noah said with a cheer. “One last thing, though. I need a puffbloom.”
Robert called one of his over. They were playing with Freddy. He suddenly realized something. This island had a low Ether concentration and though he crossed dozens of miles across it, he hadn’t seen a single puffbloom. “Professor,” he called.
“Yes, Robert?”
“I think I figured out why the puffblooms are so important to this realm. They are the ones who move Ether around. If those smugglers were here killing every single puffbloom that came this way, it might be the cause of the low Ether levels on this island.”
Noah nodded. “You are correct. This realm is deceptive. There’s no real sun, no real clouds, the haze that blocks view is an illusion. The only real things are the islands and the puffblooms. The Ether flow between islands is nonexistent if no puffblooms are crossing it. That’s why I had you catch two of them at the beginning. We can’t starve if we bring our own food. The Ether they carry, not the actual critters.”
*
*
With Cotton attached to his back harness, Noah climbed on the platform and checked the controls. It had three levers and one red button.
“I’m moving the platform to its place, does anyone want to come along?"
"No, I'd rather watch from here," Amanda said sheepishly.
"I'm her bodyguard, need to stay by her side," Robert nudged his head toward Amanda.
"Fine by me. Deploying platform!" Noah said as he pulled a lever and the pantograph mechanism stretched, pushing the platform to the center of the hole in the island.
"Launching weight!"
The teacher pulled another lever that caused the lowered portion of the track to pop up and pull the heavy ball down the track, over a hole next to the anvil, and out of the platform. A loud click rang as the ball passed through the hole and entered free fall.
The clicks repeated every second. On the thirtieth, a bell rang. Noah pulled the third lever, which moved the anvil and box to cover the ball hole. Flaps on the edges of the platform turned up and locked in place. The bell rang again, signaling sixty seconds past the drop.
Robert tried to see the ball. It wasn't yet past the haze's ten miles distance. When it appeared, it was like a meteor.
"Brace for impact!" Noah shouted, causing Amanda to yelp and crouch.
Robert placed a hand on her head, ready to use his talent if anything went wrong.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The ball appeared on the box as if it had teleported there. It wasn't moving. Robert didn't see it fall. The moment it touched the box lid, the entire box glowed red, then yellow, then white in less than a second. Huge tongues of flames burst out of the small gaps between the box and the lid, shooting a dozen feet in the air.
The collision made no sound, a fact that Robert found very strange.
Only then did a whistling sound like a howling banshee came from above along with a heavy gust of wind.
The flames burned for almost the same time the ball took to come back, rapidly losing height in the beginning but stubbornly resisting with a few inches of constant height until the end. When the flames died and the box was rapidly cooling down, the anvil started to glow a dim red. The ball remained sitting above the box.
"And… It's done!" Noah announced.
He took a tool hidden on the far side of the control podium. It had a long shaft like a fireplace poker but ended in two flat, parallel rectangles of metal two feet apart, the far one on the end of an adjustable slider.
He touched the closest part along a corner of the box and then pulled the slider until the other one touched the other side. He tightened it with a screw, then turned the tool as if to open a lid. The side of the box swung down, releasing the ball to fall back on its grove.
The box lid popped back up.
Robert saw a thin glowing slab of Base Ether Crystal inside the box. It was less than five percent as tall as the box.
Noah examined it, then turned to give his students a thumbs up. "We successfully forged our first block of Base Ether Crystal." He announced with a genial and cheerful voice.
Only then Amanda remembered to stand up. With the anvil leeching the heat from the box, the Base Ether Crystal seemed to shine brighter. Under direct sunlight, nonetheless.
"Robert, please fetch those tongs that look loke a duckbill," Noah politely requested.
While he went in search for the duckbill tongs, Noah brought the platform back to place. The professor used the tongs to remove the slab of almost entirely transparent crystal out of the box.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Yes," Robert nodded. It took hundreds of slime cores to make it but he felt it was worth it. He'd never seen an Ether crystal this big.
Noah turned the duckbill tong so the handle was facing Robert. "Put this slab of Base Ether Crystal on that wooden table over there, please. Don’t let your bare skin touch the crystal."
"Sure thing," Robert took the tool and walked away.
"Amanda, did you hear that?" Noah asked.
"Sure. No bare skin contact with the Base Ether Crystal," she replied.
"Good. That's the second-most important safety rule here."
"What's the first one?" She asked, curious.
"Don't drop the balls on your feet." Noah flipped the box side back in place, locking it back. "Now we fill the box with more slime cores."
"Let me," Amanda volunteered.
*
*
Filling the box with slime cores was the most time-consuming step in the process. When Robert offered to help, he noticed runes on the inside.
"Why can't we use a second box?" Amanda asked. "We could fill one while you drop the ball on the other."
Noah nodded. "Yes, that would speed up the process but it wouldn't work here, with this setup, for two reasons. First, we need to wait until the anvil has shed all the heat it leeched. And second, the latch that holds the box on the anvil is difficult to handle. It would take too much time to swap the boxes. Not to mention that the box is stuck while the anvil cools. Because of thermal dilation."
"I see," Amanda mused. "Because I've seen Base Ether Crystal forging and it was a whole different setup. It had way less pyrotechnics. None, to be honest."
"Yes, the pyrotechnics waste some Ether. Modern processes are faster and more efficient. And this is why this place is abandoned. This city used to be full of delvers and workers. Tamers flew dozens of puffblooms between the islands to bring Ether here."
Noah continued after a dramatic pause. "But everything changed a hundred years ago when the Fire Nation attacked."
"What?"
"A rival organization of Fire Archs declared war on the guys who ran this place. They started by killing most of the puffblooms, grinding the Ether flows to a halt. Back then, this place had lots and lots of Ether and people invested the time and effort to place the platforms, cabins, and towers.
"The gathering chambers hadn't been invented yet. The best people could do to gather Ether was to spread around and conquer as many islands as possible. The tamers who ran the puffblooms were highly sought after.
"But the Fire Nation wasn't the only rival group. Others were trying to figure out more pacifist ways to defeat the monopoly on crystal forging, and that led to innovations that made the setup here obsolete. The place was abandoned as the Ether concentration dropped. The company who owned this realm vanished into obscurity later on."
He sighed. "For our low scale projects, this is more than enough and we harvested a lot of cores. The enchantments we will make here will not be the best but it will be something we did together, with our own hands. Trust me, all of us will cherish these days."
Robert noticed notes of melancholy in Noah's lecture. Was he related to… Wait, no. That would make the teacher more than a hundred years old and he looked and sounded to be in his late twenties.
A century-old Arch wasn't unconscionable. Many Archhumans were virtually immortal as far as age was concerned. But Robert didn't believe they would stay in the three-star that long. Especially not someone as active as Noah seemed to be.
It seemed that, for every detail he learned about the mysterious masked teacher, even more questions appeared.
*
*
Two days later, they had a rack full of Base Ether Crystal slabs. They needed to remain separated and contained so they wouldn't merge or lose potency, respectively.
"Good. Are you well rested?" Noah asked. "Today we will learn how to engrave rune circuits on the Base Ether Crystal. It is hard, time-consuming, and requires extreme precision. If you mess up a single rune, the whole piece of crystal is ruined. Almost. Depending on the place of the error, we can cut a slice and start anew with a weaker crystal.
"On the cabinet to your right, you will find tomes and engraving tools. Grab a volume of H.C. Mills' 'The Whispering Crystals' each. It is the basic handbook on engraving. You will each have a slab to train on. Use it sparingly. Your assignment is to craft a working version of any basic circuit on the book and present it.
"Robert, you are not allowed to use your spells. Also, don't take raw Base Ether Crystal to the void until I give you permission. We don't know how the energies of that dimension will affect the crystal. Understood?"
"Loud and clear, professor," Robert replied. He was eager to try that. Making his own enchantments sounded fantastic. And if he could take the Base Ether Crystals to the liminal void, he would have all the time in the universe to perfect this craft.
"Excellent. You can get started. Don't worry about making mistakes and wasting crystal. Focus on the process. Of course, I will be available if you have any questions. In the meanwhile, I will be teaching Freddy some new spells."
Robert let an electrical Amanda get her pick of the books and tools first. They seemed old but well-maintained. They also found runic gloves made out of fine leather.
The first chapter of the book described all the tools and how to use them. The gloves would isolate the Ether from the Base Ether Crystal and stop it from interacting with their essence. Touching the crystal with their bare skin was dangerous.
Robert donned the gloves and took two slabs, placing the first one in front of Amanda's workspace.
He prepared his tools, re-read the introduction, and then got to work.