"Are you sure it was wise to bring Mittens along?" I ask Amelia as we enter the Guild Building. "He hasn't completely settled down yet."

"He should be fine." Apricot answers for her. "As long as no one casts any spells on him, it won't be a problem."

"And, thank you for jinxing us." I sigh and shake my head before walking up to the reception counter. "Hello Claire, hi Hana, hi Damita, and thanks again for that transmission idea. We're here to see Stanwood." I can feel Amelia purse her lips as I greet the receptionist.  She went so far as to deliver the bunny girl's bonus personally after we got back from dealing with the worm, she's so cute when she gets jealous.

"Hello, he's waiting to see you." Claire takes the lead. "But before you head up, I've gotta know when your next party is going to be." She asks and the other two receptionists lean closer while perking up their ears.

"Sorry, but things are going to be kinda busy for the foreseeable future." I give her a rueful smile. "The Crown has given me several tasks, and I've got a lot of plans that I've been meaning to get to, but just haven't had the chance to implement yet. ...Hmm? How about I bring over some of the extra Rune games for the lounge? But, don't tell Stanwood I said that, I might need it as leverage." My smile changes from rueful to wry.

"Hahaha, my lips are sealed. Mind if I ask what the meeting is about?"

"Had an idea to help out the Mages on Rune charging duty.  I don't want to say anything more than that before I talk to him though."

"Well, you'll have my thanks if you can get some of the mopey ones to quit whining about how boring it is." She laughs and waves us up the stairs.

A short flight of stairs later and the Guild Leader's voice greets us. "Sorrel, Amelia, Apricot, come on in." Stanwood had his door open and gestured us in from his desk as soon as we entered the outer office.

"Good morning, thanks for seeing us." We all take a seat across from him.

"No, thank you. I'm sure whatever it is will be worth my time. That and anything is better than paperwork." He chuckles.

"Yeah, anything's better than paperwork." I nod, and get down to business. "So, I just came up with an idea to automate Rune charging and wanted to see what you think." I retrieve the prototype that I built on the way over. "With this people can just deposit their coin and have their Runes filled up."

"Interesting." He strokes his chin. "But, most people sign up for charging plans where they pay a set fee for the month or year, and can get their Runes charged as they like."

"Okay, I've already worked out how to track how much each Awakened contributes, I can repurpose that, maybe add in a fingerprint scanner..." I trail off as I work it out in my head. "Yeah, I can track all that like how I keep the high-scores on the Rune games, but I really need to finish that data storage rune, it would simplify things immensely."

"How did you plan to track contribution?" He tilts his head to the side.

"Oh, I built a Mana meter." I display the Rune Diagram on his desk. "They would just select their name, and then it would mark down how many cubic millimeters worth of Mana Stones they've filled. It's also a one way Mana valve, so they could just carry around empty Mana Stones to fill in their spare time."

"That, wow." He examines the diagram for the Mage side of the charging station. "Mind if I call Deluca in on this?"

"Not at all." I shake my head. "Here's a paper copy of the diagram and you can keep the prototype. It'll take me a while to add in all the tracking functions. But, until then I can just add in a manual override that a receptionist can activate."

He then sends his secretary to get us tea and ask Deluca to join us. She arrives a few minutes later.

"Sorrel. How have you broken enchanting this time." She says with a smile.

"Nothing so grand this time." I chuckle. "I just came up with an automated Rune charging station because I want to sell a cheaper version of the phone. But, the design can also work with any enchantment."

"Meaning I won't have to listen to my enchanters moan about getting stuck on charging duty anymore." She laughs. "You even have a way to measure how much they contribute?"

"Yes, based on cubic millimeters of Mana Stones filled." I materialize a length of Mana Conduit. "I developed the Mana meter after I made this stuff and thought about how to charge people for mana drawn from it."

"Is that the Conduit you'll be running to Riverton?" Stanwood peers closer at the cable, so I hand it over.

"Yeah, it's basically just a flexible Mana Stone." I say, not wanting to give away all my secrets. "There doesn't seem to be any Mana loss, at least not over the distances I've tested so far."

"Could I get some of that to play around with?" Deluca asks with a shine in her eyes.

"Sure." I shrug, and chop the loop that Stanwood is holding into various lengths. "The insides of the cable are a bit hard to work with directly, so that's why I cap each length with tiny Mana Stones."

"I don't think I even want to know how you made this." The Guild Leader shakes his head and passes the cables to Deluca.

"This isn't going to set you back is it?" She looks worried.

"I still need to make over nine-hundred kilometers." I say with a rueful smile. "This doesn't even count as a drop in that bucket."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Alright." Stanwood claps his hands together. "I don't see any problem with this, let me talk with Tobie first though, he's in charge of that department. But, I can't see him saying no, he has to deal with more complaints than anyone else."

"That's fine, I'll be busy making more conduit and dealing with a few other minor tasks for the next little while anyways. So, take your time. Also, I'm happy to accommodate any design changes or ideas he or you two might have."

I'm about to end the conversation when one more thought pops up.

"And, aside from the Magnet Mana I'll be providing, I don't need any profits. Just being able to sell phones to more people will make setting up these stations more than worth it. But, if someone wants conduit run to their home or business... Well, that's another matter entirely."

"I'll turn you into a merchant yet." Amelia crows from beside me.

"Speaking in that vein." Deluca says with a hint of the same glint to her eyes that Amelia get's when she's dealing with coin. "Do you know what this could do for the Runestone market?" She holds up the conduit. "Especially if you run lines to cities other than Riverton."

"Good point." I nod to the enchanter. "You should probably have your team start stockpiling basic Runes to sell in Riverton. I'm running the conduit for military matters, but there's no reason not to tack on a little side venture."

"And, you said you didn't have anything grand in mind." The smile Amelia gives me is more than worth any extra hassle it might cause.

"Any other sweeping changes you wish to implement today?" Stanwood half jokes.

"No, but I thought I'd offer some of the duplicate Rune games from the party for the lounges here." I'd almost forgotten what I'd said to Claire. "So, if a mage could come pick them up, that would be nice. They're just taking up space in the basement right now."

"Thank you, I'm sure that'll make a lot of people happy. I'll send a courier over later." He sighs and looks at the paperwork on his desk. "Well, if there's nothing else, I really should get back to this."

"Thank you for seeing us, and sorry if it added more to your work load." We get up and head back down stairs after that.

"I don't see why you don't just provide all the Mana yourself." Apricot says once we're alone. "Just set up collectors near the tree, or find a way to convert all that Fire Mana the arc reactor makes."

"And, annoy half the guild over pocket change?" I snort. "No thanks. Besides, I don't really want to waste the time on it, I've got more important things to deal with."

"Ah, that's a fair point." Her orange mop bounces up and down as she nods

"The extra ambient Mana is already starting to lower the price anyways." Amelia adds. "Last time I was here, I learned about some Mages that were starting to undercut the Guild rates. Apparently there's always been a few that set up their own side business, but the number has been growing since the Well appeared."

"Hard to maintain a true Monopoly when any Awakened can carve out a piece of that pie." I say as we head out the front door.

"Hi, Abby." Amelia greets the Fire Mage who's heading in just as we're leaving.

"Oh, hi guys." She looks up at us. "What are you three doing here?"

"Sorrel just changed the world of enchanting again." Apricot says matter-of-factly. "How about you?"

"Oh, just visiting the library. I'm already level three, and feel like if I master a few more spells I can hit four soon." I can see a hint of fire in her eyes. "So, I heard that your... thing was going well." She says to Amelia

"Is this her secret project?" I ask with an amused smirk on my face.

"Yes, and you'll find out what it is... when it's ready." She gives Abigail a pointed look.

"Would you look at the time." The Fire Mage says nervously. "Sorry, but I really must run." She slips inside like the hounds of hell are after her.

"Hahahaha." Apricot cracks up, while I just smile and shake my head at Amelia's silliness.

"Come on." I put my arms around them. "Let's go home and make a few thousand suits of armor."

"You go ahead, I was going to-"

"Check on your secret project." She frowns when I say what she really meant. "You want the car, or should I give you my motorcycle?"

"Why don't I keep one of those in my inventory?" Her frown goes away as quick as it came.

"Too busy hiding secrets in there." Apricot teases her and giggles.

"Mittens prefers the car, thanks." She ignores her wife while petting the cat's invisible head.

"Come on Sorrel." The pixie grabs my arm. "I want something rumbly between my thighs."

"Alright." I drop the bike onto the street in front of us. "Have fun with your little project." I give Amelia a quick kiss. "I love you, stay safe."

"Love you too." She kisses me back. "Love you Sweetie." She gives Apricot the same treatment.

***

"How's it going?" Amelia says with a laugh when she gets home and sees Apricot dancing around in a chainmaille bikini next to a small, but steadily growing mountain of hauberks, a large rapidly emptying spool of steel wire, a smaller but growing spool of conduit, and me staring at a large cube made up of over sixteen-million glowing dots.

"Good." I blink and look up at her with a smile on my face. "Very good actually. I finally got that expanding array sorted out." The cube goes from two-hundred-fifty-six dots on an edge to half that, and half again, before returning back to how it started. "I just give it the dimensions, what factor of two to use, and then it does the hard work for me."

"I thought you were going to use magnets or something." She tilts her head to the side and stares at the lights.

"Yeah, this is just to help me think. I still to make a file handler that can keep track of where everything is stored. And then, I'll change the array from making light to reading and changing magnetic polarity." I disable the Rune. "But, you look like your little project must have panned out."

"Did everything finally come in?" Apricot dances over to Amelia with a twinkle in her eye.

"It did." She smiles at me and takes out a crate from her inventory. "Surprise baby. After you got so happy about the rubber trees I sent messenger birds out to all the ports in range asking mage couriers to collect seeds, or cuttings from any strange, interesting, or useful plants. The last of them arrived yesterday."

"Oh, Amelia. Thank you." My eyes start tearing up and I have to blink to clear my vision. "This is the best, you're the best."

"I have more boxes too, but it's crowded in here as it is. I'm sure there's going to a lot of duplicates, but I wanted to do something special for you."

"There's dozens of new plants in there, including a few I've been hoping to get my hands on. And, I can sense one that seems to have a magical component like the coffee and cocoa." I focus in on the small round fruit trying to puzzle out what it does. "Hmm? I think it might have some sort of preservative effect. That could be very useful if I can adapt it to other perishables."

"I knew you'd love it." She smiles and I pull her and Apricot into a hug.

"I do, now let me see the rest." I say causing her to giggle. "Ooh, prickly pear, and it's got some cochineal on it. That's the bugs that carmine pigment comes from." I add after seeing her quizzical look.

"Oh, I never knew that came from bugs." She raises an eyebrow. "But, we didn't deal with it a lot. One of daddy's rivals had a connection with the source, and usually got the shipments."

"Well, hopefully I can cultivate them. It'll give me a chance to stretch the non-plant areas of my Nature Magic." I transfer the crates into my inventory one by one as she brings them out. "Ooh, here's another magic one. Hahaha. It's one of the ingredients from those potions."

"The hair growth ones?" Apricot laughs. "You were so excited for those too."

"Oh well, I'm sure it has more than one use. And, seeing more examples of magic plants might help me grow my own." The glowing moss for the yard is as far into that as I've explored so far.

All in all, it was very lucrative haul, especially considering the last new plants I've seen were a few sticker bush seeds I pulled from the assassin's dirty laundry.

"Thank you for all this." I hug and kiss her again.

***