I follow Isabelle down the street quietly. She goes at a fast pace, with surprisingly long legs for her height, so I need to jog to keep up. Of course, I have no metals with me to help, so I have to rely on the little fire and lightning I still have. We head down onto East Main Street, going a little way before we actually turn into the northeast district. Somehow, I expected the blacksmith to be in the central district, but I guess not.

It isn't much longer before we arrive, the place is pretty close to the southern edge of the district, about halfway between east and west. I know where we're headed long before we get there, from the plume of smoke rising past the surrounding buildings.

When we get the the right street, the first thing I notice as we approach is how the whole front of the shop has open windows, all the way across. Glancing up, the sign has a metal ingot drawn on it, and I think the name is written there too, but it's kind of messy and hard to read quickly while I'm trying to keep up with Isabelle.

Unable to read it quickly enough, I rush after her back, right through the front door of the shop. It's nice and bright inside thanks to all the windows, even with the day just starting to wind down as the ninth bell approaches. I take a quick look around. Of course, there are metal goods everywhere, and I still don't recognize what a lot of them are.

There is one immediate thing that stands out though. They're... big, and heavy. I don't see anything like that small, detailed shiny thing that caught my eye at the Ebock Blacksmith shop. All the stuff here are big, sturdy metal things. Bars and chains and some extremely heavy metal hammers. There's even an anvil sitting up by the counter. They... sell anvils? For other smiths maybe?

There are a few other customers in the shop, which puts me on edge, but for now they're focused more on whatever products they're examining, so they haven't noticed me. When Isabelle gets closer to the front counter, I peek out from behind her to see who's standing behind it.

It's... uhh, is it a man? I blink at the person. Well, they don't have a big chest, so I guess so... It's weird, he just... doesn't look very manly. Shoulder length blond hair and a girly face... He isn't all that muscular either. Does he only work at the front, not as an actual blacksmith?

Then he speaks, and his voice is... more or less a man's voice. But still just... not very manly... "Hi Isabelle, what can we do for you today?" he asks with a pleasant... non-manly sound to his tone that makes me squint at him. What's with this strange person...?

Isabelle sighs slightly, just stepping aside and vaguely gesturing in my direction. She doesn't even introduce me or anything. The man's eyes follow to me but he just raises an eyebrow, not even glaring at me or anything. Somehow, that makes me even more nervous. Why isn't he disgusted by me?

I gulp anxiously, and speak up. "I... I want to place an order." It practically comes out in a squeak, but he just smiles at me pleasantly.

"What would you like to order, little one?"

I shuffle forward, drawing my chromium ingot from my basket. This time, I get my voice to come out normally. "I would like this part of this ingot formed into a flat circle." He looks at the amount I show with my hands, then reaches out, leaning over the counter so I can hand it to him.

"Ah, chromium. Norman will like this one," he comments, aiming that unnerving smile at the ingot while he takes some ink and marks the ingot where I said to take the end off. "That will be four irons."

Four irons?! My whole order at Gremory's was only two! When he sees me panicking, the man asks, "Could it be you don't have enough money?" At his words, Isabelle scoffs from the side.

"N-no, umm, uhh, let's see..." I sputter, starting to dig into my bag of money. It's all copper coins, so I don't know exactly much I have. I start trying to pull out the money, praying that he doesn't start yelling and kick me out before I have a chance to check.

"Ahh, in that case, would three irons be better?" His question stops me dead. He's lowing the price instead of yelling at me? Why? When he tilts his head in a way that looks disconcertingly cute for a man, that snaps me out of it, and I finish digging out my money.

"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, I do have forty!" I have to keep from shouting as I rapidly count out the coins. I have no idea what he'll do if I actually try to give him the lower price instead.

"So you do have enough," he directs his smile at me, and I'm caught between enjoying how pleasant it is, and shivering from being creeped out by how pleasant it is...

After sweeping the money over into a till under the counter, he walks the ingot over to a door that I guess leads to a workshop. "Hey Norman, there's a new order for you." Hardly a moment later the door opens and he's brushed aside as-

Woah.

The man who walks out is... the opposite. I mean, he's only a head taller than the shopkeeper, but he's basically just a big ball of muscles. He makes the other man look like a woman by comparison. He's just... too muscular. Why is everyone in this shop so... weird?

"Who's the one?" Muscles asks, his gaze swinging all across the store as he stomps his way toward the counter.

"Right over here," the thin one replies, as calm as ever. When he points me out, I start to shuffle away from muscle man, who's bearing down on me fast. Part of my brain just starts screaming 'flee!'

"The little one? Why are you taking orders from peasants now?" the man asks, Norman I guess. His voice practically a shout and he's not slowing his approach at all.

Somehow, the girly man keeps pace at his side without any apparent effort. "She came with Isabelle, so she's from Eryk's place," he offers pleasantly.

"That so?" He comes right up, and I'm an instant from flinching or trying to dodge out of the way when he suddenly, finally stops, a half step from barreling right over me. Towering far above me, a mountain of comically bulging muscles, he stares down and asks. "What are you looking for? Anything good?" Even as he speaks, all of his muscles flex and bulge even further. It almost looks painful...

Then the smaller man somehow places himself in the nonexistent space between us. "She placed an order for us to take this section of chromium and form it into a flattened circle."

"Chromium? A dirty thing like that?!" Norman nearly shouts, pointing at me and making me flinch this time.

Without a hint of reaction, the girly one says, "Yes, that's what she ordered," and presses the ingot into the massive hands of the larger man.

"Bah, sounds interesting enough, I'll let it slide this time, Eli. "Better be grateful, girly!" he shouts, jabbing a finger at me and getting me to stumble a step back this time. Spinning around, he stalks off into the back room again, waving the chromium ingot over his head.

Once he's gone, Eli turns back to me. "Thank you for your order, it should be finished and waiting for you tomorrow morning." With the overbearing Norman gone, I'm actually kind of thankful for the overly calm Eli.

But... is that even a man's name? It sounds like Elly...

Isabelle turning to leave pulls my attention from those thoughts.

"Th-thanks, umm, th-" I stumble over my words and my own feet as I try to follow Isabelle, thank Eli, and bow at the same time. I end up hastily half-falling and staggering my way out of the shop behind the woman. Once we make it outside, she makes a dismissive gesture and walks off, leaving me standing in the street outside the baffling blacksmith shop.

What in the world is with that place?

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I pick up the metal I ordered along with my ingots at Gremory's on my way home. One look, the metal appearing to be perfectly ordinary circles, tells me who forged them. After all the crazy going on at the other smith, I'm grateful for how perfectly average and ordinary Bob is at Gremory's place. I thank them repeatedly, but Gremory just keeps telling me that I'm a paying customer, it's their job to make what I pay them for, laughing the whole time.

I keep looking at the metal on my way back. They're bigger than I had in mind. Flattened out thin, the circles are somewhat larger around than I expected them to be. I think I misjudged exactly how much material they would have to work with from the parts of the ingots I told them to use. Maybe I'll ask for smaller ones at some point, but they're fine for now, I'll just need to... I don't know, put them against my chest or back I guess.

Actually, that's probably a better idea anyway. It'll make me less likely to lose them, from having them blown off of me or something. And most of my injuries were to my front last time, so I should probably tie them all against my back...

When I get home, I spend some time in my room attempting to tie them onto my back with bandages and it goes... not well. It takes both hands to wrap the bandages around me, and I also need to hold the metal in place. And the two pieces of metal aren't actually connected, so they keep sliding if I don't do things right.

I need something to keep all of this together. The first thing that comes to mind is something sticky. Like...

I glance at the lele fruit under my bed.

Mira sap. I think that's what Emily said was sticky and used for bandages. I went through most of my money ordering all of that metal, so I only have a little left to buy sap with, if I can even find it. I'll have to ask Eryk about that. I pack my things up for tomorrow, making sure to leave my money so I can go shopping. It's almost the tenth bell already, so I sit, going between homework, meditating, and continuing to practice with my mana.

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It's a little while later, after the tenth bell, when I remember what I wanted to ask Reena about from earlier. The connection between using mana and magic, and whether they're really just the same thing. However, the other kids have already started getting home, and Eve is still here with Mary, so I can't channel my mark to talk to her now.

No, wait, I don't need to channel my mark to talk to Reena anymore, do I? Not as long as I'm the one doing it. So like I did the last time, I reach inside my mark without channeling it, finding the part inside where Reena's mana well is embedded inside the structure of the mark. I push into her well, forming a connection between our souls like I did before.

"Umm, hello?" I ask experimentally. Reena is startled for a moment from the sudden connection out of nowhere, but then realizes what I'm doing.

"Ah, interesting method," she thinks to me.

"Yeah, I can't channel my mark with everyone else here, but I wanted to talk to you."

"Sure, what do you want to talk about?" she asks, with a feeling like she's smiling.

"Well..." It actually takes some time to get my thoughts in order. "I was talking to Eryk, and he made me think of a few things that I really wanted to ask you about. Basically, I told him about telepathy, and how I learned how to do it with souls. When I told him that you told me magical creatures can do it, he said that made it soul magic, which made me realize, if magical creatures can use telepathy, meaning telepathy is magic, what is the real difference between just using mana, and how magical creatures do magic? I already know magical creatures can use mana for their magic, so are they actually just the same thing?"

Reena hesitates for some time, a dull shock mixing with a few other feelings that I can't quite pull out from underneath. She considers her words very carefully before answering. "I'm not allowed to tell you specifically about that topic, but if you ask me for my opinion, then I'd have to say that it certainly sounds like you have already come to a conclusion that you made all on your own on the topic..."

Her evasive words just make me grin. Now that I know her and how she's restricted from telling me certain things, her rambling is really just a confirmation. So... using mana is magic. I've been using magic this whole time...

Wait, does that, like, make me a magical creature or something? Is it using magic that makes you a magical creature, or is it just that magical creatures can normally use magic? And rail units can use it too? Because of our manastones, like I thought before?

Then what does that say for people I teach to use magic? I mean, can all magical creatures use it, or just some of them? Are humans magical creatures because they can be taught magic?

I have so many questions. Putting them to Reena doesn't help though, she just says she isn't allowed to discuss those particular things. Every answer creates a dozen more questions...

"You're making wonderful progress," Reena compliments me. "Just keep studying and thinking about everything, and I'm sure you'll discover even more."

I flush a little. "Thanks..." I'm still not used to sincere compliments like that... Since that's all I had in mind to ask her about, I just thank her again, and draw my mana back.

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Magic...

Flopped down on my bed, I have to wonder, why isn't Reena allowed to talk about using mana being magic? It must mean that the gods are trying to keep the relation between mana and magic secret, but why would they try to hide something like that? There are so many possibilities. I know so little about all of this, it could be a million different things I've never even imagined before because I don't know anything about them...

I know I'm not going to get anywhere with this, I don't know enough. I'll just drop it for now. I still have to practice with my mana more. My... magic, I guess...

But that just gets me wondering, what part of using mana counts as magic? Is it magic when I just push it around inside myself? Or only when I use it to do something? Apparently telepathy counts. Myra and Avara using it to make their claws sharper works too, which probably means that channeling mana counts...

Wait, they're channeling mana to their claws when they use their magic. Does that mean their claws have some sort of mana structure inside them, like my divine gear and Reena's mark? And Avara's fur too, since apparently she can channel that to make it more durable?

Myra is busy fighting a boar, so I turn my attention to Avara instead. I don't even need to say anything since she was already following my thoughts. With a little mental nod, we grab the mana inside her and direct it over to her claws. It's easy to find. While it doesn’t have anything I’d call an ‘appearance’ like my divine gear or mark do when I reach the thing attached to her barrier where her claws are, it’s in the right spot, and… I don’t know, kind of just feels right.

Without channeling the mana into them, I reach inside, to find that my guess was right, there is a mana structure here. On the upside, it's not so complex I don't even know what I'm looking at. On the downside, I have no idea what any of it means anyway...

Still, it's worth taking a look to see what I find. The structure is actually really simple, only about a half dozen pieces of connected mana as I skim across it. Starting at it's base, I find... colorless? I'm immediately reminded of my own colorless mana that I found inside Reena's mark. Just like that time, the colorless mana isn't a mana well. I'm starting to see a pattern...

So maybe, if colorless mana is used as the core, but it has other things connected to it, then it doesn't make a mana well? That's my best guess for now. But there's one more thing that catches my attention. I push through the structure to get a closer look at the little piece of colorless mana and... yeah, it's definitely not mine. This must be Avara's own, original colorless mana, from before I converted her.

I briefly consider that maybe it could be possible to convert them back later if they wanted me to, but with just one piece, I don't have any way of mixing a smaller amount of mana into it to make more. Huh...

Shelving those thoughts for now, I move on. Let's see how this structure is laid out. Following the single connection coming off of the colorless mana core, I find a single, straight line of connected mana. Down its length, it goes: earth, earth, light, air, earth, light.

That's so simple, it feels like I should be able to pick up something from it. For instance, three of those are earth. I know that their claws are supposed to cut better when they channel mana into them, so maybe all of that earth makes them more hard and durable so they cut better? But how does that work with the air and light mana mixed in there?

I really want to compare Avara's claws to Myra's, see if they're the same or different, since they aren't exactly the same kind of magical creature. But she's still busy, so I look to Gram instead. Splitting my attention to him, I direct his mana over into his claws to check the structure and... huh, they are... similar, but not the same.

Like Avara, his claws start off with colorless mana, Gram's own, original colorless mana. From there, it has the same first part of earth, earth, light that she has. However, it gets a little more complicated after that. It actually splits up into two separate connected segments. The first is air, earth, while the other is earth, earth, fire. And then both of the segments come back together, to a single piece of light mana at the end.

I have to stare at the whole thing for a bit to realize, but when it clicks, I get it. If I imagine that final piece of light as finishing both of the parts connected to it, then both creatures have essentially the same structure inside their claws, the only difference being the one little extra piece Gram has, that goes earth, earth, fire, light.

Again, more earth mana. Maybe that means that his claws work better than Avara's? Or maybe the effect is just different in some way, but not exactly better. I quickly amend, when Avara starts to get discouraged.

"This is interesting!" Myra suddenly exclaims. She really wants to know, so she throws caution to the wind for a few moments, and channels her own claws to rip through the boar she's fighting. I flinch and cringe a little from the sudden gore she flings everywhere in the process, but I can't say it isn't... effective...

Completely ignoring the... stuff smeared all over her fur, she thinks toward us. "Here, let me check," and looks inside her own claws.

Wow, they fit the pattern almost perfectly. They have all the same parts as Avara and Gram's claws, but rather than no split like Avara, and a two way split like Gram, hers have a three way split, with the additional section going water, earth, lightning. It also converges down to the light mana at the end, just like the others.

"Yup, I really am the best," she proudly proclaims. I just shake my head at her and take a moment to comfort Avara, reminding her that I have no idea whether more stuff in the structures are necessarily better. It only takes a few moments before Myra calms down and joins in, telling her that she doesn't just have her claws, she also has her fur.

That's right, she does have her fur, doesn't she? I'd almost forgotten about that, thoughts buried in the differences between the claws of each. But I put that off for now.

There's one big thing that stands out to me as soon as I take a step back to think. Avara isn't exactly the same type of magical creature as Myra and Gram, so I can understand her claws being different. But Gram and Myra are definitely the same type. So why are their claws different?

"Could just be like how everyone's a little different," Maven suddenly volunteers. "Just look at Kiara, she has nicer fur than the rest of us, despite... well, you know. That turns my thoughts to how Kiara is currently rolling in mud and laughing like she's crazy. Right, she does that sometimes, doesn't she?

"Maybe that's actually good for her fur?" I offer. Everyone shrugs, but I'm getting a little off track. Whether it's natural differences, like people having different hair colors, or something else I don't understand yet, magical creatures definitely have magical structures inside of them that they can use to create magical effects. Apparently, whether they can normally control mana or not, since they said they were able to use their claws even before I converted them and they gained my mana control abilities.

I nod to myself a few times. I think I'm starting to get somewhere with all of this. I still haven't figured out how these mana structures work, but at least these ones I can form some sort of connection between what I'm looking at and the effects that come from them, whether I understand all the details or not. At least it's a place to start.

"Uhh, Aria?" I blink a little, drawn from my thoughts by Eve, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Umm, yeah?" I ask.

"Why are you nodding?"

"O-oh!" I realize aloud. Of course she would wonder about that, I've been staring off at nothing for a really long time and I just started to nod out of nowhere... "Ah, umm, sorry about that. I was just thinking a lot about something and I think I kind of, uhh, thought of something..." My rambling words don't really reach an actual point, or an explanation...

Eve cracks a grin at me. "Alright then..." Now that she actually has my attention, she points over to Mary. "I think this is a pretty bad one, she's been resting, but I think it's gotten a little worse. She's probably going to be down for a few days, at least. Only a slight fever, but her breathing doesn't sound great."

When Eve waves me over, I go to Mary's bed. I don't actually need to get that close to check her breathing with my hearing, but I lean over her anyway. Listening closely, I can tell what Eve is talking about. Just a little raspy, but I can feel the force she's putting in to draw each breath. Like it's difficult, labored. It immediately reminds me of the poisoned man I helped. Wouldn't mana also help with something like this?

I consider it for just a moment, but I'm not sure, and I can't really do anything with Eve watching anyway. For now, I just nod and thank her again for taking care of Mary.

"It's no problem." She glances away a little, pausing before saying, "We're all friends here, we have to take care of each other, you know?"

That makes me smile a little, despite the other part that goes unsaid. Something I've picked up living here the last few months.

'Because no one else will.'

"Yeah... friends."