The next morning when I get to work, I sit down. I want to tell Eryk what happened, but one of the shopkeepers is talking to him about the inventories of different metals. Thankfully, they finish up quickly. But before they do, the man mentions something about time off for the harvest festival. That's right, I never asked about that... I push that off for later though.
"Hey, Eryk. I messed with that slag last night," I speak up once Eryk's free. "It turned out to be like nickel. Whichever part gave me the mana I wanted, it broke down after a little while. I... I'm probably going to keep needing more to use..."
"Huh..." He considers that a moment, then asks, "What do you need so much mana for anyway? You don't go through nickel very fast."
"Oh, umm, to practice with it. I can hold the special mana outside my body like I showed you before, but it's super hard and I keep losing bits of it as I practice, so I keep needing to make more."
"Ahh, I see how that would be an issue."
"S-so, umm, but I realized that it would be useful!" I claim. "Since I'm pulling one more part out of the slag, we can do alchemy tests on it. So it's not like I'm wasting it, even if I keep needing more!"
"Aria," he raises his hand to stop me. "I already told you, the slag doesn't have any value right now. Giving it to you is no problem. It doesn't matter how much, or what you do with it."
"Y-yeah. Right..." I mumble. "Thanks, Eryk."
He smiles a bit. "You're welcome. And based on what you've said, maybe some good will come out of the leftover slag too, you never know. We can test that out later."
I beam at him and nod happily, then we get on with our days when Claire arrives not long after.
----------------------------------------
We spend the day on math. All sorts of complicated rules and formulas about circles, and how to calculate everything about them. It feels odd, that there's so much about circles in particular. Do we have math like this for every kind of shape? Well, it's all math, so I have a great time getting into all the little details of how each piece of the lesson fits together.
The most interesting part of the lesson is about this thing Claire calls 'Al.' At first I think she's saying 'all,' until she clarifies. Apparently it's pronounced with more of an 'ah' sound, though it's such really tiny difference I can barely hear it unless she exaggerates.
Claire says the odd, non-word is a 'constant.' Basically just a stand-in for a number like a variable is, but it never changes. "Thus the name," she chuckles as she explains.
Al is the specific ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle, and it's used in basically everything about them. And the really interesting part, despite being an unchanging constant, we don't really know what it is. Something slightly larger than three, and Claire says the closest value she's ever read about is the fraction twenty two over seven.
Apparently, the math to get that accurate can be extremely long and difficult. Whatever the case, I have a great time. I always love math days the best.
----------------------------------------
"Oh, what's a 'harvest festival?' I suddenly speak up at lunch, as I tend to be doing more lately.
And just like usual, the random question earns me strange looks from both Claire and Eryk. Followed, same as always, by an explanation from Claire. "The harvest festival is the celebration of the last harvest of the year before winter. It takes place at the end of Hurven or beginning of Reeze, whenever they finish the harvest. I've heard things are running late with everything that's happened lately, so a week or two maybe?" she turns the question to Eryk.
"Should be on the thirtieth, or maybe the first, if we're unlucky," he answers. Doesn't that make it right after the next battle?
"A-ah..." I mumble, scratching my head. And what was that about being unlucky?
"It is a city-wide holiday, so you won't have class or work that day," he notes. "Word should be spreading soon on the exact date, once it's close enough to set it. Let's just hope that they make it by the thirtieth. It's considered an ill omen for the coming winter if the festival takes place in Reeze."
"...Why?" I question. Because it means it took them too long to harvest all the food?
"It's a silly superstition in my opinion," Eryk begins, waving a hand dismissively, "but it's worth knowing since lots of other people get worried over it. It has to do with the thought that crops harvested in Hurven, the month of the land," he notes, "will keep far better into the winter months than those harvested in Reeze." Reeze was the month of... I have to search my memory, all the way back to when I learned about this. The month of... Oh, right...
My heart starts to sink when I remember. Reeze is Reena's month, the month of knowledge. At this point, I really shouldn't be surprised that people would think everything bad about it just because it's connected to her, but it still bothers me anyway.
"Ah, I think I get it," I respond with a dull sigh, glancing across the table to where Claire hasn't made any comment at all. "Thanks, I'll remember that." I drop the topic there, not wanting to dwell on it any longer. Lunch finishes up soon after, and it's back to my math lessons.
----------------------------------------
After Claire leaves for the day, it's time for work. On our way into the back room, Eryk goes to one of the cooled slag troughs at the back of the workshop and breaks off a new chunk for me. He tosses it over and I give him a big thanks. I wouldn't be able to keep up my practice without more of this.
From there, we continue with our work. Combining things, testing things, seeing what patterns we can pull out of everything.
One particular idea Eryk has turns out to be really good. By melting down the slag I used up yesterday, we try our catalyst coil on it to see if it still combines the same way as normal copper slag. "It'll take until tomorrow to cool, but we'll be able to see then," he shrugs, the crucible sitting in the back corner of the locked room.
As we work, I start to wonder when Eryk will want to get back to making new star metals. After all, that's where he's going to make a ton of money soon, not from any of our messing with alchemy. Well, unless we can discover something else extremely valuable. Like the burning powder which can replace sulphuric acid, actually. I'm sure he'll be able to sell that for something, since sulphuric acid only comes from magical creatures and it's super expensive. Although, the only use for it I know of is making sulphra, which isn't worth much, so I'm not so sure...
In any case, he doesn't actually need me to do the star metal combination process with him. He can do that himself, he only really needs me to help look over what he makes afterward. And even then, that mostly applies to mana effects, which aren't usually useful to him.
Since his time with me is so limited, maybe he's focusing on the things only I can do...?
At the tenth bell, I head back home for the day. The days are getting noticeably shorter, so it's pretty late when we arrive, but my homework is a quick read today. Just a few more bits about different guilds, so I still go out so I can use what little time I have for special mana practice, slipping back into town just as the guards are making the last call before they close the gate for the night.
----------------------------------------
Hureday and Firoday pass similarly. More class, more work, more mana practice any time I get the chance. I end up using up a chunk of copper slag each day, and thanking Eryk the best I can when he keeps giving me more. Even if he always assures me they're worthless, they aren't. At least not to me.
I also manage to pick up my orders from the blacksmiths, and continue getting around town without running into any more trouble. Though I still can't pinpoint that one pair of eyes that falls on me now and then... So far everything's been going alright, even if it is annoying to always be on the lookout for people. Eryk wasn't kidding when he said his party would put a lot of attention on me. At least no one's tried kidnapping me yet...
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
During all our experiments over the couple days, we start discovering a number of things. First is the 'depleted' copper slag as we decide to call it - given the way I deplete all the special light mana out of it. It still contains lime and the yellow substance, and it doesn't have any reaction to our catalyst coil anymore. So whatever part inside I'm using up, it's one of the things that combines. More than that, since it still has the yellow flecks after we try, that means the those are also part of the combination. It also means that if there's anything else in the rock, it doesn't combine with the other parts.
All told, we've narrowed things down to the point where we can make a few possible conclusions. Copper slag probably contains three specific parts. Lime, the yellowing substance, and the special light mana one. If there's anything else hiding in there, none of our prodding can find it.
Most importantly, at least to me anyway, we find out that the part of it that produces special light mana is the part that is magnetic in mana fields. Well, I originally thought it wasn't magnetic, just that it pulled toward magnets like normal metal. But that was wrong. It's just that during my original tests, the magnetic parts were in teeny tiny bits, trying to pull along whole chunks of rock that weren't. Which makes a lot of sense in hindsight...
Of course, we only find this out after grinding down the slag into powder, then using a strong magnet and a mana field to pull out just the magnetic bits. And that's when I notice that those same magnetic bits keep giving me special light mana after separated from the rest of the slag.
----------------------------------------
"So..." Eryk hums as we finally manage to separate the copper slag into three distinct... not exactly piles - since one is liquid, sitting inside a crucible. First, we crushed the slag and I pulled out the special light substance with a magnet. That one actually looks kind of shiny and metallic when it's all piled up together. Then we added water to make lime water, and scooped out the leftover chunks of yellowing rock, more of a dull gray outside of a mana field. "Let's see if we can melt these all down again, like we do with sulphra."
"Oh, that sounds good," I agree. To do that though, we wind up needing to break up and separate a bunch more copper slag, because the amounts that come out aren't really equal.
It's hard to say how much is lime, since it's mixed with water now, but there's definitely more of the metallic looking, special light making stuff than the other two. Even so, after we dump in a good deal more of each so we have enough to make a good batch of each from melting them down, the metallic one feels strangely light when we load it into a crucible.
All three go into the furnaces, and it doesn't even take that long, at least compared to the usual time to melt metals out of ore, before they come back out, melted down and molten hot. Except for the lime anyway. That one just went back to its normal grayish powder form in the bottom of its crucible. Kind of like that other strange powder we found, where heating it up just boiled off the water again.
That's just two examples so far, but they had almost the exact same reaction to water. So we try it with the burning powder too, and find the same thing again. We add water and it becomes an acid, then heat it up to remove the water again, and it goes back to its usual white crystal form.
"It looks like a pattern," I tell Eryk. "Maybe some substances can go back and forth between two forms with and without water," I guess.
"Possibly..." He rubs his chin while considering all of our messily scattered test samples.
That's all we have time for throughout the week, we'll have to check on the outcome of our melted down copper slag parts next Arcaday.
"Bye, Eryk," I say as he's untying the smock I've been wearing, shortly after the tenth bell rang. "See you next week."
"Yeah, see you then, Aria," he rubs my head, then stops me just before I head out the door. I have to wait a few ticks as he gets something from the far end of the workshop. "Here, you'll need these over the weekend," he says and hands me a few more chunks of copper slag.
"Oh right." I didn't think of that at all. "Thanks a lot!"
"You're welcome," he chuckles, and sends me out. He doesn't come back to his office with me while I grab my stuff, so he must still be working on things in the workshop. With my extra slag chunks piled on top of my basket, I head out the door. John sweeps me up and carries me home like always.
----------------------------------------
"Soooo..." Emily trills, kicking her feet happily and looking at me over her shoulder on Nuvoday morning. "What do you want to do today?"
"Well..." I hesitate. I want to meet Effy again before the battle. And today is probably the best day for that. Besides buying some mira sap, there's nothing else I specifically I need to do to prepare for the battle next week. Just practice all I can, really.
And talk to Effy.
Emily turns around. She stares at me closely, eyes narrowing and tone going lower, like she can see through me somehow. "What is it?"
"I... have, uhh, someone I want to meet today." I say it like that since the other girls are still in our room.
"Can I... come?" The way she asks it, she can obviously tell I'm hesitant to bring her.
"I mean..." I fumble. There's no real reason not to, right? But I have this weird anxious feeling in my chest. I've been keeping things with my life here and with the rail units separate until now. It's not like I want to hide it from her though, right? I trust Emily with everything. But would she even want to meet Effy? Meet a working rail unit? I know how scared she still is of monsters after everything that happened, even if it's been a while, so bringing her to meet one might be a bad idea...
"Aria?" When she calls my name to drag me out of my spinning thoughts, I realize it's been more than three ticks since I stopped. "If you don't want me to come for some reason, you can just tell me." She says it really calmly, but I know it would hurt her to leave her out without saying anything.
"Come on," I speak up, taking her by the wrist and pulling her out of our room, the other girls giving us looks as we go past. I keep pulling her along slowly, using the contact for telepathy. First, I just tap on her outer barrier as a warning, before forming a connection right to her soul, so I can use actual words to make this as clear as I can. Sure enough, there's a little stab of pain in her heart that she hasn't been showing.
I think to her, "It's not that I don't want you to come, I'm just... not really sure if you would be comfortable." Then I explain. "I want to meet Effy today."
It takes her a moment, I don't talk about Effy too often. Then she remembers, and there's a pang of shock, immediately connecting to who Effy is. What Effy is. And a gut-deep fear I can feel her pushing down on. It all passes in a rush, before she responds, "Oh, so that's it. I..." Her soul twists around in uncertainty. "Well, you don't really need me there for this, right? If you're just meeting up to talk some, then..." That's all she has to say. After all, her feelings beneath speak far more loudly.
Even if Effy is kind of like me, even if I care about her... Even if Emily has nothing against her personally, she really doesn't want to go out of her way to meet a terrifying monster for no good reason. Not unless she has to.
"It's fine," I say out loud this time, drawing back from her soul so I don't need to feel any more. It's making my chest hurt. I hide the pain and keep a straight face. "Just hang out with your other friends for today. I won't be doing anything that interesting anyway."
She manages to hold her feelings in incredibly well too. "Yeah, sure. I'll do that." Her smile is genuine, even if it doesn't quite reach her eyes this time.
----------------------------------------
We end up going our own ways after breakfast, Emily off to play with her friends, and me... I glance out the front door and catch someone watching the house from down the street. Hmm...
There are kids everywhere since it's the weekend, so I don't exactly want to climb out of a window. That would draw too much attention. I try searching the back of the house, and grin when I find a particularly loose board all the way in the far back corner of the storeroom, pretty much completely out of sight behind a cabinet.
Pushing on it, the gap is tiny, but I just manage to squeeze my own tiny body through with a good deal of effort, then wiggle my basket out after me. Just like that, I'm in an alley out behind the house. I hate that my size can be useful for things like this...
I head northward, out the north gate to sit in my little grassy spot like I have been lately. I have my chunks of copper slag with me, so I sit and continue with my special mana practice while Chisa carefully checks over the city for Effy.
It takes quite a while, more than a full bell, before she finally spots the rail unit walking through the central district, way over by the east gate. I guess she's had a while, so she's really started expanding her range from the rail unit building. Not to mention she's actually adult size, so walking that far wouldn't be any trouble for her like it is for me.
We don't want to be as conspicuous as last time, so instead of swooping right down to Effy where everyone would see and create even more troublesome rumors about Saras, she watches until Effy is in a good spot. Chisa flies down to the edge of a well up the street from Effy. It's a dangerous spot for a bird like her, so she makes sure there aren't any people right near the well as she's landing.
Now directly within Effy's line of sight, Chisa flaps her wings a couple times to get her attention, and meets her eyes. Then she pushes off again, right up and over Effy's head, and lands on a nearby building. Effy turns around, spotting her, and Chisa gives another flap. That's all it takes to have Effy follow. It's going to take a while to lead her all the way through the city, so I leave that part to Chisa, hopping from one building to the next, while I maintain my focus on my practice.