Breakthroughs weren’t always dramatic. Sometimes they happened in the heat of battle, or during a grueling training session, but sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, they were far more mundane. In this case, it happened in the nicest bathroom Wyn had ever been in, as he was washing his hands.

Even the bathroom of the merchant's guild building was huge. The size wasn't what blew his mind though. Unlike in Straetum, or any other place he’d been since leaving for that matter, there wasn’t a water basin for hand washing. No, there was what he could only describe as a small, elevated, artificial river along one of the walls, which brought in clean water from the right and exited the left. He’d had to confirm with someone that it wasn’t actually just a decoration before using it. And as if that wasn’t enough opulence, the wall above it had a mirror.

It was as he was washing his hands–and certainly not playing with the river, fascinated by how it worked–that he achieved something he’d been practicing at for over a month now: sending thoughts to Eia. He knew he could reach her mind through the bond. If he shook it, she’d feel it, and with practice, he’d gotten better at feeling the bond without her shaking it back.

Rather than shaking it though, this time he tried ‘grabbing’ it, until he could feel it in his mind, like a cord held almost completely taut.

Eia are you there? Wyn thought for the millionth time, trying to send the message through the bond.

He felt a surprised tingle in return. Wyn? Wyn! I actually heard that!

The bar of soap fell from his hands into the water. Can you still hear me? He thought, trying to replicate the feeling.

I can! It’s a bit fuzzy but I can hear you. I can also tell you’re craving more smoked skyeel… you’re sending too much.

Wait, how much could she hear of his thoughts?

Everything you send through the bond. Right now that’s basically everything; you’re not filtering them. Well don’t try not to think embarrassing thoughts! Wait, stop thinking about– Agh I don’t want to picture that! He let go of the bond, terminating the communication abruptly, his face heating up.

He dried his hands and walked out of the bathroom, clearing his throat. Progress was progress.

Kei was waiting for him by the entrance, reading through a collection of papers with a thoughtful look on her face. She’d changed out of the dirty worker’s uniform she’d been wearing into a simple tunic and trousers, over top of which was a buttoned blue coat that fell to just above her knees. They’d ordered the guards not to touch anything while they returned to the guild and retrieved the inventory sheets. When they’d left, the mist had begun to start dissipating, but it was still too thick for anyone besides Wyn to enter, they hoped it would be gone when they returned.

“Good to go?” Wyn asked, receiving a nod in reply.

“There’s a lot to go through. I’m glad I got to sleep, though I’m probably going to need more coffee.” She pursed her lips as they left and walked back out onto the streets. Even as they walked, she kept looking down at the papers, shuffling through them one by one, and he had to make sure she didn’t run into people as they went.

Wyn wondered about the long-term effects of using his blessing to stay awake for so long. Sleep was different from poison and fatigue, but he wasn’t sure if it contributed to his post-burning crashes like those things did. There were obvious facets to the blessing, like how it invigorated him, and let him enter a heightened state of performance at will, but if he was tired enough, he’d still feel it even while burning. As the adrenaline from his earlier battle had faded, and he’d stopped stoking the flames, the tinge of fatigue at the edge of his senses had returned.

From what he’d put together, the embers of spirit fire had been inside him since the first time he visited the forest. Thanks to that, he’d very rarely gotten sick as a kid, and he hadn’t been able to get drunk when he was older. But then, he had been affected by the venom from the deep floor snake in the battle for Straetum, at least until his blessing had been fully ignited.

If there was a limit to the embers, it followed that there might be a limit to the flames. Like metal in a forge, no matter how much fire there was, if it wasn’t hot enough it wouldn’t melt iron. That must be what happened when he “stoked” them: increasing the metaphorical heat.

I need to learn more about my blessing. Not knowing my limit is dangerous. Iillia said there was more to it, but there’s still things I don’t even know about its purification. Maybe I should start drinking poisons to test it? That was a weird thought. He had a hard time believing he would go from being fine to simply dying if he drank too strong a poison, but there was a level of uncertainty to it, and he wouldn’t know that limit until he hit it.

He filed the thoughts away for later though; they’d reached the warehouse. As they approached, the guards stood a little straighter.

“Has the smoke dissipated?” Kei asked. She was using what he’d come to call her “business voice”, stately and confident.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The guards informed them that they had, and so they walked inside to inspect the building. The fight had been limited in both scope and duration, so there hadn’t really been much damage to speak of. With any luck, that would mean the evidence would be left untouched.

“What’s the plan?” Wyn asked.

Kei looked around, happy to see the smoke gone. “We start going through the boxes, see what they took, and log it. I asked for some info on the previous thefts as well, but I haven’t been able to form much of a connection in the stolen goods yet, other than the fact they were all valuable. These papers have records of the goods in each crate, you take half the workers, I’ll take the other half.” She pushed the papers into his arms.

“Don’t you need these too?” He asked.

“No need. I memorized them already.”

Wyn raised an eyebrow. The walk over hadn’t been that long, maybe five to ten minutes, and there were more than twenty papers in the stack.

She smirked. “What? You have your talents, I have mine. There’s a reason I was… never mind. Anyways, just get them going for now. Once your group knows what to do, I want you to look around and find those pouches, along with the dagger you said he threw. The dagger is a stretch, but the pouches could be a really good clue.”

Wyn gave her a salute and got to work, organizing the workers into smaller groups to go through each of the crates and mark anything missing from the inventory sheets. The thief had said that they “got what they came for”. But what was it?

Next, he searched the warehouse, gathering up all the pouches. Opening one up revealed that the strange blue liquid which had once moistened the bag was almost entirely gone. Luckily, the small amounts that had seeped away from whatever plant had been mashed up inside seemed to remain, so he hoped that’d be useful. By the time he was about halfway done, he found the dagger as well. Well, the thrown dagger, the thief had thrown one and fought him with the other.

Wait… that’s not a normal dagger, or even a throwing knife. He realized. It’s more like a cooking knife than anything.

It had been impossible to tell during the battle, but the blade was cut more like a kitchen knife than anything. It was single-sided, with a thin metal handle which curved into a small knot at the end, only wrapped in two layers of cheap cloth. He took it to Kei, who stopped sorting items to appraise it carefully.

She turned it over twice before her face lit up. “This is perfect!”

“Really?” Wyn asked. “How so?”

She flipped it over, pointing to a small mark stamped into the metal near the hilt: a circle with a set of lines inside it. “This is a touchmark. Some blacksmiths use them to mark their work. Usually you’ll see it done for higher-quality pieces. Seems the maker of this knife considers himself a master.” There was a hint of humor in her voice at that.

“Ok… so we know the blacksmith who made the knife? I don’t understand how that helps us. Unless you’re saying the blacksmith is the thief?”

Kei looked at him. “Tell me Wyn, did you get the impression that this thief was an experienced criminal? The kind of mastermind that would leave behind false clues?”

Wyn thought back on the confrontation, parsing through the man’s words and actions. He shook his head. “No. I didn’t. He had some good tricks, and he was fast, but he made too many mistakes: approaching me, trying to fight, panicking when I fought back better than expected. He said he didn’t have a choice. Those don’t strike me as the words and actions of a master thief. Our trap was by no means perfect either, but he still fell for it.”

“Right, that was my impression after what you told me as well.” Kei nodded. “So let’s assume this is his knife. If we can track down the blacksmith, we’ll be one step closer to finding the thief. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a start.”

Wyn nodded slowly. “And if it doesn’t lead anywhere? That could just be a dead end.”

“Then we reassess and try a different approach.” Kei said confidently. “We gather all the evidence we can, and we follow it to where it leads. If it’s a dead end, we adjust and try again.”

“I guess I can’t complain about that. You’ve thought this through huh?”

Kei’s cheeks gained a hint of pink as she glanced away. “I said I'd do my best to help you catch him didn't I? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more inventory to look through.”

She handed Wyn the knife and walked back over towards the group of workers at the nearest crate and resumed searching through them. Wyn wrapped the knife in a cloth and put it next to the pouches, which he’d gathered into an empty fruit crate. He then got to work himself.

Hours passed as Wyn gave himself to the work, sorting items, checking them off a list, rinse, and repeat. The only break was for a late lunch at a nearby cook-shop consisting of some sort of poultry that didn’t quite taste like chicken, and large purple fruits that he’d seen growing on the cliffside in large vines that blew in the wind. Biting into it revealed a sweet white flesh that bubbled faintly in his mouth. When Kei yelped from the shock of the fizz, it was all Wyn could do not to spit his own out in laughter.

Before leaving, he paid extra to take some bread with him, as the incredibly fluffy looking local dough had him curious for a taste. It was good, but a little too fluffy for his liking. Nonetheless, it was salted well, and he snacked on it while they continued working. By the time the sun set, they’d gone through all of the boxes that could have potentially been stolen from, and Wyn was lying down on his back while Kei looked over the sheets.

Finally, she made a “hmph?” sound that roused him from his languor.

“I take it that means you’ve thought of something?”

“You could say that,” Kei said. “They didn’t steal much in the end. You really did force them to run before they could do more.”

Wyn shrugged. “I figured as much, he only left with a single satchel. It couldn’t have been that much. In fact, I don't know how they would've planned on taking much more anyways.”

“Considering the way they escaped, I'd wager they weren't planning on taking much. That's probably why they've had to hit so many warehouses rather than one big score." Kei paused, thinking carefully about something. "On that note though, you said he said they ‘got what they came for’ right?”

“Yeah?” Wyn raised an eyebrow. “Why? What did they steal? Gems? Cores?”

Kei looked downwards, her tired eyes creasing as she rubbed her chin. After a moment, she looked back up at Wyn. “That’s the thing. All they stole was medicine.”