The kitsune mage pointed to a particular object on a higher shelf, following her finger with his eyes, Lindle’s gaze landed on a familiar roll of scales he had laid out on the shelf. It was the scales of the zmey he killed for his Milestone Rite.

He had many of the draconid parts set away neatly around his workshop. Most of the meat had, of course, been used for the steaks served during his celebration, but the rest were expertly cleaned and prepared by Mr. Dalton and his employees at Madam Holly’s request. He had scales, two sets of fangs in various conditions, claws, bones, and the more valuable organs such as the two draconid breath sacks in cold storage, though considering their ice aspects they probably would have kept outside for a good while anyways.

They were among the more valuable and Ethos powerful materials he possessed, and he hadn’t touched any of them during his experiments yesterday to not risk wasting them, but he had a lot of scales to work with.

“Those are scales from some kind of draconid yeah? Those are usually pretty tough, can you make some kind of armor from it?” Dorothea suggested.

“Armor is too large, I can only work with pretty small amounts of material at a time right now,” Lindle explained as he reached up to pull off the roll of scales. “So far I've mostly been making jewelry, or small handheld objects. zmey scales should have good defensive and protective Ethos to work with though.”

He spread the roll out on his worktable, inspecting the scales and activating his Ethos sense. He could sense various aspects, a trio forming the primary traits for the scales, a protective one, an elemental ice one, and a new one, of power and rage, that he could simply define as draconid. Despite being as solid a contender for dominance as the other two traits, it somehow felt thin, like it was a weaker or lesser version of itself.

“Yes, Ethos,” Dorothea repeated with curiosity coming over her face. “Have you been able to figure anything more about it now that you have your class?”

“Not much, my skill doesn’t let me sense anything new about it that I couldn’t sense before with my feat, but it does let me extract it from objects and mold them, even shift them slightly.”

“Fascinating, solid Ethos, like Nothing? And it shifts based on your Skill? Your intent?”

“It might be easier to show you, but first, I need to make this more manageable, harvesting all the Ethos from these scales at once is definitely more than I can handle.” Lindle rubbed his chin in consideration. “Can you pass me that knife?”

Dorothea obliged, and handed him a decently sized knife for butchering animal parts. It wasn’t a commonly used tool, but considering the need to cut apart monsters for alchemical parts on occasion, Lindle had gotten one. Lindle started to cut into the roll, attempting to strip away a long but thin strip of hide while keeping the scales attached. The cut wasn’t perfectly even, and the material was tough, but Lindle drew on his Dex and Str stats to get the job quickly. The quality of the cut shouldn’t matter once the Ethos had been harvested anyways, so it being a bit ragged was fine, even if it did mar the aesthetic of the beautifully preserved roll.

“Watch this,” Lindle said excitedly as he activated [Artifice Crafting]. Even though she couldn’t sense the Ethos traveling to his palm like he could, Dorothea immediately began observing with intention and fascination, giving him a bit of room.

Lindle gripped the strip of scales and hide and plucked out a long thin mass of Pelos, the black claylike blob hanging from his fingers, and the scales began to dust away. Lindle’s gaze followed the black flecks for a split-second, but he then let it pile onto his desk and held the Pelos in his hand, showing it to Dorothea.

“This is called Pelos.” Lindle said with a smile on his face, as Dorothea peered at the strip of black material, glancing between it and Nothing to compare.

“Fascinating. So this is Ethos given form. My mana sense is picking up on… something when I focus on it, but it’s not giving me much. I’d love to study some with all my equipment back home, do you think you could give me some sometime?”

Lindle blinked. “I hadn’t considered not using Pelos to make something and testing it yet.” He looked at Nothing. “Would that be possible?”

Yes, though it would rapidly fall apart and disperse if not converted into a fabled object after long enough. If you kept it in a flame it would hold for longer, but you won’t be able to harvest any Ethos as powerful as mine, so any Pelos you make would still eventually disperse.

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

Nothing pointed to their own flame for emphasis with a tendril. Lindle nodded and turned back to Dorothea.

“They say it would be possible, with a flame if you wanted to preserve it, but not for very long, so we’d need to make some preparations.” The mage nodded, and Lindle continued. “I don’t mind giving you some in the future, but for now, I have to decide on what exactly I’m going to make with this.”

They both looked at the Pelos in his palm. “It’s got a protection aspect inside, so I was thinking I might make it some kind of toughness item? Perhaps with some cold protection too, like a frost resistance potion, its ice aspect is powerful too, likely because it was a frost type draconid.”

Dorothea tilted her head. “What are the limits for what the effect can be exactly? That seems a bit simple compared to that band on your wrist.”

“I’m still not really sure, so far I’ve mostly been using the aspects to try and make the effects do something similar to whatever I got the material I got the Ethos from could do, especially when it’s a more complicated effect. I made the Hotpond Band from a Steamheart tree core.”

“Do you have to? That’s just one way you can make the Ethos behave right?”

Lindle hummed to himself. That was true, making shadows deeper wasn’t something that blackbell blossoms could do, but he still used to darkness aspected Ethos from it to give that ability to the Petalshade ring. Maybe he could create a more complicated effect that the zmey itself didn’t have as long as it made sense considering the aspects he had available.

“Hmm… protection, cold, draconid…” He mused aloud. Could he combine those ideas somehow? He could already protect himself from the cold… hm… “Protection from the cold? Protect from cold, granted from cold?”

The Hungry Trowel could create an effect using mana as a resource, could his items use other things as resources? It did seem like it was a bit more powerful than his other items, and if there was something abundant in the Reach, it was the cold.

The idea gripped him, and he immediately started molding the Pelos in his hand. The physical shape of the item was still a bit nebulous in his head, but if it was something that was meant to interact with the cold, it should probably be exposed. Something on his chest perhaps? He’d seen Soarians wear objects on the outside of their clothes before, pinned to their chests. What were they called, a brooch? Those had always seemed very exposed to Lindle, and that was what he needed.

He shaped the Pelos into the desired shape, the beginnings of a stylistic dragon scale forming in his hands. As he did so, he called to the aspects held in the Ethos, bringing all three dominant aspects forward, not repressing one in favor of the others, but keeping them equally in the forefront, but with his intent he gave each different purposes.

To the protection aspect, he charged with function, or perhaps the motivation. To the draconid aspect, Lindle charged the item's shape and form, it would be made from dragon scale, and the form by which it protected would be draconic in nature. Finally, to the cold aspect, in a similar way he used the consumption aspect from the Ethos of a Wretched Willow, he shaped his intent for the item to draw power from the cold. It had been much easier with the consumption Ethos. The zmey had been aspected to the cold, to being immune to the cold, and creating more of it, not drawing energy from it, and it’s ice aspected Ethos required a lot of intense focus to shape from one purpose to the other, but shift it he did, and eventually, Lindle activated the last part of his Skill.

In his hand, was a brooch made of zmey scale, a small white needle on the back that looked a bit like bone. Individual scales bent and melded together to form one larger stylistic white scale covered in cracks like ice, a little smaller than his palm. It was the most visually striking item he had made so far, it actually looked like what he would expect a magical artifact found deep in a dungeon to look like.

-Frostgreed Scale

Effect: When wearing the brooch, the wearer will be protected by scales of ghostly frost, the amount of and power of the scales are determined by how cold the immediate area around the wearer is.

-You have leveled up! Gained 1 level in the [Artificer] Class. (lvl 3)

-Stat gains : +1 Str; +1 Con; +1 Dex; +2 Int; +1 Res; +1 Cha.

Lindle let out a delighted series of chuckles to himself, smiling widely as both his new item, or he supposed he should call it, Artifact, and his status screen.

“Amazing…” Dorothea said behind him, inspecting his hand. Lindle flinched, having almost forgotten she was there. Dorothea looked at him and laughed softly.

“Single-minded focus is a good trait for spellcrafting, so I imagine it’s helpful for your class too. Just try to stay aware if you’re going to be going into fights and keep that to the workshop.” She advised. Lindle nodded with a small blush.

He held it a little closer to her, and Dorothea let out a low whistle. “That sounds pretty impressive, reminds me a bit of some more esoteric cryomancy spells.”

“Yeah, I think for hunting in the Reach, it’s going to be super handy.” Really it was almost universally useful. He felt a bit bad just making it for himself.

Hmm… Did it have to have to only be for himself?

“Hey, Nothing?” He looked down at the homunculus. “Can I make an item I’ve made before? Like, can I make another of these?” He showed the brooch.

If you use the same materials with the same Ethos, and you copy your intent, it should be possible to replicate an effect you’ve made before.

Lindle smiled. “Well, it’s a good thing I have a lot more scale to work with.”