Not everything worked so smoothly as that. For example, it took Loren a while to realize that he’d need a lot of cooking oil for this little bit of alchemy, and the bottles he’d brought with him wouldn’t be enough. He had less than a liter of the stuff, since one of the two bottles he had in his backpack was only two-thirds full, not nearly enough for the amount of cement Rick said they would be making. Such bulk measurements weren’t something he’d learned in his college classes except in purely theoretical, mathematical terms, but over the years his father had been expanding and improving their house, which had involved a lot of cement pouring as they had covered over muddy ground with pavement. Loren had learned about cement through observation his father’s occasional explanation.

Fortunately, the solution was as simple as informing Steve, who sent Malory off to buy three liters of the stuff. The Thaumaturgist took flight as she wrapped herself in black vene. The flight wasn’t very high or very fast—she was legally required to only fly over public roads unless she was above a hundred feet, the same for any civilian who could fly—but it was quicker than taking the company car or sending someone on one of the motorcycles. One day, Loren really needed to learn how to fly. As a Flame mage, doing so was within his power, but… well, it wasn’t as simple as blasting Flame that was mostly kinetic energy downwards.

Between him and Harmony, they were able to fill his improvised heating vessel with the gravel needed—and then some more because you always needed more—whereupon he proceeded to use Flame to heat the gravel. It was indirect heat, but he had his flavored oil and the day was nice and hot, so he had magic to spare. While the gravel was already hot simply from being laid out in the sunlight, that wasn’t the same as being imbued by heat. It was the most basic aspect of Flame, after all. Heat was magic, magic was heat. However, just because they were equal didn’t mean that they were the same. If you put a lot of heat into something, it got hotter. But if you put a lot of magic into something, while it would remain warm, it would not necessarily get hotter.

Knowing when you had to think in terms of heat or magic was key in proper Flamecraft, whether it was alchemy, metallurgy, engineering or enchantment. In this case, he was imbuing the gravel with heat that would be stored inside the aggregate as magic, which would serve to power the alchemy. He was doing his best to make sure as much of the heat as possible was being imbued into the rocks, but as with all processes—especially one using makeshift equipment—there were inevitable inefficiencies. Still, as long as the gravel held imbuement, a little inefficiency was fine for now. He could work on getting a better vessel later. Maybe some kind of drum or cook pot…

Once the aggregate was imbued, he and Harmony got it ready to mix. One part cement, two parts sand, and three parts aggregate. Harmony seemed to be familiar with the work, meaning she’d done this before, and when Ricky came to check on them all he said was to not add water yet but to get to mixing so that everything was distributed evenly. When they had the sand, gravel and cement was piled together, the two of them did so. It was tiring work, since there was a lot of the stuff to mix, but at least it was work that Loren was familiar with from helping his dad with home repair projects.

“I really wish Steve would just spring for a cement mixer,” Harmony sighed as she used her shovel to scoop from the bottom of the pile, lift it up, and turn it over to dump the load on the top of the pile. Each repetition progressively mixed all the components together, but with the size of the pile there was going to be a lot of repetitions before they even finished on pass of it. “You know, one of those small ones that’s electric.”

Loren hummed to show he was listening, even as he tried to keep an ear on the radio that was playing. It was a big wireless speaker sitting in the shade, relaying some news and talk station. From the relative youth of the speaker, it sounded like it was a station run by one of the big universities.

“—lieve that vigilants should be under the authority of the government.”

“But the government already has a body that could be used for investigation and dealing with organized crime: the police. And as a result, the police are underfunded, under-equipped, overworked…. even if the vigilants somehow agree to be nationalized as a part of the government, will they be as effective as they are now when they’ll be limited to government funding?”

“The vigilants are self-funding though, so they won’t need government funding.”

“So what, exactly, would the vigilants get from being nationalized, beyond becoming another institution whose funds the corrupt in the government can plunder? Back in the nineties, the government already experimented with deploying an arm of the police who would specialize with criminal investigation and keres fighting. The Capital Constabulary Chapter are remembered as being almost completely ineffective, and until the they were dis—”

Thankfully, someone changed the station. It was entertainment news and lifestyle station, meaning it was all about celebrities, plugging the shows of the TV channel was affiliated with, plugging the actors and actresses their parent company had under contract, and endless ads, but at least it wasn’t a pair of college kids being political.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Granted, they were probably not much younger than him, but he was already a graduate, so there!

“So… was this place haunted too?” Loren asked Harmony for lack of anything better to do.

“Oh, yeah,” Harmony said. “Remember that story I told you about the husband and wife?” She jerked her head towards the shell of the house.

Loren glanced at the still-roofless house. There were flashes of light and sparks as the blue-skiined oni—presumably Mang Ambong—did some kind of welding. “Um, they’re both… exorcised, right? Neither sound like people someone would want to have as roommates.”

Harmony made a face as she nodded and lifted her shovel to turn over the dry cement they were mixing. “Yeah… no one wants to have the ghosts of murderers around, much less a ghost who’s committed a murder. After we got out, Steve had to contact some vigilants and clergy he knew to deal with them.”

“Huh… if it were that simple, I wonder why the people who owned the property didn’t do it themselves…?”

“Two things. This was a bank-foreclosed property, so they don’t particularly care to improve it, just sell it off to make a profit. The original owner was the diseased wife, and I think once her next of kin found out how she died, they didn’t want anything to do with it. Secondly—” Harmony pointed at the wooden debris and roofing sheets. “It had a roof when Steve bought it and it didn’t have one after the exorcism was finished.”

“Oh.”

“Eh, it’s fine. The roof was in such terrible shape we were going to have to rebuild it anyway. I’m just glad none of the walls were damaged. Pouring a new driveway is a lot easier.”

“Was it damaged during the exorcism?”

“No, it just had trees growing through it.”

By the time the rebar had been laid and secured, they’d managed to thoroughly mix the dry cement. All that was left to add was the water and oil, the latter of which Loren had imbued with Flame that was aligned with Change. That last step for completing was relatively quick, which was why he’d set it aside for last. He could have done it ahead of time if he’d had the oil.

However, it was the middle of the day, so everyone stopped for lunch.

That meant Harmony cheerfully grabbed Loren and started to pull him over to where everyone was sitting under the shade of the scaffolding that had been set up so Mang Ambong could weld. “Come on, you need to go mix and get to know our coworkers.”

Loren just rolled his eyes and let himself to dragged that way.

What little shade the metal platforms was augmented by a black panel of solid vene Malory was maintaining above herself and her sister, the latter of whom was all but curled up and enfolded by her tentacles. A large golf umbrella was floating above Steve with the help of a softly glowing spiritform, adding to the shade. Everyone had some kind of lunch with them, whether in a plastic bag holding rice, dried fish and maybe an egg, or in a little plastic food container containing rice with some canned tuna poured on top of it.

Loren, being a Flame mage, sat down where it was bright and sunny, soaking in the heat of the sun to help replenish his magic. Back home, Sara was probably doing the same. Opening his backpack, he pulled out his lunch.

“Lor, what are you eating?” It wasn’t a full mom voice, but it was in the same vein.

“My lunch,” he said simply.

“Two cups of instant noodles is not a healthy lunch!”

Loren shrugged. “Well, I didn’t have time to stop by a bakery and buy salt-bread.”

“But you had enough time to buy cup noodles and pack in your backpack last night?”

“It’s my emergency stash. Normally I eat bread.”

Harmony sighed, dug into her own bag, and pulled out a little container. “Here,” she said, handing him the plastic screw-top. “Eat the noodles first, then mix this rice into the broth. If you eat like you did in college, you’re going to make yourself sick. You’ll need a lot of calories from now on, and I don’t care if you can just power through with magic that you get from the sun, that’s not healthy.”

Yes, he definitely needed to buy Harmony that pizza this week. Loren accepted the rice, noting with amusement this was the same container that had come with the lunch box she’d brought to school when they’d been eleven. She was such a hoarder. “Thank you,” he said, putting it aside for the moment as he pulled out the metal flask that contained the water for his noodles. Gathering Flame to his hand, he gripped the flask as he started humming a little song to count down until the water was hot enough for the soup—

“So, you’re an alchemist?” one of the men eating lunch said, and it took Loren a minute to realize the question was directed at him.

“Ah, yes, basically,” he said, meeting the gray-skinned payatin’s… well, face. “I’m Loren. You’re… uh…”

“Loren, this is Sam. You’ve already met, but you might have forgotten,” Harmony introduced, and the payatin waved one of his tentacles, an easy-going smile on his face. “The green one is Louis, and the one with the curly hair is Jerry. The one with the amazing beard is Mang Ambong, this is our plumbing guy Mark—he wasn’t around when you met everyone else a couple of weeks ago, so this is the first time you’re meeting him—you already know Steve and Malory, and that bundle of tentacles next to her is her sister Loni. She’s our carpentry and electrical girl.”

“H-hello…” the bundle tentacles quavered. Loren couldn’t make out a face, but presumably there was one in there somewhere. Malory sighed and patted… something in the bundle.

“She’s shy, but she’s really nice,” Harmony said helpfully.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Loren said, putting down his now-hot water and peeling back the tops of his cup noodles. “It’s nice to meet you all.” He wasn’t Harmony, who could actually say that and mean it, but they didn’t seem to be objectionable people.

Sam leaned forward, and while payatin had different expressions than humans and oni, from TV Loren was able to recognize eagerness. “What’s being a Flame magician like?”