“Weird question,” I asked Kene the following morning. “Do you know of an enchanter’s shop called the emerald… scale? Emerald enchanters? Emerald egg? Something like that.”

Kene bit their lower lip as they held up a skirt and a pair of pants, deciding which to wear.

“It sounds vaguely familiar,” they said. “But there are a lot of enchanters in Teffordshire. You should be able to find them in a Lightwatch directory or with a communication mirror, though.”

“I don’t have a mirror,” I responded. “Want to come with me?”

“Sure, what for?” Kene asked, deciding on the fashionably torn gray skirt and stepping into the bathroom, closing the door.

Today shouldn’t be too strenuous, so I grabbed a binder, then quickly changed into it, a black shirt with black denim pants with tears on the knees before throwing on a green and black plaid button down on top, leaving it partly unbuttoned.

When Kene emerged, I answered them.

“I want to have my aura pin jump to third gate output.”

“Oh, yeah. You might have mentioned that to me? I don’t remember.”

“Me either,” I confessed.

“Is the emerald place the people who made your pin?” Kene asked.

“No, actually. So there was this mission a while back…”

As I regailed my partner with the tale of the terragon’s egg, we left Dusk’s space. Dusk had changed too, putting on a bright pink dress that the brownies had made for her, and we stopped by a lightwatch station to ask for directions to the emerald… place.

As it turned out, it was called the Emerald Scale. Score for me – that had been one of my guesses!

It was in an uptown, nicer district of Teffordshire, near their branch of Mossford University, so Kene and I flew out that way and searched around with the guard’s directions in mind. It didn’t take us long to eventually find the shop.

The Emerald Scale was, in my opinion, the most beautiful shop I’d ever seen.

It was made of charming brown stone bricks, with large bay windows looking in on a collection of plants and the shop. Greenish gold lettering on the bay windows proudly displayed the shop’s name.

It beckoned us in with a crisp white door that had a large square window set inside. The window was made of nine square glass pannels, each one stained a different color, and ever so slightly reflective.

Kene pushed the door open and we entered.

The inside of the shop was equally as beautiful as the outside, with dark stained walnut wood flooring and walls, set with shelves on the right side of the store that contained wonders: A top, spinning under its own power, floating in the air. A crystal orb that caught the light and showed distorted images of far off places. An amulet of wood with intricate, tiny runes on the back. A silver sigil in the shape of a pheonix. An emerald book with rustling pages.

All that and a thousand different other knick knacks lined the shelves, giving off the sense of a proper enchanter.

The left side of the store, where window was, had far more open space. There were plants, as I’d seen in the window, on a few different stands, and floating in levitating pots, but the real wonder was the counter.

A large glass counter with thin wardlines in frosted glass dominanted the back part of the room. The levels within the counter were lined with a plush, dark green velvet. Nustled into various compartments were the magic items that were truly powerful or dangerous. There were also vials filled with various elixirs lying in the velvet, glowing in a rainbow of different colors. A thick placard of embossed metal was affixed to the top left corner of the cabinet, firmly stating ‘Custom Orders Upon Request’.

The entire store had a pleasant scent – the must of age mixing with a burning bergamot incense in one corner and the faint scent of alchemy coming from the back, behind a pair of drapes.

Emerging from said drapes was a man who could not more obviously have been Ivy’s father if he tried. He had larger antlers than his son, but greenery still twined down his horns and through his dark hair and over his dark skin. He wore a simple button down with brown slacks.

“Welcome to the Emerald Scale,” Ivy’s father said, leaning down on the counter and smiling warmy. “How can I help you two?”

“Well, if Ivy’s around, I figured I’d say hey,” I said. “Also, I was looking to upgrade this to third gate.”

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As I spoke, I placed my lapel pin on the counter.

“My own defensive enchantment has taken a beating,” Kene admitted, putting down his witch’s hat. “A basic checkup and retouch would be good, as well as a retouch on this.”

He pulled off the spell storage bracer, and I added my own mana regeneration necklace.

“Ivy’s out right now, but he should be home before too long,” Ivy’s father said, pulling on a pair of copper and glass goggles to examine the items.

He looked over the hat first before nodding and putting it to the side.

“A bit of wear and tear, but nothing that can’t be touched up.”

Then he examined the pin, tracing invisible lines with one sharp finger.

“Interesting. The design appears to be more of a Vinopae style than Mossford, but overclocking it shouldn’t be too hard. I generally prefer the Mossford style, but I’ll hand it to Vinopae – they make it easy to overclock an enchantment. This has a lot more damage to the spell, though, which is always the tradeoff. But I can give it a polish and some upkeep before I overclock it.”

Then he picked up the spell storing bracer and frowned. He ran his fingers through the air several times, frowned again, and put the bracer down.

“This is interesting. Minimal wear and tear, but the design is nearly a century out of date. Where’d you find it?”

“Out exploring,” Kene said breezily.

“Well, if you have any more, I’d love to take a look. The design is obviously old fashioned, but it has some fascinating interactions between energetic arrays and mana arrays. It almost reminds me of draconic enchantments, yet it was made using human mana…”

“You’re in luck,” I said. I tapped the necklace, while Dusk hopped off my shoulder and withdrew the energetic binding knot and the orb that gathered and stored mental and knowledge energy. “These all come from the same location.”

Ivy’s dad looked like I’d told him he’d won the lottery, eagerly running his hands through the items.

“Oh yes, these certainly were made by the same person, or at least in the same style.”

He removed his goggles and let them rest on his antlers, which was an almost comical sight, the copper and glass mixed with the woodlike horns and ivy strands.

“If you can leave these all with me for a few days, I can overclock the pin and touch them up for free.”

I glanced at Kene, who just shrugged.

“As long as we get them back before the Idyll-Flume,” was all they said.

“Hmm? Oh, I think my wife mentioned something like that,” the dad said, a goofy smile coming across his face at the mention of his wife. “About a week out, right? Shouldn’t be a problem.”

The dad’s hand started to drift to his goggles as he continued to speak.

“Anything else I can help with? If not, feel free to look around.”

Kene and I shook our heads and explored the shop for a bit.

Anything inside the glass display case was too expensive for me to afford – these were no basic pharmacy supplements, these were high end elixirs and one use spells that ranged from first gate to fifth – but it was still fun to look at.

There were enchanted items and potions of all sorts, from a stone that could accelerate plant growth, to a potion that could turn one of your limbs into wood – permanently – to a paper scroll that would allow the user to conjure a massive swarm of giant insects.

There was the standard suite of magical items and potions too; healing potions, advancement potions, defensive and offensive spells, even one of the complex and expensive regeneration enchantments, and more besides, but that was less fun to look at in my opinion.

Before I shifted to look at the enchantments that weren’t kept behind the glass, Ivy walked in. When he saw me, he brightened.

“Malachi! I figured you’d decided not to show up.”

“No, I’ve just been busy and working further north,” I said with a shake of my head. “Haven’t had the chance to head down this way. But Ivy, this is Kene, my partner! Kene, this is Ivy.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Kene said, holding out a hand. Ivy shook it with a smile.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Ivy said, then glanced at me. “What are you doing here?”

Before I could respond, Dusk let out a peep from the counter, where she was sitting, swinging her legs. She introduced herself as Dusk, and Ivy wandered over to her.

“Hello, Dusk,” Ivy said, then glanced at me. “A nature spirit, huh?”

“Something like that,” I said. “As for why I’m here, I was upgrading my defenses, and retouching enchantments. But how are things going with the egg?”

“Going well,” Ivy said. “It’s recently hatched, actually, and is growing well.”

“Excellent!” I said, brightening.

“Indeed,” Ivy said, nodding. “Thanks again for your help there.”

He poked at me with his mana senses, then raised an eyebrow.

“Well, you’ve come far. I was going to say, when you’re a few months out from hitting Spellbinder, you should talk to my mom, but… Seems like now would actually be a good time.”

As he poked at me, I poked back, but he had some sort of wall around his spirit. Not a veil, exactly – it felt like an abnegation spell.

“As interesting as that is, let me see how far you’ve progressed,” I said. “Then we can talk about your mom.”

Kene let out a dry chuckle and shifted awkwardly, clearly not following along much. I squeezed their hand, and was about to say something to reassure them when Ivy removed a bracelet, and I was hit by a wall of raw power.

It was like nothing else I’d ever felt before. It was third gate, but… Not.

It felt like third gate mana, but it was so absurdly compact and powerful that it rivaled fourth gate magic. Like when I overcharged a spell, only… Instead of being a single instance, it was all of his mana.

I had seen powerful spellbinders before. Many of Ed’s managers had been stuck at third or fourth gate since their early twenties, and had pushed themselves to the limit of what power they could express without advancing.

Ivy put all of them to shame.

Deep within me, my mana stirred without my control, flinching back.

The Depths of Starry Night technique, which had carried me on the winds of fortune, stopped before the absolute decree of someone destined for power. Only the flicker of resolve that I had drawn upon while I fought to build my staff, to drive off the fungal tyrant, to conquer the war root, held on, pushing back against Ivy.

It was entirely different than when Orykson had released his seventh gate mana around me. That was raw power, raw mana.

This was deeper, beyond mana and energy. It felt more like the Loyalty Spark that Ikki had offered me, or the Lushloam that had helped to birth Dusk.

Then Ivy put his bracelet back on, and I could breathe again. My mana circulated and The Depths of Starry Night reasserted control.

“I’ve still got a long way to go,” Ivy said. “Only about a third of the way, maybe a quarter. So, are you all ready to head out?”