Dellen stood before Isabella Ironwood, she was tall, taller than him, and exuded a palpable air of Electrical Aether. Her steelskin glinted, not as strongly as Miss Thornbrook’s but about as strongly as Dellen remembered Tiberius’s. He suspected she was of a lower Trinity than Miss Thornbrook, but he wasn’t certain.

“So, you came with the unforged,” she said in a clipped tone, walking toward him. “Forging scars, that’s sloppy technique. Who taught you so poorly?”

“I’m self-taught,” Dellen said.

“That at least is slightly excusable, if only just.”

“I like her,” Gilgamesh said.

“How long have you been using Electrical Aether?”

“That’s a tricky question to answer, how long have you been using Electrical Aether?” Gilgamesh said.

Dellen hesitated, he had spent centuries working with Electrical Aether, and all of the time across all of his resists, but in linear time? “I forged iron eleven days ago.”

“Eleven days,” she said as though tasting the words, then shook her head, “I do not find myself inclined to help you raise yourself to Second Trinity, it would be unusual for you to have attained the skill to manage the increased flow of Aether safely in that time period.” She shook her head again, “No, come back in a few months.” Her turned back and walk away spoke of dismissal.

“He saved my ship from a lightning bolt.” Aurora said, her voice firm, without a hint of begging or pleading.

Isabella Ironwood turned and looked at Dellen again before turning her attention to Miss Thornbrook, “Did you know this?”

“The eleven days? No. The lightning bolt? Yes, that’s one of the reasons I brought him to you. I thought you might find him intriguing.”

Dellen gave a brief nod of thanks to Aurora. For her part, she all but ignored him, she seemed distracted by the results of the forging that she had undergone after Finnegan. She had shown no more talent than Finnegan before the forging, being just as unable to slow the spinning of the gyroscope, but despite that inadequacy, she bore the same steelskin as the rest of them.

“You survived a lightning bolt,” Isabella said.

“Not quite, we were in a storm, and I did my best to call it so that I could prevent it from striking the ship.”

She nodded again, “That still seems unlikely, there should have been far too much Electrical Aether in a lightning bolt for you to redirect.”

“There was, but I used the bolt to forge silver.”

Isabella’s mouth twitched to the side enough to pull her nose with it, “Are you telling me that you deliberately attracted a lightning bolt before you had even reached First Trinity, and you survived?”

Dellen ran a finger over one of his many scars, “Not unscathed.”

“What did you do with the excess?”

“I vented it out as a smaller lightning bolt.”

“Incredible that you had time to do that, rather than explode,” she muttered.

Her words made Dellen wonder whether the cradle in his chest was helping him survive his repeat forgings, he still was not quite sure how it helped him, apart from the time loops and granting him some perception of Chronometric Aether and of Gilgamesh.

“Fine, I will help you, if you can show me that you are competent with Electrical Aether.”

Dellen inclined his head, “How would you like me to do that?”

“Catch,” she threw him a ball of lightning.

This was more like the training Ardentus had given him, Dellen plucked the lightning out of the air and tossed it back to her. Then he followed up with three more of his own. Isabella returned the favour and in seconds the two of them were almost juggling four balls of lightning between the two of them.

“Almost acceptable.”

Dellen raised an eyebrow, he knew it was more than ‘Almost acceptable.’ “What else would you like me to do?”

Isabella collected the four ball lightnings into one and threw it to him. Dellen’s eyes widened, the charge from a smaller ball was no challenge, but a larger ball was a different matter altogether. His Spark Core spun, and he increased the flow of Electrical Aether to both of his hands and used it to create a negatively charged field in the shape of an open sphere. Holding both hands before him, he shaped the field into a hemisphere. Just before he caught the lightning, he reversed the charge and closed the field.

“I can’t,” he panted, “Keep throwing that,” he was near his limit for how much Electrical Aether he could push at any given moment.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Isabella held up two fingers on her right hand and spread them apart. Lightning danced between her fingertips, then it jumped across the room straight at Dellen. He stepped to the side, and the lightning curved in the air, following his sphere.

Dellen tried to bat it away with his sphere, but instead, the spark ran over its surface and crept up to his left hand. He yelped, and the field around his ball lightning wavered before he managed to steady it.

“Stay focused,” she said, “Electrical Aether is dangerous, you cannot lose focus just because of a little distraction.”

“I think he’s showing admirable control,” Miss Thornbrook said without heat.

“Mind your own business.”

Dellen tensed, waiting for another spark that did not come. Eventually, Isabella said, “You can release the ball lightning.”

“Is there somewhere that I can throw it?”

“You could just reabsorb it.”

Dellen flicked his eyes between Isabella and the ball, “How?”

Isabella sighed, “Give it back to me.”

He threw the crackling ball of energy and watched her catch it single-handed. The ball shrunk and shrunk in her hands until it was a tiny spark of potential and dwindled to nothing.

“Show me a thunderclap.”

“Isabella, you can’t expect him to know how to make a thunderclap, he’s been working with Aether for days, demonstrate the technique,” Miss Thornbrook chided her.

Isabella’s eyes narrowed and she treated Miss Thornbrook to a glare, but Dellen noticed that she did not argue, “Fine, create as thick and hot a bolt of electricity as you can and throw it to me.”

Dellen chose not to mention that he would have been better able to do so if she had let him keep the large ball lightning and release it as a bolt, but if Miss Thornbrook was already annoying Isabella, it was probably best if he kept his mouth shut. He concentrated as much Electrical Aether as he could manage in his palm, then pushed it out of his skin, releasing a bolt of lightning at Isabella.

Thunder cracked in the small space. Finnegan, Eliza and Aurora all clapped their hands over their ears after the fact.

Isabella caught the bolt, formed it into a ball, and threw it from hand to hand before letting it dwindle away, “Tolerable. Let’s see your electrokinesis.”

Dellen waited for a memory to come to his rescue, but nothing triggered, “Ah, can you give me a demonstration?”

Isabella tapped a finger on her chin before holding out an outstretched hand. A metal ball flew from her desk to her fingers, and stopped before making contact with her skin.

Eliza gasped.

“Catch,” the metal sphere, no more than three inches across, flew straight at Eliza. Eliza flinched and ducked.

Dellen’s hand lashed out, Electrical Aether flooded down his arm to created a magnetic field. The sphere curved away from Eliza and slammed into his palm.

“Sloppy, you should have held it still before it touched your steelskin.”

“We don’t injure,” Miss Thornbrook said reprovingly.

“You were standing right there, if he’d missed you would have caught the sphere before she could get hurt,” Isabella said.

“Isabella,” Miss Thornbrook said, a look of disapproval on her face.

Isabella rolled her eyes, “Show me what you can do with that sphere.”

“Don’t feel bad if you can’t meet her standards,” Gilgamesh said, his voice full of false encouragement, “Sure, she’s asking you to do something that you should absolutely be capable of doing, but there’s no shame in being unable to do it, Eliza, Finnegan and Aurora don’t know enough to judge you.”

Dellen exhaled, ignoring his companion. The ball rose out of his hand and wobbled over his palm, hanging in the air.

“I didn’t know you could do things like that,” Eliza said. Dellen spared a moment to recall that he had used the same technique to pull her into a shipwreck, but forebore sharing a comment. Instead, he focused on his Aether and created magnetic pathways all around his body, slowly pushing the ball around him in an orbit that ran from his hand, up to his head and then spiraled around his body down to his boots. The ball snapped out of his magnetic field, and flew back to Isabella’s desk.

“You are not entirely inept,” she said, “The question I have is, how are you not inept? I have spent time with innumerable Aetherforged with electrical affinities of the Second Trinity, very few of them have the control that you do, and that’s after years of familiarity with Electrical Aether.” She walked around him like a predator examining a particular tempting morsel. “Very curious.”

“Now you see why I brought him to you,” Miss Thornbrook said.

“Yes,” Isabella said, somewhat ignoring her. “What is it that you want?”

“Help reaching Second Trinity, I don’t have gold, palladium, or titanium.”

“Is that all you need?” Isabella said, sounding skeptical.

“Well, I would also like access to enough Aether to forge, preferably anything less violent than a lightning bolt.”

“I don’t just give out, gold, titanium and palladium,” Isabella said.

“I gave them copper, iron, and silver.” Miss Thornbrook said in the same mild voice that Dellen suspected she used to irritate Isabella with.

Isabella took a breath and gave her colleague another annoyed look, “Yes, thank you, Evelyn.” She turned her attention to Dellen, “And what will you be doing once you’ve reached Second Trinity?”

“Trying to reach Third Trinity,” Gilgamesh laughed.

On reflection, Dellen agreed that Gilgamesh was quite correct, “We were part of a fleet headed here, we were separated in a storm, and we found a ship in our fleet that crashed after it was attacked, I can’t speak for my companions, but I would like to see if I can find out what happened to them.”

Isabella opened her mouth, but Miss Thornbrook spoke over her, “A fleet, were there any more unforged in this fleet? How many airships?”

“I don’t know how many people were in the fleet, but most of them were unforged and there were twenty-six airships.”

“Twenty-six ships of unforged,” Miss Thornbrook said with a surprised inhalation of breath. “Twenty-six. Stop playing games, give him the metals, we need to discuss this.”

“I have three unforged crew aboard my ship, right now,” Aurora said, “I suspect they would all take the opportunity to reach this…” she stumbled a little, “First Trinity you’ve brought me up to.”

Miss Thornbrook looked at her and spoke in a tone that suggested her thoughts were not fully on what Aurora had said, “Three more unforged, yes, of course, bring them here, and we will help. “Can you go fetch them, and do you happen to know their affinities?”

“Bogsmith and Stevens both have Kinematic affinities, and Westlake has a Pyro affinity.”

Dellen hadn’t known that.

“Westlake really likes fire,” Gilgamesh muttered.

“Fine, fine, that won’t present any problems.”

Isabella turned to Dellen, “Your skills seem adequate for forging on your own, if we supply the Aether, do you want assistance, or do you want to perform the forging on your own? I recommend that you allow me to assist you.”

Dellen was torn, he welcomed the idea of assistance, but he did not know how much Isabella might learn about him through assisting him, and the cradle in his chest might inspire greed in even the most helpful of souls. Of course, even if she was capable of sensing that there was something unusual in his chest that did not mean she was going to know what it was, or that she would attack him. He hesitated a moment longer, “I’d like to forge myself.”