Lady Lockridge addressed her guests in a cheerful and upbeat tone. “Good evening! Thank you all for joining, especially on such short notice!” She waited for the crowd to quiet, “I’m sure you’re all quite curious about the reason for tonight’s celebration, as my last gala was held rather recently.” A smattering of chuckles went through the crowd. “No doubt almost all of you are aware of my long-standing fascination with the aetheric arts. I have with me tonight a number of special guests. These guests can help anyone here Aetherforge themselves with no risk of personal failure, injury, or death.”

The entrance foyer went silent, then came a roar of voices, all clamoring to be heard.

“That got their attention,” Gilgamesh said.

“Did you know about this?” Harold asked him.

“Know about it?” Dellen said, “I helped arrange it. What do you think? Do you want to end the night as an Aetherforged?”

“Does it hurt?” Harold asked in a low voice.

“It will not hurt, and you will not feel discomfort,” Lady Lockridge said. Three of her servants stepped to either side of her, making the center of a group of seven, all six of her staff raised a hand and ignited balls of fire above empty palms. Gasps echoed around the foyer. “As you can see, my staff has already availed themselves of the offer that I am making to you. Soon, I will be making this offer to any in Copperopolis who wish to see themselves Aetherforged, for a price. I am offering it to those of you in this room first.”

“Appealing to greed is always a strong play,” Gilgamesh said. Dellen smiled, it had been Gilgamesh’s suggestion to indicate to the nobles that soon, the general population would have access to forging.

Harold looked at Dellen, “Am I going to get scars like you? No offense.”

“None taken, and no, you will not, besides, you won’t be using Electrical Aether, will you?”

Harold spoke up, voice booming across the room, “I would take this opportunity.”

“Well met, Lord Thorne, please follow us to the banquet hall, which has been temporarily redecorated as an Aetherforging room.”

“See you over there,” Dellen said to Harold, before using a magnetic field to pull himself toward the ceiling and over to Lady Lockridge. The chandelier tilted in his direction. He felt self-conscious as every eye in the room fixed on him. He landed with only a slight thump of his feet on the marble. His performance was met with even more noise than Lady Lockridge’s proclamation. He raised his voice to be heard over the furor, “For those of you who do not know me, I am Lord Dellen Northcote. I wield Electrical Aether, and I have forged myself, not once, not twice, but six times, I have reached what is called Second Trinity, and I have visited the cities of Ravenport and Evergale. Amongst their citizenry, I never saw a single person who was less forged than I.” He paused in his speech to cast his gaze around the crowd, he stopped for a moment when he saw Eliza, who gave him a supportive smile to continue. “For those of you who have questions about Electrical Aether, come find me.”

Finished with his short speech, Dellen pulled Electrical Aether from his Spark Core and stepped off of the balcony, letting cushions of magnetism lower him to the floor. He could feel his weight pushing against floor, but also against metal in some of the attendees’ pockets. The guests below him scattered out of the way. He landed without even a faint bump, nodded his head at those nearby, spun on his heel, and led the way to the banquet hall.

“Anyone who had not heard of you before will know who you are by tomorrow,” Gilgamesh said.

“Lord Northcote, Lord Northcote!” Came an unfamiliar voice.

“Yes?” Dellen said, casting a look over his left shoulder at a young woman he did not recall having met.

“You said to ask you about Electrical Aether?”

“So I did. What would you like to know?”

“Can you fly anywhere?”

Dellen laughed, “Sadly, no, I cannot fly at all, but I can create magnetic fields to push and pull myself along. If there are magnetic metals, like iron, nearby that are firmly enough mounted, then I can use them to look like I’m flying.”

“Oh,” she said, looking disappointed.

“Do you have an affinity for Electrical Aether?” He asked, assuming that was why he felt a subtle kinship with her.

“I do.” She licked her lips, “And what about…”

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“My scars?”

“Yes,” she said, cheeks bright with color.

“I was struck by lightning, if not for my Electrical Aether it would have cooked me, all things considered, I think I was lucky.”

“So… I won’t get…”

“No,” he said, “You will not pick up scars like these from forging, you will also not be able to manage magnetism like this, on your first day, or from only one forging, it takes some practice.”

“Some practice,” Gilgamesh said with a snort, “You’re almost a savant at these things. Some of these people, if they choose to be forged, might take years to replicate your little flying trick.”

“What else can you do?”

“Some things are easier than others, but I can make lights,” he said, holding up a hand, letting sparks dance over his fingers. Someone walking behind him gasped, “I can throw lightning, not like the bolt that scarred me, I can provide power to devices that use Electrical Aether, and I can make localized thunder.”

“Why would you want to make localized thunder?” She asked with her nose wrinkled.

“It can be useful as a distraction or in a fight.”

“In a fight?” She said, a single eyebrow high with a flirtatious smile on her lips, “Have you found yourself in many fights, Lord Northcote?”

“More than I’d like.”

Her smile lost its shine, “Oh.”

The banquet hall had drastically changed even from when he had last seen it. There was a chair with contact pads for forging Electrical Aether, there was a gyroscopic seat for Kinematic Aether, two comfortable-looking velvet chairs for Pyro Aether, and an incredibly intimidating-looking chamber for those who wished to forge Steam Aether.

Forging Pyro Aether required flames and a lot of high heat if you did not have access to a High Trinity individual such as Miss Thornbrook. She had told him that to accomplish her forging that brought her up to Seventh Trinity, she had ventured near the center of a lava flow and meditated inside a quasi-dormant volcano.

The chamber for Steam Aether had large hoses leading into it, and a door that needed to be closed and then spun shut. As Dellen understood it, the occupants would be bathed in an obscuring steam, and were likely to come out drenched.

“Please tell me I don’t have to go in there.”

Dellen turned his attention back to the noble lady who had been asking him so many questions, “What? No, that’s for those with Steam Aether, like, apparently, Lord Thorne. Well, when he comes out with steelskin that should do a lot to alleviate the concerns of the other guests.” He snuck a canape from a passing servant. “Come along; you just need to sit in a chair.”

“Sit in a chair? Is that it?”

Dellen led her over to the chair, though he made no motion to put her in it. “This is Maynard Kitchingham, a member of the Mercantile Guild, unlike myself, Maynard has forged, I believe, nine materials.”

“That’s correct,” Maynard said, looking much more confident than he had in the meeting with Gaius.

“And you can do all the things that Lord Northcote can?”

“Yes?” Maynard said.

“Say it like you’re sure,” Dellen suggested.

“Yes,” Maynard said again, though this time he sounded a great deal more confident, “And I can help you with your forging, if you’ll just take a seat and hold my hand, Lady…?”

“Lady Heathgate,” she said, taking his hand and sitting down. She smoothed down the wrinkles in her dress. “Lady Heathgate. How do we begin?”

A crowd formed around them, watching Lady Heathgate sit in the chair with Maynard holding her hand. Maynard placed an iron ingot in the palm of her left hand, and another between their clasped hands. “We start like this.”

Dellen waited for his nod and adjusted the controls for the chair, sending a faint trace of Electrical Aether to the seat. Lady Heathgate’s back stiffened just a bit, sending her a touch more upright. Even that small reaction garnered sounds of concern from the crowd.

“They’re a skittish group, aren’t they?” Gilgamesh said.

“Hmm,” Dellen said noncommittally. “When you’re ready, I’ll increase the flow. Maynard nodded at him, and Dellen increased the flow, they continued with a series of gradual increases until the iron was sucked into Lady Heathgate’s body. “That was supposed to happen,” Dellen said to the onlookers.

A minute later, Lady Heathgate opened her eyes and smiled at Maynard, “Thank you, that was… remarkable.” She held up a hand and took in her new steelskin and turned it back and forth with a frown. “This may require some new fashion choices.”

“Oh, of course, you just helped forge her, and she’s worried about dresses,” Gilgamesh said with annoyance.

“Who’s next?” Dellen asked.

After Lady Heathgate’s successful forging, there was a steady stream of nobles ready to be next. The damp form of Lord Harold Thorne trudged over to Dellen, “You couldn’t have warned me to bring an extra suit?” He asked.

Dellen stifled a laugh; Harold’s shirt collar was a limp and lifeless affair, his cravat a soaked ruin, and his pants were plastered to his legs. “It might have been hard to explain.”

“Hard to explain?” Harold said, sounding irate.

“Yes, I really can’t help you right now, but why don’t you ask one of the staff with Pyro Aether if they could just dry you off a little?”

Harold looked at Dellen in irritation, then, still grumbling he went looking for some fire.

“It’s going to be a long, damp, evening for Harold,” Maynard commented.

“I don’t suppose he’ll be making many friends in that chamber,” Dellen replied.

“Not in the short term, but if there’s time, some of them may want to go back in, you can’t do much if you’ve only forged iron,” Maynard said.

“Wait, what?” Said one of the waiting nobles, “What do you mean you can’t do much if you’ve only forged iron? What else is there to forge?”

“The ignorance astounds me. They should have known that they could forge copper too. That was a known fact in your city!” Gilgamesh said.

“You will receive a significant bump in your capabilities once you have forged, iron, copper, and silver,” Dellen explained.

“That’s what I want.”

“If you forge those, without Maynard here taking approximately an hour to teach you how to use your Electrical Aether, then you would be a risk to yourself. Poorly handled Aether is dangerous.”

The next several hours were consumed with nobles demanding that an exception be made for them, so they could be brought to First Trinity in one evening, regardless of how many people would have to wait hours instead of minutes. By midnight Maynard had been hired for so many private forging sessions that his teeth were on permanent display.

The trouble started three days later.