Adeline was very quick to usher us to the back of the shop. The woman shoved a pair of crates at us, one filled with assorted Infusions and the other with assorted Materials. With reverence, she also passed me the crate she'd been staring into and the buzzing grew louder as the thing landed on my arms. When I tried to peek inside, I saw that there was a cloth covering the mystery Material and I hurried to set down everything so I could finally satisfy my curiosity.

Plus, I'd been forcefully given ownership of the thing so I didn't see why I shouldn't take a look at it. Something about horses and gifts in mouths.

While Marie looked just a shade less excited than I did, Madeline gave me a knowing smile when I reached in to lift the cloth. The Material was practically tingling through my fingers and the blue color highlighting the usual gold trim that covered the material when its information popped up on the Implant was proof enough that the strange sense Sharon's memories had inflicted me with was the real deal.

"It's beautiful," I whispered. There were no two ways about it. It reminded me of the many insect slides we'd seen during our biology classes, those where they had a bug pinned up by a single needle while the rest of it was frozen in time. Instead of a bug, a radiant example of a hummingbird reflected the light from within the work area's ceiling with stark oranges and greens. The tones almost seemed to cascade down from the dark green skull, the only bone remaining of the creature, in a cape of color. On instinct, I extended a finger and ran mana through the plumage and felt the inherent effect activate despite the Material not being shaped or Infused. A whistling current of warm wind tussled my beard for a moment before I pulled my hand away.

"Momma said it was a ruby-throated hummingbird," Madeline explained. "She suspects it got hit by stray lightning, otherwise we would have never caught it. They are one of the few true herbivores we know of, and they are fast as... well, not quite lightning but it's close."

"I wish I knew what his Refinement was," I said, fingers already itching to do something with the Material. Ideas swirled in my head, even if one was already surfacing from the depths with a vengeance.

"How do you know it was a boy?" Marie complained, huffing and crossing her arms. She pointed at the colorful throat feathers that looked enough like living fire that I would have believed the bird had that as its Attunement instead of Air. "Girls like pretty things like that."

"As a matter of fact," I said, raising a finger. "That is precisely why I know it was a boy. Most often, female birds seek the male with the brightest and most outstanding plumage to mate. The males will make a show of it too, and I imagine this little guy was a big contender in his time."

"Ohhh," Marie said, tilting her head and looking down at the plumage with new eyes. She said, matter-of-factly, "Then he really knew how to dress."

I couldn't help but chuckle. We spent a few minutes talking about birds and some of the few I'd seen-- and fought-- before I got to the meat of what the plumage could offer. "So, this here is a step rarer than the Material I used for my Amulet."

"What!?" Madeline said, alarmed. Subconsciously, her hands went to the bracelet I'd formed for her. "I didn't even know that was possible."

"Well, if I have a guess on things, I would warrant that Fievil is made from something even rarer than this," I said, smiling at the look the dwarfess was giving the axe-hammer on my back.

"I've seen this before on a few Materials," Marie asked. "What's the difference between the normal glow and the green one?"

"My running theory is the conductivity of the Material. Something about them is different enough that you can create Amplitude Items, like Madeline and I's accessories. The rare Materials seem sensitive enough to trigger some magical effect just by running mana through them. The few I've seen don't have a big effect, but I warrant that's more because they haven't been given a target or intent than for lack of anything else. Both of which the Infusion process provides. If my memory is reliable enough, there should still be a heart that freezes things stashed somewhere in the Bunker Camp. Of course, what I know about Infusions now compared to when we first found that Materials is miles beyond and I really should have put that thing to use sooner."

Marie went quiet, her brow furrowed in thought. She plopped onto Blobby, idly starting to play with a block of wood she pulled from a pocket on the dress she was wearing. I couldn't tell if she was listening, but Madeline at least was scribbling furiously into her journal.

"But that in itself should affect the visualization of the final Item, shouldn't it?" the dwarfess asked.

"I'm sure it does. I've only ever crafted with the uncommon green Materials at most," I replied, chuckling when her eyes popped open. "I think I told you last we met. I love crafting, but protecting is my calling. If they happen to overlap, then I get to fuel the process with double the passion. I've barely even had a chance to look at the loot from the things we fight of late."

The young crafter looked speechless, even as her charcoal pencil continued to scratch away at her notes. Shaking my head as Madeline tried to form one word or another, I continued. "But, I think it would be the best of lessons for us to try it out together. How does that sound?"

Madeline nodded so hard I was sure if her Attunement didn't benefit Strength she might have lost her head. Marie was still lost in the wooden block, but I knew better than to disturb someone churning through inspiration. Even if her fingers were unmoving, I could barely see the wisps of a Gift flowing through the wood. It seemed our talk had provided her some benefit and honestly that was good enough for what was intended as a short lesson.

"I won't explain the basic basic stuff, but neither are we going to start with this bad boy," I said, hooking a thumb at the plumage.

"But--"

"I'm rusty, Madeline. I don't want to mess up if I am not in the right mind to tackle something like a rare Material. Plus, since I am here, I have some Items I owe a very ornery brunette. Many birds, one stone." I chuckled at my own pun, setting to riffling through the contents of the Material Traits.

Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of fish based parts. Scale segments, fish bones, spines and more than one whisker I assumed had to come from a catfish or sturgeon. Not all of them were Water Attuned Materials, ranging through everything but Fire but I attributed that to the biome of the Ock River's shore rather than a baseline impossibility. In addition to the more aquatic bits, there were drops from the hog swarm, a few trees that had apparently met their end while possessing some levels, and general small wildlife that called the surrounding Dungeon-less forest home. There wasn't a lot that jumped out at me, so I opted to just dump the whole crate onto the work table.

Madeline was still scratching away at her notes, noting everything I did in my 'process'. I really didn't have one, but I did try to think of what I could do to benefit Danny and Billy. One was the most bombastic fighter that I knew and the other was constantly adapting the flexibility their cloud-stuff gave them. Obviously, I was limited by what was available, but anything even remotely synergistic would benefit them.

My eyes caught the light glinting off a set of red-colored scales. They weren't anywhere near the vividness of the hummingbird, but they were surprisingly reflective but only at a certain angle. That got the creative juices flowing, and I started to shuffle around Materials as if they were puzzle pieces coming together. Bits of leather from some of the hogs that had been harvested during their swarm of the outpost, as many scales from that particular fish-- identified by the Implant as a redbreast sunfish-- and a curious flare of spines. It all looked fairly eclectic and almost not enough for what I was planning but I was hopeful thanks to Daniela's petite-ness.

With the Materials assembled, I finally set Fievil down beside me. As much as I wanted to continue training my brain's ability to multitask feeding mana into the hammer, controlling Pith Threads was still a full focus type activity. Especially for the actual Infusion part. First, however, I started with as physical a manifestation of Jolene's to cut through the leather precisely. As steady as my hands were, they didn't compare to the steadiness I'd developed for my mind. That thought shook loose a reminder of what my last visit to Madeline's shop had wrought.

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Despite my hesitance to split my attention, I sent mana gently into my Amulet. Usually, the energy didn't actually sink into the Item but instead immediately flowed to form an Amplified Skill for me to use. However, the boost to my Attributes was still very much a part of the Item. With an additional five levels worth of Containment I felt the scope, for lack of a better word, of my mind expand. The effort visualizing the Item I was building practically disappeared, even if the slight nag of my trickling loss of mana replaced it. Leveraging that, I resumed cutting leather with an ease that left me blinking when I was done. It had hardly taken a minute and the Q2 Water Infusion I'd been using only fizzled out because I sputtered at what I'd done.

"That's a whole new level of efficiency," I mumbled, dropping my channeled mana to my Tortoise Amulet. Immediately, a headache flared on my temples. While no one had actually put my skull in a vice, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference right at that moment. It wasn't unbearable, and it quickly started to fade, but it was about what I remembered about boosting Containment. "This is probably some soul shit I will have to figure out eventually."

I spent two full seconds contemplating if I wanted to commit more thought to how the non-physical Attributes worked before deciding to leave them alone. I had more than enough on my platter to try to tack on 'more branches of the fundamentals of the universe' to the list of things I needed to accomplish. Instead, I reactivated my Amulet and got to work preparing the rest of the Materials. I carefully cut the scales into bands along their reflective orientation and separated out the spines into hand-width segments. Once that was done, I Infused the Material with the corresponding elements. All but the leather was Water Attuned, with that particular bit of hog turning out to be Air Attuned.

With the parts prepared and primed, it was time to put it together and finalize its transformation. Due to the... hodgepodge nature of what I'd gathered, there wasn't a clear way to bind all the parts, especially without a Fire Thread to fuse them together with pseudo-welds. It was entirely possible that I would be able to massage some similar effect out of the Infusions I had available, but I opted to remain in the ballpark element I was hoping to cap the Item with. "What better inspiration for how to put this whole thing together than vines?"

With a Q2 Life Infusion firmly in hand, I sewed the parts of the future Item together. A base of leather, with a ninety degree upturn at the back. Another segment curved perpendicular at the tip of it. To fill out the space, I arched the strips of fish scales to form a rough tube over the leather. With very deliberate placement, I reinforced the whole thing with the spines to hold it up. The Life Infusion wove in and out of the heterogenous mixture of parts to force them to stretch into one another as if they were characters in a video game clipping through each other. Despite the fact that it all looked organic, it was entirely unnatural.

"Are those... boots?" Madeline asked, somewhat aghast. "They look... nice?"

I could tell she was hedging her words. Hoping to ease her concern I replied lightly. "No need to pull punches. I know they look horrendous."

"Why... did you make them then? I understand the potential for effective equipment despite how it might look, but would anyone want to wear this? It looks like it would hurt as much as a bear trap just to wear."

"Ouch," I said, unable to keep a chuckle from escaping me even as I kept my eyes locked on the cobbled pair of hog and fish made boots. "But I'm not done."

Some people would argue I was one for dramatism, but I would argue back that I just had a propensity for adequate timing. As such, as soon as I replied to Madeline I pulled the Pith Thread from another Q2 Life Infusion I had in hand. I wasn't sure if it would work effectively, but using the Deepening Technique with a non-matching Attunement had to be tried at some point. I tried to visualize what I wanted from the boots. Obviously defense, but also utility. What better combination of Skills than and , two of my Foundational Hemisphere magics.

My free hand lit up with and I sputtered for a second as the mana I was feeding my Amulet tried to augment it into . With a flexing of will that I was sure to pay for when I stopped upping my Containment, the spell chain remained static. The Pith Thread transformed into motes of energy, gold and brown particles twinkling in the air, before I caught them with and lathered them onto the boots. The motes of light seemed to squirm and twist like a blanket of worms until they made contact with the fish scales. That was another testing point for this effort, since I considered the pair of boots one Item instead of two individual ones I wasn't certain what would happen.

While I was making a mockery of the scientific method, I was happy to see both of my goals successful. Something about my intent had the particles evenly distribute themselves over the surface of the two boots. After I was done with that Infusion, most of the rough edges of the boots had been smoothed, but they still looked rough. Thankfully, the average Level of the Materials had been Q3 and I'd gone through the effort of Infusing each of the component parts so I had a little bit of leeway for the Artisan side of Infusion Artisan to flex its muscles.

There was a Q4 Life Infusion in the crate, but I didn't want to burn that on a lower Level craft. Despite all the people working with Infusions since I'd spread the Miscellaneous Skill, re-gathering an Infusion was still not something we'd figured out. Instead of dwelling on that, I riffled for another Q2 Infusion I'd seen in the crate as well as a handful of Q1s. The 'math' of using Infusions and matching them to a level was a bit less reliable with the number of unknowns I was working with and I wanted to make sure I didn't end up short somehow.

Cracking my knuckles and shutting out everything in the room after I told the girls I was going to finish the rest of the Item in one go, I crushed the Q2 Infusion between my fingers. The Thread unspooled vigorously, but I had ready to catch it and ready to apply it. As soon as the motes started to be used up, I cracked the expected trio of Q1s that would complete the Item. Unlike my usual crafting efforts, the Deepening technique in combination with the Skills I'd selected seemed to massage the changes into reality.

The Pith stitched bindings melded with the scales, stretching them out and forming a crosshatch pattern along the side of the boot where the spines reinforced them. A curling edge flowed over the lip of the leather, smoothing the edges and growing more subtle as scale and leather became some new hybrid material. While I hadn't intended it, a small heel formed at the back of the boot while the rest of the sole hardened perfectly before my eyes. Despite all that, the Item wasn't complete.

Why isn't this enough... I popped another two of the Q1 Infusions, straining as my mana dropped below 50% from the Deepening Technique and the stream I was feeding my Amulet. Pushing the confusion from my mind, I let the motes of energy shaped by my Skills run over the boots. Surprisingly, instead of changing anything they turned to polishing the absolute shit out of every individual facet of the boots. Trims looked gleaming enough to be blades, and the scales would have been perfect mirrors if not for the sun-orange tinge of the original owner. I stared, as the polish flashed brighter for a second before growing dull. The pearlescent gleam was gone, replaced with an almost muddy look that had my hopes dashed until I heard a gasp from behind me.

Marie was staring at the boots with wide eyes, her little block having been forgotten at some point. I turned back to the Item I'd failed to create, only to come away almost as surprised as the young woodshaper.

It wasn't exactly the Attribute I'd been expecting, considering the Infusions I'd used to create it, but the Trait smelled awfully close to what I'd been hoping to squeeze out of the Material-Attunement mixture.

Anticipating the suck, I took a seat before retracting my mana from my Amulet in order to do a test activation of the boots. Even with the expectation that dropping my Containment was incoming, I nearly hurled from a combination of vertigo and faintness that lasted for several seconds before the headache hammered me right in the axions. I'm not sure how long I sat there gripping my skull as if that would alleviate the aftereffects of boosting that particular Attribute.

Thankfully, I had two eager students that could only hold their questions at bay for so long. It ranged from the mundane of why I'd chosen which materials, to how I'd opted for what Skills and how the Deepening Technique might be replicated by someone not past the Corporeal Limit. Almost an hour of questions later, my headache only felt like an ice pick through the cornea and the two young crafters were sitting in their own seats contemplating. Marie, in particular, was squeezing her cube of wood as if it were plasticine instead of a solid. Her eyes hadn't left the Item.

Leaving the two, I stood and walked over to the boots. I placed a hand on each before channeling mana into them. The change was instantaneous. A glittering wall of nothingness seemed to crawl up my hands from where they were touching the boots. At the same time, the fish scale patterns on the boots returned to their mirror finish. The two combined effects seemed to scatter shadows and light in unnatural ways even as the glittering wall of nothingness continued to crawl up my arm all the way over my head. I was worried it would impair my sight, but the only thing I noticed as it crawled up my neck was a few scattered floaters in the periphery of my vision.

"Hehe, success!" I said, cutting off the mana supply to the boots. I wasn't sure how they would synergize with Danny's heat haze camo, but it would at least broaden her options for deceptive attacks. She's probably going to complain I didn't Infuse the bear bracers first; I didn't have those with me! She's just going to have to get over it. I'm getting her the goodies she requested, custom too!

"Mr. Ron?" Marie called, drawing me out of my thoughts.

"Oh, sorry, Marie. I was just thinking of the face a friend of mine was going to make when I give this to them."

"Ms. Danny will love them, I'm sure," the fae said, nodding her head. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but I urged her on. Clearly it was a question, but she hadn't hesitated with any of her theoreticals before. "Could I... craft with your supervision?"