John's armor took a few more tweaks before it was done, and then we got into more mundane armor, which wasn't going to be enchanted, for Alice and John. They didn't find anything like spidersilk--no supermaterial cloth available to them--so I mostly used John's memory metal to make threads, which I coated in a thin layer of nylon for comfort and durability, then made essentially a two-layer coat out of it. In between the two layers, I made a layer of chainmail out of slightly thicker wire, occasionally stitched in place. In total, it was enough weight to no longer be light armor, but it was still nearly as flexible as cloth, and it felt like heavy cloth when you wore it, thanks to the nylon sheathing.

Steve was impressed to find that although his golden weapon could penetrate the armor, it didn't tear it completely apart in a single blow. "This is solid," he declared, but then turned to look at me, completely serious. "But I could use something heavier."

For him, I essentially did the same thing, but adding a layer of scale mail to the outside, which his knowledge from the Armory helped me design. The armored scales were thicker, and while a light strike from his golden broadsword tore a gash through the garment and scattered scale and chain across the room, it failed to make it entirely through, leaving only a scar on the inside of the inner layer of metal fabric. He nodded, approvingly.

Combined with this, of course, I provided them with mundane clothes in silk, cotton, nylon, and various combinations, even providing everyone with their choice of T-shirt designs. Given that they had bags of holding, I provided them with summer, winter, and formal wear all together.

The women did not mention their unmentionable clothes, and nobody suggested I do the same for the men. I found this humorous, but kept it to myself.

After she finished enchanting John's arm armor, Jess was willing to provide me with spell circle templates that would work for accelerating plant growth, and warned me that this could get easily out of hand if I wasn't careful. She was a little less able to provide help given my questions providing passive power with meteoric steel, but when I set up a test thing on the roof, she could at least confirm that the metal would--eventually--provide enough magical energy to run a small spell on its own. The idea wasn't something that already existed within the Diamond Mind's archives, but given a test piece in front of her, she was able to pick apart the design and why it wasn't going to work the way I wanted it to, or not immediately.

Mostly, any attempt I made to turn meteoric steel into "wires" that directed the power to a spell circle would run afoul of some complicated restrictions that would have taken longer to explain than the other heroes were willing to wait. It was the right metal to "create magical energy", and the wrong metal to transfer it, and none of the mundane materials I had would work, either. She assured me that they would find something eventually, and it would almost certainly be another one of the magical materials that they would need me to craft into armor or accessories.

Once put to the task, she did quickly find a practical use for the solar panels, providing me with two spell circles, one to collect water from the atmosphere and one to heat up nearby, relatively pure water to a little over body temperature--in short, providing me a water source and a water heater. She tried to explain to me how to modify it--in particular, how to set the temperature--but those modifications were beyond my ability. It's not like I was dumb, but somehow, it was really hard to understand the runic language that spells ran on, even with her explaining it. To paraphrase our findings, that was entirely within the domain of the Mind Hero and not in the domain of the Will Hero, and that's all there was to it.

With the business more or less concluded for now, they dumped everything they'd collected on my behalf into my storage. They offered me one of the bag of holdings, but it didn't work for me, like it didn't for Alice--nor for Steve, as it turned out. Somehow, that was an advantage reserved for Jess and John, and well, more power to them.

We'd decided to do our parting on the roof, just because it felt right to John and Alice. "I'll check in with you once a week or so," I promised, since apparently subtle communication was a me thing more than anyone else. "And next time you come by, the tower will be better filled in..."

"And taller, I expect," said John, his eyes still on the horizon.

"Yes," I admitted. "It just... feels right."

Steve let out a sigh. "I thought when you first left that it had to be wrong," he said, and we all turned to look at him. "But you're right, it does seem... right, doesn't it? The palace isn't home. And if we were carting around our own private smith with us everywhere we went, well, we wouldn't have an excuse to walk away for a while. I can see this being part of, you know, a healthy work-life balance."

There were nods all around, and I smiled. "Probably why I have to keep animals, too," I pointed out. "A sanctuary from the outside world--"

"Oh," said Alice, suddenly. "I didn't think of it like that." She turned to look at me. "If we find someone that needs a place, you can keep them safe, even if nobody else believes that they're safe. A child of demons, for instance."

I nodded. "A broken soul, someone forgotten, someone evil, someone good..."

"We're not finding you a wife," interrupted Steve. "Or a husband, for that matter."

Entirely for the joke, and not because I was at all, yet, comfortable with the idea of having a husband, I stepped in towards the Hero of the Golden Arsenal. "That's okay," I said, in my best seductive purr. "I have everything I need right he--"

He understood what I was doing in time to shove me away before I groped his ass, and we all laughed, him obviously upset but also understanding that it was a joke. "Yeah," he said, through the laughter, "that's not going to happen."

"Yeah," I agreed, and offered him a hand to shake, which he did. I offered the same to John, and gave the other two hugs. Then, the four of them grouped up, Jess wiggled her fingers, and they were gone.

It felt a little empty after that.

I spent the next little bit organizing the piles of junk--I mean samples--that they'd provided, dividing my storage up into shelves and bins, and jars and vials where appropriate. Aside from memory metal, foam, plastic, elastic, nylon, and silk, I also was able to closely examine a couple cell phones, replicating the battery chemistry and construction easily and in bulk. I wasn't sure that would help me much; the internals of the phone were too complicated for me to pick out which chips were voltage regulators, and without that, figuring out how to turn battery power into the correct voltage and current for lights and motors was more guess and check than I was ready to dive into at the moment.

There were also a couple potions, which I quickly discovered I couldn't replicate. That wasn't surprising; Alice had warned me it was a Mind thing, and I would have been shocked if it weren't. Come to think of it, maybe electronics design was a Mind thing too; I'd ask next time she was around, but there was no rush.

As I rummaged through the piles, I found a pair of gloves in a very particular kind of leather. I frowned, wondering if this was the dragon hide that Alice had suggested the kingdom had, but my bracers told me that wasn't correct, even if it refused to positively identify the creature it had come from. Nevertheless, it was very tough leather, with a little bit of natural magic in it, just like there was to meteoric steel, but I wasn't sure exactly what it did. Without knowing that, it didn't seem wise to do anything with it, and I resolved to ask Alice next time I talked to her. In all, it seemed like the sort of thing that I wish I'd asked about while they were still here, but... too late.

There were also a series of gems, some of them mundane and others magical. The most magical crystal was obviously some kind of mana-gem, and my attempts to replicate it only provided a very thin lattice on which, I was mostly sure, you could place a ton of mana for storage. Even as I watched, though, the lattice broke down. I studied the effect, finally deciding that it was only stable when actually filled with mana--as you used the mana, any crystal lattice that got exposed would vanish. That made sense, if it were engineered... and I guess being designed by gods counts as such.

The other two magic crystals were sealed in separate jars, and it wasn't immediately clear what they were. After replicating each and playing around, I discovered that one of them you could look through, and it would show you just a bit of the spirit world beyond. In my tower, that wasn't helpful--as Jess had noted, the walls were solid enough to block out a lot of spiritual phenomena. When I stepped outside, though, I found that there was a hazy fog over the hills, and I quickly discovered that just by walking around, I was disturbing that hazy fog, my every motion sending waves of power that stirred things even in the far distance.

I resolved to try to shield the area from my power more in the future, though in the near future, that would most likely just mean staying inside my tower. The possibility that I had attracted the demon fox just by being here... well, I didn't like it, but it was plausible.

The other crystal I eventually worked out was some kind of magical absorber or heat sink. It didn't store energy, exactly; instead, when I put power in it, it released it more slowly, patiently, turning intense energy into diffuse energy. That seemed like a useful defensive feature, but I'd have to work out how to use it properly, and it'd probably have to wait until we had whatever material conducted energy.

Carli showed up a little while later, trotting over to me and saying, Want to see Malla!

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I looked at my goat, and decided that she was right, I ought to check in on her, and others in town, too. I replaced my samples in storage, and then... before walking away, looked at the staircase from the ground floor to my storage, I decided to cover it up, leaving the floor looking pristine and level. It'd be easy enough for me to undo, and if someone got into my tower without permission, they might not even know it was there.

The lock on my front door, though, was equally arcane--all I did was have a deadbolt that required no key, sliding it into place with magic alone. I'd need to do better someday, if adventurous thieves showed up, but it'd do for today.

The walk did me good, and Carli was happy to be out with me. When get got to Malla's, we found she had gone out with the herd, but the two of us didn't have any trouble tracking them to the area where she'd been attacked. The small herd of goats were already exploring the green spot where Alice had done her work, though Malla seemed uncomfortable.

I called out to her, and she turned to see me, looking relieved. "Colin, boy," she said, sounding a bit surprised. "You need something?"

"Just checking on you." Carli scampered ahead of her own volition, and I gestured to my kid. "She wanted to see how you were."

"Oh, sweety," Malla said, kneeling down with a little difficulty and giving Carli a good scratch. "You're kind, but I'm fine. The healer did good work, and I'm made of tough stuff in the first place."

Carli bleated, but didn't offer any loud thoughts, likely because she knew that Malla couldn't hear.

"We're glad to hear that," I said, on behalf of my goat, myself, and my absent friends. "But you should take it easy for a while anyway."

Malla looked up at me, and I felt like she was judging me, but not quite in the way I was expecting. "I am tired," she admitted. "More than I'd be if I were healthy. But the herd needs to eat."

Carli bleated at her again, and I noticed a few of the goats wandering in our direction, giving Carli an eye. It reminded me that she'd done her own fighting at around the same time. "I didn't mention," I said, "but in addition to the nasty black fox, there was a normal one, which Carli drove off. She said it got one of the little ones."

Malla was looking at me, her eyes lost in some world of memories or methodical herding calculation that I didn't know or want to. "Only two," she mused after a long moment. "Desert foxes hunt as a family or alone. Do you know the genders?"

I didn't, though in retrospect, I was fairly sure the demon fox was male. I just shook my head instead of answering directly. "You think it matters?"

"If you only drove off the other one, and if it was a female..." she shrugged. "Might have kits, in a season or two. Don't know where the black fox came from, but it was a nasty sort, ruthless and cruel. Don't want more of them around."

I sent Carli a mental question of whether the one she beat up seemed like a girl fox, but the goat had no clue, and wouldn't have even considered the question if I didn't ask. Though, to be fair, I didn't until Malla asked, either. I shrugged. "I didn't ask what happened to the other fox," I said, "but I'll look into it. The ones who found it might have killed it."

"They're wily," Malla said, finally getting back on her feet. "Can't keep a fox in one place, or out of one, even with fences. You have to kill them when you have the chance."

As much as I understood the practical side of that, I wasn't eager to genocide common animals. I didn't make the argument, though, not to Malla, and once I was sure that she was fine, I left her and went on to the town. It was only midafternoon, so I stopped in the tavern to ensure they didn't need anything repaired.

Which, as it turns out, of course they did.

The carpenter they'd called in to make repairs was going as fast as he could, I could tell. The chairs, stools, and benches around--it was a mixed lot, I think because they weren't picky, and not really so much because the tavern had any real theme going--were mostly set up on tables things lashed together and glue setting, and the carpenter looked harried and upset. The tavern owner, a middle-aged man with a fairly large gut, was working beside him, and when his eyes met mine I could see him bristle a bit.

"You," he said, "you're that outcast, right? With the tower."

Outcast, huh? Ouch. I held up my hands and laughed. "Sorry about last night..."

"Oh, you can be sorry, it's fine," he said, sounding grouchy, putting a bunch of guilt-tripping parent voice into his words like an old Italian man might, but with a very different accent. "But I want some words with that golden rapscallion who caused this mess..."

"He went home already," I interrupted. "He will come and go every now and then, but I don't think he'll be back soon."

"Ran away, huh?" He straightened, and rubbed his face, and I realized he had a decent shiner on one eye, though not so bad that it seemed to be affecting him. So Steve's barfights could leave bruises, but nothing that would get in the way the next day? That was a useful bonus. "That son of a mercenary bastard will be back, you say. Well, I won't be returning his change, not if he ran away."

"Change?" I raised my eyebrows.

"He paid for the repairs," the owner gestured. "Too much, and said to put the rest towards his tab. But what is he thinking, with all of that money...!"

I just shook my head. "Keep it," I said. "He doesn't need it as much as the town does. Maybe get some better tables--"

"Hey, my tables are fine!" The carpenter gestured at me sharply, and repeatedly, with a hammer. "It's the local wood is all, it's crap! There are no straight boards to be had out here. We can cut things rough and smooth them out, but there's no making better with this shitty lumber."

I added Sawmill to my mental checklist of future improvements to the town, although there weren't enough trees around for that to make a lot of sense, either. Not that there were none, but... for a sawmill to be used even daily, that would require a lot of cut-down trees, enough that the sparse tree lines would noticeably change. I frowned, though, and considered. It's not like I couldn't do the cutting myself, and that would help the town without being a handout, and without becoming a major hassle. "Is it just that there are no straight boards, or is the wood bad?"

"It's both," he said, going back to his gluing. "Aside from fruitwoods they grow, which nobody wants to harvest, there are two kinds of woods here. One has too much sap in it to be good for lumber, and the other is too hard. We do the rough-cuts with axes more than saws, because we have to sharpen the saws until nothing is left of them..."

"What kind of sap?" I asked, now curious. Between resin, latex, and syrup, there were plenty of kinds of useful tree sap.

"They call it tarsap," interrupted the tavern owner, but the carpenter spoke over him anyway.

"It's nasty stuff," he said, waving his free hand dismissively. "It smells bad if you burn it, doesn't work as glue, but it remains sticky and foul no matter how you treat it. Worse, it will corrode iron in time, and it doesn't want to come off. If it gets in the teeth of a saw, it will be ruined too soon." He put his hands back on his work. "We try not to cut down tarsap trees, but whenever they do, they always bring the trees to me as though I want the wood. I do not want the wood! It ruins my saws, and it's of no value to me at all."

"Which ones are tarsap trees?" Who knows, if purified somehow, it might become more useful.

"The ones with the narrower leaves," the owner said, focusing again on his work. "The ones with the wider leaves are the Bur'jaal hardwoods. Of course, the kipear and koalet trees are distinctive..."

Koalet, I assumed by context, were the olive-like fruit trees that I'd seen when working on the drainage. I filed that away and looked at the two working on repairing the stools and chairs. "Is there any way I can help?"

The owner looked up at me, and I noticed the moment when he realized that I could actually just repair things. But then he glanced at the carpenter, and looked away. "No," he said, "we can do this work ourselves."

The woodworker either missed the byplay, or didn't care either way, and I left.

As I stepped outside and looked around, I noticed a caravan off in the distance, coming the same way I'd arrived. It wasn't near enough the town to be a concern for now, but it was likely the same one that Heglid was expecting. That reminded me that I'd asked him to get me a mattress... and that concern was now redundant, given my access to plastic foam.

So I went off that direction, trying to think of new requests I could make. He'd caught me off guard the last time, and in truth, I wasn't sure how helpful relying on caravans was given my eccentric and eclectic need for materials. So, by the time I walked into his shop, I was frowning.

"Ser Hero, is everything alright?" To his credit, Heglid was immediately concerned, and polite.

"Oh, nothing's wrong, Heglid," I said. "I wanted to tell you I don't need the mattress anymore, but I was trying to think of anything else I need, and... I feel like I'm forgetting something." That was a better way of phrasing it than, 'I can make almost anything I would buy'.

"You don't need a mattress? It's the sort of thing that is hard to get in good quality. I was going to pass a letter along to my contact in Sei'la. They have the finest goose down there that you have ever felt..."

I lifted my hands, amused. "I have found something that satisfied me for now. If I get tired of it later, I will let you know." I paused, thinking. "I am meaning to start a garden, and because of my magic," or, really, Jess', but he didn't need to know that, "I can raise plants that are not usually healthy here, but not in large quantities. If you see any seeds, or plants that will seed, buy them for me."

"Of course," he said, sounding impressed. "Was it your power that created the Green Place?"

Word of that had already gotten into town? I raised my eyes. "No," I said, "That was the Hero of Purifying Light. What I do will be much slower."

"Purifying Light, that was the woman in the white robes?"

"Yes." I glanced around, thinking and frowning. "One of my friends told me that they make something to the south that explodes in bright light, in the skies, what we call fireworks. Have you heard of something like that?"

"In Amash, they made a display once. As I recall, the elders of the city did not like it. I did not really like it much, either." He paused. "There are of course oils that burn very well..."

"This would be a powder," I interrupted. "It is easy to handle as long as you keep it away from flames. If you know anyone who can get a hold of some, I would be interested."

He shrugged, and I knew that he had mentally added it to a list, and so I moved on to the next item that came to mind. "Do you know of any... paintings, or images, of famous landmarks worldwide? Palaces, temples, monuments...?"

"There are always such for rich people," Heglid said, with a frown. "But for this town? I think a trader would be confused if I even asked."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a cheap copy of the image, but I suppose that's rare." Coming from a post-industrial world, of course I'd immediately underestimated how long it takes to make a quality image. "Mostly, I suppose I'm just interested in knowing what the..." Wonders of the World was probably not a phrase here, I thought, trying to find a better way to phrase it. "...What sort of style legendary builders have had over time."

"Aurnal would be the place to ask those kind of questions," he replied, and I frowned. I hadn't been thinking about it when I left the capital, but doubtless he was right.

"Well," I said, "even if it's just a book of travel stories, it might be interesting. I'd pay a reasonable about for it, but it's not important."

Heglid nodded at me, again, but the frown on his face said he didn't agree. Over the next little bit, I asked him to snag or ask after a few tools that I doubted were made in town, including a drill, which was a concept he didn't intuitively understand, but those were mostly low-use or low-chance items. Once I got started about drills, though, that kept running through the back of my mind even as I left his place and went off to see Miun.