“Now, first you must pour in your aetherium and bring it to a low boil.” Cira watched the studious Delilah carefully pick up a jar of light blue jelly and slop it into the perfectly clear cauldron.

She looked briefly impressed to see nothing stick to the jar and held it up to the light. There were a good few seconds spent staring blanking into the glyph, “Um, Cira… I don’t have much mana. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use this for long, and I thought ‘alchemy’ recipes took a lot of mana too.”

Cira pondered for a moment, “I wouldn’t say that… Maybe half or so do. Depends on what you want. I mean, it would be counterintuitive if you needed your own mana to restore mana, wouldn’t it? As for the cauldron, you will find it activates and stays alit using ambient mana alone. Same as most of mine at home. It’s much simpler this way.”

Nanri was on the other side of her and gasped in sudden realization, speaking under her breath, “So that’s what it was…”

“I better get you an enchanted spoon though. I always forget something…” Cira squinted and looked around as if grazing her line of sight for materials was a reflex. Shortly thereafter, a dollop of silver found its way to the forge corner. “Go ahead and get started. When it comes to a boil pour the prima salt in and flip that hourglass. Stir constantly until your spoon is prepared, it won’t take long.”

“…alright then.” Delilah paused for a moment then nodded, returning to the cauldron as Cira walked away. She stared at her open hands with a blank look as if they were missing something.

Watching her, Nanri giggled and conjured a titanium stick for her to stir with, “You can borrow this in the meantime.”

“Oh… thanks.” Delilah didn’t know how to react to her bright smile, so quietly proceeded to stir instead.

For an amateur blacksmith, spoons were easy money. Cira could pump them out all day, regardless of demand. They had to be long, and they had to be strong. Three spoons found their way into existence upon the anvil, and swiftly passed quality check under the sorcerer’s discerning eye. Next step of course, was enchanting them, for which she could return to the lab, a few paces over.

“Why are there so many?” Delilah asked, unsure of what emotion to feel at her newfound surplus of shiny spoons.

“Ideally, you three will be able to each run a batch concurrently.” Cira explained, using one spoon as a pointer to wave around, “That said, the main bottleneck will be daily aetherium supply. If you were to do one batch each per day, you would finish quite earlier than my three-year projection, but you never know how it will go. In fact, they should be over here.” Cira turned her head towards the picnic table of bored companions, “Alchemaidens! Come forth.”

All three turned their heads, but the two she was talking to got up and walked over. “We have names you know.”

“I am yet unaware of them.” Cira replied factually.

“Oh, this one’s Sarah,” Nanri popped up between them with a hand over their shoulders that made the pair incredibly uncomfortable, “And this one’s Patricia.”

“Very well. Though I won’t need to know them for long, no offense.” She set the spoon down. “I won’t explain everything again, but just listen to Delilah. She’ll walk you through your first batches tomorrow. Why don’t one of you stir for now?”

“I can do it.” Patricia stepped up and nodded resolutely and Cira appreciated them finally relenting a little. Perhaps separating the pack was a good idea.

“Good initiative. Delilah, make sure she doesn’t splash it around too much or it’ll coat the edges and burn.”

“Got it!” Delilah stepped back to let the new girl give it a try.

During this time Cira pulled out her trusty world-class treasure of a needle and enchanted the spoons. The key to drawing in ambient mana was etching an array into the object—the formation of which varied based on its shape. The medium was convenient as it could just use holy mana, and many patterns worked, but Cira was partial to a series of magic circles in rings down the length for this application.

Stirring itself was actually much simpler. An elementary spatial sorcery can be transcribed as a glyph to twist the spoon around. Of course, she made her standard activation glyphs and reinforcement runes were placed in points of high stress. This spoon was built to last.

Nanri watched each step intently. Her eyebrows would raise, she’d let out a breath, or give a thoughtful, “Hmm…” Depending on the glyph.

“And that’s that.” Cira dusted off her hands as the spoon found its way to the cauldron. She gave Nanri a look and the temporary one faded away.

Patricia gasped, backing away, “What did I do?!”

This elicited a chuckle from all the other girls, including Sarah. Though she stopped herself and covered her mouth with a hand. Cira picked up another spoon, “You’re just fine. That’s the replacement. Go ahead and touch it.”

“Just touch it? Okay—Ahh!” As soon as her finger made contact it started spinning in the cauldron. “Does… does it just keep going?

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“Naturally. To turn it off, touch it again, but you shouldn’t ever need to. When the batch is done just pull it out. It will only work inside the cauldron.”

“Wow…” Sarah gazed endearingly at the automated spoon, “That’s amazing.”

“Sure is. Now all of you watch closely. The hourglass is set to one hour, but if our potion is not translucent by the time it runs out, we have a problem.”

When Cira assigns work, she often overestimates the amount of effort required. In other words, she overstaffs. This couldn’t always be true, however, like with that one guard whose simple job of notifying the citizenry to gather at the infirmary turned into head nurse, chief patient-wrangler, then eventual poison tester, but Cira valued wiggle room. She didn’t mind paying three people to watch a bowl of muck change colors if it meant the cure would be crafted with care. In a way, this was a test. Could they keep their attention on it for the remainder of an hour?

This also begged the question, why would they need to? What could possibly go wrong for the inexperienced alchemists in her absence over the next few years? With simple, low mana recipes like this, the worst that could happen is loss of ingredients or burnt sludge caked onto the inside of the apparatus, making for a difficult cleaning. The truth of the matter is that she way oversold the alchemist role here, something they would come to learn in the coming days.

Of course, this brings us back to Cira’s habit of gathering more labor than necessary. Nanri peered over to the picnic table, where two others had finally woken up. Ripped pants and shorts. One wore a vest over stripes and the other, a plain cotton shirt. Both looked mangier and dirtier than anyone else present. Their first actions in the waking world were to creep over to the table and peer into the boxes of worm pies, grabbing a couple themselves. Triton and the others all looked at them funny, then back at Cira.

Nanri said the thing on everybody’s mind, “Hey Cira, I’ve been meaning to ask… Who are those two?”

“Oh, I see they’ve finally come to.” She noticed them eating a late breakfast, “Those are my nameless goons.” She let Jimbo hang onto the other two who stayed awake for the adventure.

“Your… what?” Her head tilted to the side, glancing between them sloppily eating with their hands and a faintly grinning sorcerer. “What will they be doing?”

“Haven’t decided yet. Figured it would be good to have some extra hands around. What do you think?” She noticed the alchemaidens stealing glances and pointed at the cauldron, “Pay attention! This is important.”

“Yes Ma’am…” Sarah turned forward and gazed into the cauldron with full concentration.

Nanri had a hand to her chin, “They should probably be exorcists, right?”

“Good call. I think you’re right, but… there will be a couple more roles popping up that I won’t have time to fill personally.” She handed her a spoon and the orichalcum needle. “Figure out what they want to wield and get them suited, but do you mind finishing these spoons for me first? I still need to make two more of everything else for the alchemists.”

“Of course.” Nanri smiled, confident she’d watched closely enough, “Leave it to me.”

The blessed alembics took a little time, as they needed to be identical in every way to each other. In reality, they didn’t, but Cira was a stickler for consistency in the process. Of course, those most careful had the capacity to be most reckless, but that’s an alchemical adventure for another day.

These operated with simple glyphs as well and could be enchanted with a conjured needle. Once she finished that, it was time to craft the cauldrons. Solid crystal which nothing sticks to. Really, the perfect material for any apparatus unless it called for a specific one like the alembics. These were but another feat of sorcery.

Ordinarily, conjurations were impermanent by nature. This was not true for stabilized mana crystal, however. Creating them took a great deal of mana to begin with, or she would have done such a thing with the crossbow—not saying she won’t with her own later. The key difference was stability. A low-power array could easily crystallize mana, but it would disperse quickly.

As an aside, this is the only known material form of mana aside from spirits, but stabilizing mana in crystal form was essentially the same process the crossbow did but much slower. Cira took time meticulously adding mana to her construct, allowing its structure to form in a natural fashion. Like this, it’s much denser as well, hence the proportionally steep mana cost.

Two didn’t take much though, and Cira had them ready to go before long. A quick glance at the hourglass and she joined Nanri to meet her goons for the first time, “How are you two feeling? Missed out on quite the night, you did.”

“Oh hey, it’s Captain Dreadheart.” One lazily looked up to her.

They other seemed to be rather chipper, “Hey there, Captain! What’d we miss?”

I am confident these ones were asleep before I said I was anybody on this island’s captain. Hardly half an hour after I crafted the Salty Songstress. Is this part of their routine? They just linger in the background, as if they were always there? She tried thinking about it from different angles and couldn’t think of a reason to be upset about it. “After you fell asleep, we took down the Black Scourge, allowing Jimbo Sticks to become their new captain. I’m sure he’ll change the name soon, though.

“Haha, right… Good one Cap.” This man had dark stubble on his face and a mohawk that hadn’t been kept up on, with the hair around it long grown back.

The lazy one stopped mid-bite, “Wait, really? We missed that much?”

“You sure did. Now you’re exorcists, too. How about that?” She patted him on the back, “Did you two choose your weapons yet? I’d like to use up the last of this silver.”

Nanri took charge on this one, patting the chipper one on his shoulder, “Charlie wants a cutlass and,” She switched to the other, “Frank wants a big hammer.”

“Well, I guess they’re not my nameless goons anymore. But hmm… I may not have enough for the hammer. How about a morning star?” Cira suggested.

“Too hard…” His face was gaunt and sunken. He wasn’t dark-skinned but somehow his skin tone was just a few shades darker like meat left out overnight. Not a healthy man. “Can you do a mace?”

“Sure can. I’ll get right on it. Keep up the good work, Nanri.” And she returned to the forge, leaving just enough silver to weave into everyone’s armor later.

Nanri’s expression brightened up, “O-okay! Thanks, Cira… I will!”

She had only just begun shaping her first ball of blessed silver, when Delilah excitedly called out, “Cira! I think it’s done, come look!”

“Oh! Be right there.” She rested her various floating objects and got up, “Hey, Nanri. On second thought, take a break. Come look!”

Talk of the completed cure had quickly drawn everyone’s attention. No matter their background—exorcists, alchemists, overseer’s lackey—they all gazed at the translucent, glittering green liquid with wonder in their eyes. Delilah especially had such a proud look on her face, but her heart stopped at Cira’s next words.

“Shit.” She raised the cauldron into the air, holding it up in the scarce light, “It’s not orange.”