Karrel woke up well rested for the first time in a week. He slowly opened his eyes and stretched, thinking of the weird dream he had. Something about falling rocks and aliens.

Then he remembered an actual falling rock and alien he met yesterday. Just in time to hear loud sizzling coming from his smithy.

The enchanter quickly put on his pants and rushed to the workshop. There he saw that Trader has appropriated one of the tables and set up various vials and alchemical equipment. Half of the vials were filled with this substance or other.

In the middle was a beaker filled with a bubbling liquid, an active tau burner under it.

"What are you doing?" Karrel asked.

"Good morning to you, too." She greeted him, her eyes still on the bottle. "I woke up in the middle of the night, so I decided to work on my secondary specialty, alchemy. I'm making a potion of mana sight, so you can better study firmamental magic."

"That's nice. But where did you get all this stuff?" He asked.

"You still had a couple of gold coins in your pocket, and the local potion shop is always open because Isabella is a workaholic and constantly drinks fatigue suppressants. I told her it's unhealthy, if not for her body then her mind, but she assured me she takes a week-long slumber every three months, so it roughly cancels out." She explained. "I gave her a check up, and she's fine, so it's not my business to tell her how to live her life. We chatted a bit, exchanged some potion recipes, fucked a bit…"

Karrel cleared his throat. "It's… good to see you're making… friends. How does sex work for you anyway?"

"I'm bisexual. I like everyone."

"Yes, I know how that works. I meant, how do you… down there…? I saw you had… a penis, but you're a woman…?" He was wrestling between curiosity and embarrassment.

"Oh!" She chuckled. "I can shapeshift, but I have a preferred form I feel most comfortable and beautiful in. I chose to have both sets of genitals. There's a vulva behind my penis. So I use whichever my lovers prefer, sometimes both."

"Huh. Sounds handy, honestly."

"I could spend some time to-"

"Nope! I'm good with what I got, and Luci is, too. I appreciate the thought, though."

"Of course. If you do want any modifications, let me know. We can make a deal."

"Wouldn't that fall under our current arrangement?" He wondered.

"Our deal is: I help you become a dragon, you help me regain my memories."

"Oh come on, we're friends, right? I know we met yesterday, but it doesn't feel like we're just business partners."

She sighed. "There's a few more weird compulsions I have placed on my mind. The biggest one is that I cannot help anyone without getting something out of it. Well, technically, I could, it's not like a geas or whatever, but something bad will happen. Either to me or whoever I have helped."

"And that's one of those things you just know, huh?" Karrel put his hands on his hips. "Your knowledge is implanted, how do you know they gave you fully accurate info?"

"We can test that, if you want." She shrugged.

Trader turned around, and picked up a small plate filled with pastries.

"Isa gave them to me on my way out. They're yours now." The symbiote handed Karrel the plate. He took it, immediately taking a bite out of a chocolate cookie.

"Any moment now…" she muttered.

The smith finished the plate of pastries undisturbed.

"I don't think anything will happen." Karrel said.

On this cue, a brick fell on his head from the damaged ceiling.

"Fuck!" He shouted as Trader moved in to heal him.

"This doesn't mean anything, the roof was fucked up by your fall, that the brick fell at that moment was just a stupid coincidence." He ranted as the alien pushed healing magic into his head.

[Minor concussion, the scalp is bleeding, but no skull fracture.] She noted.

"Your house is made out of stone, and the roof is wooden. This is probably the only brick here." She said out loud after the bleeding stopped.

Upon closer inspection, the brick turned out to actually be the last ingot of copper that was left after one of Karrel's work orders from lady Tiamarr. Still, the fact that it was left in that particular spot in the attic and teetering on the edge for a full day before falling precisely at Karrel's head was too specific to be a coincidence. The smoking gun was a sliver of destiny mana that clung to the ingot.

"See? I'm forbidden from altruism on the threat of bad luck. It's also proportional to how much I've helped, so saving someone's life might just kill their family." Trader said, holding the slab of metal.

"Uh, then won't healing the injury bring more bad luck?" Karrel asked worriedly.

"No, because it's part of an existing deal I made with you. You can't become a dragon if you're dead. But any freebies not related to that would be punished." She explained. "I can't really cheat it, because it's based on what I believe to be the part of the deal. One silver lining is that I can make agreements that aren't fair. I can just swindle someone, sure, but I can also get the short end of the bargain and I'd still «gain,» so that's also on the table. So next time you want me to hand you something, you'll have to pay one copper coin for the service."

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"That's going to get annoying really fast." He scratched his head, then hissed in pain. "Are there any other compulsions you have? So far I know about the «no charity» rule, the blood thing, and the heightened sex drive. Something else?"

"The paranoia. Or I hope it's paranoia. I feel someone's hunting me, and I bet it's a church, but we can't be sure until and unless someone does actually attack me. But I've been able to fight it, since I went to Isabella's. Oh, and I'm pretty sure my libido wasn't changed. The compulsions feel like someone else's thoughts if I pay attention to them, but I just have a high sex drive." She shrugged. "Aside from the blocked off memories, that's all."

"Alright, it could've been worse. I'm gonna check the mailbox, hopefully someone has an order. You can brew here, I don't need all the tables." Karrel turned around and left.

He returned a minute later with a skip in his step.

"Four orders!" He waved the letters.

"That doesn't sound like much to me." Trader admitted.

"Nah, that's a lot. Even when I had a contract with Tiamarr, she only gave me an order a week, or one for two weeks if it was a bulk order. I'm not making simple swords that shoot fire on every swing. I do one-of-a-kind, powerful stuff, or bulk orders of medium-grade enchantments. I mean, I could make common magic items, but these days the market is saturated by mass production using taumachines set up by dumbasses who don't even know what a rune is. They can make a hundred enchanted swords a day by just pulling some levers." Karrel rambled.

"So your stuff costs a lot, I assume?" The alien asked, pouring some viscous, green substance into the beaker.

"My prices are fair for the services provided, and since my services are superb, so is the compensation I expect. If the client isn't satisfied, I can always sell the product to someone else." He answered. It has been many years since he doubted the quality of his work. Were there better artificers in the world? Surely. But none of them lived in this dutchy, and everyone worth their glyph chalk knew it.

Karrel sat down by an unoccupied table and opened the first letter.

"Let's see here… from House Periapt, the senior's child requires some armor. Form adjusting, as they're a werewolf and they sometimes run off in the middle of the night in a shift-induced trance. Must not restrict movement, but still provide ample protection." He read the letter out loud, omitting some flowery language for brevity. He then sighed. "The classic dilemma. If light, durable materials were cheap and easily available, we'd make everything out of them. Adamantium is hard to make and impervious to magic, so it's a bitch to enchant, even for me. Dragon scales are even more expensive, and even harder to enchant, unless they're from the same dragon, but good luck with getting a dragon to skin themself for your project. There are some elemental alloys, but I'm not a fucking dimension hopper, and I don't know any elementalist powerful enough to make them here."

"I assume they put a cap on the price?" Trader stopped him from falling into an even deeper rant.

"Twenty hundred gold pieces. They will pay exactly twenty hundred." The smith nodded. "A kilogramme of adamantium costs fifteen hundred."

"Hmm…" Trader stopped mixing components. After a while of thinking, she snapped her fingers. "Chitin."

"What?" Karrel raised his head in her direction.

"Chitin." She repeated. "It's an organic substance. The exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans are made out of it. Tough, stiff, and light. Exactly what you're looking for. The only weakness might be corrosives, but you're a smart guy, you can figure it out."

"No way. Why haven't I heard about it before?" He found it hard to believe that the solution for an ages-old issue was found that quickly by someone that was barely introduced to the subject.

"Probably because you can't work it like a metal. It's brittle, and will burn before it melts. It has to be grown in the desired shape from the get-go. Fortunately, I can easily do so with my own body."

Karrel smiled widely. "Great, then let's get to work!"

"Twenty percent." She replied.

His smile vanished. "That's a lot. You only make the materials. I can do fifteen."

"What if we made it an ongoing deal? On every order I help you with, I get eighteen percent?"

He mulled it over.

"Fine, eighteen percent."

They shook hands, and Trader produced a palm sized plate of chitin, and detached it from her body. It didn't physically hurt, but there was an alarm bell in her mind that protested against ejecting biomass like that.

She finished the potions while Karrel analyzed the new material. It was definitely lighter than adamantium, and for a centimeter of thickness, pretty durable. He had to employ magic to break it to pieces, and he wasn't a weak man.

"Okay, I have some ideas. I usually don't do teamwork, but it's gonna be easier with you. Come bond with me."

She slithered up his back, the sensation getting less alien with each time. He sent his idea telepathically.

[Alright, lots of small plates, yes… I can add a compound to make the chitin more flexible here and here… ooh, layered with padding to increase impact absorption, ordinary armor padding should be enough for that… check this out.] She sent her proposed changes, he explained how viable they were, and they went back and forth like that for a few minutes. Much faster than if they had to sketch their designs, though they did put the final version on paper. Then, they gathered the materials and assembled what they dubbed "beetle-scale" over several hours. Linking the chitin composite plates took the bulk of the time.

When they finished it, Karrel thanked his new work associate and they separated. She decided to go through her notes from the library while the artificer placed the enchantments on the armor.

It was always a balancing act between simply imbuing the spell into the material itself and placing runes that allowed more power, but would act unpredictably should they be damaged. They've already carved anti-corrosive runes into the underside of the plates, so that just required pumping them full of mana to start a feedback loop, at which point the enchantment became self-sustaining. The resizing enchantment was the main function of the beetle-scale, and it wasn't allowed to fail mid-combat, so it had to be installed directly. It would drain the wearer's mana to function, but the master enchanter made it very efficient, so someone like a child of a noble, who no doubt trained their mana capacity from birth, would barely notice.

Finally, The Carapace was complete.

"Do you always name your items?" Trader asked, slightly amused.

"When I make something I'm particularly proud of, and especially when it's going to a noble. It makes it sound more powerful, and for the Dragonblooded, the presence is as important as functionality. I also often decorate the piece, but in this case, the exotic material speaks for itself. We did good work. Thank you." Karrel answered.

He looked at the finished piece for a few more seconds, before a rumbling in his stomach got his attention.

"Well, time for a well-deserved lunch break." He commented.

"I'll feed from you when you come back." She said, which made the enchanter miss a bit.

"Oh, right, you eat better when you take my calories. I guess I'll eat for both of us then. I'm assuming you have something to do?" He gathered himself.

"I've made some potions according to Isabella's recipes and I want to sell them to her. Our approaches are a bit different, so she should be interested in studying them. There's nothing more engaging like trying to reverse-engineer another alchemist's methods." She confirmed.

"Can't you just tell her what you did?" He wondered.

"That would count as a freebie, and therefore trigger my restriction. Besides, that's not in the spirit. When you break the code, you feel like you've just pulled off a heist, even though the potion's maker let you study it in the first place. It comes from the times when scholars were much more secretive with their knowledge, and you actually had to steal someone's elixir to learn something about it. Nowadays, people understand that sharing research is mutually beneficial, so we willingly exchange our creations. Well, technically it's a whole thing of leaving the vial on the table and theatrically averting your gaze so the other can grab it. You know, good, dorky fun."

The smith chuckled. "I did something similar with my cousin. We did apprenticeship together under my father. Ah, good times." He looked into the distance, reminiscing about his teen years. "Alright, I'm gonna go stuff my belly full, you have fun with your girlfriend."

"She's not my- I mean, I was planning to ask her out… anyway, see you soon." She replied, and they went their separate ways.