165, 2/2

In a room ten meters to a side and half that in height, Erick and Grosgrena stood beside a table laden with ingots, most of which weighed in at a single kilogram, but some of which were much smaller than that. The majority were silver or grey, but practically all of the smaller ingots were of other colors. Bright orange, mossy green, gold, white, blue. The smallest ingot was the size of one of Erick’s fingernails.

The room itself was solid stone and constructed with magical experiments in mind. A few iron blast shields, each a good two meters square and half a hand thick, rested in an iron holder so they didn’t crush the floor with their weight. They had large bolts on their sides that could slide into holes in the floor, along with foldout triangles to keep them from toppling. If Erick needed to use one or two, there they were.

One such metal plate was already set up to the side, protecting two of Grosgrena’s assistants with their paperwork and various scales. They were two twenty-somethings, one male the other female, on the barest cusp of being not fully human; they were demi of some pink flavor who were both probably the equivalent of grad students. That iron plate was a precaution for them, since they knew a bit about what Erick might be doing to pull apart Grosgrena’s metals.

Poi stood near the grad students, but not with them.

“I don’t need a metal plate.” Erick said, “I can control the heat.”

“If you’re sure, then you’re sure. I certainly don’t need one.” Grosgrena gestured to the table of ingots. “Which one do you want to start with?” She tapped a milky silver-like ingot, saying, “This one is adamantium before the magic. In this form you can treat it like normal iron.” She gestured to the rest, saying, “Iron. Steel. Rustless steel. It’s all in there. Start where you want.”

Erick looked over the smaller ingots, for something caught his eye. One of the small silver ingots was messing up his mana sense—

“Oh. That one’s Extreme Light material.” Erick said, “I can’t work with that one.”

It was probably uranium or maybe thorium. There were only four stable elements past lead and Erick hadn’t made any of those Condensing spells. Perhaps he could make the spells for Bismuth, Thorium, Protactinium, and Uranium, but he didn’t feel like experimenting in that direction. Let’s not touch the radioactive materials, shall we. Don’t want a repeat of the Atomic Ban incident.

“Dammit.” Grosgrena frowned at the tiny bit of metal, saying, “I suppose you couldn’t either, could you. Meh. Fine. Can’t do shit with that stuff besides throw it in a bomb or in the trash. Trash it is.” She waved a hand and a tiny [Cleanse] drowned the radioactive ingot. The spell took a few seconds to turn the ingot into thick air, so Grosgrena hadn’t used a normal [Cleanse], but soon enough, the radioactive metal was gone.

Erick grabbed what he suspected was a steel bar, saying, “Let’s start with this.” He moved away from the table of ingots.

Grosgrena followed, saying, “Tell me what you’re doing while you do it.”

“Sure.” Erick explained as he began to throw spells into position, “First comes [Particle Vacuum], to clear out the space of any stray particles to ensure a clean working environment. [Particle Vacuum] should come out in the Script in a year. While that spell is warming up— see the mist it expels? Those are particles inside the space. Anyway. I have Ophiel use an [Incandescent Aura]— The base spell for that one should have entered the Script back when Particle Magic became a part of the Open Script months ago.

“And now Ophiel throws a lot of mana into that spell, ramping it up to strength, as I use my lightform to toss the steel into the center where— Yup! [Condense Iron] secures the metal from falling down as I take my lightform away. Now comes the tricky part. I start layering many, many more spells across the space.” Erick took a minute to do this, while he had Ophiels help with their own spells, to cut down on the necessary time it took to erect the working due to the limitations of the Script Second. “And then we put more of these spells down in ever-tightening concentric circles.

“See the basic structure? I’m overlapping 81 different Condense spells, but most of those spells existed outside of that overlap. This arrangement pulls metals away from each other. I made the iron part the largest, and the other ones smaller, because I’m pretty sure this is mostly iron. But I might be wrong.

“And now, with the steel bar sitting in the center, and the whole thing prepared, Ophiel turns up the heat.”

Ophiel trilled in violins as his fiery aura rapidly began melting the metal bar, turning it red hot, then yellow, then into melted white metal. Soon, floating blobs of metal began separating left and right, passing out of constraints of their neighboring Condensing spells, into their own sections of spellwork. And then deeper.

Erick nodded, saying, “And… yup.” He pointed, “That one is [Condense Iron], and this metal bar looks to be mostly iron. This spellwork will last another nine minutes, so I’ll have to renew it now and again to ensure that it all stays working as it should. It only takes about seven minutes to separate the steel into its parts, though, so this should be done long before then.”

Grosgrena had watched, enchanted, but now she spoke up, “I thought Particle Magic couldn’t latch onto individual particles, but this clearly can.” Slightly unsure, and showing the barest amount of fear for the first time, she added, “At least that’s what I heard of the discipline. I could be wrong.”

“You’re not wrong. As of three months ago, Particle Magic still couldn’t affect individual atoms.” Erick said, “Either something changed, which is the far-off possibility. Or —and this is much more likely— this level of control is only possible because of high temperatures and the presence of a pure vacuum altering how the Condense spells operate. Maybe this sort of setup produces an ‘atom soup’-like effect, allowing for precision control, like how [Small Spark] is capable of affecting electrons but electrons are much, much smaller than atoms. Maybe the heat here frees up these atoms so that they move freely, like how electrons move in most metals.”

“Ah.” Grosgrena lost her fear as she stared up at the brightly burning metals. “That might explain it. Spells do weird things when you get enough of them together.”

“Aye; that could be a part of it, too. But I don’t have a real answer as to why this works now.” Erick said, “I might have informed Rozeta how I thought Particle Magic should work, but I did not create many of these spells. I got [Condense Iron] from the tier one [Condense Particle] just like everyone else.”

Grosgrena nodded, her dark eyes seeing only the glowing metal before her. “It’s quite beautiful.” And then she came back down from the beauty, saying, “Complicated as shit, though. How the shit do you know which one up there is iron and which is carbon? That’s too many damned spells.”

Erick chuckled, then said, “I remember.” He turned his gaze upon the metal particulate here and there, and then to the large ball of glowing iron, saying, “I’ve thought about trying to combine all of these spells into one so I don’t have to set this up every time, but not yet. Not until after I understand more of what’s happening here.”

“Ha! 83 spells combined into one! I suppose if anyone could do it, it’d be an archmage.”

Erick smiled.

Soon, the separation was done. The metal bits had filed out into eleven different Condensing locations. Erick had Ophiel turn off the heat, and then he grabbed the clumps of stuff with his lightform, as he simultaneously filled up the vacuum with hard light. With the space secured, Erick canceled the vacuum and slowly relaxed his light inward, preventing a catastrophic implosion. He told Grosgrena what he was doing as he did it, talking about how dangerous vacuums were to biological life and how much a poorly released vacuum could ruin everything.

And then, the dissection was over and Erick had twelve bits of metal in his light. He set them down with Grosgrena’s assistants, naming them as he did.

“Iron, the largest, of course. Then you got what I think you purposefully put into the steel; carbon, manganese, titanium, nickel, chromium. The copper might be intended? The tin, too, maybe. I don’t know. The silicon is likely unintended, and it got in there with some sand, or something. Sulfur and phosphorus probably aren’t intended? Maybe part of the smelting process? I don’t know. There’s tungsten, and you probably intended that, but I don’t know enough about metallurgy to be sure.” He added, “There was also some air trapped in the steel, but I didn’t hold onto those. Oxygen, nitrogen, stuff like that. All of those escaped the Condensing traps.”

The metals had different names on Veird, and Erick used those names when giving out his list, but inwardly, Erick went with his own names for this sort of stuff. The only metals that he didn’t do that for were for the magical metals, but he’d probably stop doing that as soon as he tore apart the metals sitting on Grosgrena’s table over there. He’d probably still call ‘antirhine’ as ‘antirhine’, though, instead of ‘lead’, or at least when other people were around.

As the assistants silently, quickly weighed the metals like their lives depended on it, or perhaps they just wanted to make a good impression, Grosgrena stared at the outcome of Erick’s work. Wide-eyed, and looking fifty years younger, her heart beat hard and happy. She got a giddy little grin. The Old Smith even sighed, like a woman cracking open the first page of a book she knew she was going to love.

Grosgrena said, “Enduring Forge needs a Particle Mage; I can tell. You wanna stay here? Learn proper metallurgy over a full ten year course? We might could fit all that learning into one year, but certainly no less than that.”

Erick hadn’t been in Enduring Forge long, but it certainly reminded him of Spur. It was a nice place, with a lot of the same type of transient populations, and a lot of the same types of citizenry. A lot more humans, though, but there were certainly all the other types, too. Dragonkin, incani, demi, even shifters and harpies. Goblins instead of orcols, though. Erick still hadn’t seen another orcol in town aside from Teressa. Enduring Forge even seemed to have a pixie population.

No wrought, though.

And here Grosgrena was, giving him a genuine offer to emigrate. Her offer wasn’t made out of a desire for physical power, either, but for the learning and sharing of knowledge. And yet…

Erick said, “Sorry. I’m not moving here. Maybe I’ll give you guys one end of the Gate Network once I figure that out, though I might need your help to make the Gates themselves.”

“That’s good enough for me.” Grosgrena asked her assistants, “What’s the ratios!”

“Shit steel, ma’am,” said the first assistant, the man. “Impurities are too high.”

“That’s correct. That is shit steel.” In what was likely a teaching moment for the assistants, Grosgrena asked the woman weigher, “Why is it shit steel? What’s in there that shouldn’t be?”

“Copper, titanium, tin, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, tungsten.” The woman added, “Ma’am!”

“Yup. That’s right. There’s space for titanium in proper steel, though not in the best quality steel.” Grosgrena turned back to Erick. “Let’s pull apart the adamantium.”

Erick huffed a small laugh. “Already? Okay.”

“Yeah yeah.” Grosgrena said, “You proved your system works and I want to see what your magic has to say about our Class-defining metal. Rip that shit apart!”

Erick did so.

The spell took a good while to complete, and when it was over, Erick had a few piles of metal for his troubles. He was rather surprised at the results.

One bar of pre-tempered adamantium came out as 50% platinum, 15% gold, 15% osmium, 10% iridium, 5% nickel, and what had to be a purposeful inclusion of silicon at 4%. The remaining one percent of the metal bar’s weight simply vanished; it had to have been some trace gaseous elements, like nitrogen or oxygen.

Erick said, “So that’s a lot of platinum in your adamantium—” And then he realized something more. He glanced through the eyes of an Ophiel on the roof, looking at the massive chains that held Enduring Forge in the center of its cavern. Beyond those chains, at the cavern wall, were similarly sized ‘staples’ that kept the cavern from shifting. Erick came back, saying, “Oh, wow. That’s a lot of platinum out there. A lot of gold, too.”

Grosgrena’s assistants were silent and worried at Erick’s reaction. But they said nothing.

Grosgrena smiled wide, as she said, “Yup. All of it’s adamantium now, though, which is a might lot better than plain old gold and platinum.”

“Right. Yeah…” Erick had another thought, and decided to voice it, saying, “I wondered why no one used platinum here for currency. Or even in jewelry or whatnot. It’s even more precious here than it was back home, isn’t it? That’s because it’s such a useful magical metal?”

“Oh yes.” Grosgrena spoke without reservation, “Platinum is more than useful, it’s practically essential. Platinum is part of practically every high-grade enchantment, for it can take and multiply every element you imbue into it, becoming a different magical metal in the process. Celesteel, hellite, and starsteel are the three most useful options, but practically any other element can be infused into platinum. Forcesteel is a big one, too, but that’s like making a mop out of silk; you can do it, but for Force magic runes, sticking the runes in rustless steel is good enough. Watersteel. Airsteel. All of them are possible, but all of them are a waste of platinum. Unless you’re enchanting some tier 9 spellwork, of course.”

While all of that was rather interesting, Erick focused on one thing, “Why have ‘steel’ in the name of those when there’s no steel involved, at all?”

“I bet it’s some obfuscation handed down from Oceanside eleven hundred years ago, or some shit like that, and the angels just went along with it. Demons didn’t, though; they went with hell-‘ite’ instead of ‘steel’. But that’s a guess and it don’t matter none to me where the names came from.” Grosgrena shrugged. “I can dig up a historian if you want to know more about that.”

“Maybe some other time. But maybe you know about this one: What about shadowsteel and lightsteel? I’ve never heard of those, but now I’m wondering.”

Grosgrena smiled. “Now I do know about those, and you do too. Adamantite—”

Which was the name Grosgrena gave to osmium, in its base form; had to be.

“—is thrice over shadowsteel and lightsteel and illusionsteel.” She continued, “No steel in any of them, though, and no platinum either. It’s complicated. Stonesteel is actually better known as dauntless jade, but that’s not steel neither; it’s crystal stone. Adding to that confusion, some of the elemental-imbued ‘steel’s actually are a type of steel. Bloodsteel is actually steel.”

Erick paused in thought. “… But adamantium is clearly dark. I haven’t seen a single instance of it being lightsteel at all? And this adamantite—” Osmium. “—isn’t bright white, or dark, or shadowy at all? It’s plain silverish?”

Grosgrena nodded, knowingly. “That’s a complicated story, but it basically melts down to: Melemizargo did that. Platinum used to be able to become shadowsteel and brightsteel and illusionsteel. And then Melemizargo ripped those three away from the rest, fucking with them all and creating adamantite in the process…” She paused, as if deciding how far to go with the story, then she decided that was far enough. “Some of the oldest pieces of untouched adamantium are purest white, though that’s also only what the wrought have told us. Don’t have first hand knowledge of any of that, and it’s all ancient history, anyway.” Grosgrena said, “Enduring Forge has always been black, though. Most people are put off by the black, but it grows on you.”

Erick had a small epiphany. He said, “Practically no one else has this knowledge you just laid out there, or if they do, then it’s not in their published books.” He added, “You’re some of the best enchanters in the world, aren’t you.”

“We’d like to think so.” Grosgrena said, “But we’re only in the top 5 percent, overall. The elites of Oceanside still got everyone beat in generalized study, but not everyone can do what we do when it comes to runework and metals. In that, we’re top half percent, easy. Not including the wrought, of course.”

Erick went, “Huh.”

He was gonna need to learn runework, wasn’t he. Well! Maybe he’d have better luck with this sort of enchanting than with normal enchanting. Casting spells into an item in order to give physicality to a magic seemed a lot nicer than imbuing spellwork into an item that could then only be used a set number of times, like how most of the world enchanted. Seemed nicer than how the Shades enchanted too, by mutilating souls and shoving them into items in order to have those souls cast the assigned magic. Nicer than bloodwork formations, too, like how Xue and Ari enchanted.

… There was probably a lot of relations between bloodwork formations and runework. Eh. Oh well. Missed connections, and all that.

Anyway.

Enduring Forge’s approach to runework seemed rather compatible with Erick’s Undertow line of spells. Pretty darn perfectly compatible, actually. Instead of having [Flying Sword] runes in a sword, and requiring the user to have that spell themselves, Erick could imbue an Undertow effect alongside the [Flying Sword] spell and then anyone could use the flying sword just by, for example, sticking their finger in a slot in the weapon where the [Undertow Drain] was exposed to the outside.

There was probably no way to make ambient mana turn into magic, though.

Erick asked to be sure, “Have you all figured out how to make ambient mana become magic? Any specific funneling systems, or perhaps through a manacycler?”

With a strong voice, Grosgrena said, “Can’t be done, far as I know. Best we can do is rune up adamantium for the end-user to extend and empower their own spellwork. The user still has to have the spellwork, though; we haven’t ever found a way around that.”

Maybe they just haven’t yet, if Erick’s ideas about Undertow and adamantium turned out to be valid.

“You’re using the illusionsteel part of adamantium to do all of this, aren’t you?” Erick said, “To smudge reality into subjective Reality.”

“Hmm. Somewhat correct. You can put runes on a rock face, if you want. They won’t last long, but it can be done.” Grosgrena said, “Adamantium’s various shadow-illusion-light aspects do allow the metal an unrivaled ability to do what we tell it to do, and with great strength.” She gestured back to the table of ingots, her eyes full of interest. “Let’s continue?”

“Absolutely.” Erick asked, “Got a request for the next one?”

Grosgrena quickly pointed to the bar of pale white metal, about the size of three of Erick’s fingers. To Erick’s mana sense the metal glowed with a pale gold shimmer, but otherwise, it was completely boring to look at. She said, “I got a bet riding on this one. I think it’s a single source metal, but a friend of mine thinks its an alloy.”

“What is it?” Erick asked, stepping to Grosgrena’s side at the table.

“Holyite.” Grosgrena said, “It’s impossible to find as a vein, but you can refine it from certain types of rocks and crystals. Takes a damned lot of steps to do, but the end result takes to divine magic, if you can get it that refined.” She nodded at the Crystal Star on Erick’s chest, saying, “Your Silver Star was likely made out of holyite— before Koyabez changed it, of course. All real Silver Stars are. Almost all Holy-aligned items with any actual godly power behind them are made out of holyite before the gods are asked to anoint them, but even without a god behind it, holyite is still partially divine.” She added, “Any metal can be made into holyite, though, if a god wishes it so.”

“Ahhh.” Erick put a hand on the artifact pinned to his chest as he stared down at the silvery-white ingot. His Star had been about a hundredth of the mass of the ingot when he first got it. Erick only had his mana sense and his original Silver Star both at the same time, for a little bit of time, but he was pretty sure that his original Silver Star had a tiny golden glow. This block of holyite was ten times as bright as his original Silver Star. But compared to the current Crystal Star, which glowed with a radiant gold light when focused upon by a good mana sense, this block of holyite was barely a flickering candle. Erick asked, “This stuff is unaligned?”

“Yup; not dedicated to any gods.” Grosgrena said, “And I want to know what it actually is. Is it an alloy? Or is it an individual particle? I want to know.”

Erick picked up the small ingot, saying, “Time to find out.”

Five minutes later, they had their answer.

“It’s aluminum!” Erick said.

Grosgrena held the sphere in her hands, and stared.

Erick digressed, “And the barest bit of copper and manganese. Mostly aluminum, though.”

Grosgrena’s eyes were wide. She barely paid any attention at all to the two other drops of metal that had come out of the refining process. The aluminum sphere was perfectly shiny, reflecting the world like a mirror. But as moments passed and the sphere was exposed to the air outside of the vacuum, oxidation began on that surface, dulling the sphere. With enough time, Erick was sure that the aluminum would return to its previous silver-white look. It already looked to be regaining its small ‘divine fire’ glow.

While Erick had been pulling apart the metal with high heat, the flickers of Holy surrounding it had faded, and Grosgrena had panicked a bit, but now those nascent flickers of gold began to return to the manasphere, and Grosgrena had relaxed. The glow seemed to have returned even stronger, too, but the sphere was still barely Holy; no gods had descended to actually anoint the metal, as far as Erick could tell.

Grosgrena had yet to speak. She hadn’t even let the aluminum out of her grasp, to let her assistants weigh it.

Erick spoke again, “Looks like purity makes it more holy, I guess?”

He almost said that he knew a few ways to extract aluminum from various sources, but he decided to keep those to himself, for now. Grosgrena was obviously having a moment.

And then the moment was over.

Grosgrena sniffed, blinked, and handed the sphere off to her assistants to let them weigh it. She wiped away a stray tear as she turned and looked up at Erick, saying, “Which number is that? ‘Atomic number’ was it?”

“13.”

“It’s thirteen! Ha! Fuck. I coulda—” Grosgrena asked, “What’s iron’s number?”

“26.”

She nodded, then, tentatively, she asked, “Platinum?”

“78.”

Grosgrena’s face fell. “Ach. Shit.” She scowled. “What’s osmium?”

She asked after adamantite, but Erick was already mentally substituting that one, and he would likely continue to do so going forward. The word ‘adamantium’ had come from his daughter, anyway, when she told him it was the ‘toughest metal in the world, so it must be adamantium!’.

Erick said, “Osmium is 76.”

“Ah! Damn it all to shit.” Grosgrena huffed, then she let her worries go, saying, “The most anyone around here has gotten up to is tin, at 50, but they skipped around a lot. No one has been able to get silver or gold, but everyone who’s truly tried has gotten iron at 26, then they skipped 27, but continued on to nickel, copper, and zinc, all in a row at 28, 29, and 30. One or two people have managed to get cobalt at 27, but most don’t even try because failing seems to have compounding effects; nosebleeds first, then eventually face and lung hemorrhages.” She said, “We’ll be able to change up a few things thanks to Particle Magic, but we still need to figure all of that stuff out.” She gestured to the table. “Continue?”

“Yes.”

– – – –

Deep Sky Silver, a lustrous, lightly blue mirror-like silver metal, turned out to be 99.9% silver, but Erick’s spellwork killed the magic inside that metal. That magic had been what turned it into deep sky silver, instead of just normal silver.

As the sphere of silver came out of the heat, it tarnished almost instantly with a sheen of dark rainbows.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. That’s gonna happen a lot. You ruined the magic, but that’s fine. We can put it back in with enough effort. Let’s continue.”

– – – –

Hellite, Celesteel, and Starsteel were each beautiful in their own way. Hellite was ruby pink and warm to the touch. Celesteel had an iridescent sheen to its white, cool surface. Starsteel was a sky full of stars trapped in ingot form.

All of them came out of the furnace as plain platinum, now tarnished and missing less than 1% of their weights, for each had some ‘impurities’ removed. Hellite had a drop of extra copper. Celesteel had a drop of extra titanium. Starsteel had a drop of extra iron.

And with that sort of evidence before him, Erick couldn’t call them ‘impurities’.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. They’re in the exact right measurements, too. It’s part of the imbuing process. We’ll see all of that later.”

– – – –

Bloodsteel was iron, with traces of all the particles normally found in blood. Carbon, mainly. But also sodium, potassium, zinc, calcium, manganese, cobalt, copper, magnesium. Even molybdenum.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. Great for blood magic items. Not much use outside of that. All those impurities make it brittle until you craft it into a Healing Magic item, then those impurities stabilize the intent of the rod of [Greater Treat Wounds], for example, creating something worth twenty times its weight in gold.” She added, “Conservative estimate, obviously.”

– – – –

Rustless steel was stainless steel, but by a different name. It was mostly iron, but also 22% chromium, 4% molybdenum, and 8% nickel, along with another 1% trace metals. Barely any carbon at all, though.

“Yup,” Grosgrena said, “That’s right, too. A lot less carbon in rustless steel. A lot more of a bunch of other shit.”

– – – –

Before Erick knew it, several hours had passed. The sun had set hours ago, and the rent in the roof of the Cavern of Enduring Forge showed stars and a deep night above. Erick had pulled apart a full 43 ingots of metals both magical and not, learning a lot in the process, and coming to a conclusion which he shared with Grosgrena.

“I think imbuing a metal with magic adds a tiny fraction of weight, but not much.” Erick said, “Maybe not anything at all, really? All the missing weights could easily be gasses that escaped the set up.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Grosgrena said, “We’ve done tests on this stuff. Magic weighs down metals, though it’s only about a gram or two per kilogram of metal. Those tests involve antirhine, though, and we don’t keep that shit around anything that we care about.”

“Oh. Well. Good to know someone has already done the tests.”

Grosgrena nodded. “Gravitysteel is pretty damned hard to weigh correctly, but even that stuff is only about a gram of magic to a kilogram of metal.”

“Huh.”

Grosgrena moved right along, asking, “You want me to set you up with someone else to talk about something, this night? I’m beat, but there’s always someone awake; we don’t keep the same day-night hours that surface dwellers do, so don’t go thinking that you’re keeping someone awake.” She added, “The Forge at night is the best time to learn the practical side of this stuff because barely anyone is in there right now. Want to meet a working Smith?”

Erick grinned, happy to know that the Old Smith even cared about the small stuff, like sleeping schedules—

Poi laughed. And then he cut his laugh short with a small cough, making both the first and second sounds he had made all afternoon.

Erick instantly said to Grosgrena, “I’ll show up tomorrow when I show up, if that’s alright with you. It’s time to check on my people and do something else for a while.”

“Sure enough.” Grosgrena waved, saying, “The way out is the way you came in; don’t try [Teleport]ing or lightstepping through the shield. They got instructions to let you in and out of the main gate whenever you wish. The Smithy is open to you, but don’t poke around anywhere besides the Campus.” She shrugged. “Or do. I’m sure you’ll end up swamped with people wanting to talk to you, though.”

“Then I’ll take my leave. See you tomorrow.”

Grosgrena nodded.

Erick went to Poi, near the door, and glanced to the table of metals on his way out. Grosgrena’s assistants had carefully labeled everything with weights and identifications. It had only been the work of an afternoon, but it would send ripples throughout the entire Smithing community, for sure. The two of them left the room, and kept going.

Back in the room, Grosgrena went to the table and stared down at the work, her eyes carefully moving from orb to orb.

For a little while, as Erick walked down the hallway to exit the building, he watched through the mana as the Old Smith’s stare firmly locked on the sphere of holyite. The aluminum was inert to the eyes, but to Erick’s mana senses, it started to flicker with the smallest bits of proper divine fire, like a wreath of golden flames, or someone suddenly upping the burner on a gas stove to full. And then that glow faded. Back to ephemeral. Like a bonfire that couldn’t decide if it wanted to light, or not. While it was fully powered, though, it had taken on a mirror finish. Now, it was back to cloudy silver white.

Erick asked Poi, ‘What god do you think wants the holyite?’

‘I have no idea.’ Poi sent, ‘Maybe don’t go releasing the knowledge of easy aluminum to everyone.’

Erick smirked, sending, ‘Why Poi! You must have read my mind! I was just thinking the same thing.’

Poi leveled a glare at Erick.

Erick changed the topic. ‘What do you want for dinner?’

– – – –

Laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Erick had a few thoughts, mostly brought on by what he had seen with the aluminum. Pure aluminum normally oxidized and formed a hard layer which would prevent further oxidation. This is what Erick had seen with the aluminum (holyite) sphere. But then some divine empowerment happened and the white coating went away, leaving behind a mirror finish. Apparently, under a divine touch, aluminum turned shiny and incorruptible, and looked exactly how Erick’s Silver Star had looked before Koyabez changed it into the Crystal Star.

Erick couldn’t replicate the divine empowerment turning metals shiny…

Or maybe he could? An [Undertow anti-Oxidation] enchantment seemed possible. He could even stuff that onto a shield, or armor, or whatever, as long as he figured out the proper runework for such a spell.