[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapters 44-46 (Patreon)

Chapter 51

After a quick breakfast, Hal decided to do a little experimentation, seeing as most of the people in Brightsong were either waking up or starting their day, he would have a good chunk of time to himself.

One of the benefits of using Vorax as a cloak, second only to the immortality side-effects of soulbinding with a Founder, was his Inventory. Hal’s [Kobbiesack] was in sore need of improvement and he always meant to do something about it, but never seemed to find the time.

Vorax, as a mimic, had an almost infinite amount of space. Making sure he wouldn’t eat the items was the challenging part. The rest was fairly easy, comparatively.

With his essences once more unlocked, Hal finally had the ability to Bonecraft as he used to. By combining his monster essences and his Bonecrafting skill together, Hal could draw out the essence of a creature family as pure mana and solidify it as an osseous concentration.

In other words, making monster bones out of mana.

And with his larger mana pool, he could make more complex shapes and types of bones as well.

There were four total stages to Bonecrafting: creation, refinement, imbuement, and finalization.

Creation, as the name implied, is the general shaping and creation of “bone blanks” as Hal liked to call them. Essentially, ingots of bone waiting to be shaped. With an idea in mind as to the function or shape, the creation stage could be streamlined by making a blank in the rough shape he desired, such as a crossbow bolt, a dagger blade, or anything else he might fancy.

Once the bone blank was made, which consumed a large amount of mana, the next stage must be completed. There was no resting between stages, which made the whole process a lot more stressful than simply smelting an ingot and letting it cool while he took a break to have some tea.

It was one of the reasons that Hal required so much time in a single block to be able to Bonecraft in the first place.

Refinement was where he improved and solidified the shape and form of the item. A blade takes on an edge, a hook becomes pointier, that sort of thing. It’s the last point in which the physical purpose and form of the item can be changed.

Then there were imbuements, which granted magical essences or specific endowments and enchantments based upon the overall shape and design of the first two stages. Bonus attributes, skills, and various other improvements were all possible here based upon what items were sacrificed to apply the imbuement.

The capacity for the item to hold various imbuements was entirely down to its initial two stages. The higher the quality of the item and the more defined its shape, the better the imbuements would be. Both in quantity and quality.

Finalization, as the name suggested, was the final stage of Bonecrafting and, by far, the trickiest of the lot.

The reason was pretty simple. Every single stage required a large amount of mana to get through, with the majority of the mana use being done by the first and last stages, respectively.

Mana was needed to create the bone blanks, and mana was once again needed in large quantities to seal in all the effects. The sealing process was done via layers.

As Hal bent over his project, he held it carefully between both palms as he let his mana flow one way, then the other, over the new creation.

This was more akin to applying layers of frustratingly complex lacquer. If he paused a moment, if the bone wasn’t completely smooth or finished properly, then the mana would build up and “snag” on the parts that it couldn’t flow through properly.

That resulted in a tiny, almost infinitesimal bump.

An okay result if all you’re going for is a few layers of mana sealing, but the catch was the more layers Hal put on, the stronger the item became. It could even bump up the rarity and Level with enough layers, applying extra effects.

With every layer, that “tiny bump” became more and more pronounced until finally it became a large lump that threatened to destroy the whole item if Hal kept layering his mana onto it.

It was one of the main reasons he couldn’t make a bone golem or a wand that held spells ready to go inside of it. He felt he should be able to do so, but when was anybody’s guess.

The former items would take a great deal of mana, and even though he had over a 1,000 MP, it wasn’t enough to do anything but make a small golem toy, if that.

He had more important creations to make.

Hal selected the Arcana monster family for this trial. They were known to have good mana retention, and he hoped that property would carry over to aether, as mana was a subset of aether.

All mana has aether, but not all aether has mana.

If he had access to Hemel’s half-room where he could improve his Aetherochemy, he would have tried to use that instead, but being that it was on the moon, Hal decided he’d have to settle with Bonecrafting for now.

But while he layered his mana, first one direction, then the other to apply maximum coverage with minimal overlap—a trick he learned over the last week to improve the final stage—he couldn’t help but think, why not both?

It was a heady thought for sure, and one that would guarantee an explosive result of the item he was creating if he dropped his concentration to chase the thoughts.

There had to be a way to combine the two skills, right? Bonecrafting and Aetherochemy were alarmingly similar in some ways, and they were both fairly unique to himself. He should be able to find a way to combine them into one skill, or at least use them in tandem with one another.

That would surely improve the results of both.

Unfortunately, the question was how?

Hal didn’t have the answer, and he wondered if he ever would, but it was a tantalizing goal all the same. And until Athagan was ready to go on his little Dungeon jaunt, Hal decided to keep up with his experiments.

A faint light began to seep out of the ceramic-like box of bone he held in his hands. He could already see the issues with it, the tiny fissures too small for the human eye that he could somehow still see and feel against the odds.

Tiny lumps and bumps where his mana layering hadn’t been just right.

In the end, however, he had once again failed to create something that was on the same level with [Magicite]. He thought he was onto something when he copied the method he used to create the [Shard of Density].

[Shard of Density II]

Rarity: Fabled

MP Storage: 0/300

Durability: 700/700

Details:

Empyreal Shardite Core II

Mana Saturated Bone

Enchantments:

[Mana Condenser II]

[Empyreal Shardite] is a known conduit of mana and magical effects. Infusing the crystalline substance into the bone matrix creates a new element. One of crystal, and bone. In the spaces between the hollowed cells of marrow, crystalline channels have grown.

These channels can not only accept mana to empower the item’s effects, but can also condense that mana at a rate of 2 to 1, due to the refined nature of [Empyreal Shardite]. This mana can be extracted for use later. The unfortunate side effect is the item’s weight increases dramatically.

Tier II Effects: +17% Mana Condensing

[Ossified Metal]

By combining metal and bone, you have created a new element. Ossified metal has the strength of hardened steel, but the lightness of bone. Applying this enchantment increases Damage, Durability, Lowers Weight, and makes the weapon exceptionally conductive. Conductive elemental effects are improved.

Good, but not good enough. More importantly, the [Shard of Density] was only slightly better than his first creation, holding 50 MP more but having a lot more durability.

Hal set down the box-shaped item and drummed his fingers along it, deep in thought. He had gotten Levels in Bonecrafting, but not enough to bring him to 35 and the next Perk, so he dismissed them, already knowing what they gave by heart.

What had he done wrong? He clearly created a better product, but it wasn’t enough. With his new [Shard of Density II], he could store a base value of 300 MP and with [Mana Condenser II] he could further double that to 600. Not a small amount, but not a whole lot more than the base item he made quite a while ago, which could hold an equivalent of 250 and 500, respectively.

Granted, the Tier II effect improved that a further 17%, a 2% uplift over the original, but the only notable difference really was the durability of the second item.

It was staggeringly high compared to the original. A 700 durability versus 450 durability was nothing to sneeze at and it suggested that he had done something different that was beneficial, but not in the way he wanted.

After all, Hal was going for a strong and stable source for holding aether, not mana, but if he could work out how to do it properly with mana, he might be able to do it with aether too.

Though I’ll undoubtedly need Aetherochemy, he thought to himself. The damned stuff was in the name, for crying out loud.

Which meant he would need to either struggle with the rich aether of the Shiverglades without the buffs his little refuge on Hemel had, or risk life and limb on Hemel and get the massive buffs of the room… but have to endure the thin aether of the moon.

It was a bit of a quandary, which was why he was glad when Noth came in, followed by Hamrin.

She immediately locked eyes with him, tugged Hamrin over to him, and threw her arms around Hal as soon as he stood up to greet them.

“Hal, this is Hamrin, the Gourmage. Hamrin, this is Hal, our Founder and resident all-around defender of the realm. You two haven’t met, so I figured it was high time to change that.” She looked at what Hal was doing and the half-eaten breakfast. “I’ll get some food.”

Hamrin looked up at Hal bashfully. “Er… I’m sorry, Mister Founder, sir, I don’t really know how to—”

Hal held up a hand to stop him. “Just Hal is fine.” He motioned to the world at large. “It’s not like Brightsong is a fabulous castle or anything. I’ve got a while to go before anybody should be calling me anything other than Hal. Don’t you think?”

Hamrin pulled up a seat and folded his hands atop the table. They were clean, but his fingernails were black with crescents of dirt under the nail. He glanced at what Hal was holding, “May I?”

Hal slid the box over. It wasn’t very large, hardly big enough to be a hard case for glasses. Hal worried it would break despite the durability.

The Gourmage turned it over and over in his hands. His eyes lit up with academic fascination. “High mana density? Are you making a mana battery?”

Hal looked up curiously. “I was trying to.”

“I don’t mean to intrude,” Hamrin said, setting the [Shard of Density II] down and sliding it gingerly back to Hal. “But there are a number of failure-points I’ve noticed, and you forgot to hook up the grange-point to the Zelling-Ness node. It’s a simple fix. Where were you trained?”

Hal blinked. For a moment, his mind went blank with incomprehension. He had no idea what a grange-point was, nor a Zelling-Ness node. “I wasn’t.”

Hamrin stared at the item, then looked back at Hal in utter astonished horror. “You made this on your own?”

Chapter 52

From the way Hamrin talked to Hal and looked at him, you would have thought he had just created a hydrogen bomb from scrap metal. The Gourmage rattled off more theories and names for things that Hal mostly didn’t even bother to think of.

It was all instinctual for Hal. Bonecrafting was in his blood as it were, and he could easily understand some of the phrases and strange names so long as Hamrin explained what they were.

The processes, it turned out, were quite similar to other magical systems within Aldim. In fact, this was all covered under one big umbrella of “Magical Theory” that every Tower trained mage had to pass.

Something Hal very clearly hadn’t done.

And so, as Noth came back with more food and drink, they ate and talked, with Noth chiming in here and there with her own addition to spur the direction of the talks into helping Hal develop his Bonecrafting further.

With the plates cleared away and the town hall beginning to fill up, Hamrin leaned back and shook his head. “Mister—Hal, I’m honestly very impressed with what you’ve managed to do. You have an almost instinctual grasp on the mechanics and theory without ever having been taught them.”

“I didn’t have much option,” Hal said, fiddling with his latest creation. His mind was abuzz with all the information that Hamrin had laid on him. He wanted to make another this moment, but even after eating and resting, his MP wasn’t high enough yet.

He couldn’t ask somebody else to charge the [Shard of Density II] with their MP, because then he couldn’t craft with it. It had to be his mana, which made things a little complicated.

“Well, my proverbial hat is off to you, sir. You’ve managed to reinvent something that you didn’t even know existed. Luckily for you, there have been generational improvements to the iteration of mana batteries for quite a long time now, however most of them aren’t practical and therefore never truly used.”

“Why is that?”

Hamrin scratched at his bare chin thoughtfully. Despite several days roughing it, the man seemed incapable of growing a beard. “Well, you generally need a crystalline substrate, right? Something with plenty of empty space between stable cell walls in order to hold all that mana. It also must be strong enough to stay put while the mana within is charged and discharged, if not and the substrate destabilizes at the wrong moment—”

“Kaboom,” Hal supplied.

“Very much so!” Hamrin grinned. Hal caught Noth grinning as well, as if she knew they would hit it off. “Metal is conductive, but it’s not neutral enough. It discharges, sometimes randomly, at the slightest thing and so crystal is generally used. [Shardite] is the main material used, but it’s rare and difficult to harvest owing to its odd and unreliable propagation method.”

“Manastorms, right?” Hal asked, vaguely remembering.

Hamrin shrewdly looked at him. “Are you sure you didn’t train at the Tower?”

“I would be locked in a cell if I did,” Hal told him. “Trust me. Rinbast has no love for me and wouldn’t allow me under his nose like that.”

“Well, then you’re just an uncannily brilliant man.”

“If you’re trying to butter him up,” Noth said with a wink at Hal, “it doesn’t work. He’s largely immune to flattery. But I, on the other hand, like to hear all the nice things people say about him.”

Hal coughed nervously as she put a hand under the table onto his thigh and squeezed affectionately.

“Shard’s truth!” Hamrin said, putting a hand over his heart. “I am being utterly honest, really. Most people don’t understand what goes into these great works and only think about what disasters they have caused. As I was saying, [Shardite] is used and the rarer yellowish [Empyreal Shardite] is even better, but both have the same weakness.”

There was a clear space for Hal to answer, and he wasn’t about to leave the mage hanging. So he said, “Structural weakness. Crystal is stable, but only if you don’t manhandle it. Bringing it into battle is like taking a bomb into a forest fire. It might go off at any moment, releasing all that stored up energy.”

“Exactly!” Hamrin was enthusiastically nodding along. “So you can see why there has been a lot of development, but not much in the wearable kind. However, a lot of places use massive mana batteries for all sorts of services around the city or Sanctum. They provide much needed utility for everyday life and that’s where they truly shine.”

Hal could see it. Provided the crystal was shielded and protected properly, the downside of its brittleness and low durability meant that you could build a very large mana battery indeed and use it for all sorts of things.

It was the equivalent of building a power plant, though how to generate the mana in the first place was something he’d very much like to know.

“But what you’ve made here,” Hamrin tapped the [Shard of Density II], “is something unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There’s clearly crystal as part of its general makeup, but it feels like….”

“Bone.”

“Really?” Hamrin’s eyes lit up. “How did you manage that?”

Hal couldn’t stop himself. Despite the waste of mana, he lifted one hand up with the palm facing the ceiling and conjured a small bar of [Doll Bone] from his Golem essence. It looked like a finger-thick bar of dark-brown ceramic was sliding out of his skin with a faint glow of light where skin and ceramic met.

When it came out completely, he handed it to Hamrin.

To his credit, the Gourmage didn’t hold back, cringe, or otherwise show any sort of fear of seeing a man creating an item out of his own body. It was rather refreshing.

“This is… this is incredible!” he said, eyes bright with amazement. “If I had something like this on the farm, I could double—no, triple—the yields easily!”

“Really?” Hal asked. “What sort of bone do you need?”

“Anything that can function as an efficient mana conduit, and ideally a mana battery as well. I could help guide you through some of the basic theories on how to make them. I don’t have the most advanced methods known by heart, but I would be more than happy to help if you would let me.”

Hal looked at Noth, who gave him a slight nod of approval.

“If you’re sure,” Hal told him. “But let’s do it in the cottage. The town hall is filling up, and I’d rather we had a little privacy for this.”

Hamrin stood, the bench scraping against the wood in his haste to get up. “Lead the way.”

An hour or so later in the cottage, Noth got up, planted a kiss on Hal’s cheek and said, “I need to go check on the progress of the first tower.” She laughed at the surprise on Hal’s face. “Your towers are the talk of every dwarf in the settlement, Hal. As if you didn’t do enough single-handedly making enough iron for the smithy or smelting mythril—a famous dwarven metal, by the way—in front of them!”

Noth shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder if you realize what you’re doing. You’re too clever by half, Hal Williams.”

Hal chuckled and smiled at her. “Honestly, I just wanted to help out. Now that the smithy is up and operational alongside the sawmill, we should be able to expand to cottages very soon.”

“The longhouses are nice,” Hamrin said gently. “But it would be nice not to be so crammed together.” He raised his hands defensively when they both turned to look at him. The man seemed to wilt under their gaze. “Not that I would expect any special treatment or that I would get a cottage ahead of anybody else with greater seniority!”

“Don’t worry, Hamrin,” Hal told him. “With the rate the new production buildings can output, we should be able to get some actual comfort here relatively soon. I can’t say for certain when, but I’ll have a word with Bardan and Athagan when I can.”

“Every dwarf wants to see those towers completed, Hal,” Noth said. “I’m not sure how much more they can be split, so try not to get your hopes too high. Seeing the half-made towers that’ll be the gateway to Brightsong is like seeing a painting only partially done. It’s driving them mad. They want permission to complete the interiors and link up with tunnels and stairs into the settlement. I told them I’d help oversee it with Elora.”

One of Noth’s slimes poked out of her satchel. “Pyuu?” it asked inquisitively.

“Not now,” she muttered, gently guiding it back into the satchel. “I figured I could get some work done for the rock slimes I’ve been cultivating. They can chew through stone like it’s butter, though some of the rock around here is unnaturally hard. The new tools the smithy is putting out seem to be working though.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Hal told her. He watched her leave then turned back to Hamrin. “Let’s get back to it. Now, tell me about these conduit channels within the battery. How many do I need to place in sequence?”

As Hamrin rattled off the requisite numbers, part of Hal’s thoughts went back to the dwarves. The smithy had provided new tools for the dwarves to use. The new tools, in turn, allowed them to cut and carve through the hardened stone around Brightsong with greater ease.

This allowed them to get access to ore veins that were otherwise inaccessible, opening up greater pockets of materials that they could extract and use.

Something, something dwarves delving too greedily, Hal mused to himself.

With new tools in hand, the dwarves were itching to get at the towers he had created—very roughly—at the southern edge of the Gap where it met the greater Shiverglades.

They were easily seen and both Naitese and Orrittam had taken to nesting nearby. They were more than large enough to house each dragon, but their interiors were non-existent. Hal wasn’t skilled enough yet to use Carve to create their interiors. Not even with the Kol’thil Surge aiding him, which appeared to give a large skill boost as well as power for its duration.

He was lucky to get as far as he did, truth be told. The greater part of his work with Carvewas to create a sheer wall around the main areas of ingress. Places where it previously would have been easy to scale the exterior of the mountains that ringed Brightsong.

These places he had altered so heavily that the walls bowed outwards slightly, making it all but impossible for people to climb and clearly announcing their presence at the same time.

The dwarves wanted to make little murder holes, hidden chambers, and even carve the stone face of the mountain’s sheer side into a semblance of bricks and pillars. There was even some talk about making decorative friezes!

With the iron Hal managed to make, the tools created with the Dragonfire-enhanced ingots were significantly better than their standard iron cousins. Before long, Athagan promised Hal that they would have not just steel tools, but [High Steel] as well.

It was just a matter of time.

Turning his attention back to the conversation at hand, Hal began to go over the essences that would be best used for this project.

He was well versed in Bonecrafting at this point to know what essences would prove best. Arcana Family essences were perfect for mana conduction, and he knew that his Mimic essence was the best he had at present.

While Hamrin was still talking, Hal drew out a small mimic essence blank. It looked like a wooden beam three fingers across and girded with what appeared to be iron riveted banding. It was still mimic essence, not actually metal, but it did give it a certain flair that Hal appreciated.

Hamrin examined the item with great interest and handed it back. “I cannot wait,” he said with barely checked enthusiasm.

Chapter 53

There was little else better than mimic essence for conducting mana. It worked with low resistance, losing practically none of the mana introduced no matter how far away the source was, and was easy for Hal to produce.

It was a poor building material, despite its appearance, but if Hal could make the bone blanks thin enough, he could effectively create wires with it.

“That should not be possible,” Hamrin told him as he watched the impossible happen before his eyes. “There is usually enough transmission loss that the conduits need to be thick or made entirely out of crystal, which—as you very well know—has a tendency to crack and be very brittle. Not the best when employed on a farm.”

“Why do you need these on a farm, anyway?” Hal asked, working at the second stage of Bonecrafting, refinement. He shaped the mimic bone blank into a series of thin branching wires about as thick as a coaxial cable back home.

“I specialize in advanced growth procedures,” Hamrin told him. “Not that many people in the Tower cared.” He gave Hal a half-shrug. “If I had even half the resources you’ve given me, I could have done so much for the Tower.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Hal told him. “You’ll make great things here and the people who come to Brightsong escaping the oppression of Rinbast will have you to thank for their full bellies.”

Provided this works, Hal thought to himself.

Hamrin watched with fascination as Hal continued Bonecrafting in front of him. “You see, most everything is made up of mana. It is a part of everything and I started to wonder, well the provinces with the greatest yields are those with high amounts of ambient mana, right? So what would happen if we pumped in mana?”

“And what did happen?”

“The yields exploded!” Hamrin was nearly jumping up and down while seated, which was quite the accomplishment all things considered. “Of course, some spoiled and others mutated into grisly creations that should not be spoken of.”

“What?” Hal looked up, nearly messing up the wire-making process he was designing. He cursed and looked back down.

“You see, some mana types aren’t compatible with others,” Hamrin explained sheepishly, all excitement gone. “We had thought that it was just the amount of mana, but the type matters as well. You have bonuses and maluses based on what mana types the plant has. Get that mixture right, and you triple or quadruple yields with very little overhead. Get it wrong… and you make monsters.”

“Hold on,” Hal said. “Are you saying you can create monsters by mixing mana and plants?”

“Something like that, yes. It is a bit… simplified, but that is the broad strokes.”

Hal pushed away the thoughts of a monster farm for a later discussion. Once Hamrin had proved himself at the very least. That could be incredibly useful for Brightsong, especially if they could farm specific monsters.

Not that Hal was willing to do so inside the safety of Brightsong’s walls. But there was a limit to how far you could bring up somebody with low levels. Dungeons were good because the risk was minimal. If you were defeated in a Dungeon, you got spat out.

It was still traumatic, but you didn’t die.

However, the Shiverglades was a place filled with powerful monsters, and getting the Levels to match up properly was going to be a pain if they ever gained more people. Having something like a monster farm to create weak and mindless creatures to train up on was an excellent idea for later.

For now, Hal said, “And if you have the right amounts, you can make plants grow even in the dead of winter?”

“Oh, that’s easy!” Hamrin folded his hands atop the table, much more comfortable with this line of questioning. “We’ve been able to make plants grow during the coldest weather for decades and decades. It’s a rather simple process, though it does use up a good bit of mana.”

“How much?” Hal asked worriedly. He wasn’t sure how they would recharge the mana batteries yet, but if he could create them to accept anybody’s mana and make it neutral, then anybody could “donate” mana at any time.

“Depends on the size of the field. If you mean a full farm like the ones we have here? Probably about a 100MP a day, give or take a few points.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s a very simple process,” Hamrin told him. “In fact, we could probably drop that by another quarter or so if your… er, material there, is as good as you say. I mean no disrespect, but I need to see this to be certain we can use it.”

“As soon as I’m done here, we’ll give it a trial run at the farm,” Hal told him. “I’ll personally keep it topped up with mana.”

Realizing what he had just signed himself up for, Hamrin nodded mutely. It took him a few moments to find his voice. “I didn’t mean to imply that—”

Hal stopped him with a shake of his head. “I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do, Hamrin. I haven’t been out to see the farms, they’re outside of the walls because of the land they require and I would like to visit them. Which reminds me, why don’t you live at one of them?”

The Gourmage shrugged his shoulders and hunched a little as if trying to appear smaller than he was. It was a hard sell with his gangly frame. “I’m not a farmer,” he said sulkily. “I can’t do all the hard labor that it takes to run a farm. I can optimize it, create new strains, but the actual work of harvesting and planting and watering is beyond me.”

“So you’d manage them.”

“That would be ideal, yes. If I could get a cottage within an easy walk to the farms, I could manage a good ten or twenty I’d say until it became untenable. By that point, you could feed thousands of people easily and I would need assistants to take over in my stead. The work is rather easy to maintain, the setup is what is truly specialized.”

“Like laying all these grids around the farm?”

“Exactly.” Hamrin pointed at the thing Hal was making. “If you can actually make a net out of that, as you suggest, we can suspend it on poles high above the crops and trickle down mana onto them. Most of the prototypes I’ve been working with… well, let us say they are not the best.”

“You’ve been working with scrap and leftovers, I get it,” Hal told him.

It wasn’t hard to see why. Rinbast clearly favored the more battle-oriented types of magic while neglecting the domestic uses. Tristal had been a font of information about the man, though what she knew, admittedly, wasn’t much more than common knowledge.

Since Hal wasn’t a native to Aldim, said common knowledge was incredibly insightful.

Rinbast was an oppressive tyrant. Hal already knew that from Elora and the rest of the rebellious Rangers and their ilk. But it was the way in which he had risen to power and how he kept it that was of most interest to Hal.

With Hamrin’s help, they would actually be able to create a foothold out of Brightsong and begin to grow.

People who were fleeing Rinbast would be welcomed here, but the journey would be perilous without a guarded pathway and to do that, they needed the help of the other tribes.

Hal had no idea how he was going to handle that, but for now, it didn’t matter. What was most important was keeping his people fed and safe.

It would be easy to lay into Rinbast about how he could let a genius like Hamrin get away. But the truth was, Hal managed a tiny settlement where he knew everybody by name more or less and Rinbast managed what was effectively a kingdom.

And if what Tristal said was correct, then the rest of Aldim was significantly larger than Fallmark was. Which, by itself, was huge. Hal didn’t have anything to compare it to, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole of Fallmark was equivalent to the United States in terms of square miles.

There were a lot of areas his magical map showed, but he hadn’t visited yet. In fact, the whole eastern side of Fallmark, outside of the Shiverglades—an area he might have visited if things in Murkmire had turned out differently—was a decently populated section that was rife for rebellion.

Places like Withermere were hotbeds for rebellious activities, neglected by Rinbast due to the distance from Fallwreath. It was meant to be the first stop after Murkmire way back when.

Instead, they had taken the longer path around through the Glitterwood and Fool’s Pass to enter the Shiverglades from the opposite side that Rinbast would expect.

It had worked, and they managed to get into the Shiverglades with minimal bloodshed. And now they were poised to strike out from the Shiverglades into Withermere if they laid the groundwork for it.

Of course, using the Fathomways to pop directly under Murkmire would be far better. He had friends there, contacts who would help him, and people who were already looking for a new home.

Hal’s thoughts were interrupted by Hamrin’s gasp as the item Hal was Bonecrafting began to glow with an ominous purple light.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hal told him. “It’s a pretty simple imbuement that I’m adding to it to give it greater durability and flexibility over time. If it works out, I’ll bolster the process further. This is just a prototype.”

Hamrin nodded, transfixed. “I must say again that I cannot thank you enough for this opportunity, Hal. Had I know that this was what would come of me trying to help Leis, I would have jumped to it with greater fervor! You mark my words, within a year Brightsong will be the breadbasket of the Shiverglades to rival even the largest farms in the world.”

“That’s a tall claim,” Hal said, layering his mana carefully across the lines of mimic wire he created. They still had the appearance of wood and banded iron, but now they were so thin that it looked incredibly incongruent. “I’ll hold you to it, Hamrin.”

The Gourmage sat up taller, prouder. “I give you my word, sir. You may be single-handedly responsible for pushing the boundaries of food magic as we speak! I would gladly huddle together with a thousand dwarves for warmth and freeze the tips of my fingers off if it means I get to keep working with the fine folks of Brightsong.”

Hal chuckled, finalizing and tying off the stream of mana so it settled onto the layered wires with care. He didn’t need a distinctly powerful finalization process here, just enough to keep everything contained.

If this prototype worked out, Hal could empower the next version further, making adjustments as Hamrin needed.

Grabbing the mass of cables, they ventured out to the first farm together.

“For somebody who spends most of their time inventing different types of plants and food, you don’t seem bothered by my Beastborne powers,” Hal told him as they began to string the cabling up onto a post and stretch it out to the next in line.

The man was surprisingly easy to talk to. Hal expected him to shy away from the physical labor, but he took to it with gusto, despite the obvious strain.

When Hamrin had told Hal that he wasn’t able to do the labor, it wasn’t out of some sort of snobbery. The man was weak. Clearly, all of his attributes were firmly in Intelligence.

“Food is often gross and weird,” Hamrin pointed out. “Could you hand me that bit? Thank you. You see, when you make self-baking potatoes, you also have to realize that often the initial experiment wasn’t on a potato necessarily. Sometimes it comes from a rude prank a student made with some rather foul-smelling excrement.”

Hal paused and stared at him. “Are you saying you got the idea to make a self-heating potato from some kid who… what, created a magical poo bomb?”

Hamrin colored. “He was not a kid, and the mess took ages to clean up! I had dozens of samples that were—” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Inspiration strikes at the most unlikely of times.”

Chuckling, Hal said, “I’ll say.”