There was, in fact, a shower in the bathing room. The water clearly came from elsewhere, but the heat was generated at the showerhead with a fairly intuitive to use magical design. It was one that Serenity didn’t remember seeing until quite a bit later in time; of course, that could have simply been because Vengeance wasn’t exactly in a good place after he left Earth. How showers worked wouldn’t have interested him after he saw the destruction of his home.

The bathing room itself was clearly only for cleaning oneself and possibly relaxing. The room was over ten feet on a side and completely tiled; the shower head and drain were simply in the middle of the room, with the main other notable feature a bathtub off to one side. The bathtub didn’t even have its own faucet; instead, the showerhead could be pulled over to above the foot of the tub. There was a display of soap, but towels were outside the bathroom through the door to the north, while the door to the south led to the toilets; both directions had sinks, but there wasn’t one in the bathing room.

When Serenity emerged from the bathing room, noise in the distance directed him towards Emery. He walked through one room to get to another; the building didn’t really have hallways, just partitions between work areas and storage areas. He found Emery in the third work area he checked; it was relatively sparse, with only a table and three chairs as furnishing. The fire-heart was in front of Emery on a clearly enchanted plate and a small bucket of tools sat next to the plate.

Serenity didn’t say anything as he walked through the open doorway; he didn’t want to startle Emery if she hadn’t heard him. She wouldn’t mind if he watched; she wouldn’t be working on something in an open room while she knew he was in the building if she minded. Serenity quietly moved around the table and pulled out a chair; he made sure to have it scuff against the floor slightly to make noise.

Emery didn’t react to Serenity’s deliberate noise, so he sat in the chair and triggered his Magesight. He wanted to see what she was doing; was she really using what he called essence or was it something else?

The first thing Serenity saw was that the seemingly normal table was actually significantly enchanted. For all that he wasn’t an enchanter, he could read spells. Magic always turned into similar forms, and active enchantments were fairly similar to spells. Reading them when they weren’t active or actually creating them was different, but reading some information from them while they were active wasn’t that hard if you knew how. Or perhaps it really was hard and Serenity simply had too much experience. That was always possible, too.

Either way, he didn’t have much trouble reading the general function of the workbench. It was a straightforward enchantment designed to leech energy and momentum from anything over a set level. It was really more of a set of levels than a single one; yes, speed was one, but there were also a large number of other energy types that could be siphoned. A set of stationary shields seemed to be secondary, only triggered if the leeching enchantment wasn’t sufficient.

That was surprisingly interesting. Serenity would have expected the enchantment on an enchanter’s workbench to aid in making enchantments, but this seemed to be set up entirely to prevent disasters from affecting other things. Was that why there were so many different work spaces, so that different things could be done with different preset workbench enchantments, or did multiple people work here?

There was a decent chance both were true. Serenity hadn’t seen any sign of anyone else, but the building was really pretty large; unless there was a tremendous amount in storage, Serenity couldn’t come up with a good reason for it. This was clearly an industrial district, not a residential area, though Takinat’s restrictions on such things seemed to be completely informal. It was possible part of the space was used by Emery as living quarters; that would explain the nice bathing room.

With the table figured out, Serenity focused past it. The next thing to catch his eye was the enchanted place Emery had the fire-heart on. Unlike the table, it had exactly the sort of enchantments Serenity would expect to help out in crafting; he couldn’t tell what all of them were, but there were a bunch that seemed to have something to do with energy movement and at least one that was supposed to help reduce unintentional movements. That wasn’t an easy spell to set up, even with an appropriate Affinity; Serenity doubted it was any easier to make as an enchantment. This had to be an expensive tool that Emery used regularly.

Emery was using the enchanted plate to do something to the fire-heart. Serenity watched as she worked; it wasn’t easy to figure out what she was doing. It seemed to be some sort of preparatory step for enchanting; he’d never really thought about that sort of thing.

Both mana and essence moved in the fire-heart. At first, the movement seemed random, but with time it became clear that whatever Emery was doing had the eventual effect of separating out different influences. Serenity could see the Affinities; most of it was Fire, which resonated with Serenity’s Plasma Affinity, but there was more than a little Solid and even a hint of something that was more like water, though Serenity didn’t think it was actually water. It resonated weakly with his Liquid Affinity, whatever it was. It collected in pockets inside the Solid Affinity material.

The Fire and Solid affinities were mostly separated when Emery reached into the bucket of tools and pulled out something that looked a lot like a dull wooden knife. It was enchanted, but the enchantments were all minor; Serenity suspected it was as little as she could get away with, because tightly woven spells like that were far easier if they were low power. Enchantments were probably the same.

She set the knife against the side of the fire-heart where the non-Fire affinity collected and started to slowly shave away at it. One piece after another fell off. Serenity watched as she moved closer and closer to one of the pockets. She slowed down and moved carefully as she drew near the pocket.

Emery was very, very careful as she shaved away the material over the pocket. Serenity expected it to break any time, but before it did, she put down the dull knife and pulled out something that looked very much like a glass syringe with a metal needle. She poked it directly into the pocket of liquid; an enchantment on the syringe activated and sucked up the liquid without any additional action from Emery. The liquid in the syringe was a pale blue and bubbled strangely; Serenity couldn’t think of anything in lava that would behave that way.

Emery set the syringe aside and returned to using the knife to cut away the solidified material. She slowed each time she neared a pocket of liquid to trim close to it and extract the liquid.

Serenity simply watched. He got the feeling that she couldn’t see the Affinities as clearly as he could; if she could, she was far more cautious than he’d have been. He wasn’t certain about it until the seventh liquid pocket, which she shaved close to without slowing down. Surely she’d seen it; she’d stopped for the others at significantly more material left. “Aren’t you going to extract the liquid?”

Emery jumped. Fortunately, she pulled the knife away from the fire-heart when she moved suddenly. “Where did you come from?”

“The bathing room?” The words slipped out of Serenity’s mouth before he realized they weren’t really helpful; she knew that. “I’ve been watching you for forty-three minutes.”

Serenity froze in surprise. He hadn’t checked the time when he sat down, he hadn’t checked the time when he answered, and he certainly hadn’t done the math to figure out how long he’d been watching. How did he know it was forty-three minutes? He could have said a less precise figure, but he knew how long it had been, down to the number of seconds.

Okay, that was creepy. It probably wasn’t something to worry about; in fact, it was probably something he should have expected at some point. Aide was recording everything, after all, and Aide worked a lot faster than realtime. Aide might well have known the answer. It was just a little creepy to have Aide’s knowledge show up without asking for it, that was all. There wasn’t anything wrong with it.

Serenity tried to cover his surprise, but knew that he probably did a poor job of it. He usually did. “I mean, I’ve been here for a while, watching you. I thought you knew I was here.”

Emery shook her head. “I didn’t. I should have; I knew you’d show up at some point, I guess I just wasn’t watching for you.” She bit her lip and turned back to the fire-heart. “What was it you said when you startled me? Something about another liquid pocket?”

Serenity was perfectly willing to let Emery move past her surprise and into the discussion he wanted to have with her; that was why he was here, after all. This seemed like a good way to start. “On the side, where you made that last cut.” He gestured at the spot he’d seen where she’d come close to it. It wasn’t shaved down quite as close as where she’d normally use the syringe, but the remaining wall of the pocket was almost that thin. “Over here.”

Emery turned the fire-heart on the plate so that she could see where Serenity was pointing, then stared at it for a moment. “Oh, I see what you mean. Good eyes; are you an enchanter?”

Serenity shook his head. “No, I’m just a mage.” He paused for a moment, then decided that it was probably relevant. Affinities mattered a lot for runecrafting, after all. “And a runecrafter. I have a lot of practice at seeing Affinities.”

“Is that what you did?” Emery sounded surprised. “I’m working on the different material properties, not the Affinities. I guess that’s the difference between an enchanter and a runecrafter; you don’t really work with materials, do you?”

Serenity shook his head. “No, we don’t. I can’t craft, but I was hoping you’d be able to show me some things I could apply to my magic. Daryl said you wanted the fire-heart for its Fire Essence. I can use Essence, but most of the spells I know use mana instead.”

Emery snorted. “You can’t craft? Anyone can craft. You may not be good at it and it may not be the Path you want, but anyone can learn. It just takes practice and dedication to improve, that’s all.”

Serenity stared back at Emery. He’d been told that before, but he knew it wasn’t possible. He’d tried. It would have been a good way to drown his sorrows in distraction at one point in his life, but everything he tried failed. “When I tried to learn, my teacher told me I might as well be cursed. It was bad enough we even tried to get a curse removed, but there wasn’t one. I just can’t make things; I’ve accepted it.”

Emery frowned at Serenity. “That sounds like a bad teacher, one who wasn’t actually interested in teaching you. Possibly one who was trying to sabotage you. Maybe you’ll never be very good, but anyone can learn the basics. Here, I’ll walk you through them as I work on the fire-heart.”

This was the price he was going to have to pay to learn about what she was doing, wasn’t it? Lessons?

Well, there were worse prices. He wouldn’t ever be able to use them for enchanting, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t learn something useful for some other reason. It might even be interesting.

Lillene

Oh no, someone is going to force Serenity to take lessons in a crafting profession! Whatever will he do?!?

Oh, and before anyone gets worried: No, the story isn't going to focus on crafting any more than it already does. Sorry if that's your thing, but that would be a different story.