The scientists led Vivi into a quiet workchamber. The box-like room was far from a smithy—she had tables instead of anvils; flasks and beakers instead of vises and crochet hooks—and the white walls were distracting at the very least, but the chamber was nice and private, simple enough for her next experiment.

She laid out all fifteen ether roots on the table, placing each one into beakers to hold them upright. The set-up looked flimsy at best. Vivi’s instincts as a runesmith urged her to get each one tied to a proper vise. But since the process wouldn’t require any complex vein-shaping, Vivi figured this would be fine.

Essentially, Vivi would create a larger iteration of the previous experiment, just with fifteen different runes strung together instead of two.

“Lucius, initiate the roots,” Vivi said.

“What, all of them?” Lucius asked. “At once?”

“Yes, and don’t worry about precision,” Vivi said. “The roots just need to conduct ether. We’re not crafting anything for real yet.”

“Ah, right, experiments,” Lucius said, nodding to himself like some genius.

“Do you still not understand what we’re doing?” Vivi asked.

“Experiments,” Lucius said. For some reason, his tail moved excitedly. “For the big ballista thingies.”

Vivi blinked at him, then rolled her eyes. Even after all these months, she still struggled to understand her spirit. Every now and then, Lucius sounded knowledgeable and competent, offering genuine advice, but the moment the conversation strayed away from dungeons and ether hunting, his tone itself turned close to whimsical.

“Just initiate the roots,” Vivi said with a sigh.

He did so with a grin, floating over each ether root and pushing ether into them. Each root cracked open, and stalks began growing.

With that done, Lucius sat in a loaf next to Vivi. The experience was like watching seeds germinate and grow into plants. The more conductive roots grew faster, while the iron root barely seemed to grow at all. “Push more ether into that one,” Vivi said.

Ether flowed from Lucius to the iron root. He was smiling, paying attention with half an eye.

Vivi gave him a look. “You’ve been in a strangely good mood today.”

“I’m a spirit,” Lucius said. “I don’t have moods.”

Oh, really?

Vivi thought. “So you’re smiling and acting all excited for the sake of it?”

“I guess you humans would call this feeling anticipation,” Lucius said. His grin turned thoughtful. “Or maybe satisfaction. Yes, maybe I am excited.”

“Why?”

As Lucius thought, the same sharp look showed in his eyes that always came when entering a dungeon hunt. “I am very satisfied with my choice of picking a wielder. In two months, you’ve grown into a millionaire, you’ve revolutionized runesmithing, you’ve done this science thing, and now we’re revolutionizing ballistas as well.”

“Hopefully, at least,” Vivi said.

“There could not have been a better time for a serious storm season!” Lucius said, whiskers fanned out with a full grin. “Defeating a storm nobody else can is the greatest of great honors, Vivi. Our reputation will be magnificent! You, too, will become a beast of the deepest abysses!”

Vivi’s smile fell. “Lucius, the city is at risk of being destroyed.”

“Not if we have a say about it,” Lucius said.

Vivi was about to argue, but merely sighed instead. Of course, ether was what got Lucius excited. She felt dumb for thinking it could be anything else.

“Vivi?” Lucius asked, seeing her expression. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, you’re right,” Vivi said with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “We’re creating ballistas to defend the city. We’ll defeat the storms.” She paused. “Although, I don’t think it’s very nice to get so excited about millions of ether worth of monsters possibly descending upon our homes.”

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“Meh,” Lucius said. “We just need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Vivi focused on the experiment. The ether roots had grown enough by now. She told Lucius to stop pouring ether and grabbed each root from their beakers. She cut off the roots from the stalks, and quickly gave each root a sharp tip with Lucius’s claws.

The end results weren’t pretty; the roots were different sizes, and the tips weren’t sharp enough to be used as weapons, but Vivi prioritized speed more than quality. Ether would be conducted through the roots even if Vivi’s handprint was poor.

The most time-consuming part was carving the fifteen runes. Vivi followed Civar’s string of runes, starting with the wind sub-element. Carving sub-elements was, though it sounded counter-intuitive, more complex than full runes. That was because the sub-elements’ structural branches resided at the end of a full rune. To carve a wind

element, Vivi had to first carve a shockwave rune, at the end of which she carved an additional branch to specify that only the wind element of the shockwave rune was supposed to be included and shaped. Again, she left the runes unwrapped, for all but the very last one.

Carving all fifteen runes took a bit less than an hour. Vivi wasn’t sure why multiple flow and wind runes were needed. In theory, the branches should have already been shaped from one rune. But the skill wisps seemed to use multiple of the same rune as well, so Vivi figured adding more of the same rune couldn’t have been useless.

While carving the last rune, she told Lucius to fetch Civar and the ballista makers.

“They haven’t been introduced to me,” Lucius reminded. “They’ll probably require an explanation for my presence.”

They’ve seen you floating around me, Vivi thought. They’ve formed their conclusions already. And I’m fairly certain rumors have spread about your existence.

Lucius seemed to agree with that, floating over to fetch them. They arrived in the room, while Vivi was arranging the ether roots in their correct order. The roots weren’t connected to each other. This contraption really was just an experiment. It would fall apart from a breeze of wind.

“I have to say…” Patryn said with a funny smile. “Watching this reminds me of watching my daughter stack blocks.”

Freyven snorted, shaking his head. “Except, the blocks are another revelation about to happen, aren’t they?”

Civar was the only one who looked serious. “Vivi, we have a testing room as well with protected walls. I’m positive that my rune combination works as intended, but its intended use isn’t exactly safe. I can’t let you test it here.”

“Oh, right, safety first,” Vivi said. “Sorry.”

“Excitement gets to the best of us,” Civar said. “Let’s get this set up.”

***

The testing room, it turned out, was an underground hall, similar to the foundry, though slightly smaller. The walls ceiling were of sturdy black hardstone, and the floor was an even sturdier levelstone.

“What kind of experiments have you been running to warrant a room like this?” Vivi asked.

“All kinds of things,” Civar said, his voice echoing. “Chemical reactions are best performed on levelstone in case corrosive materials overflow. Explosive reactions are performed here as well. It sees use at least once a week.”

A cleaning, it seemed, was not one of those uses. A musty smell of old chemicals hung in the air, and the floor was cluttered with dirt particles.

Civar didn’t seem to mind. He walked in, having left his chair at the lab, and placed down a four-foot long rod with a tong at the end. The first stalk slid between its arms, and Civar tightened the tong. Then he added another similar rod, angling the next root so that the tip of the previous root touched the rune of the next.

He did this for all fifteen ether roots. The last one, however, was not tightened between tangs. Civar left it sitting on a platform at the end of the string of runes.

Lastly, he carried in a thick protective glass, placing it within arm’s reach of the experiment. The glass had a small hole to slide a stick through. Vivi and the three stood behind it.

“Alright,” Civar said. “If all goes as theory claims, the ether will make it up to the final piece, the momentum of which will be greatly increased. As it’s standing still without momentum, it will merely be charged. By poking it with a stick, we offer it a light amount of direction, which should push it with a greater amount of momentum than a push with a stick should normally allow.”

Lucius frowned at the explanation from Vivi’s core. Vivi smiled. “Start it. Push ether through the first root.”

Civar nodded and did just that. He pushed ether through the first wind elements. The wisps inched their way up the roots, moving from one rune to the next. The process was anything but quick. Ether roots were good at conducting ether, but that didn’t seem to apply to inactive ether. Each of the runes felt stubborn as well. Ether moved to the next root only because the next root had less pressure.

“I need to come up with a more efficient solution for this,” Vivi said.

She received no response. Everyone was focused on the experiment. The fourteenth ether root was filling, and ether slowly made its way to the last, active root.

The final root began glowing with active ether. A slight sizzle came from within. A similar sound to collectible ether, like a heavenly teapot whistling, though the sound was barely audible.

“Is it trembling?” Patryn asked.

Vivi squinted at it. The root seemed to be moving in place ever so slightly, as if trying to escape. A few wisps were already oozing out of the root, forming a misty aura. Without metal to contain the ether, an ether root itself was far from a perfect container of ether.

“The honor is yours,” Civar said, offering Vivi the stick.

She nodded, handled the stick through the hole, and hesitantly gave the glowing root a little poke.

A whoosh came, and a tang from the wall, followed by a splash as coffee spilled between Civar’s legs.