"… I think we are much farther than I expected. And I'm afraid I don't have more useful comment than that."

"Well... Welcome to Cloudbank? Your sorcery is going to be extremely popular. Fast ships are great. We are escaping this storm fairly easily instead of it being a frighteningly close call."

"I am somewhat surprised you don't have any."

He frowns and pulls a bracelet out of his bag. The next time he looks at Nick, his eyes are glowing blue.

"Okay so please don't do sorcery things on my ship without explaining them and securing permission. Sounds like it could be really quite dangerous."

"– Right, sure." He puts the bracelet away.

"I don't suppose you know what Chi is or why you don't have any."

"No and no."

"It'd explain the lack of sorcery. But I'm slightly surprised you're not a rock."

"Chi is an old Chinese word referring to life-force. But life's just chemistry plus mutation and selection pressure, really."

"I do not know what Chinese is. Anyway – what's your name? I'm Akien."

"You can call me Nick. I think there is opportunity for trade here, even if you two are rather badly lost..."

"It will probably be quite small-scale, for the time being. Seeing as how there are two of us."

"I have no clear idea how much sorcery one can do in a day. Or even what it can do besides wind. But new resources are generally rich in potential profit-space."

"It is in fact limited but can do quite a few different things – elemental manipulation is part of it, small extrasensory details, is often useful in a fight or if you might be attacked by monsters. Possibly less of an issue here, but still."

Evara coughs. "Uh, I'm Evara, by the way."

"Akien, Evara. Bladesquid probably count as monsters. Can you do permanent effects?"

"Well, most of my tools here, they're permanently magical in some way, but it's mostly as magical aid. Other than that – extremely limitedly, but yes. It takes a long time, a lot of effort, and a lot of potential to backfire, with quite a restricted pool of things you can do."

"Permanent effects, or trivially refreshable ones, will sell extremely well. I'll buy some even."

"Anything in particular you'd want?"

"Your wind effect! The wind is critical, it's the breath of life and the blade of the reaper around here. A hundred small ways a breeze or gust or a stilling of the wind will help, most of them in moving around, which I do a lot of as I am a trader."

"That sounds like a less trivial thing to make permanent than – I don't know, an object that glows briefly when you pick it up."

"Quite a bit less trivial, from what I know."

"A flameless light will do well too, but you could practically buy your own boat for a permanent wind thing.... Actually, we should talk about payment if you want me to do something other than drop you two the first place that seems far enough from the storm."

"What sort of thing might you be proposing? Not that we're not grateful for your help."

"I normally don't take passengers, just didn't want to leave you two to die. The first place we see is likely to be some middle-of-nowhere rock with some onions and a tree. The first inhabited place is going to be a small farming village, possibly without even its own ship. I'm eventually headed towards the tradewinds cities - low-altitude cities further north that are big centers of industry because they take advantage of consistent opposing winds for power. Those are probably the biggest centers of civilization around. But it's also about a week's journey, much further than usual for me, and if you want to come that entire way I want some sorcery things."

"… If we're the only source of them, and you all don't even have chi, then they could be worth quite a lot."