"The storm's reach is long and its grasp is subtle. I would prefer to keep flying away from it very fast as long as possible. Lower intensity over longer time works."

So he gradually reduces the intensity he's holding the wind away with.

"I should get started on the glowing things, then," he says. "Got any rocks, chunks of wood, things I can make glow?"

"I have something specific in mind, but I can't show you yet. Please just wait."

"– Sure."

"Go ahead and ask questions - local guide mode -if you want. I just can't leave the controls yet, see."

"So there are a bunch of floating islands, there are storms like that one, and there are floating ships like this." Pause. "Is there ground, somewhere?"

"Yes. I don't advise trying to find it. It's hot enough to boil water and melt lead down there. Not to mention the sulfur."

"… That sounds like quite a large problem. Not one I've encountered before."

"Are there… just a lot of volcanoes around, or…?"

"Pretty much yes, though we don't know the exact reasons since so much of the high technology people used to use dried up or broke or fell in the centuries since the Stargate closed."

"The Stargate being?"

"...The way back to Earth? If Earth even exists."

"We just appeared on an island. By way of being eaten by a Los. I don't think 'Stargate' being 'the way back to Earth' was obvious."

"It's a background fact of life here. I'll try to be more thorough in future explanations."

"– What's Earth?"

"Earth is... The planet humanity originated from. Do you know cosmology? I think you had electricity, but it's very hard to judge knowledge backgrounds like this. The highest population anywhere, the most advanced technologies. Habitable surface, seven continents, two thirds covered by ocean. And humans left in every direction from Earth heading to the stars, sending stargates ahead of them. The stargate is supposed to have connected two regions of space. Send things through instantly, instead of taking years or decades to cross the black sea of space. One of the stargates was here. And they mined this planet for stuff and explored the rest of the system. But then - and stories vary here - Earth shut it off, or it was sabotaged, or there was some kind of accident. And it stopped."

"… Okay that's a lot larger scale than I was expecting. I thought you meant, like, a huge air path that's hard to get through, not another planet. What sort of – we have lightbulbs, low quantity, and I think maybe a few  other things, nothing like that."

"Yeah, that's where the phrase 'lost technology' comes from. Nobody knows how to make stargates, or fusion engines, or proper computers, or photovoltaic cells, anymore. We can make lightbulbs but metal's rare and so we don't have good sources of electricity. Generators are kind of expensive."

She looks at Akien. "I think – we might be able to help with metal, depending on how rare it is?"

"It'll be slow, at first, but if it's worthwhile I could invest in producing metal more quickly? Requires – uh, rock, wood, natural materials, but I can convert them."

"The things we have in abundance are... Biomass in general. Wood, grass, food. Silica and glass. And hydrogen, and air, and water."

"I haven't tried doing things with hydrogen, or silica – at least not directly? – but I can do some fancy things with glass. Wood would be most useful, of those, for the metal transmutation."

"I'm looking forward to helping you experiment now. Depending on what kind of metal, it could be a real boon. My engines are made out of starglass, not steel, for example. That's, eh, a special glass which is much stronger than ordinary glass, which we know how to make but not the science behind it. Still worse than metal for many purposes, but more available."

"I need to know quite a lot about the properties of the metal, for starters, and – metals are far easier than other things, I actually have a set process to get metals, but it varies between them. Gold is not particularly easy, copper would I think be harder than iron but I've never tried copper in bulk, that sort of thing."

"Gold and silver would net you a lot of buying power until you saturate the market - which will happen pretty quick - but not a lot of practical use. Iron is probably the best thing to start on in bulk. Copper too. Electrical devices need it. There's some others, aluminum and titanium strike my mind. Maybe zinc or platinum. Anti-rust. But I've never made an extensive study of metals."