Somewhere, far away from this, is a forest.

In said forest are beings, beings aplenty. They're not particularly easy to spot, often just out the corner of your eye, but are mostly harmless. It can be dangerous to travel through the forest, especially if you're not experienced at dealing with such creatures, especially during the colder months or near the twilight hours of the day, but that's why you bring a sorcerer along.

You might save up some money, trade small items you find outside the walls of your town for money, and go on a trip with someone selling their skills in a local marketplace. Perhaps you're rich enough to have your own sorcerer, part of your team of warriors, one whose job it is to lead you through the forest to go visit your relations across the border. Or you might be the daughter of the leader of a small town, live at the birthplace of a quiet adventurer, and have known this adventurer for many years, studying under him, before he takes you out to the woods.

And he might walk through the forest, seemingly prepared for anything.

You might be on your way to try to stop the apocalypse. Or the nearest equivalent you've heard of. You might not have a solid plan, you might not feel competent enough to take down a shadow, but you know enough you're surely safe in the woods.

Until, that is, you suddenly lose sight of your adventurer friend, and you call out for him, and get no response–

And then you notice something out of the corner of your eye. Just a glimpse, just a small shiny glimpse of a something, something you haven't encountered before. You turn to face it, feel yourself knocked back.

Then you find yourself lying on a piece of rock in the sky.

Evara leans up rather quickly, summoning a flame to herself in defense.

"– Evara," says the adventurer, already standing up as he sees her appear. "I wasn't sure you'd follow – watch your back."

She looks behind herself, quickly, checks for danger.

The only clear danger is... Falling off.

Though the bracing wind, pushing them more strongly than it really ought to at this speed, makes that non-trivial.

"I have no more information on where we are," he says, making his way towards the structure. "It doesn't – that was a Los, I've heard stories about them but – they eradicate species, they don't teleport –"

What's the structural integrity like, how destroyed is it, was it by flames –

Looks like flames, yeah. The surviving structure is made of the same rock as the flying island. 

To the - north? To the right anyway, there is a forebodingly large storm cloud. Another island, this one green, is visible to the left. A third one above.

"Akien – I don't suppose you've been holding out on me –"

"– I'm afraid that looks like a serious problem."

A moment and a couple of hand gestures later, he shoves his arms outwards in the direction of the wind threatening to topple them, and slows it, giving them a brief reprieve, then goes to look what's over the edge of the island.

Infinite sky, until it's swallowed up by clouds. One more floating island visible, a very big one this time. There's some sort of flying creatures, covered in spines. They seem to be fleeing.

The while island shifts when he casts the wind spell, reacting to the new balance of forces.

Evara braces herself, putting her flame out.

Akien grabs a small ankh shape out of his bag, blows on the top of it, and then has far less trouble with the wind.

"That – does not look doable."

Maybe not.

That second island above them is turning toward them. It has something almost recognizable as sails... And windows. A ship?

"No water, too far – volcano, what?"

"Too far, then clouds," he responds… and then looks up.

She follows his gaze.

"… The fuck is that."

It passes, someone shouting and waving from the front window. Too far to make out words.

It starts a wide turn, still descending.

"– How is there a person in that?"

"I can honestly say I have never seen one of those before."

He notices his position, so close to the edge of the island, and moves back a bit.

Evara moves to him, being nearer probably being safer than further apart.

It seems to be propelled by two large, loud, buzzing spinny things.

It lines up to pass them again, much closer, and drops a lot of heavy nets shaped into a basket that get carried along below it.

It seems to have trouble with the wind, too, but manages to approach the island relatively gently, only bobbing about a little.

Akien keeps hold of the ankh symbol, and takes a small metal bar out of his bag, too.

Quietly, he says, "They might not have had anything to do with this."

"… Perhaps."

She fiddles with a bracelet on her wrist, slightly nervous.

The nets approach. They could jump in now, if they're quick and steady.

She looks at the oncoming storm.

"We're taking this, right."

"Yeah."

He taps her hand, quickly, then jumps into one of the nets.

She follows quickly behind, jumping into another.

That guy gives them a thumbs up sign through a floor window and disappears.

With a clank the nets start retracting into the open floor. After a moment the ship accelerates up.

They wait, seemingly patiently.

Akien is fiddling with some things in his bag.

Now they're not in open air but in some sort of flying storage room. 

"Hey!" A shout almost obscured by loud rumbling. "You okay? Come up front!"

Ev checks with Akien, and – after a nod from him – goes in the direction of the shout.

Through a hallway and past some closed doors and into a glass walled room with a lot of complicated looking things and a stressed looking guy muttering numbers to himself.

"-Oh, you're alive. Quick, mass of you and all your gear, it's going to be tricky to get ahead of that firestorm, can one of you do calculations?"

She frowns at him. "I don't have a number handy – do you need it exact? And calculations – depends what you mean."

Akien is not yet present.

"Add large numbers quickly, dig through my navigation books. Estimate will do. A hundred kilos? Two? Two fifty?"

Click click click go the controls. He pulls one and the ship turns to the left. He sways with the motion easily but they might not.

She's unprepared for the motion and stumbles a little, but doesn't fall over.

"– Something like a hundred fifty? Maybe hundred sixty? And I can dig through navigation, large numbers I'm reasonably good at?"

And a moment later, Akien arrives. "– Hi, where are we, any important steps to take to get away from that thing?"

"You're welcome for getting you aboard my ship. You, add the weight to the balance log, under 'forward'. Subtract a hundred kilos water. You, get the book 'winds of the 20th parallel'."

Akien goes to grab the book. "I mean, thanks, too, but – thought you were looking for efficiency."

Ev looks for the balance log.

It's right there, though all his columns might be confusing.

"I need to focus on navigation to get us away unless you want to get sucked into the upper atmosphere and die of hypoxia and-or burns."

… Akien raises an eyebrow, but hands the book to him when he finds it.

Columns, columns – if there are headings she'll go off that, else it'll take a minute but she should be able to figure it out.

He continues ordering them about. Taking readings, adding numbers, paging through the book. He looks at the storm once in a while. He continues to be extremely stressed.

"– Don't suppose sorcery would be of help here?"

"Sorcery, right. Never heard of it."

"Like, mess with the wind or – better idea of the local area, I'm not sure what's the most difficult part here because I've never been in a flying building before."

"Making the wind carry us forward and down more easily will be of great assistance."

He looks around to get an idea of the wind, then holds his ankh symbol more tightly – and reduces the upcurrent and any force pushing them backwards.

It'll only be a small effect right now, but can (gradually) increase assuming it doesn't have horrifying effects.

"...Structure okay, control authority okay. Increasing engine power. Your thing seems to be working."

"We – I don't know if you'll call them the same thing, I've never seen islands like this, but – we encountered a Los, it's a gold creature, sort of like a Fleck, usually hides out of sight, rumored to be very dangerous – and then landed on that island."

"I've never heard of those critters. You'll probably have to describe them."

He's relaxing quite a bit now. The emotional state of the captain is a good indication of the ship's safety.

"Flecks – well, mostly that. They hide in plain sight, you can only really see them out the corner of your eye, they sort of… sit flat against a surface, making it look raised, or blurry?"

"Not ringing a bell. Something to do with this 'sorcery' maybe. I'm inclined to think it's probably actually lost technology but call it whatever you want."

"… I'm reasonably confident it has nothing to do with technology? Lightbulbs are a relatively new invention, to my knowledge."

"We're coming at this from two completely different directions here."

"How do you mean?"

"To me anything humans do to the world is technology. Sorcery is storybook nonsense. Lost technology is technology we can't replace - lost knowledge, lack of material or facilities - but sometimes find in working condition. Brace for weight shift, venting lift gas..."

Akien moves towards the edge of the room, steadies himself against a wall.

Ev can cope.

The ship shifts fairly violently, and there's a sensation of falling for a moment. "What, you two aren't used to shifting?"

"We are not used to large moving buildings, we are used to towns with large walls on solid ground and monsters of varying degree around mainly at night."

"Well. You're quite lost, sorry to say. And this type of flying building - one that can direct itself reasonably well - is called an airship."

"I am like ninety five percent certain I've never heard that word before."

"We have lost knowledge but it's mostly about sorcery practices."

"Hmm. Never heard of flecks, or anything particularly like them either."

"… Shadows? Pixies, Angles, Los, Panicks?"

"None. Bladesquid, rays, jellywings, spinies, fireflowers?"

"Fireflowers – we have those? If you mean brilliant orange roses that are slightly hot to the touch."

"Er, no. To me fireflowers are medium size red creatures that vaguely resemble flowers when seen from above, and like to explode."

"… 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."

"Supply and demand is a thing but limited marginal purchasing power is also a thing. A, say, special unbreakable rope might not be worth that much even if it's one of a kind."

"Could do increased durability but not unbreakability."

"– Okay, but still, our ability to do sorcery is a trait possibly unique to us. Unless you are a fluke and the only talking should-be-a-rock around here."

"And now this is a negotiation, lovely. So, my minimum fee for not putting you down at the first place that has people, since you don't have local money or other useful objects, is a couple of magic things. You're not at a trade hub, you're not high on liquid currency, I have the bargaining advantage."

"You do," she concedes. "Magic things take a long time to produce, though – I've heard of people spending years attempting to replicate things they've seen in the wild and outright failing, often… with fatal consequences."

"Well, don't attempt to replicate anything you've seen in the wild on my ship. You mentioned objects that can glow without heat as relatively easy. If it's about as bright as a lantern two of those would do nicely for food and fare to a trade hub and playing 'local guide' to help you learn your new surroundings. Or a dozen or two smaller ones."

"You'd need to pick a trigger to have them glow," says Akien. "Unless you want them on all the time. And the brightness can vary depending on the conditions of the surroundings."

"Put them in a little glass case, physical location of a notch on a piece of wood on the bottom, reacts to position of the notch? I'll sketch it and make it in my workshop once we're well and truly clear of the storm and I set down for the night."

"I could probably do that," he says. "Without any horrific side effects, even."

"Later then. That will be fare to a trade hub and we can discuss anything else afterward. I can probably do without navigational assistance now, we're clear enough, just going to keep going to be safe. Keeping your wind effect up for another hour or so would be appreciated though..."

"An hour is probably stretching it – I can do a few more minutes fine at this rate, but if we want it done for longer I can't do it so strongly."

"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."

"I would need examples to work from for anything that's not iron or gold… But they should be fine to start, once I'm somewhere less – flammable."

"It involves fire? Or heat? My engine compartments are fireproofed, at least, but you won't find unflammable places common."

"It involves potentially sparks and also smoke if I screw it up a little, which isn't typically a problem since I do it in my workshop or in a clearing in the forest…"

"I have one hot-box in my workshop, is four by three by three feet enough space to do this in?"

"… I'm actually not sure what a hot-box is like, but I need to be able to see the materials while I'm doing it. Preferably also draw a diagram – I have some chalk."

"Well, I'll show you in an hour or so. You two can go to the kitchen and eat if you want - as long as you don't take too much of my cheese. And no fire." He pauses to write something in the navigation charts and adjust a lever. "Second door on the left. I'd appreciate it if you fetched a chunk of bread for me as a snack."

"Back in a sec," says Akien.

"Thanks," says Ev, and then she follows Akien.

She is back shortly, not Akien, with bread and some other things. "Wasn't sure what you'd want."

"Ah, thanks. Since we seem to be done talking shop for now - what's this about a Los, anyway?"

"I actually don't know much about them? All I know is that there was – a shiny blurry creature thing, attacked me after Akien disappeared and then I found myself on that island."

"Your world sounds like it has its own problems. Hmm. We've very much adapted to life in the sky - I bet the same goes for your Specks and Los and so on, yes? Your society knows how to work around them?"

"Uh – Flecks, but yeah, for the most part it's to stay inside town borders especially when it's dark or foggy, or be prepared slash with a trained sorcerer if you go out."

"I don't know how much of this world's common sense I can verbalize... Always be careful with fire. Watch the wind. Don't throw things overboard, recycle as much as possible. Watch your altitude. Islands avoid colliding with each other, somehow, so if you're on one don't worry about getting hit by things unless there's a storm or a ship coming along. Watch out for bladesquid - they like attacking large sections of green stuff because their favorite prey is basically a big green blob. Most critters are deathly afraid of smoke and fire."

"Fortunately… ish… I can actually create and control fire, in some quantity, so that could be useful. I take it you don't have much in the way of small-ish, typically hard to recognize or magical in some way, creatures that vary in danger from approximately 'sting you if you touch them' to 'will trade your soul for great power' to 'will literally snap you in half because you got in their way'?"

"No. The most 'magical' creature with regards to unusual capabilities are probably fireflowers, but we know how they can explode and survive the experience."

"Huh. Okay, well, if you see anything out of the corner of your eye and it looks blurry when you stare at it, call one of us? Or if you see coins on a desk and you didn't expect them to be there. Or if there are large lurking creatures – hazy, made of shadows, whatever."

"Pretending to be coins, really? I'll keep it in mind."

"They – if you're not looking particularly closely – appear to be small, round and shiny. But basically, the guidance is: if there is anything out of the ordinary, try to stay away from it until you're backed up by some other people or preferably someone who is experienced at dealing with it, i.e. a sorcerer or a town guard."

"My intuition is that your monsters wouldn't have followed you, but intuition is very much not fact. I'll keep it in mind.

"My hope is that they didn't follow, but that Los has been going around and apparently teleporting people to other dimensions, and it ate us at separate times and put us to the same place, so."

"...Great. Okay. I haven't decided if you're both making this all up yet but am leaning towards 'why would you go through all the effort, probably no'. Anyway, yes, I'll watch out for strange things."

"… I would offer to show something but the main thing I can do on such short notice is fire, so, like, no. And it's not like a good luck charm has many visible effects."

"The wind is proof enough for now. It could be some artifact of technology, but if you can also produce light objects and metal... It'd be awfully flexible for a piece of lost technology."

"Perhaps we stumbled onto a motherlode and just happened to find ourselves alone on that island at an inconvenient time."

"Found a cache of tech here in the central bands, somehow lost your ship through hilarious misfortune, decided to lie about it all for some reason? Eh. I've heard stories with farther-fetched plans that worked out. They're terribly unrealistic stories."

"I mean, it sounds like it's probably… more probable than a world with weird creatures and magic? From your standpoint?" She shrugs.

"Who knows what's possible. Maybe Earth has magic and we all forgot. Can't rule it out. Wait and see."

Smile. "I'll be back in a minute – didn't actually eat anything."

Scribble scribble in the navigation charts.

Interesting day. Does it really matter if they're from another world or pretending? (Does one or the other make them more likely to double-cross him? Pretending probably does.)

Hm.

And then Akien is back!

"Do you mind if I look around for Chi again?"

"It's passive, just looking, yes?"

"Yeah – the only visible thing is my eyes going blue."

"Then be my guest, and thanks for asking."

So he gets the bracelet out of his bag again and his eyes flash blue.

"This place definitely has far less Chi than I'm used to."

"Perhaps it will spread from you. Or perhaps this place... Cannot support it. In the latter case you should probably use what chi you have left sparingly."

He looks down at his chest. "Seems like I'm still producing it just fine? But – oh, I guess if we're the only ones producing it then it'd make sense the area's less saturated."

"More data needed, I think."

"Time will tell." Sigh.

Evara returns.

"I don't suppose you have any books? On local culture, I mean."

"Not on local culture specifically. I've got books, but I'm no anthropologist or librarian or anything."

"What sorts of stuff do you have? If you don't mind me asking."

"Hm. Farming techniques, navigational books. An encyclopedia of critters. One on commodity prices. Construction and engineering. Various stuff like that, nonfiction. A few novels."

"The construction and engineering stuff could be interesting – you're probably more advanced than we are, at least without magic, since you have these airships?"

"Oh, mine's unique, I'm a genius, built it myself." He doesn't even look like he's joking. "There are others. Maybe we are. Or possibly we just specialize differently. Different environments make different technologies useful."

"Our constructions are – well, mainly large walls and small buildings within these, nowadays. There are some older areas with larger ones…"

"Some of the older cities, rather far from where Evara's from, have large universities? Lots of books, lots of space, rather high-status but not much is done with it."

"A decline, eh? I'm sad to say that's the case with Cloudbank, too. Maybe creating metal will slow it down."

"The magical creatures were, apparently, less of a problem in our history."

"So it's the critters' fault?"

"They have quite a lot of impact on trade and exploration, and people seem mostly content to just… sit inside the walls that were built to protect them."

"There's nothing wrong with safety. I suppose the knock-on effect of impairing trade is pretty bad in the long run. Are there flying magic evil creatures?"

"Yes, but less of a problem and the walls can keep a lot of them out anyway."

"I was wondering if airships would be viable, or easy targets, mostly."

"It seems like you can go quite high up, and you'd be pretty safe up there, but if you tried landing at night I expect you'd have trouble."

"I don't know what the pressure ceiling on your planet would be, but I can definitely imagine going several miles up. Landings are easier during the day, but overnight stays would be needed, and there would need to be docks built, and supplies for the ships. I doubt you have float-grass drifts that I can just cast out a net and get more hydrogen from, like here. It's native."

"Yeah, it would definitely take a lot of doing to get airships going back there."

"There's no guarantee there's a way back, anyway."

"It can still be interesting to speculate on things that are unlikely or will never be, though."

"Taking your world's knowledge of technology and our world's… I mean, fact it has a ground you can dig into, seems like we'd both be better off, yeah. Shame about the various creatures."

"Like I said, I don't necessarily know that we can actually build a lot of stuff I've heard of. Lightbulbs are pretty far up there as far as tech level goes."

Shrug. "If anything it might be inspiration for people working on this sort of thing."

"Lightbulbs have been around for a while for us – perhaps been around again, I'm not quite sure if they existed at some point in the past – but things are mostly stalled except in a few small locations."

"I'll show you my books in... Maybe twenty minutes. We're probably clear now but better safe than sorry. And then I have quite a few chores to take care of."

Nod.

He continues operating the controls, munching on bread and blueberries. He seems perfectly at home here, humming slightly.

Evara fiddles with her bracelet a bit more, then talks to Akien, quietly.

And then he sets down on an island with a fair bit of maneuvering and shifting around, and quickly runs outside and ties down rope to various points of attachment on the chunk of rock he found, then comes back in and says, "We're good for now. Sunset is soon, too, but let's go see my workshop. Or the books if you want those first."

"… Workshop is probably a good idea, first – I have a feeling he's going to try starting on the metal sooner if that's okay."

He rolls his eyes and smiles. "That'd be preferable."

"Right this way."

The workshop lets the fading sunlight in from outside through some kind of arrangement of mirrors. There are also lanterns, all currently unlit. There are a bunch of what look like half-finished projects neatly lined up on shelves (one looks nearly done, some kind of fold-up glider), and rows of tool racks or piles of - stuff, components, timbers, springs, so on - on more shelves taking up the middle of the room.

The hot-box is a small section off to the side made of glass laid over sturdy-looking wood and rubber.

"The whole area is resistant to fire but anything truly flammable I work on in that box. I could probably light up some gunpowder there and it wouldn't start a fire."

Akien assesses it. "I think I'm going to need to alter the ritual to be a little less – circular – but that should work? Might be a bit slower than I'm used to, it being smaller."

"That should work, then. I could arrange larger fireproof areas given time... But I'm not sure that's a worthy investment quite yet."

"No, probably not yet. Do you have a chunk of wood, something I could transmute?"

He fetches a few smallish branches, about as wide around as a finger. "I've got larger timbers if you need that, but could you try with these?"

"… Mmight take a while since this place is small and also that's unprocessed wood, but it should be doable. Uh – do you have a knife? It'd be better if I could strip off the bark now instead of having to deal with impurities later."

"Large timbers are hard to get." He produces a glass(?) pocket knife with a flourish. It reflects in different colors when he turns it, and seems... Dark, somehow. "You can use this."

Headtilt. "What's it made of?"

"That's starglass. If the knife will affect your ritual - well, it's basically glass, but tougher. Nice and unreactive."

"It shouldn't affect the ritual, not in great quantities, unless it's something very weird. But thanks." Pause. "Do you have somewhere for me to put the bark…? I assume I shouldn't just discard it onto the floor."

"Hm, here, this bowl. I'll feed it to the composter later."

He gets to cutting the bark off one of the sticks.

"So – since he'll probably be at this for a bit, how about we go look at those books?"

"If you like. Oh, I'd appreciate it if you two helped me with some chores, there's a fair bit of those to do, but since I already talked about fare..." He walks towards a different room.

She follows! "I can help with chores – once he gets started he really shouldn't be interrupted."

He unlocks the room to reveal a study with the same mirror-arranged light as the workshop. "I see. It'll make the trip faster, which is nice. Well, here's my books."

"Ooh."

She goes to investigate.

Nick starts reshelving a few.

The books are as described: Various flavors of nonfiction on a lot of different topics, for the most part. There are maybe a hundred total. Two dozen look like personal notes.

She stays away from the personal notes and instead tries to work out which of the nonfiction books will be most useful.

Anything on production of tools or fancy construction of buildings? She knows he mentioned they weren't as high-tech as they seemed, but it's possible he was underestimating…

A thin volume titled very straightforwardly "How to Make Starglass" stands out. Three books on airship construction/operation and best practices. Two on engines - one is more of a physics text and the other is a manual of some kind. One titled "Everything You'll Ever Need to Know About Electricity." One on control systems. The author is listed as "Nicholas Streiss."

Huh. "Don't suppose there's any relation?" Point.

"We're one and the same, actually."

"I wouldn't have expected people to own their own books. Then again I've never written one."

"If I had written a biography maybe not, but it's a useful reference. And kind of a trophy."

"How hard are books to produce around here?"

"You can just literally write it if you want. If you want a lot you hire a typesetter and pay for a print run on some big town's printing press."

"But bindings, paper, the materials for books aren't that hard to get?"

"Not that hard, no. I'd say a blank book the size of my encyclopedia would cost... Three days' wage. Kind of pricey but not completely out of reach."

Nod. "It's probably more immediately relevant for me to look into starglass, seeing as how Akien isn't familiar with that. Would you rather have help with the chores now, or…?"

"As long as they get done. Gather more fuel from this island, check the gas cells, refuel the engine hoppers, water the plants in the greenhouse... Perhaps I need to show you how to do these things though."

"Probably," she agrees. "Might be good to get to them now, in that case."

"Let's get to it, then."

She unfortunately does not have a ton of expertise with this sort of thing! Well, refueling and dealing with the engines and so on. She does, however, pay attention well.

None of it is super complicated. Just barely complicated enough that verbal instructions without a demonstration wouldn't do.

Gathering fuel is a matter of putting a weighted bag over the stalks of this strange plant 'floatgrass' and then hitting it so the seeds come loose. And then been feeding said seeds into some large machine and hitting a button.

"… How sure are you that this isn't magic?"

"Quite. They filter out all the heavy gas and put light stuff in that cell in the middle. Same way my ship and, like, rubber balloons float."

"I did not realize," she waves her hand through the air, "was enough to make quite such a difference."

"Oh, yes, the air is very heavy here compared to Earth... At least, I think I read that somewhere... Hmm. That puts paid to my plans for airships in your world. We have a lift of anywhere between five and fifteen kilograms per cubic meter of light gas. So that tiny seed can easily lift itself, and birds of all kinds have an easy time flying here, and lighter than air critters can stay afloat by filtering gases."

"I honestly don't know much about birds or various species of plants, but – yeah, the air is definitely not as thick."

She gets to bagging some more floatgrass seeds.

They clean out the island of easily-reachable ones in about twenty minutes. And then she can feed them all to the machine while Nick looks at a curious thumping on one of the control surfaces, and then they can go water the plants, a relatively boring task.

Watering plants is, however, a thing Evara is used to, so she doesn't need any instruction.

"What sorts of things do you grow?"

"Food. A few herbs and spices and such. Carrots are due for harvesting, actually."

"Should we do that, then? Carrots are a species I'm familiar with, fortunately."

"May as well. I wonder how much is familiar? I've labelled the trays with how much water they get... Should really get around to finishing the automatic thing I've been working on for these, but it's just not as interesting as other stuff I could make."

She looks around at the other species. "I recognize, uh, maybe a third of this? Seems like you have a lot of – rice?"

"Yep, that's rice. Huh. I try to have a high variety, but rice grows fast and in little space, it's a good choice here. Well, let's get to work."

Harvesting!

"So what sorts of other things do you make? Control systems, you know a lot about those, but – I mean, I'm not much of a scientist myself so I'm possibly missing something – what's the difference between working on something like that and something for plants?"

He works alongside. The carrots go in a big basket. "The thing I'm building for this is a water pump and a bunch of valves hooked up to timers. It's hard to explain? A lot of time goes into planning things out, a lot of time goes into calculations, a lot of time goes into actually making the stuff, a lot of time goes to fixing little problems that turn up. Maybe if you have specific questions? My current pet project is a solar thermal generator."

"Is that more useful, does it look prettier…? Does it do something novel? I mean, I'd probably be interested in seeing how both, either of them was built, but I haven't really investigated into much technology."

"It's definitely more interesting. A lot of interesting calculations about optics. It would make electricity without fuel. Depending on how the drawbacks shake out, it might be better in some ways than using generators for it."

"Other generators using what sorts of things as fuel…?"

"Hydrogen, or wood, or other plant matter. Burnable stuff. Dangerous. Not that solar heat can't be dangerous, it could also ignite, but it's an experiment."

"Huh." Pause. "Maybe it's just because I'm used to sorcery, where I try to poke around at – well, basically everything, but not recklessly."

"Oh, don't be sorry. The world could use more engineers. I'm just very much not a teacher."

"It is weird you don't have Chi, though. I mean, it makes sense what with you having no sorcery, but still."

"What are the properties of Chi?"

"… Sort of hard to describe? It's not usually visible, it's produced by humans, it can be channeled in particular ways to produce particular results especially aided by rituals and foci and so on, usually present in low quantities around the world, congregates around living matter… Can be dangerous if you don't control it appropriately?"

"Fuel for the sorcery, then? Is it consumed during magic?"

There aren't that many carrots. They're done harvesting, and move on to watering.

Watering!

"… Yes? Ish? It sort of – becomes the magic, shapes itself to produce the right result, requires constant maintenance to continue? Like if I made a fireball, it'd be shaped around where the flame appears, flicker around the edges."

"I kind of feel like doing experiments but you know more about it than me and also I can't observe or manipulate it directly. That never stopped particle physicists, but..."

Shrug. "I can at least do demonstrations, and it's not really done in any systematic manner – most of it is finding rituals in old books or from other towns, checking they don't seem utterly ridiculous, trying them under careful conditions and then trying to modify from there. Akien does most of it."

"That feels very unscientific. I'm talking about finding the origins, the primitives - If making a lightbulb was a ritual, figuring out electrons. It'd be pretty difficult, obviously."

"Dangerous, more like. I'm pretty sure that if electrons are, say, letters on a page, what we have are books written in various colors and thicknesses of ink that all have particular meanings, and we have a couple of guesses at what the colors do in certain contexts from people who have survived messing around with them before."

"Would good safety gear protect you? Fireproof rubber suit, your own air supply, that kind of thing? Or is it magical damage that ignores everything."

"Good safety gear helps, for sure – it often backfires with flames for small things, explosions for anything bigger, and you can have large craters or dramatic changes in temperature if you touch the wrong thing, suddenly everything decomposes in an area, etc. Mainly flames."

"The decomposing thing sounds nasty."

"Yeah," she agrees. "It's only happened twice, as far as I know – two people messing with the same ritual, and fortunately the second time they weren't in the radius as the effect happened."

"...How far away can you work on it? How big was the radius?"

"In this case? A few meters, but it was slightly delayed before the effect actually occurred, so – well, so I hear at least, Akien was the one there – when Akien noticed what the person was doing he grabbed them out of the circle before it happened."

"Eesh. I wonder if anything could shield against that - are there things that provide immunity to sorcery? Any materials impermeable to chi?"

"Nothing seems to be impermeable, and there aren't any modern wards against it, but the walls around a lot of the towns will block it. It also has trouble going through solid surfaces, if people are directing it, but – it's not globally true, the decomposition thing was absolute."

"If you want to add a third perspective to your experimenting I can look at the data once you're done with your experiments."

"Yeah? Most people aren't too interested in it or don't have enough of an idea what we're doing to… even really want to help."

"Resources are resources. If it's a good avenue of exploration, why not?"

"I'm glad," she smiles.

"Just like I ignored everyone who told me it was insane to try and make a ship's frame entirely with live floatstone - this is a living ship, technically. It was hard, but it needed trying because it could have been revolutionary. As it is, I think it's too much effort for the benefit incurred for most."

"I'm… not really sure what 'living' entails, when it comes to something like floatstone?"

"It's... It's alive, the stone. Bacteria and something a bit like moss in symbiosis that excrete the honeycomb foam structure and filter light gases in. It grows. Just very very slowly."

"Ah." Pause. "How do you feed it, or…?"

"Feeds off sunlight. Occasionally I sprinkle the interior surface with sugar and fertilizer to make up for the darkness in here - but this way it won't try to grow inward, so I don't have to occasionally carve it down or anything. Floatstone cultivation is complicated."

"Sounds like it was an interesting experiment, at least. And you got something out of it, it wasn't useless."

"Yes. I could have had a ship four times the size for the same money - but it also wouldn't be manageable by myself, at that point. I wouldn't get on well with a permanent crew, I think, even if the very occasional passenger is acceptable."

"Do you think the floatstone'd have applications to… housing? On islands? Admittedly I don't know its properties very well."

"They do make houses out of it - mostly the dead variety. It's not as bouyant but still light and tough."

"Any particular benefits to it being dead other than not having to feed it?"

Mostly that. Also, it's much less flammable when it's been dead for long enough to lose the internal gasses."

"Okay, that sounds like a large perk to being used for houses especially kitchens."

"Just remember that's not 'not flammable', just less."

"Do you just not have much in the way of – not flammable materials?"

"Not bulk enough to make a house. Starglass and metal are both rather unflammable. There are fire-resistant paints - but if it's hot enough they'll melt off and burn anyway, that's a problem with fires you reach a certain amount of heat and everything ignites all at once, they call it flashover - and a few other things. But fire is a constant danger yes."

"I do not know that we have wards to protect against that kind of thing but it might be something we can look into?"

"Honestly, a ready supply of metal is a much more promising near to middle term benefit."

She shrugs. "People have not really been doing much in the way of development, where I'm from, but you may well be right."

"Oh, I'm sure there's all sorts of opportunities here, I just don't see the possibility space as clearly as you two do."

"Could be. People seem to like sorcerers, but mostly… as the town's medic? Or last resort in the unlucky event they get attacked?"

"Honestly, that's a bit like how metalworkers and glassworkers and some chemists get viewed. They work with fire and heat, you know, very dangerous, people would rather not have to talk to them or share islands... But it's just that they make so many useful things."

"There's also a difference between, like, town sorcerer, and that random guy who just picked some up because he had a spare hour every day for a month, and that one who goes digging for artifacts and has got some knowledge about it through slow exposure, and that group of weirdos who live in the abandoned university who often get themselves killed poking at it recklessly…"

"Hm. At any rate, that's about it for plant-watering."

She nods and puts things away.

"If it wasn't clear, Akien's more… the town sorcerer kind with an added bit of mystique?"

"Almost like me, the slightly crazy wandering trader-inventor? But, no, I think I see it."

"It's probably one of the easier personas to set up," she shrugs.

"I do have to set it up again in almost every town I visit - wide-ranging communication is not so much a thing here. But I've worked out the mannerisms."

"News can take a while to travel, but – like you say, there are mannerisms. Sorcerers tend to be less serious, have various little trinkets on their person, and pretty much the only people who go out at night."

"Hm."

He takes the basket of carrots and puts it in a box. "Next, inspecting the gas cells. We're looking for any small holes or tears, especially near seams. You'll probably be able to hear it and smell it if there is a leak - I deliberately dope my gas with a foul scent."

She nods and follows over to the gas cells.

In a cavernous room, perhaps up to half or three quarters of the entire airship, taking up much of the space there, are about a dozen large bulbous brown canvas(?) bags. There are ropes and ladders and valves and pipes and other machinery and a catwalk near the top.

Nick investigates and writes down the readings on the valves.

And Evara looks around for any small holes or tears or apparently very obvious signs of a leak.

Nothing seems out of place, though she has to climb around some to check every spot.

She's fine climbing around, so long as nothing looks particularly breakable when she goes to stand on it…

The most dodgy thing she tries to traverse is a vertical rope net like those used in playgrounds sometimes.

That's fine.

"Everything seems good," she says, making her way back to Nick.

"Excellent. You can never count on that after a hard flight. I think that's all the chores I'll impose on you - I'll run engine check myself. Better check on Akien to see that he hasn't broken my tools or anything first though."

Shrug. "I'm like ninety percent sure he'd ask before he did anything risky – unless there's something unexpectedly breakable?"

"Don't mind me, that's the selfish paranoia talking."

Akien-wards!

"Haven't blown up my workshop yet, have you?"

"Nnnnoooot yet, nope."

He stands back from the bark-stripped twig he has inside a circle of various trinkets. It does not seem to have changed visibly, yet.

"It's not working as expected? Should I get a bigger timber for you?"

"No, no, I'm pretty sure it's working, it's just slow and kinda inside-out."

"I see. Well, we're done with the most crucial tasks to make sure my ship can keep going tomorrow - I've got a bit more work to do but Evara's done to my satisfaction - unless you volunteer for more work."

"I should stay with this if we don't want any accidental fusing of the metal – could get messy."

Evara shrugs. "I'd like to look at the books sometime? Starglass could be useful. But I can help out some more."

"I'll fetch you a couple of books. It's about sunset. I have electric lights - but I don't like running them when I don't have to, so lights-out is as soon as your metal experiment finishes, Akien."

"… Maybe I should've got started on the lights, first. But yeah, okay, shouldn't be too much longer."

"Well, I haven't made the things I want you to enchant yet as I had urgent work to do to keep the ship afloat tomorrow. I'll do that now."

"Mm, but – I mean, could've just used something from my bag in the meantime." Shrug. "I can sleep soon,  that's fine."

He nods and gets to work.

The sun sets. The electric lights are really quite poor compared to natural light.

Akien, fortunately, does not need much light to be able to do his work.

It takes him about an hour more to get much done in the way of progress, but then there is a visible gold tip to the stick! It is about an inch long and Akien can then detach it from the rest of the wood quite neatly.

"I thought you were doing iron?"

"When I do it in bulk, yeah, but I can't set up a proper processing area here? You said gold would net money, I thought it'd be smart to go for that first and start iron later."

"Gold will net money, yes. Rather a lot. But if you had a few kilos of it then it would depress the local market rather quickly." He looks suddenly grumpy. As if he should have asked for a percentage of the results in exchange for workspace.

"This is…" He pauses, picks it up and tries to get a feel for it. "Probably less than 200 grams? So hopefully it won't have so much of an impact. I can always split it into pieces if it's much of a problem."

"I'd guess 75 grams tops. I have a balance if you want to see for sure."

He looks at it. "I would've guessed a bit more – still pretty confident it's less than 200, but sure." Shrug.

"Small objects are small. I find many people don't have a good intution for it. I didn't ask this in advance so no fee on this one, but if you use my workspace and materials again aside from the lights you've agreed to make I want a 10% cut of the results, or a flat fee if you prefer..."

He brings out the scales.

The piece of gold weighs 86 grams.

"Do you have any idea how much this'll get? I assume it varies by location, but, a range?"

"One gold to a hundred copper is a good bet. And a meal in a decent restaurant costs five or six copper."

"How much is 'a gold' in copper?"

"I meant weight for weight. One gram gold to a hundred grams copper. I should just go ahead and make a list of common currency materials."

Pause. "I mean I knew I could plausibly live quite a lavish life back home, relatively, if I chose to, but I hadn't really realized it."

"I don't know that it's that valuable back 'home'? And a six copper meal is pretty modest and a great deal, come to think, that's mostly what I pay in ingredients when I cook. Sorry for the confusion."

He starts writing down currency conversions. 

Common currency materials

Silver. 1g silver = ~2-3g gold

Gold. 1g gold = ~80-100g copper = ~16-20g silvered brass.

Silvered brass. 1g S.brass = ~5g copper

Copper, steel, and starglass. 1g copper = ~1-1.5g steel = ~3-5g starglass

Various plastics. 1g copper = 10-30g plastic, depends on type.

Wooden tokens. Depends on town.

Rates variable - rough guide only

"I haven't looked up gold rates back home! But they're reasonably high, I think, people want fancy things and gold seems to count."

He looks over the list. "So plastic is reasonably common, then?"

"Yeah. Grows in vats from leftover Earth engineered bacteria if you feed it right, most kinds."

"… Huh, okay."

Evara also looks at the list.

"How's iron, for price?"

"Sell it to a forger who'll make it into steel. Not sure how much you'll get - probably around sixty to eighty percent?"

Peer. "Hmmkay. I haven't actually done much metal manipulation, or like any, so I'm not sure how the better structure will impact it…"

"More permanent workshop? Should speed it up quite a lot, especially if there's room somewhere for me to try doing – experimental things. Which there might not be."

"How long does it take to learn this stuff, when you have chi? A few months? Years?"

"It depends what you want to do with it, and – a lot of things build on top of each other, practice with one thing helps with another. Learning to make something glow – while you're actively feeding it, at first – would be, uh, something like a week or two of concentrated effort?"

"So kind of like engineering, I suppose. You need a little knowledge to learn the next thing, and there are so many individual parts and specializations."

Magic. A rare or possibly unique talent. Supply and demand could be handy there but it also sounds like a massive pain to learn even if he could...

Shrug. "I'm pretty sure you can't do it if you're metaphorically a rock."

"If I could I would definitely want to learn how."

"Maybe it will turn out you can use the ambient chi after hanging around us long enough, or something." Pause. "We do not know much about the origin of various creatures, so – if you get a desire to turn dark and shadowy and terrorize people in some forests, please let me know."

"Forests around here aren't big enough for proper terrorizing, I suspect. But I will keep an eye out for sucpicious things as I already said."

"Would be convenient to check that you're not, like, a one-off. … Not that you probably are, just, you know, you're so far a one-off."

"I could stop somewhere inhabited on the way, sooner than the full trip, if you really insist. It's a bit of a delay and uses some consumables though."

"Is there anything en route? Could check if there's chi surrounding a town, low-fidelity."

"Everything moves around. Maybe we come across a small town on the way to the edge of the stormwinds, maybe we don't. Looking for one and catching it and lining up to dock and refilling all the gas and water I use to get neutrally buoyant would be the delay and expense."

"It's not really important enough to check early, I don't think?"

"Nah," agrees Akien. "– Do you mind if I have a look 'round again?"

He angles to get something out of his bag.

"Go ahead and do passive scanning whenever you like, it's fairly demonstrated-safe now."

Nod.

Blue-glowing eyes! Scanning around!

"Welp, seems like we're definitely leaking it," he says.

"I thought we already knew that?"

"Well, yes, but – it's sticking around a little, in this place, instead of just evaporating or whatever."

"...Even more on the lookout for nasty creatures, then."

"I've never heard of them just mysteriously appearing in towns, and towns usually have quite a lot of ambient chi, but – yes."

He looks over at Nick and tilts his head.

"Have I got something on my face?"

"Not that I'm looking at, at least," he responds. "You might be – a bit blue, though."

"So you might be contagious? Or you might be leaky? Hm... Anyway, I'll go string up a couple of hammocks in the cargo bay for you two and then make the glow-implements and then sleep. We're going to head out in the morning and hopefully fly all day."

Nod. "Sounds good."

So he does that. The end result is one flashlight-sized thing with a big glass tube at the top and a rock inside that, with a rolling wheel built into the handle to control it, and a similar large lantern with a dial on its top.