"You shut it down the moment I asked. Counts for plenty."

There's another small room on the other side of these doors; rectangular, and with two more sets. The ones across look sealed tight; the ones on the right have sunlight leaking through.

"Feels like I got lucky," she mutters. "This is another fortress then? In better repair, it seems."

"Oldwalls. Made by the Spire-makers, or at least from the same stone. Mazes, every one of them. Mostly impassable, often full of Bane. Which is why those doors are sealed tight - if they open, the Crossing could turn into a massacre in minutes, whenever they happened to notice the way was clear."

She frowns, considering.

"No wonder they're forbidden. I was told that lightning might do well to kill Bane."

"The 'Younger Realms' said that anything you found was crown property, but you could look if you wanted. Kyros says no go, don't even encourage anyone. Fatebinder Myothis says consider where the Spires are - and that people pay attention to what's forbidden. Almost all Spires are blocked away by the Oldwalls; therefore, if Spires are a source of power, maybe a source of Kyros's power, then forbidding the Oldwalls is a way to keep that power locked in the Overlord's hands. I say - come well armed, or not at all. Lightning magic works well on them, I've heard. Probably nonmagical lightning works too."

"Some interesting discoveries down there, most likely. But I've a lot to do before considering adventures like that."

"True enough."

And they're out into Lethian's Crossing.

They're flanked by waterfalls. Pretty tall ones. They go up - eighty feet, a hundred? And then down another fifty, pooling into a decent-sized stream with ambitions of riverhood.

In that fifty feet are several tiers of building; three main floors (one is above them) plus the ground. They get further out from the Oldwalls as they go down, mostly adobe construction.

"Welcome to the Crossing. Best meals are at the Lethian's Mistress, unless you'll be bothered by it also being a whorehouse. The other decent-sized bar has Sirin, Archon of Song, who sometimes follows me around; she's been shackled to keep her from exerting her power over minds, but she's - not someone to meet when off-balance. Or, just sit outside for a while."

"No, not particularly bothered? I s'pose I ought to finish cooling off and then go have a snack. See that apprentice forge later..."

"Good."

He leads the way down several ramps (all retractable) to the Mistress, and has a quiet conversation with the proprietor Sophia. A small corner table is cleared.

"I'm going to check on the others. If I'm not back when you're done, the forges are on the opposite side, one level up; spot a Forge-Bound by their tattoos and ask."

And then he'll be off to reassure his companions and see about getting a forge set up by one of their knappers.

Yes, thank you for not making her say 'I am here for food and possibly a bath, not sex', but some part of her feels - parented. She nods politely to Sophia anyway and quietly asks about a bath- Just a bath.

Well, she's a vassal. And good communication is valuable in the workplace.

"Kohl, just so we're on the same page and I understand what you need - My current plan once I'm more centered is essentially to get established - make tools I can use for more things, work with the apprentice forge, look for ore, teach and learn with the Forge-Bound, all in order to increase what I can potentially do in your service later. With an eye towards dealing with the aftereffects of Edicts, as you said- My current ideas on that front are cutting tools for removing fused armor, and possibly mining tools to create paths through the Edict of Stone."

After that incident of losing control, he is being paternalistic and would not apologize.

"Those seem like fair priorities. I'd suggest bridges over digging, for the Stone Sea, but also the Scarlet Chorus have their main camp in the Sea so I wouldn't suggest traveling there too soon. They're hard to predict."

"I checked with the Forge-Bound, and they expect they can recall some knappers they were sending north by sea, and that some apprentices are interested in learning glass like you suggested. The Master of Mining is already back north, but they'll ask him south as well."

"I can only hope to be good enough to make up for dragging them away from other work. God, I have to write down what I can remember about nickel and chrome ores... They make iron much better, like tin in copper."

"They're interested for its own sake. The new survey might displace something useful, but not the rest."

She nods. She fetches out her writing supplies to sketch glass-tool designs. They'll need lead...

"Any guidelines for if and when I should work in the spire again? I bet I can finish what I started away from the spire, and I do think I'll get a lot better at drawing on it for inspiration without going mad about it with practice, but the heat source up there is an absurd cheat of a shortcut..."

"Let the others get used to you working in - a normal mindset - before you go back up, and also the less-intense version at ground level before you consider letting loose up there. From there I trust their judgment to calm you down quickly if you start getting out of hand. ...If it would help, the same effect should happen on the Mountain Spire with less ability to act on it. You could meditate?"

"Right, some normal work and some less-intense sparking. I definitely don't want to do that again tomorrow.

-I don't know how to do meditation and I've only heard it as, uh," Heathenistic? Primitive? Colonial? "...Secondhand."

"It's useful for practicing visualization, and thinking about how you think. Mages all use it a little, the Forge-Bound a lot."

"I'll endeavor to find a tutor."

She's starting to sound like she wants to be asleep.

A fine choice; long day.

"Shouldn't be hard. If you want a bunk, easiest is popping back to Ascension Hall - it's very quick, a minute each way or something like it."

"Yeah, I could use the sleep. Maybe at least look at the non-spire forge and say hi to folks." Sigh. And no use complaining about the conditions either. (Though she is going to keep her fancy, and now recharged, spear with her.)

He nods.

The apprentice forge is an extremely regular, precisely laid-out assembly of rocks, a cubical frame containing an array of wood and smaller rocks that's supporting a neat thin square of stone, currently with a long bar of iron resting on it, probably partway to becoming a sword. The rest of the room is sparse, and the stools and tables are stone, brick, and bronze rather than wood.

The tattooed smith holding that bar and a hammer stays focused, but another one looks up. "Oh, the wild smith! We heard you might come by. Is it true you can purify iron ore without magic at all?"

"Hello. Wild?" Sigh. "I suppose I can't complain, the Spark certainly is a thing. And, yes! All you need is the right sort of furnace and enough sheer heat." She peers at the workspace. Fireproofing, good, except for the odd frame. More magic? "My homeland produced iron by the tonne in continuous furnaces - ore in one end, molten metal out the other - a sort of alloy of it called 'steel', and used it for bridges, in the bones of buildings, for tools and machinery of all sorts. Once I get a handle on the sigil of fire - not today, I've had enough of today, just saying hi - p'raps there ought to be a way to do the same without needing a mountain of coal, just a few wagons instead. Coal actually gets alloyed into the metal, see. Though I have been curious if you've identified all the kinds of iron ore there are - there are kind of a lot. Oh, Waltana Hampson, nice to meet you."

"Apprentice Smith Kyrene, nice to meet you! You'd have to ask one of the miners - here in the Crossing we mostly just work with what we get from the river. But they can feel the good ore in the rocks, once they know what they're looking for. I know there's at least five types but the only one I remember is lodestone."

Nod, nod.

"Oh, some kind of magnetic sense? I was afraid I'd have to build some sort of detector. Nice to meet you. Looking forward to building. Would you mind if I just watched you at work for a bit? See the differences between what I know how to do and how things are done here. I'm in no shape to do any more forging today."