"By all means! We're not the experts, but we're always learning."

And, in fact, a lesson resumes shortly. An older Forge-Bound steps back in the door, sits next to Zethos, the apprentice currently at work, and after a moment, reaches out and lays a hand on the hot iron. She admonishes him about confusing two types of impurity - the 'stiffener' and the 'heavy double' which apparently softens the iron and often leaves it more magnetic. The iron bar he was given was deliberately not-quite-pure, and he's succeeded at removing the 'heavy rust' and most of the other remaining impurities, but left in one undesirable kind along with the kind that's meant to be kept in the iron in order to make spring iron suitable for blades.

Kyrene is occasionally called over to touch the iron herself and pay attention to something that Master Kinara thinks is particularly important for her to see. The rest of the time she spends quietly sitting with a handle-less iron dagger, touching both haft and blade with her hands, eyes closed.

How are they doing that?

Stiffener would be carbon. Is heavy double... Magnetic... Cobalt? Nickel?

She waits until they're done. "It seems you already know how to make what I call steel- Iron with stiffener. About one part in one hundred at most. Could I see some heavy double? Is it a metal? I have a different understanding of these impurities."

How do you run your fingers through your hair and get twigs out of it? Like that.

"Sure, here's some slag that's heavy with it. It behaves like 'carbon' in some ways, but it's heavier and that makes the iron softer instead. Or something; we don't know that much of why these things happen."

It transpires that this is silicon.

She has to mess with it for a while to realize this, but eventually figures it out.

"This is quartz! You can turn it into glass!"

"Oh, it's the same as glass-dust?", says Master Kinara, "That explains why quenching runaway flame with sand did strange things to the iron."

"Yes! It might have absorbed some, or just cooled strangely... I should explain elemental theory..."  She yawns.

"Absolutely! But now is neither the time nor the audience."

"Tomorrow maybe. Good to meet you, looking forward to learning and all that."

...It's time to head to the other spire and rest.

Over the next fist, they assemble a new forge for her in Vendrien's Well, just inside the outermost ring of walls for Ascension Hall. While she doesn't have her own, they'll eagerly allow her use of the forge in the Crossing, asking many questions about alloys, elements, and chemistry. (After it's finished, they do the same, but with slightly fewer of them because some stick with the traditional curriculum back in the apprentice forge.)

Once the knappers have started setting up the forge, Kohl takes his leave. Off to the Blade Grave, to clean up the mess he made calling the storm.

Waltana spends the night sleeping rather badly, and much of the next week trying to live up to the shining, unreachable image in her head. Of someone brilliant, decisive, charismatic.

She spends at least a little while trying to learn how to - feel things out, like the forge-bound do. She runs on intuition far more than anything else.

Aside from that, some sessions where she lets the Spark rise up, but outside of the Spire and with her watching it in an anxious fear - or, not fear exactly, or at least not fear alone - it doesn't go nearly so far, flowing sluggishly and grumpily. 

She sparks up a glass furnace and a slow-cooling kiln and some glassblowing tools and sparks up a series of colorful crystal glass decorations and some (mostly unsuccessful) attempts at lenses, and makes a map of likely ore concentrations visible from the Spires, and takes the effort to find out what sorts of materials are used or thrown out by various bronze-age activities, and leans into the Spark to try and use the Sigil of Lightning as a stable source of power for an electric motor, and teaches the Forge-Bound about the periodic table of elements and 19th century chemistry and the ideal gas law and analog automaton logic and calculus. Or less abstract things, if their interests aren't in the more abstract.

Several apprentices are fascinated with the glassmaking; Kinara isn't directly involved, but the deputy leader of the local Forge-Bound, Ulantis, sits in and takes some notes. One of the 'full' Forge-Bound, Camlo who focused on iron but isn't particularly senior asks for permission to experiment with her glassmaking setup when she's not using it; he thinks glass seems useful enough that he'd rather try to become Master of Glazing than be one of several smiths beneath the Master of Tempering.

None of the primary teachers here have much time to teach her the meditative practice they use to ease into the 'feeling your tools' techniques, but Camlo is happy to try and teach her the basics. He's always been good at the basics anyway.

She gets an increasing amount of attention, most of it positive. Examining the alloys she made in her first big burst of Sparking and explaining the basic chemistry that underlies the properties they've observed gets substantial Forge-Bound admiration, and over the next span she's going to have more Forge-Bound moving into the Crossing or near Ascension Hall. They don't quite know enough to see the regularities in the periodic table, but analogizing carbon-silicon and oxygen-sulfur as like copper-silver-gold does make sense to them. Some apprentices try to follow along with the ideal gas law but the abstraction is mostly too much for them.

She knows, intellectually, that she's pulling off fucking miracles compared to what anyone else dropped into the bronze age would... But it still feels like she's standing still. Working with crude tools, to make crude results. With a week in a modest British workshop she could have built an airship. All this raw processing is out of her comfort zone to an extent still; She's used to being more of a machinist, working with saws and measures and drill presses and lathes and grinders, and she doesn't have any of those tools yet, because her supply of iron is tiny and she's dubious at the prospect of making them from bronze.

She's happy to work with Camlo, though, and let him use her glassblowing tools so long as he helps out here and there, too. She's - clearly pushing herself hard, very hard, no matter her attempts to seem cheerful and productive. She's at her happiest when she's making something, especially when it's not just a tedious chore of a step. Or talking about production, the genius of industrial design, the many ways things can transform and be used.

...Would Madam Sophia be willing to pay for some of the fancy glass decorations, or inviting plate-glass windows? Give the place a touch of class!

(Meanwhile, in the Blade Grave: Kohl is traveling with the whole crew, though he sometimes leaves Barik with the Disfavored garrisons and Verse as a hidden sentry, parleying with just the rogue mages and Killsy behind him.)

(The storm around Sentinel Stand is impenetrable, as bad as it was when Barik was first hit. But they'd ventured in shallowly before and learned that the Steadfast Insignia might allow the storm to be bypassed. Kohl makes common cause with the Unbroken, promising them autonomy and possession of the Steadfast Insignia in exchange for stopping hostilities with the Disfavored, returning prisoners, and cooperating on making the cowardly fool of a Regent pay for what he did to Stalwart's people.)

("What are you doing here, Stormcaller?")
("Cleaning up my mess. Should I have let someone else do it?")
("You're at fault as much as the fool of a regent.")
("I gave him as much time to concede as I could. I didn't think the Tiers could beat Kyros; I tried to limit the damage.")
("Cold comfort.")
("Well, I have a better plan now.")

(After two fists they've made their way to a breach in the Oldwalls, both the closest path to the Ocean Spire and the last known location of the First Regent with the Insignia. Which, it transpires, he died wearing, inexplicably charging into melee with a Havoc, an especially large and dangerous Bane. Also, it's been blocked off on an island platform in the Oldwalls, trapped in a bubble of force. This may take a while.)

Camlo is very happy to help, and to listen to her talk about the industry of her homeland; a lot of the masters resent working on making many identical pieces rather than working on artistry, but it sounds like they elevated the practice of piecework to almost an art! He and many of the apprentices notice that she's happiest when working, and are unsurprised; when they're not learning, the main job of apprentices is to remove all the barriers to working from their masters. Full Forge-Bound often say they only feel properly alive when they're working; the hammer is their heartbeat, the fire their breath. (This is why they prefer a death at the forge to the slow decay of old age.)

Sophia would, actually, like that! She is also going to be mentioning it was created by the Lightning Smith to every traveler who comes in, at least when Walta isn't there.

And that draws someone else's attention, actually.

Sirin is a young woman, slightly older than Walta, in (by local standards) a very nice dress. Unlike everyone else Walta's met, even the scribes, she has the hands and skin of someone who has never done manual work in her life. But the most attention-grabbing part of her appearance is the headdress. It's a big fan of bronze, with a huge glowing red gem in the forehead.

She walks into Walta's forge when it sounds quiet, walking like she owns the place.

"So, you're the one grabbing all of the Forge-Bound's attention, are you? Planning on going wild in the Spire forge again?"

(All the Forge-Bound present go rigid and set down anything in their hands that could be taken as a weapon.)

-UM.

CONCERN.

(She is currently doing math on a chalkboard.)

"-Sirin." 'She's not someone to meet while off balance'. So the danger here is more - social bullshit, than direct attack? Well, probably. "Archon Sirin if I recall correctly."

She sketches a bow, trying to get more time to think.

"No. The magic of the spires is - something close to overwhelming, and I was asked to let loose by Fatebinder Kohl," in a way, at least, "So now I know not to repeat the experience without a clear head and a specific goal."

"Yes, Archon. What are you doing, just teaching smiths how to do their jobs?"

"-What am I doing? Making things. Things to make more things, tools to make tools, faster, bigger, brighter. There's- So much potential, if only we had the tools. Everyone can be rich."

"And you think any of the people with actual power will just let you do it?"

"That just means I have to make things that the people with actual power want."

"Speaking as someone who made something Kyros wanted, you probably won't enjoy that either."

"-Yeah, I can see it. However. Not trying would be intolerable."