Nico gave a polite nod to a vendor and leaned over the display of manasteel circlets. The craftsmanship felt familiar to the well-known alchemic exports from the Forged Nation. Steel was common, but Forged mana-imbued-steel was coveted for its elemental resonance, which stabilized inscriptions and mana flows. Alchemists fought over the supply during busy seasons.
He lifted a piece of manasteel. The alloy matched the Forged Nation’s grade exactly, right down to the polish pattern and stabilizing frequency. The only difference was branding; here the circlets lacked the authenticity seal stamp. A tiny emblem that certified it was an authentic piece from an official Forged Nation distribution channel. It transformed something made in Tellur into a luxury export worth ten times the as much.
The Virid vendor engaged proudly with Nico’s questions and launched into the finer points of her inscription process. She seemed thrilled to have someone who could follow the technicalities, right down to the headache that was separating elemental layers during inscription engravings. The Virid, happy to find another alchemy nerd, guided the hooded fox to a glass case at the back of the stall. She unlocked it with care and presented an item on the counter.
The ringlet rested in a velvet-lined tray among other restored pieces, each one bearing the patient touch of masterwork repair. High-grade manasteel, nearly free of impurity. The metal had been reforged, but the original glyphwork remained preserved. The older language folded neatly into the restored inscription.
He recognized the language’s shape from the rises and falls of its waves— the same script carved along the observatory’s walls. The same glyph fragments Zhou had partly deciphered using his grandmother’s memory. A circlet containing what previously was thought to be an endemic language of a Gemfolk quarry was here now. Restored and circulating on the shelves of a lush underground alchemic market hidden inside a rift.
Tellur wasn’t known for alchemic wealth. Yet the stalls brimmed with craftable resources: condensed mana, refined cores, imbued relics, and—most notably—pure manasteel, that they forged into high grade equipment. All resources typically harvested from rifts. Vendors spoke casually but kept their voices low when discussing their sourcing. “Harvest” and “restoration” stood in for terms Central might flag.
The vendor, still delighted by Nico’s appreciation, explained that the circlet was a restoration of harvested pieces from the lands of Tulen itself. Local craftspeople repaired them, doing their best to preserve the original channels, letting the resonance deepen with age. Nico suspended thought about the moral implications of that as the vendor encouraged him to try the circlet.
He ran a thumb along the central groove and sent a controlled pulse of mana through. The current threaded cleanly along the pattern, splitting and converging with remarkable efficiency, with the conversion ratio surpassing most standardized A-grade equipment. His gold mana filled the rune lines in a steady flow. As the energy reached its apex, the color shifted—violet bleeding through.
“Hmm. Are you following me around?” A cheery hum spoke beside him.
“…Apologize to me,” Nico replied, still watching the color shift along the metal.
A low chuckle answered. “You look well rested, shopping in the middle of a weekday.”
“It’s to clear up the resentment in my heart.”
“Ah. Sorry, then. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Okay.”
Nico finally turned. Zhou stood beside him in a stylish dark cloak that hid his hair. For a moment, Nico felt underdressed. Then the image of Zhou crawling through one of those tiny Virid doors hit him, and the entire effect collapsed. His ears twitched under the hood, fighting the urge to laugh.
Zhou noticed the fabric of the fox’s hood wiggling and clarified with a soft laugh, “I came through a full sized entrance."
Nico did not appreciate the mind read but accepted the information.
The Virid vendor seemed equally startled by Zhou’s sudden arrival, but hurriedly composed herself and began assisting him as he picked through the array of manasteel charms. Zhou notably gravitated toward the restorations of older alchemic items, all made of refined manasteel with preserved inscription channels.
To all of their surprises, the circlets resonated extraordinarily well with Zhou. Where Nico’s mana was streamlined, Zhou’s mana was responsively amplified, overtaking the inscriptions. The vendor’s eyes widened; she leaned in with scholarly excitement, delighted by the contrast. She was well-versed in the older language and announced, with barely contained enthusiasm, that inscription restoration had been her research focus. In minutes she had both alchemists testing different restored pieces, injecting their mana to compare elemental affinities, adjusting inscriptions to watch the changes, and taking notes. What started as a polite inquiry became a group of alchemy nerds awing openly over the craft.
Zhou ended up purchasing several circlets, each one resonating with his mana in a slightly different way. The vendor, thrilled, even pulled a piece she had struggled to restore from her inventory and pressed it into his hands as a freebie—provided he promised to report back with anything interesting. Zhou nodded along, already slipping into a discussion about her restoration attempts and the structural problems she’d encountered, offering theories with genuine interest.
By the time she finished, she had drafted them a route that felt oddly like a fetch quest: a list of other restoration stalls specializing in pendants, rings, guards, and similar pieces. The two followed her notes through the network of pathways, stopping at each recommended stand.
The conversations were all interesting, but the longer they dawdled at the market, the more Nico noticed the silence between them once each interaction ended. They didn’t make small talk, didn’t naturally fill the moments between stalls, didn’t know each other for long enough to be spending this much time together. They just drifted along the quest route the vendor gave them, as if that counted as a plan.
It dawned on the fox that neither of them knew how to get out of the rift. And that neither seemed willing to ask for directions. Apparently even Sages weren’t immune to feeling awkward.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
As his social battery drained, Nico decided it was time to figure it out. He shifted his attention to the sensory cues around them. Here and there, shallow pools of water collected between stalls, each lined with hyacinths like the fountain he entered from. Their scent laid heavy in the thick mana-imbued air as he deciphered through the layered smells of the market, hoping to trace something useful: ozone, hyacinth, metallic sting, jasmine, bark, ozone, moss, fruit, a different jasmine, so many flowers— oh?
A floral note cut through everything else, the same way Zhou’s jasmine always stood out to him. It wasn’t unique, but it was familiar enough that he couldn’t miss it. Marigolds.
Zhou was still speaking with a vendor when Nico tugged at his cloak. The sage looked amused, which Nico pretended not to notice, and fell into step as the fox tracked the marigold scent through weaves of stalls.
The stall it finally led him to felt more like a storefront. Crystal orbs sat along the booth’s table, each lit from within by mana shards that shifted color in response to passing elementals. Fairy lights were strung above, holding charms of marshflowers, tiny metal moons, and windchimes that rotated gently in the air. At the front sat a Virid with a scarf illustrated with chunky green teeth, completely obscuring their face. Their antennae stuck upright on the top of their head, stuffed inside a wrap of fabric ribbon.
“Oh~ are you here for a reading?” she sang mysteriously.
“Yes,” Nico answered, not actually wanting a reading.
The Virid gestured them inside. Both alchemists ducked very low to pass beneath the beaded curtain fitted to the very Virid-sized stall. To their relief, the interior was larger than expected, shifting into a cozy apothecary den. Mana shards glowed from lanterns wrapped in pressed leaves, giving the room a soft amber haze. Shelves curved along the walls, packed with pretty stones sorted by color, bundles of dried flowers tied with twine, tiny jars of powdered herbs, all with delicate handwritten labels. A faint scent of marigold and honeyed tea drifted from somewhere deeper in the room.
Accompanied by a series of jingles, another short Virid shuffled out from the back. She was draped entirely in colorful linens patterned in geometric motifs. Each layer was decorated with seed husks strung together in rows that clicked softly when she moved. Even her antennae were wrapped in vibrant ribbons, stacked with charms that chimed as they bobbled. Her presence was not inconspicuous, but the layers of fabric obscured her form completely. She greeted them in a low, weary voice that suggested many hours of rehearsal.
“Ahh… I’ve been expecting you.” She beckoned them over with a jingly sway of antennae.
Nico tried his best to not display how skeptical he felt about that statement.
“Good. I’m here for a reading,” Zhou replied immediately, to Nico’s surprise.
“Aha. Take a seat then. I’m Imae.”
Nico was 80% certain it was Effie based on the scent alone, and now 200% certain from the stature. But he respected her game and played along.
She asked for Zhou’s hand and left it at that, not bothering to ask what he wanted to hear. Her attention shifted instead to the newly purchased circlets and bracelets on his wrist, and she instructed him to inject mana into them.
Violet mana resonated smoothly through the restored steel. She rotated Zhou’s hand, studying how the channels responded to his elemental affinities. An assured nod followed as she began the diagnostic of the Sage’s fortune.
“These are relics of Tulen.”
Both boys tilted their heads.
“What Tellur was called long ago, before the interference of outer nations. Older writings and historical documentation, though rare, still refer to this land as Tulen.”
Nico thought back to what he had seen in the observatory, and to the reading material Effie’s team had compiled for him. Tulen had come up more than once. He had noticed it, meant to ask Effie about its relationship to Tellur, and forgotten every time. Close enough, he had assumed, to be a variance in spelling over the decades.
Standing here now, he felt a little bad. Apparently she had been waiting for him to ask, too.
“Yup, I did see that here,” Zhou affirmed.
The fortune-teller let out a slow laugh. “Afoo foo foo foo.”
It was a good laugh. Thoroughly workshopped. Nico appreciated the amount of heart Effie was putting into the role. He would keep her secret for as long as she wanted.
“Do you know the history of Tulen? It seems linked to your own, from what I can read.”
Eff—no, Imae let the violet mana seep into the orbs on the table. Inside the crystals it refracted into soft waves, aurora caught in a snowglobe.
“Just assume I don’t know anything,” Zhou replied.
“Hmmm.” Imae’s antennae swayed toward Nico, then back to Zhou.
“He can know. It’s fine.”
Nico’s ears ruffled beneath his hood. Given how everything Zhou had roped him into so far had turned out, it was probably time to sprint out of—
“Afoo foo FOO!”
The lights in the stall dimmed as Imae rolled her hands across the crystal orbs. Each one sang a different note as her fingers passed, activating the mana Zhou had fed into them. They began to rattle.
Okay. Maybe he’d stay to watch.
The rumbling faded until only one orb remained in motion. The mana inside condensed into a bubble and slowly floated free, hovering in the air above—
pop
“…”
Imae gave a definitive, jingling nod.
“You’ll learn more about your heritage in the western marshes, the valley between the great hills,” she said. “You’ll know it when you reach it. The air smells of peat and iron. The ground burns if you stand still long enough.”
“And what’s the heritage?” Zhou pressed.
“A foo foo foo foooo.”
Imae knew what it was. Zhou knew what it was. Nico knew what it was. And now Nico was fairly certain the Sage was using his conscience to drag him into something insane again.
“The way your mana reacts to these relics of the Tulen nation isn’t because of your Arcanite resonance—”
A glittering breeze swept around the table. They were indoors, so the source was unclear.
“They’re reacting to the mana you share with the original aether elementalists… the Seriffolk!”
The mana inside the crystal ball surged upward at the word Seriffolk and burst into a cascade of indoor fireworks. It rained down theatrically, dissolving into ambiance before it could touch them.
Nico sighed. He had to admit, the production value was excellent.
“Never heard of them,” Zhou said, in a blatant lie.
The moment Nico had seen Zhou’s aether elemental, he had known. Another inorganic race, categorized as such because their mana control stemmed from a carbon spine. The only people ever recorded as wielding aether, but—
“Hmmm. Not many do these days, unfortunately. It’s a centuries-old tale.” Imae snapped open a hand fan, its origin also unclear. “Their presence was lost from this land, just as Tulen was. You’ll have to see for yourself in the western marshes.” She fanned glitter over both boys. “It was once the epicenter of their society, or so we think, since most relics surface there.”
The restored circlets rattled against Zhou’s forearm, chiming as they bumped together. The wind picked up, now carrying a fine mist, and everything swirled into a sudden—
POOF
—a smokescreen that swallowed the stall. The rattling cut off all at once.
When the haze cleared, Imae had not disappeared. No one had. Everyone was still there, waiting quietly for visibility to return.
Zhou nodded. “Alright, do you do tap to pay?”
“Afoo foo foo, I do. Come to the counter with me.”
It was a bit of an anticlimactic end to an otherwise immersive experience.
“Do you also validate parking?” Zhou added.
“Hmmm?” Her antennae bobbed beneath their linens.
“We don’t know how to get out of here,” Nico clarified as Zhou paid for his reading.
For some reason, because it was Effie, Nico felt comfortable asking her what he couldn’t bring himself to ask any other vendor.
“Oh!” The antennae bobbed again. “Pluck any of the water hyacinths in the shimmering pools. The rift will kick you right out!”
The antennae paused, suddenly aware she might have let too much Effie energy slip, and eased back into her slow “a foo foo” laugh.
“And on your way out, since you both seem interested in the alchemic current of these wetlands—”
She handed them each a passionately designed flyer that read:
‘Alchemy
at the
Park!!~~??’
The scent of marigolds lingered after they left the stall, distinct beneath the ozone. Having Effie on their side really did make a world of difference.