Fel woke to the sounds of clattering metal and rumbling, off-key humming. His eyes felt dry, his face was stiff, and he'd been laying on his arm in such a way that he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers. Mornings- they kinda sucked.

He checked his mana pool with [Mana Counting].

Damn. Only 68%, still not regenerating then.

He'd been hopeful, given its unexpected replenishment from when he'd woken in the fields.

Fel yawned and shook himself into sitting up in the bed. Scratching at his cheek with one hand, he fumbled for his glasses with the other.

Thought it'd been higher, too. Probably shouldn't have lit that candle while half asleep.

His hand slapped his glasses off the bedside table.

"For gods' sakes-"

Rolling off the side of the bed, Fel hit the ground with a small 'thunk'. Arm flopping, he pulled the glasses towards himself and put them on. He was perfectly prepared to start the day.

Fel grimaced and nudged the spectacles to the top of his head.

Still broken.

He stood, stretched, cracked his back, and rolled his shoulders in a way that was almost painful, but not quite. The heavy wooden chair was dragged to the side so that he could exit his room.

He stumbled through the doorway.

Down the hallway, through the parlor room, and up to the kitchen. It was a short trip made up of tired shambling and yawns.

He stopped there, at the kitchen's entryway, to stare at the apron-wearing figure that bustled -arms waving energetically to an unheard tune- across the floor. The figure in the kitchen flittered across the floorboards, then back the other way, fingers snapping together while the body bounced to the beat.

Fel rubbed at an eye with the palm of his hand.

"Uh, Charles?"

Charles spun, his apron flicking outward.

"Fel, good morning."

The man gave him a tight smile, his body straightening, and his feet no longer tapping.

"I- take a seat. I was just starting on breakfast."

Fel nodded weakly and moved to sit at the newly cleaned dining table. It seemed that they would be ignoring the previous scene.

"So... I guess you really are a morning person, huh? Weren't kidding."

Charles waved over his shoulder, his focus turned pointedly onto a glimmering orb that rested within an indentation on the stove. He rolled the orb around, and Fel could see the flame underneath a metal canister diminish into a pale flicker. Nodding to himself, Charles walked back over to where Fel was sitting at the table and picked up a mug.

The man coughed into his arm.

"Well, yes. More surprised that others aren't. Dawn's the best time of day, after all."

He gulped down a dark brown liquid and grimaced, scrunching his nose.

"Helps to be awake for it though."

Fel nodded agreeably but without really hearing the words, keeping his eyes firmly narrowed in on the mug in the man's hand. There was a faint but notable scent wafting around the room that he'd just started to notice, which was causing his fingers to twitch on the tabletop. It'd be rude to ask, but...

Charles waved his mug slightly to the left, watching Fel's eyes track its movements. He tapped a fingertip against the side, causing the ceramic to ding faintly.

"Er- You want some? Was making a second batch for Isabelle, but there's enough for two."

"Yes. Please." Fel's head snapped up to look at Charles directly.

Charles nodded and backed away, pulling over another mug from the counter. He filled it from the metal canister on the stovetop, then passed it over to Fel, who grabbed hold of the drink with eager hands.

Fel took a deep whiff and tentatively sipped from the mug.

Ahhhhh... Coffee.

He sighed and closed his eyes, his shoulders drooping. When he reopened them again, Charles was back at the stove, fiddling with a pan and one of the crystalline balls that powered the burners, periodically dragging items down from the cabinets above.

Fel zoned out as the man worked, drinking from his mug as grease sizzled in the foreground, and only coming back at the sound of hands slapping down against an apron-covered waist.

"Alright then, that's the ham cooking. Hey- do you know runework by any chance?"

Fel looked up, hesitated, then wiggled his head side to side. Pushing his chair back, he made to stand, still holding tightly onto the remainder of his coffee. "It's not exactly my area of expertise, but there's enough overlap that I've got a few chains under my belt. What's the issue?"

"No, no- not now. Later, after breakfast. One of the burners on the stove is all. Maybe a preservation cabinet too, if you can work with those."

Charles waved him off, going back to fiddling with the size of the flame.

"But anyways -don't think we ever asked- what kind of magic work do you do?"

"Permanent item imbuements and actively sustained magic, for the most part."

Charles twirled a hand above his head. "Nope; no idea what you said."

Fel hesitated.

"Ritual work. I'm a [Ritualist]."

Charles gave the crystal a final tap, before walking over to a different section of the counter, against the far wall.

"Ah. Rituals, huh? That's what those [Cultist] people use, yeah?"

Fel grimaced, sipping at his coffee, while Charles' hand drifted to one of the knives he'd laid out on the counter.

"Both classes use them, yes, but I assure you- there's very little overlap in our approach to the subject."

Charles flicked the knife into his hand and turned, his brow rising slightly as a thought seemed to come to him.

"Funny. A suspicious skillset that incorrectly hints at a 'darker profession'. That's a bit of an ironic reaction yesterday, for someone sitting in the same cart, don't you think?"

He wiggled the blade in Fel's direction -a small grin forming at the corner of his mouth- before reaching up and into a cabinet.

Fel rubbed the back of his neck as Charles retrieved and started dicing a tomato. The off-hand jab at yesterday's incident was sharp enough to make him flush.

He knew his actions were entirely reasonable - heck, he'd probably react in the same way if given the same situation again! It was just unfortunate that the reasonable nature of his actions didn't do a lot to make it less embarrassing to recall...

"There we go- that's probably close enough to done."

Moving past Fel, Charles dusted off his hands and meandered his way over to the door. "Well, good that you're already here at least- wasn't sure how to get you up. Always a mystery how you traveler types will react if you wake wrong. Can be a bit dangerous." He paused. "Isabelle on the other hand- easy as could be."

Charles cleared his throat and took a deep breath, his chest inflating.

"Isabelle! Your coffee's ready!"

Fel leaned back as Charles yelled through the open doorway, a loud crash sounding out from the other end of the house. Turning back around, Charles chuckled to himself.

"That is a good way to start the day. Anyways, Fel, how do you like your eggs?"

A door slammed open with a splintering screech, causing the walls to shudder around them.

Charles flinched.

"Damn... Might be more upset than I expected. Hold up on the eggs then."

By the time Isabelle had stomped her way to the kitchen, Charles had poured a mug of coffee -one twice the size of Fel's own- and set on the side of the table nearest to the door. He was pulling out a wooden chair as she crashed through the doorway.

"What the hell Charles!" Isabelle snarled at the older man, walking up and jabbing a finger into his chest. "That is not an appropriate way to wake someone up! What were you thinking? I could've been-" She stopped, shooting Fel a glance, then continued. "I could've been busy! You could've wrecked hours of preparation, or caused me to drop my gear, or- stop that! Put your damn arm down. What are you pointing at, a rabid-"

She faltered again, grinding to a stop.

Isabelle took a deep, incredibly frustrated breath, and crossed her arms.

"But I suppose that's for me?"

Her eyes flickered between the apron-wearing man standing in front of her, and the large cup of dark-brown liquid sitting on the table nearby. On the one hand, Charles had been an ass. On the other, there was coffee.

Compromising, she kicked him, then dropped into a seat.

Taking a long sip of the drink, Isabelle closed her eyes. She scootched her chair in closer to the table, curled her arms protectively around the mug, and exhaled. Tension rolled slowly off her back.

As her eyes refocused, she turned and beamed at Fel, addressing him for the first time since she'd stormed in.

"So hi! How's your morning going?"

Fel's mind went blank, completely unprepared for the sudden inquiry.

"Good. I think. Uhh... how about yours?"

"Mmmm- Terrible to start, but I'm sure it'll get better as the day goes on."

Isabelle hummed to herself, taking another drink while Fel grimaced and pinched himself under the table.

"Oh! And Charles?"

The man winced from where he'd retreated back to the stove. "...yes?"

"My revenge will be swift, it will be painful, and it will occur when you least expect it."

There was a pause in which she stared at him -an even brighter smile frozen firmly into position on her face- before she clapped her hands together, breaking the silence.

"Alright though! What's for breakfast? It smells great!"

Following breakfast, Isabelle gave Fel two options on what to do, seeing as they'd be leaving for the town in the same number of days. The first was that he go with her into the fields today to assist in fixing the farm's aquifer pump. The second was that he go with her to do so tomorrow.

It was a tough decision.

As it stood, however, Fel didn't get the opportunity to make that choice. Charles stopped both of them as they discussed, and insisted on Fel's assistance in repairing the smaller, more mundane, runeworks around the house.

That was how Fel found himself bent over clearing away the top of a stove, while Isabelle went out and cleared another section of the fields, and Charles scrubbed at the breakfast's pans.

When the stovetop was cleared -and cleaned with assistance from Charles- Fel began his work.

Unlatching a small, lopsided orb from its holder on the countertop, Fel picked it up. One half of the orb was exposed- revealing a cloudy, quartz-like substance that shone in the light. The rest of its surface was covered by a dark, metallic casing, which extended it oblongly.

He peered at it for a moment, examining the item for any obvious defects, before shrugging and placing it snugly into one of four indentations on the stove. The crystal half of the ball flared blue, then petered out.

Fel hummed, tapping at his chin, and rolling the ball up into one of the neighboring holes. This time, its light grew slowly into a bright crescendo, before settling down to give off a pale blue glow. A flame popped into existence above the rune-chain connected to it, the burner on the upper right-hand corner of the stove powering on.

Frowning to himself, Fel took the orb back out of the mana-siphon, and the flame disappeared.

"Well, it doesn't look like an issue with the battery, you're right about that."

He put the battery back into the non-functioning divot and watched it sputter, then stop.

"Never an easy solution." Fel cracked his back and stretched out his shoulder, muttering to himself. "Watch the head, me." He ducked under the vent hanging above the stovetop and leaned forwards, studying the lines that made up the broken burner's mana-siphon.

Deep enough carvings in the metal? Check.

Appropriate spaces to prevent mana leakage? Check.

Lines that connected at both ends? Check and check.

There were a few sections of runework which he didn't know -an event he'd expected given that it wasn't his field of study- but they looked right, so Fel skipped them.

He made it all the way through the mana-siphon, comparing the broken version with the ones he knew worked- without finding anything wrong. An hour of careful inspection spent with no results.

It was almost disappointing.

Then he opened up the burner's grate and recoiled.

Straightening, Fel calmly avoided slamming his head on the vent above his head and approached the living room, where Charles appeared to be vegetating.

He frowned as Charles chuckled at the air as he approached, the man staring off into space.

"Excuse me," Fel tapped Charles on the shoulder and gestured behind himself at the kitchen. "Do you know the last time you cleaned the stove?"

Charles started, his eyes dilating and head jerking back before he recovered, turning to face Fel.

"What th- huh? This morning- you saw me do it. Why, what do you need?"

"Okay, technically yes." Fel scrunched his nose. "What about under the grates though? The runework for the flames?

Charles shrugged and tilted his head. "Don't often think about it. Whenever they get dirty, I guess."

Fel nodded seriously; given what he'd seen, he was fairly certain their definitions of dirty differed in some meaningful way.

"Great. Do you have a coarse brush anywhere? Or failing that, a fine-toothed scrubber of some kind?"

He received a confused and vaguely annoyed glare in response, but Charles still left the room and came back with a hard-bristled brush, so he'd call it a win. Fel took the proffered item and inspected it, flicking off some residual paint flakes. He nodded.

"Looks good." Fel passed the handle back into Charles' arms. "The runework under the grates is clogged with grease, burnt food-product, and miscellaneous debris. I expect that it'll work after you clean it."

He patted the man on the back and smiled, before hurrying away to look at the cabinets. Preservation runes- those would be a welcome change of pace!

No, scratch that; he was wrong. While certainly a change in pace, the activity could no longer be considered welcome.

Fel pushed a point of mana into the starting rune of the chain out of sheer frustration, dropping him down to 67% capacity.

Two, maybe three hours? How long had it been?

An infuriating cycle of double, triple, even quadruple checking the rune chains for the cabinets.

There was nothing wrong with them! He could feel the mana pulsing through the outline, and the pattern was directing the mana's flow perfectly. They worked; both cabinet's runes worked. He was sure of it.

Fel dragged both hands down his face and groaned.

According to Charles, the preservation cabinets in the farthest corner of the room, the two that pressed against each other to make a wedge, just didn't function. And Fel could see that. Where every other cabinet was populated with foodstuff and had a bright blue rune-chain glowing against the back of the wall, these two did not. They had no food, clearly, but neither did their runes glow.

"Which doesn't make any sense."

Because again, they should work. His check with the one had confirmed that much. They didn't even have a battery that could be cause for failure; the runes drew mana passively from the local environment.

Fel dumped another point into a non-functioning rune-chain, the second one this time, and jabbed his finger at it.

66% mana capacity.

And that one worked too! A physical check of their physical structure confirmed their uniformity, and a mana spot-check confirmed their functioning. He hadn't even touched them! The most interactive thing he'd done with the runes was- was...

Fel punched the countertop, hissing harshly through his teeth. He turned in a rush.

"Charles. Excuse me- do you happen to know this region's mana den-" The words dropped off as he took a look around the room. "-sity... annnnnd he's gone. Damn it."

Fel groaned in annoyance and scrubbed at his eyes, taking a look out the window. The sun was far past the halfway point in the sky, opposite of the direction it had risen.

Gods. Okay. A bit longer than I thought.

Eyes wandering, he noted a discarded brush by the stove.

He made his way over and unlatched one of the mana-batteries from its holster. A quick check under the burner-plates confirmed that, yes, they'd been scrubbed clean. Dropping the orb into the bottom-right mana siphon, Fel watched it glow a stable blue, the corresponding -and previously broken- burner powering on. Fel grinned a tired, but smug grin.

Called it.

His stomach rumbled and he looked around.

Shoot though. Should've asked what was okay to eat.

Fel poked himself.

Live and learn.

He started walking. A quick bite would've been nice, but he had an idea in mind.

Passing through the parlor area -where Charles now sat sleeping in his chair- Fel wandered his way to the room he was staying in. A quick peek inside confirmed that it held the materials he needed, and Fel grabbed the inkwell and quill from the room's desk.

He made his way back to the kitchen and plopped the items onto the counter.

Mana density. That was the problem.

Fel flexed his hands.

Runes were constantly running, low-consumption, magic spells. Or at least, that's how Fel would describe them to a student. For the most part, it was an accurate representation.

The 'broken' preservation runes worked- he'd seen that, pushing mana into them which caused them to temporarily function. The issue, then, was almost certainly stemming from an inability to draw in mana. It made sense; where the runes on the stove were powered through mana batteries, those in the cabinets were made with passive functionality in mind. If the cabinets were in a relatively closed-off space, however, with a less than optimal range of area to pull mana from, like say, in the corner of a room...

Fel was pretty sure he was right.

So he took the ink, and he dipped the quill, and he started drawing a second rune-chain on the inside of one of the cabinets. It was a temporary -but functioning- proof of concept, with ink being unlikely to be as permanent as would otherwise be liked.

Fel drew, and he drew, and he drew some more.

The pattern circled in on itself, causing Fel's head to twist in an effort to keep the runes properly angled. The quill dipped into the inkwell, and back out, a pattern that repeated itself a great many times.

Dip. Draw. Turn.

Repeat.

Inch by inch, the new rune-chain appeared across the grain of the wood.

And when he finished, both corner cabinets' runes began to glow, a light blue glow.

A gathering chain. Neatly inked and spanning the bottom half of the cabinets shelf, it was a set of runes that gently drew in mana from the greater surroundings, localizing it. Not something Fel had come up with of course -that was an honor belonging to people far smarter and longer dead than him- but still a decent amount of work to produce.

If it worked, and there weren't any issues with the amount it drew in, he'd help make the chain permanent. Later. After a break.

Looking down at the jar of ink in his hands, Fel corked it and leaned against an empty section of the wall.

His hands hurt, and he was tired.

Fel picked up his supplies and walked out of the kitchen, almost tripping as he passed through the entryway.

He looked at Charles, who was still passed out in his chair, then down to his ink-stained hands. Yeah, the man had the right idea.

Fel walked to his room, shut the door, put up the items, and collapsed into sleep.

...

For about an hour.

Fel's door slammed open, and a young woman poked her head in. "Hey Fel! Charles is plating the food! If you're not awake I'm gonna' eat your portion- see you there!"

Mission accomplished, and having given the warning, Isabelle bounced back down the hallway.

Fel, meanwhile, lay stiff in the bed, his heart close to bursting and eyes locked open.

He rolled onto the floor.

When he'd calmed down and brushed himself off, Fel made his way down to the kitchen, groggy and sluggish but ravenously hungry.

Fortunately, Fel made it in time to eat his own food.

It was a good meal. Decent food and a reasonable amount of conversation. Isabelle was there this time.

And Fel was tired.

After they'd finished, Fel went back to his room and laid down in bed. It was a nice end to an overall pleasant day. And that was about all; there just wasn't much to say about it. He'd eaten, they'd talked, and Fel had trudged his way back to his room, unable to keep his eyes open any longer.

When he'd entered the room, Fel had dragged the chair back in front of his door. Yes, he knew he didn't need to do it, that he was safe - almost certainly. But at the same time... it didn't hurt to be cautious, and so he was.

But again, it'd been a pleasant day, and now he was tired. A day of worthwhile work and a slice of normalcy following the previous two days of strange. He hadn't done much, not really, but he'd helped out.

Fel stared up at the ceiling, watching as lines of light from his window faded slowly into darkness.

Yes, it'd been a good day, and he was tired, and that really was all.

So he rolled over and went to sleep.