It didn't take Jason and the others long at all to track down Aurion. As it happened, he came down the stairs into the Lodge’s main hall to speak with Therissa right as Jason approached the desk.

“Ah, Jason,” Aurion said. “Just who I was looking for. I see the rest of you are here as well.”

“You were looking for me?” Jason asked.

“Indeed.” Aurion replied. “On the subject of our arrangement, the Grandmaster has agreed to the terms as you set out, and has made what I feel is a reasonable suggestion as to the specific rates you wished to settle with him. I have the contract here with his signature if you’d like to look it over. Or we could return upstairs if you’d like to negotiate further.”

Aurion held out a sheet of parchment. Jason accepted it, and scanned it carefully, paying particular attention to the amended section relating to exactly how much in the way of potions and request fulfillment the would ask of him. The rates seemed quite reasonable, given the work involved, and even had an additional clause that required the guild to provide any rare ingredients required for requests, or to at least provide a set level of monetary compensation for them, proportional to the potion’s market value.

“No, this seems quite acceptable to me. Not intrusive at all.” Jason held out a spare hand to Therissa, who was holding a quill for him.

He signed the contract. Therissa took it from him. She carefully looked it over herself, and even passed her analysis tool over it.

“Looks all aboveboard,” Therissa then said with a nod. “As this is Guild business, I’ll register this with the Lodge, with myself as witness, in case of any disputes.”

“Thank you,” Aurion said with a slight bow towards Therissa. The he turned back towards Jason.

“Have you spoken to your new comrades of your abilities?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Jason replied. “In fact, we were looking for you to ask your thoughts on that very matter.”

Aurion nodded once, firmly. “Do so. When you are putting your lives in each other’s hands, trust is invaluable, and trust is hard to come by when the other party possesses too many overt secrets.”

“Speaking of lives at risk,” he continued, “good work out there today. I’ve been reading the preliminary reports, and by all accounts you five accounted yourselves more than admirably. That goes double for you Ravs. Your initiative in setting up anchors for a mass teleport in the case of raids turned what might have been a bad situation into little more than minor property damage. Thanks to the speed at which you got a large fighting force into position, most of the houses in the area will be salvageable once the crisis is past.”

Aurion gave her a stern look. “In the future, however, I would appreciate knowing ahead of time if my students possess tactical capabilities on such a scale,”

“Yessir,” Ravs replied meekly.

“Alright, that’s it for now, then,” Aurion said. “Off with you lot. Plenty of catch up you should be doing, and I’ve got work to do.”

One visit to Flora’s shop followed by a ten minute walk later, Jason and the others had arrived back at the house.

“Holy… you weren’t kidding!” Aldin exclaimed. “They gave you a whole building for whatever this deal with Black Thorns is?”

“Actually the house has nothing to do with that,” Kera replied. “The Mayor gave us the building, because Jason is going to be supplying the town with armaments. We needed a place to stay in the meantime, because the inn doesn’t have the kind of space he needs.”

“Now I’m even more confused.” Aldin said.

Jason pushed open the door, and the others followed him into the house, where Kera was greeted by an enthusiastic Ceri and Echo. After a brief period of showing of her pets, Kera begged off some time go see to their needs, seeing as they’d been cooped up on their own for several hours.

After she made her exit, Jason led Ravs and Aldon upstairs, where he had them take a seat at the side table. Lumi meanwhile disappeared into her room saying she wanted a quick shower, but she promised Jason she’d answer Ravs and Aldin’s questions after she was finished, so that Jason could focus on getting to work.

Ravs and Aldin both eyed the ritual circle carved into the surface of the stone table with curiosity.

Jason’s first order of business was to check on the elemental shards he’d attempted to synthesize earlier. Each one had completed its transformation. He brought them to the table.

Ravs leaned forwards with interest as Jason set the shards onto the table.

“Are those mana crystals?” she asked.

“Aspected ones, yes.” Jason confirmed. “And, interestingly, not the pure elements I was expecting. I wonder if it’s because of the trait I used in their creation?”

He looked down at the three shards. The one he’d placed in the crucible wasn’t the same cheerful, bright red of the fire shard he’d transmuted the previous day. Instead, it was ash-black, and gave off faint wisps of smoke.

“Wait, you made a mana crystal?” Aldin asked. “Don’t those require really specific circumstances to form?”

“Normally yes.” Jason replied. “But my skills allow me to prepare a solution of appropriate mana and infuse it into a sort of… seed, I guess, more or less exactly like seeding a crystal. This essentially skips several steps, infusing mana directly and then letting the crystal sit for awhile to absorb appropriate aspects.”

He triggered his [Arcane Sight], and his vision became a wash of color. He studied the shard for a moment.

Elemental Shard (Smoke) Traits Discovered: Smoke, Mana

“Huh.” Jason sat back, considering the shard. Then he turned his gaze onto the other two shards, the ones he’d immersed in water. The first one was a relatively ordinary blue, but streaked with gray and white in places, and it rocked every so slightly in place where it sat on the table. The second shard was a deep turquoise, and smelled faintly of salt water.

Elemental Shard (Ocean) Traits Discovered: Ocean, Mana Elemental Shard (Wave) Traits Discovered: Wave, Mana

“Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad one?” Ravs asked. “We’re not exactly informed, here.”

“Sorry,” Jason replied, sitting up and pulling out of his introspection. “This is why Lumi was going to explain things. I tend to get… absorbed… in things when I work. Here.”

Jason shared the notifications with the other two. “The traits you see mentioned here are much like the runes an enchanter would use, except instead of shaping mana into a specific form, they are mana; aspected mana. By mixing the correct types together in the proper amounts, adding liquid, and using the right skill, I can produce what you would refer to as eternal potions.”

Ravs and Aldin stared at Jason, mouths slack.

Jason tried his best to ignore their shock; he was finally beginning to get used to that sort of thing.

“That’s the basics of Alchemy,” he explained. “By determining the magical properties of naturally occurring substances, I can duplicate most spell effects in potion form, and even create a wide array of non-potion consumables, provided I have the ingredients. Thanks to my discovery of how to create these shards, alongside one of my other talents, I can make many of the ingredients I might need. That’s what I’m going to be doing today, and then tomorrow I’ll be headed down to speak with Tersk and Jerrik for some gear I prototype with using a mix a alchemy and standard enchanting.”

Rather than sit around answer questions, Jason decided to put the two to work; they could learn by helping until Lumi was back. He conjured some tools.

“Here. Ravs, I want you to take that smoke shard and crush it down into tiny pieces,” he ordered. “That one seems to be the most useful at the moment. Aldin, you take the wave shard, as it might turn out to be a close contender. Just smash them into powder as fine as you can manage.”

“But… these things are valuable!” Aldin protested. “And you want to…?”

“Eternal potions are more valuable,” Jason said with a wink.

Aldin raised one finger in the air. “You may have a point there.”

The two got to work while Jason began the process of preparing additional shards. This time he opted for using some of the fulgurite he’d processed earlier in the morning, because he was fairly sure that making lightning shards would be a simple matter, and that element would no doubt be an excellent choice against aquatic opponents.

While Ravs and Aldin ground up the two shards he’s given them, Jason explained how he’d previously extracted the essential trait of ‘Storm’ from the fulgurite they’d acquired in the Crystal Wastes, and then went on to demonstrate a relatively basic process for creating electricity: a half-dozen different series of lemon batteries, made by wiring up three lemons each with different bits of conductive scrap metal he’d gotten delivered. The lemon batteries Jason then wired up to small bowls containing his storm-mana solution and engraved pieces of tourmaline.

“There we go.” Jason said. “We’ll let that lot sit for about an hour. With any luck, I’ll have six lightning shards, which I can then turn into twice as many with some additional arcane powder.”

“This is nuts, man.” Aldin stated. “The kind of money involved in this…”

“I still can’t believe he can make lightning out of lemons,” Ravs said, “even if it is unbelievably weak lightning.”

“That’s… not really the right term,” Jason explained. “Lightning is just a manifestation of certain other things, and it’s actually those other things I’m making here. It’s kind of like…”

Jason paused. “You know, it occurs to me that magical lightning might not be specifically electromagnetic when it’s in an elemental form.”

He gave that some thought for a moment before shrugging. “Well, nevermind. It’s unimportant. The interaction of science and elemental magic is besides the point.”

He continued “Point is, there’s lots of ways to get… lightning from various things. Here, watch.”

Jason showed them what he’d show Pelk, striking two pieces of quartz together to create small sparks.

“See? Easy. The lemon thing works quite a bit differently, of course, and keeps a constant stream going, but ‘lightning’ as you put it is easy to generate. Ever gotten a shock because you scuffed your socks too much on the floor and then touched something metal? Same thing as lightning, more or less. The lemons are just passing it along the metal in a constant wave, pushing it into the crystal so it will alter the absorbed mana’s aspect, so you don’t see it.”

“What’s this about lemons?” Lumi asked as she ascended the stairs.

“I’m using basic science faire tricks to make lightning-trait mana crystals.” Jason informed her, gesturing towards the array of lemon-batteries.

Lumi snickered. “Oh man, I remember those things. Seemed like every faire had at least one.”

“I’ve given Ravs and Aldin a very basic rundown of what I do, but haven't gone into detail, really. Care to field questions while I set up the next batch? I really need to resupply our restoratives.”

“Sure,” she replied.

Lumi took a seat and began speaking with the other two while Jason set up the refining of the additional ingredients he’d acquired from Flora, primarily ones for Restore, Health, and Mana, but also a small portion of many others, so he could begin building his supply. As each batch of refined traits was readied, he used some of each to craft new health, mana, and rejuvenation potions. He also created a few antitoxin potions for good measure. Everyone got some, and he set aside more to crate up later.

Partway through Jason’s work Kera returned as well, Ceri and Echo in tow, and eventually Lumi wrapped up her summarization of their situation. By the time be first hour had passed and Jason’s new shards were ready, Ravs and Aldin had started on their own rundown of standard procedures and things to expect when it came to undertaking a Guild-led dungeon raid.

Adventuring groups could vary in size, but within the Black Thorns, five was the norm. While there wasn’t anything like officially assigned parties, most Guild members operated in small, stable squads and the leadership always showed a preference for assigning the same groups of people to work together when it came to official Guild business on a larger scale. As for the current situation, since many of the guild applicants didn’t have pre-formed groups of their own, Aurion had assigned people together based on observed friendships and pairings amongst the class, on the assumption that those people would be the most likely to end up choosing to work together anyway.

“How will the raid itself be structured?” Jason asked at one point. “Surely Aurion won’t form the raid out of just students, will he?”

“No,” Ravs replied. “As Aldin said back at the lodge, he’ll probably divide everyone into groups of ten, two five person squads each. Each group of ten will be overseen by an experienced Guild member, and will probably include one or two more experienced adventurers. Since this is also a test of sorts, I’m sure the actual Guild members will be as hands off as they can because they want to see what we can do, but they’ll step in if things get messy, and not everyone involved will be guild applicant like us. This is a formal job, after all.”

Ravs and Aldin then spent a bit of time explaining various roles that different classes and combinations of classes were categorized under, and how that might determine a given group’s placement. Most of the information was, as Jason had expected, full of concepts he was familiar with, but it was good to receive confirmation that the tactics he’d be expected to understand were relatable to experiences he’d had playing online games.

Kera and Lumi asked questions here and there, and Jason listened in. Meanwhile, he continued to prepare and refine ingredients. His lightning shards turned out just as he’d hoped, and he used the smoke and wave shards to produce more of their own kind by placing their solutions under the same conditions, substituting appropriate traits for his original prismatic solution.

“What are you planning to use all this stuff for?” Aldin finally asked after a few hours of work had passed and late afternoon was beginning to turn to early evening.

Jason demonstrated. After all, he was currently without any proper weapons. While he was half tempted to make a more permanent fire-construct, given it’s effectiveness, It would be highly expensive to activate and maintain control over, and Jason would rather have a proper weapon in his hands first. Constructs could come later. So instead Jason made his first order of business the creation of a wand he’d been looking forwards to for some time now: A lightning thrower.

First, he prepared the iron rod he that would form the base by affixing the lightning shard to one end after softening the metal in the crucible, simply inserting it into the tip and adding some surrounding solder to keep it in place. Then he wrapped the other end tightly in a leather binding, and relied on his tailoring skills to sew the wrap in place.

He didn’t try to be fancy; Jason had already seen more than once that something about the infusion process altered the physical structure of the item, and he figured it would still occur here.

Using one unit of his new lightning trait, two units of volatile, and one unit of storm, Jason then mixed a series of diluted potions that he infused into the wand. Sure enough, the process warped his creation into a slightly new form: It transformed into a jagged, yellow-tinted rod with a zig-zag shape, with the elemental shard firmly set into the end as a focusing agent.

Jason wasn’t done though. Switching gears from alchemy to engraving, he added the normal rune sequence for elemental projection, and on a whim also included some runes for controlling the motion of the projectile.

The end result was a wand that would draw on Jason’s mana to fling small orbs of electrical energy, whose motion he could then direct with a degree of precision. If desired, he could then trigger the alchemical effect with a mental command, causing the bolt to erupt into a lingering storm cloud that would deliver multiple strikes of lightning to anything nearby. The field effect only had a dozen charges, but he could always add more, and since the wand itself was enchanted properly, it wouldn’t simply burn out once he had used up the charges.

Ravs examined his creation critically.

“Not bad. This is probably on par with some of the better rewards you might get from a mature dungeon,” she said. “And you plan on making more?”

Jason had refined two dozen units of lightning trait with two batches of six elemental shards, and he’d only used six units to craft his wand. He had plenty of storm and volatile left as well.

“Sort of,” Jason replied. “I’ll need to test this out somewhere first, probably outside the walls given how… dramatic… some of my other volatiles have ended up being, but I’m hoping with [Metamagician] I can exert some control on the actual size and shape of the storm cloud.”

“Once I’ve established its effectiveness, I’ll probably imbue this specific effect into single-use arrows. Other… spells I guess, like status infliction and damage boosting, will get made into spears and swords. The alchemical effects don’t use mana, and Arnvale doesn’t have many mana-wielders here, so I think its better to infuse standard weapons instead of wands or staves.”

“Are you going to make more stones?” Lumi asked. “Those were pretty effective.”

Jason nodded. “Absolutely, though I’m thinking that will be a good use of a bunch of those scarab eggs.”

“Eggs?” Aldin asked. “What eggs?”

Jason explained about the prism scarab eggs he’d brought back from the expedition.

“We brought back dozens,” he said, “so I’m thinking I use maybe half of the remaining ones to make a large batch of random-element variants of [Salamander Stones]. Since Volatile is an easy trait to get more of, and I’ve got loads of eggs, making large diluted batches should provide plenty to distribute among the defenders.“

“I’ll probably then use a quarter of the remaining eggs to explore new elemental shard traits,” Jason continued, “since apparently ‘prismatic’ does some weird things to the process, so I can continue to experiment with new effects. I’m wondering what ‘Prismatic Wave’ might do, for instance. ‘Prismatic Storm’ was a little too effective, since it threw out a lot of potential friendly fire, but a wave effect that pushes out away from us…”

Lumi nodded. “That could be useful. A barrier wand might be good too.”

Jason waggled his hand in the air. “Eh, not sold on that, though it has some value in opponents not being able to counter an elemental shield accurately. But if it’s random, it also runs the risk of putting up a shield that might be weak to a really strong attack at the worst possible moment.”

“Can you control what element you get out of it?” Kera asked suddenly. “You’ve got that multipurpose control rune I’ve seen you use. Could you maybe craft something that would just use a tiny bit of your own mana first allowing you to.. you know, nudge things in the right way?”

Jason drummed his fingers on the table in front of him, thinking.

“I doubt it,” he said, “That particular rune doesn’t really work that way. Its more like—”

He cut off, looking down at his hands, where he’d been idly tapping his fingers against the transmutation circle he’d carved into the table.

“Like what?” Kera asked.

Jason grinned. “Hang on, I’ve got an idea….Lumi, can I see your bracer for a minutes?”