We waited on the pier under the rose of the day’s first light as the Siren’s Flight’s sailors got ready. Flyssa, Louprak, and Faros stood close to me. While not directly concerned by today’s test, the Carpenter had been subject to our preparations for the last few days and had insisted on accompanying us. Flyssa’s proud posture bespoke the words she did not say about her satisfaction at her father’s presence.

Our six enchanted sheets were laying on the ground. I had woken up in the middle of the night to fuel them all with Aether. Now came the very first trial of Bordeaux Logistics, the one that would determine whether we were right or wrong about the potential of Aether.

I yawned loudly. I hadn’t found any coffee or beverage with similar effects and I did not dare try another one of Morange’s potions in fear of becoming addicted again.

“I can throw you into the water if you want,” said Faros helpfully. “It’ll wake you right up.”

“That’s very kind of you, but I think I’ll pass.”

“Sure?” He shrugged when I shook my head. “Your call.”

Seeing that most of his sailors were now waiting around the barrels and crates gathered on the wharf for the occasion. Louprak sounded the beginning with a sharp whistle.

“All right, Koltrak. Are we ready?”

“We are, Trade Master,” replied his First Mate.

“Then let’s get to it!”

We had planned this so early to avoid most of the crowd that usually filled the harbour. We could not go completely unnoticed obviously. Already some Fishers were joining their ship and a few Sailors were slowly waking up. But we hoped to be quick enough that we would not attract too much attention.

The Pterars got busy as soon as Louprak said the word. Two of them grabbed the first sheet, made of white and heavy wool that, Flyssa had assured me, resisted quite well to rough handling, though it was the second most expensive of our materials.

The two Sailors wrapped the sheet around the first barrel, pulling and rolling it on its edge to completely surround it. They startled when it instantly seemed to become smaller but I had warned them of what would happen beforehand.

That barrel and a few others were full of a vegetable oil cultivated around Sturron. I estimated each of them to be between 120 and 180kg, though that was a very crude estimation based on not much but my gut and a crash course on weight measurement in Sturron that Faros had given me yesterday.

“Try lifting it together!” I said.

Both Sailors looked at me like I had gone mad, but shrugged and complied when Koltrak yelled at them. They tipped the barrel over on its side and each grabbed a handful of wool. They lifted it without much effort.

“Holy shit!” exclaimed one of them.

They tried walking with it, but it clearly wasn’t as efficient as just rolling it. Without handles, the sheet made for an uneasy grip and, even with only two-third of its weight, the barrel was still a big container full of liquid.

We had prepared some thin ropes to tie the sheet to the barrel and keep it from escaping while it was rolled on the ship. That extra step slowed down the process somehow but we could easily remove it in the future by adding some kind of closing system to each end of the sheet.

The testing got easier as it went on. Every Sailor took a turn, working in pairs to load and unload the cargo. They tried every sheet with every type of container, which took some time. The harbour had woken up around us, a few ships departing, Merchants arriving to set up their stalls. We had attracted a bunch of onlookers – including two Lompres and a Human who were probably from the Dockworkers’ Guild. Louprak and Flyssa went on to talk to a few people they knew, telling them of our new company, how we were still in the early stages but that we would solicit them once we had a service we could guarantee. The Dockworkers did not talk and made themselves scarce after a while. I doubted that that was the last we had seen of them though.

I stayed with Faros to overlook the Sailors’ efforts. They had reached the fifth sheet, made out of a monster’s hide. The leather created was a very thin fabric that was easier to fold and manipulate but a bit more expensive. It was supposed to be able to withstand the kind of treatment it would receive, but I had my doubts. It seemed really thin.

“What do you think?” I asked Faros. He had been quiet for some time while I could not stop fidgetting. Koltrak had forbidden me from following his Sailors around as they worked after a near incident and I was now stuck here, on the sidelines.

The Schalass nodded, not taking his eyes off the scene.

“It’s good.”

“What? That’s it?”

“Well yeah,” he said, turning to me and frowning. “What did you want me to say?”

“I don’t know, I wanted you to expand on your thoughts.”

“You wanted to hear me calling you a genius or something?”

“Pffrt! No, that’s not what I meant.”

“‘Cause you’ve still got work to do before this goes anywhere.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But it’s good.”

“Right. Thank you, Faros.”

“No problem.”

When the Sailors were done, they loaded all the cargo one last time and I gathered the sheets. I would carefully examine them back at the workshop to see how they had fared.

We met up on the deck, Louprak, Flyssa, Koltrak and I with all the Sailors that had participated in the trial to get their feedback. Faros went home. He said he was hungry.

The Sailors were all sitting down on the deck and looking up at the four of us. It felt like teaching a class full of kids, except these children had spent a full hour moving heavy objects up and down a plank.

Louprak addressed them first:

“Thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedule to actually work a little,” he said. They all whistled him and laughed. A Pterar meeting was a noisy affair. He continued after they settled down. “The point of today’s exercise was to figure out the best way to use the magic provided by our friend Luc here. What we want now is for all of you to tell us your thoughts after using the sheets. How did it compare to the usual way of loading and unloading?”

“Don’t keep anything back, even if it’s negative,” I added. “This is the first trial we’ve done so we’re expecting that things weren’t perfect.”

I wasn’t surprised that the first hand to raise was Rolik’s, the young Sailor who had tried to give me a tour of the ship the day I presented my ideas to Flyssa and Louprak. He had been very excited all morning, volunteering multiple times, and he looked exhausted.

“The sheets are too big,” he said. “Even when we fastened them to the barrels, it was all kind of loose. It made it harder to push them because we kept slipping. Also, it takes some time to set up and to undo for each barrel.”

His mates all voiced their agreement.

I sighed. “Yeah, I saw that. Maybe we could make the sheets the same size of a barrel and you’d just have to put them on, like a sleeve. But all the barrels didn’t seem the same to me. How many types are there exactly?” I asked, turning to Louprak who chuckled.

“Dozens. Every city has one and some have more than one when the Guilds disagree. In Sturron though, we use perhaps four different types for the most part. What would you say, Koltrak?”

“I agree, Sir. Depending on our cargo, perhaps up to 9 out of 10 barrels are either Sturronian, Izalean oak, Izalean rowan or Hyuwian. And the rest are close enough in size. Having four sizes of sheets would mostly fulfil our needs.”

“Perfect,” said Flyssa, taking notes with her magical pen. “I’ll find out the dimensions of these barrels and I’ll have our suppliers make our sheets in four sizes. We’ll figure out with them if this sleeve idea is doable. What else?”

Another Pterar, older with grey in his feathers, raised his hand.

“The barrels become smaller once they’re wrapped with the sheets. That’s weird by the way. We tried removing the sheet and putting it back quickly and it was like half of the barrel disappeared and came back. It hurts my brain to think about.”

“Orpak, get to the point,” interrupted Koltrak, shaking his head.

“Right, sorry. Anyway what I wanted to say is when the barrels get smaller it’s actually harder to roll them. Well, maybe not harder but definitely less convenient. You have to bend down lower. That’s not good for your back, you know?”

“But carrying them is no good,” added a Pterar next to him. “The weight is fine, depending on the barrel, but we have to walk like crabs and we can’t grip it too hard or our talons will damage the sheet.”

Louprak and Flyssa turned to me and looked at me expectantly. I looked back with a blank face.

“Mage Luc?” asked Flyssa.

I frowned. “How do you know I may have a solution?”

“You just have that look, like you’re very proud of yourself and are just waiting for the right time to show everyone,” she replied, the corner of her mouth creasing with the hint of a smile.

I laughed. It was rare, but sometimes her father’s influence showed very clearly.

“You all have a Strength Skill or something of the sort, right?” I asked the Sailors. They nodded and whistled.

“Would you be strong enough to bear a barrel, weighted and sized down in a sheet, if it was on your shoulders?”

As expected, they all loudly agreed.

“I could carry two!” screamed one of them, standing up. He was mercilessly mocked and hooted by his mates and sat down. I actually saw Koltrak facepalm. Louprak just laughed and teased the louder boasters.

“All right, all right!” Koltrak yelled after a while. “Quiet down you loud beaks!”

I had trouble keeping a serious face but I managed not to laugh.

“Thank you Koltrak. Well if it’s possible, we could make straps that could be tied at both ends of a barrel with a loop. Then you lift the barrel onto your shoulders and carry it.”

“Trade Master Louprak?” asked Flyssa.

“It could work.”

“I agree,” said Koltrak. “Though the straps will have to be robust.”

“We can enchant them with a Hardening rune since they won’t need the Magic Imprinting one,” I added.

“Good. I will ask a Ropemaker,” Flyssa said, scribbling down on her notebook. “Next I would like to discuss the materials the sheets were made of. Could you all tell me which one you liked and why?”

The meeting lasted for about an hour, though we had started so early that it wasn’t noon yet. There would be no more trials, the Siren’s Flight was supposed depart on the morrow. We promised the Sailors that we would have everything ready for when they came back.

Louprak accompanied us to the end of the pier.

“Luc, I don’t know if I’ll have time before we leave,” he said. “Can you give my best to Inrak?”

“Of course. Do you know when you’ll be back?”

“I go where the winds of commerce take me. It could be a few weeks, maybe more, maybe less. So I don’t know. But you’ll be fine without me. I have faith in both of you.”

“Thank you, Trade Master. It is appreciated.”

“Yeah, thanks for everything Louprak.”

“So, what now?” I asked Flyssa once we returned to the workshop. “Do you want my help with the suppliers?”

“You can come if you wish, but it is not necessary. I will get the dimensions of the most common barrels from a Cooper and see with the Tanner if those sleeves of yours can be made or if it easier to add a closing system to our sheets. Are we agreed on the two materials we will use for now?”

“Yeah, it seemed clear to me what they preferred. Sharra’s leather for the barrels, Hemp for the crates and sacks.”

The sharra was a monster commonly found in the wild outside of the city. It wasn’t supposed to be too dangerous, mainly surviving thanks to its agility and speed and the toughness of its hide. The Sailors had liked it for its thinness and the fact that it somewhat stuck to the wood instead of slipping when pushed against it. It made it easier to roll the barrels.

“Good. I will require your help should your Bourok friend get us a meeting with his kin, but for now I think you should focus on improving your magic. It is the most important part of this enterprise after all. The more you can do, the more we can offer our clients.”

“Then I’ll try to reach level 10 in Enchanter. I feel like I’m close but I’m missing something.”

“Level thresholds typically require more than just effort. Perhaps some of Inrak’s books might help?”

“I’ve already read all she had on enchanting like four times. I don’t know what I’m missing.”

“Well, good luck, Mage Luc. I will pass by in the afternoon with an update.”

“All right. See you later, Flyssa.”

She left closing the door behind her. I grabbed a drink of ipio before going to my desk. It was still morning and this was technically alcohol, but there wasn’t much of it and I still didn’t fully trust well-water not to give me the runs. Faros was working on his latest project, a small cabinet for a Pix customer. He looked up at me.

“You know, not everybody’s path is the same.”

I paused. Then I grabbed another glass, but he stopped me, chuckling.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The path to leveling a Class. Books and Tutors will tell you that if you follow a certain set of teachings in a certain way, you’ll follow in known footsteps, level when your predecessors leveled, get the Skills they got. And mostly, it’s true. There are constants. But everybody is different and what works for someone won’t for someone else.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, I’m not an Enchanter. But you’re also an Aether mage. Maybe your path in one Class can guide the other. And what do you know, maybe they’ll even combine.”

I thought about it. I didn’t want my Classes to combine. Enchanting was only a means to make money for me until I could level my Aether magic enough to create reliable portals and find my way home. But perhaps there was something to what Faros said. Why did I keep both Classes separated? Every time I used both it was first enchanting then Aether magic. But my knowledge of the Aether had grown considerably. Sometimes the sense of it felt more like intuition. I should be able to use it to guide my enchanting.

“You’re a deceptively wise old Schalass,” I declared.

“It’s nice to be recognized.”

I worked on it all day. I even went and purchased a potion from Morange to lighten the headache I was starting to get. A less potent one than the one I had gotten addicted to but still, I tergiversated for a while before finally deciding. I felt on the verge of a breakthrough and I was worried that giving it time would only make me lose it.

The core of my struggling was when trying to use Aether magic while enchanting an object. I tried various ways of linking the Aether to the rune while I created it but I failed each time. And yet there was something there.

I tried meditating on it. I hadn’t kept up with my daily practise so now was as good a time as any. I started with the basics. The Aether was a dimension overlaying ours. The Magic Imprinting rune usually allowed a Mage to store his magic into an object but it worked somewhat differently with Aether magic. With it, it wasn’t storing as much as linking, allowing some of the Aether’s properties to be shared with the enchanted item. What I was trying to do was create the link slowly around the rune that I was imbuing the object with. But I kept failing. The link didn’t take and it messed with my concentration so that even my rune failed. I don’t know what the stimulus was but I finally got it. The Aether link wasn’t taking because it needed something whole and the rune was literally being built. So I tried linking the Aether to the object – a discarded wooden box I had found on one of the piles around my desk. It didn’t do anything at first, but I kept linking while I enchanted the box. Even when the rune started building, I kept linking the Aether to the box. It was hard, far harder than normal enchanting. I felt my grasp on the Aether wavering. I only held it by the most tenuous of thought when the rune finally finished.

This time, Margaux’s voice was full of joy.

*You have reached the level 11 of the Class Aether Mage.*

*You have reached the level 10 of the Class Enchanter. You have gained the Skill Easy Enchanting.*