"Oh, speaking of the Melphiran Revolution," Claire suddenly cuts short on her way out the door, with those words coming out of nowhere. She turns back, mostly addressing Eryk, but also sending a look my way. "What are you plans for Independence Day?"

Unexpectedly, Eryk goes very still, before a little, nervous smile crosses his face. "Actually, I'll be holding a party at my house."

Then they both turn to look my way, Claire with a questioning look, but Eryk appearing... guilty?

I don't have time to be confused by that though, because they definitely expect me to say something. "U-uhh..." I flush. Is this another thing I'm just expected to know about already? "I-I'm sorry, what's 'Independence Day?'"

Of course, both of the adults frown at me, and I turn to stare at the floor so I don't have to see.

Claire is the first to explain. "It is the celebration of Melphira's successful revolution. It's the day of Farrl's last stand."

Right, she taught me about that battle, when the heroes of Melphira finally defeated the strongest hero of Bromunst. The deciding battle of the war, a desperate attack to take out their biggest power at the tail end of Rosen, before everyone had to dig in for the winter, giving Bromunst time to resupply and recover, and come back stronger in spring of the next year. If they had, it might have been a tipping point and changed the outcome of the entire war. And while it's not entirely clear, that may have been the battle where Melphor himself died.

"Y-yes, right, I remember." I nod quickly after I skim back over what she taught me. So they marked that as the end of the war?

"The battle marked the end of the war," she confirms my thought while I'm still thinking it, "when Melphira could truly be considered an independent country. That's why it is celebrated, on Rosen twenty seventh each year."

It's the thirteenth today, so, "That's two weeks from now?" I ask.

As Claire is nodding to confirm, Eryk speaks up. "Actually, I meant to ask Aria about coming to the party I'm throwing."

"Huh?" I let out that disbelieving sound automatically at his words, while Claire turns a questioning look his way.

He quickly puts his hands up, unable to completely hide the awkwardness in his tone and face. "You don't have to worry about it too much, just some... some things going on with the business. It would be helpful if you attended."

I frown. I have no idea what he actually means. Business stuff? And why does he have that look when he mentions it? Seemingly ignoring my response, he turns to Claire, who is still sending a couple glances my way. "What will you be doing, Claire?" he asks instead.

"I'll be staying home," she waves, like it isn't important. "Just relaxing for the day."

"Wait." I tilt my head, confused. "Don't we have class that day?" Both adults seem confused by the comment, before Eryk speaks up.

"It's a holiday, pretty much everything is closed. Everyone has the day off."

Following right after, Claire agrees. "Yes, of course there are no lessons on holidays." I'm surprised, but I just nod, then she turns to go again, leaving the two of us in Eryk's office.

"So, Aria," Eryk starts. "About this party..." Why is he hesitating so much more than normal? "I'll say it straight. There have been some issues with my competitors. They noticed you coming in and out of the refinery these past few months and they’ve started asking questions. The metalworking guild has taken notice, and I want to cool things down before they start getting out of hand."

I... don't really understand. His competitors and... what's a guild? The word sounds vaguely familiar... "Umm, I don't get it. Could you explain a little better? Like, what's the metalworking guild anyway?"

"Ahh, right," he pauses to run a hand up through his dark hair, before figuring out what to say. "Ok, so to start, a guild is an organization that manages all of the businesses doing work in a certain field. So the metalworking guild deals with everyone working in metal refining and blacksmithing." As he explains that, it finally brings the relevant memory back to mind.

It was a while back, before the last battle. Claire taught me a lesson on economics. One part of it included a brief mention of the government using guilds to help manage business taxes. Of course, she didn't get into specifics at the time, so I keep listening closely as Eryk explains more.

"They collect taxes from the businesses to pass on to the nobles in the government," he says, starting off with the part I already know. "But depending on the guild, some do a lot more than that. They can set reasonable wages for certain positions, establish expected business practices, set prices for certain types of products, lots of things really, and it all varies from one guild to the next. Some will even fine companies that step out of line, or blacklist them so they can no longer do business in the city." When I ask for him to clarify the last bit, he explains that it has to do with no one else being willing to buy or sell from that company the guild punished, so they can't stay in business.

I gulp a little at his descriptions. I never thought there were people with so much power over what Eryk's allowed to do...

"So, keeping that in mind, the issue I've been having lately is with my competitors going to the guild with rather... wild allegations of inappropriate behavior."

"Inappropriate?"

Here, he sighs. "Yes, for instance, do you remember when we had that incident with the lightning in the back room?"

"Uhh, which one?"

Slapping his hand to his forehead, he groans, and clarifies, "The second one, when you got heat stroke." I nod, and he goes on. "Somehow, word of that reached my competitors, which then arrived at the guild as a rumor of me setting a young child on fire in my workshop."

"Oh." Even I know how bad that sounds.

"Oh indeed," he sighs. "Various rumors have begun to circulate between the different companies and the guild. Thankfully, the kind of work we've done so far has led to most of the rumors sounding utterly outlandish, so they haven't been taken too seriously. Like, there's one about you sending messages to Saras by literally flinging them up into the sky, and they never come back down." He grins a little at that one, but I immediately recognize the time he's talking about.

"Hehe," I giggle, trying not to sound too awkward. It clearly doesn't work, and he gives me a worried look, but thankfully doesn't dig into it any more.

"So anyway," he moves on, "despite the rumors being generally ridiculous, they're starting to pile up, and I'm hoping that by properly introducing you to my peers, I can bury most of them, and give them all much less leeway to make up such things in the future."

Here, I nod slowly as I finally start to get it. "Alright, that makes sense. You're trying to stop people talking since it could be an issue later." I'm already sort of familiar with that myself from everything I've dealt with at home, with all the other kids talking about me and trying to stay inconspicuous.

"So, here's what we're going to do."

The plan Eryk lays out is simple, really. I just have to go to the party, get dressed up, look nice, and then we tell all those people who I really am. Well, who Eryk thinks I really am. I'm not sure how me being an orphan working for him will set all those rumors straight, but he doesn't seem worried at all about people thinking badly of him for hiring someone as young as me. I'm not sure why...

Once he's done laying that out with a big grin on his face, he says it's time to get to work, and waves for me to follow. We go over into the back room of the workshop to work with the copper coil we had made, but it's really just me doing some testing with it to determine the lightning energy it can put out.

One test is all it takes for me to tell that there's plenty of power. It would probably sting Eryk pretty badly if he tested it on himself. Once I've given the ok, he grabs Patrick and asks for more tin and copper, and soon enough, we have another crucible of the two metals in the back room with us.

Even knowing what to expect this time, and not even using mana for this, I still don't take any chances. I make more lightning mana and set a number of iron ingots on the floor to ground any possible lightning, while Eryk stirs together the two metals. Then it's time to give it a try, but there's just one problem...

"How do I actually get the lightning energy into the molten metal?" I ask, staring at the coil. One end of the coil is in one place, up at the top, while the other is all the way down on the opposite side. How do I actually get the current of lightning energy from those distant places to come together where I need it?

Frowning at the metal in my hands, Eryk can clearly see the issue too. After some thought, he suggests, "We could try attaching copper ingots to both ends of the coil," but then scratches his head as he looks around the small room. We really don't have anything here to use for that. So, we return to the workshop.

After a while digging around through crates and tools with his employees throwing more than a few glances our way, Eryk drags out a bunch of different stuff and finally moves us into the back room once more. Then he rigs up a series of copper ingots with lots of clamps, string, and rope, off the edge of a table, with the coil sitting on top. The thing looks like a disaster waiting to happen, but it should get the job done... probably.

So, I sit up on the table with the coil and magnet, while he relocates the crucible underneath. After a few more good stirs to make sure the metals are well mixed, he takes a pair of copper ingots, and ever so carefully touches them to the two worrying lines of already connected ingots. He dips the other ends into the molten metal to finish forming the connection.

Eryk gives me a nod, and I hold the magnet up, slowly pushing and pulling it through the inside of the coil, trying not to touch the sides too much. It's kind of hard to tell if our hacked-together solution is even working, if it actually forms a full circle without any breaks, but I guess we'll just have to see. After letting me move the magnet around for a bit so the metal should be combined, he carefully sets aside the two copper ingots, where we won't need to worry about touching them or the molten metal still on them.

Then, it's just back to stirring for a bit, until the metal cools. "We could test it with mana while it's still liquid," I point out as we wait, but he shakes his head.

"Hitting it with mana would also cause it to combine. I want to be sure it was the lightning, so we have to wait until it's solid. That way, we will definitely be able to tell." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It only takes a moment to combine with mana, so we might miss it if it actually didn't work but my mana gets it done instead.

So, we wait. It takes a while, and it's starting to get close to the eighth bell by the time he turns over the crucible to let the still incredibly hot, but now solid metal, sit in a lump on the floor. "Good, it should be ready. Remember, it's still hot, so don't touch it."

I nod a few times while grabbing a nuvrite ingot. The best way to test whether it combined is if it returns light mana, because tin does, but the combined metal doesn't. And now, as long as there's no durite mixed in like that one disaster, it shouldn't flood the room with tons of deadly lightning.

Even so, I warn Eryk back toward the door and ensure everything is set up to be as safe as possible, before I give it a test.

I only have to hold the current through the nuvrite ingot for a few moments to know that it worked. The glow of the metal is bright, and it isn't converting to light mana. I big smile crosses my face. "Yes, it's working. The coil worked."

"Yes!" Eryk clenches his fist, all his teeth showing through his big grin. "Perfect! Our method is solid, now we just need to do a few design changes, and we should have a usable machine."

With that, we take some time to talk out the changes. Mainly, we just need the coil to have more copper connected to actually stick into the metal to combine them. I'm also a little uncertain about just pushing and pulling the magnet around in the coil by hand, since it seems like it might not work if you do something wrong. Eryk can't immediately come up with a solution, but he says he'll think about it some more.

Our conversation takes us to the eighth bell, and it's time for me to go home.