We returned to Safrah’s home soon after. The woman was using the day to get some work done, the shop needing a little help. I realized I had not asked her about what she was actually doing. I only knew she made leather. Maybe some other day.

I opened the window leading into the attic and Vivi jumped in before I closed it behind me. My friend was quick to move into the workshop and I soon heard her moving some wood about to get back to carving. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to follow and watch her.

She was working on a log a little short of half a metre tall. I did not know my wood but it had a light colour with a few clips of bark lying around. It looked much like oak or something similar. When I asked, Vivi confirmed it was what I had deduced.

I kept following her movements as she shaped the upper two thirds into a rough oval form. The head was a bit thicker. I soon found it was actually a head as Vivi carved out an approximate neckline. Before she got much further, we heard Safrah unlock the front door and come in. Vivi decided it was a good point to stop and we went down to the living room. The dwarf soon joined us.

“Hello you two”, she greeted as she sat down, “I set up some water for tea. How was your day?”

I noticed her muscles were much too stiff and her eyes darted back and forth between us. She was nervous.

“Good. Captain thinks we’re going to be successful. Both of us were able to land a hit on him.”

Safrah looked somehow relieved and more worried at the same time.

“Great. That’s. Yeah. That’s great. I think?”

Vivi had noticed her tension as well and decided to move in for some consolation. She pulled up to the sitting dwarf and nuzzled her face. As if on instinct, Safrah’s hand reached up to pet the ocelot’s back. Slowly, she started to calm down. When the kettle shrieked from the kitchen I bid the two to stay and went to prepare the tea. My shadow tendrils once more provided their usefulness.

Soon, I returned to the living room. The dwarf and cat were still touching though it was less of a cuddle. Safrah simply had her hand rest on the soft fur of Vivi.

I put down the tea and filled a cup for Safrah as well as a bowl for me. Vivi got a bowl of plain water. When I passed the cup to the dwarf, she gave me a weak smile before taking it from my tendril. A few sips later, the last bits of tension had left her body.

“Ahh. Thank you. I don’t know what got over me. I’m sorry.”

I nodded to accept her apology and Vivi pressed a little more into the dwarf’s hand.

“So. You are going to fight?”

Another nod.

“You know, both of us have spent a bit of time in the wilderness. We’ve been fighting a few times. And we have the support of the guards, a whole 27, Captain and his two vices included. Things can always go wrong but the dwarves should be able to take down the Monstrosity on their own. We are only there to help reduce casualties. Our mobility is a great way to distract and threaten the beast while the guards pepper it with bolts and arrows.”

My factual explanation had pushed Safrah’s back into slight tension. This time, Vivi spoke up.

“We are strong. And we will get stronger. This fight is for us. It’s also for the town.”

The dwarf nodded meekly. She let out a deep sigh, slowly collecting herself.

“Haaah. I know. I just… don’t want you to get hurt. You’re my friends, you know? Almost like little sisters.”

I blinked. Vivi just gave the dwarf a quick nuzzle but I blanked out for a moment. Did she really think that highly of me? We had barely interacted. I knew she had gotten close to Vivi but did she really see me in the same light? And what did I think of her?

~ding~ You have made friends with a new species, congratulations! Experience is awarded!

~ding~ You have reached level 27. Attribute Point allocated. 1 Attribute Point awarded.

Well, there was my answer. But why only now? Safrah had considered me her friend for a while from what she said. Was it a me problem? Had I not considered her a friend? I was sure there had to be a more mundane explanation. Something on the back-end of the system had prevented the notification until now. A quick glance told me I had gained a point in Strength. Useful. I left my free Attribute Point be for now. I wanted to reconsider my allocation after some research in the library. Maybe I would even ask the captain for advice.

I returned to the present. Safrah was looking at me with a slight smile while Vivi had distorted her face in what I could only assume to be a butchered attempt at a grin. I sighed.

“Yes. Friends is probably correct. Sisters is a little too much though.”

My facial feathers pulled off the best smirk they could and Safrah showed me an affronted pout in response that was quickly replaced by a genuine smile.

“That’s fair. Don’t do anything reckless, okay?”

I scoffed.

“Me? Reckless? Never!”

Vivi fell over from laughing. The feline wheezes sounded out and quickly infected Safrah and then me. We kept laughing for a good minute before finally calming down. A bit of pleasant brooding over tea and we had returned to normal. Safrah’s worries would not leave her be and so she squeezed every tiny part of our plan from us. A few times she voiced her own ideas but that was mostly based on fiction or exaggerated tales and impractical for a real fight. By the end of the day, we had assuaged most of her worries. Only a baseline remained but I would not have it another way. She truly was a friend. I went to rest that night with a warm feeling around my heart and next to my body. I was cuddling with Vivi.

The next day it was time to return to Riggard’s workshop. Vivi came along this time since we planned on testing if the thaumium mesh could help block magical attacks. Riggard was enthusiastic to have someone else with magic Skills to test his device on. He wanted to jump right into it but I stopped him to explain what we were trying to do to Vivi. She understood the basics quickly with all the knowledge she had gained from my Thaumonomicon.

Riggard had drawn up a new concept for adjusting the surrounding constructs. He planned on having more conductors leading into an essence converter. That would make it much easier to repeatedly use the thaumium mesh. I curbed his enthusiasm with the fact I wanted a portable version. We settled on trying with a simple vis storage using empty crystals, this one upscaled from the previous version. Just for testing, for now.

Fixing everything up took another two days, partly because Vivi was watching and asking questions every once in a while. I often interrupted my work to explain what I was doing and she even found an error in my thought process. The shape of the metal did not make the mana move on its own. There was some sort of pull from the empty crystals or push from the full ones. That was why every construct that was not a conductor included at least a tiny crystal. It was very much comparable to the voltage of an electric circuit. I had read far too much into the intent of magic. It played a role in thaumaturgy but even then there was always some sort of differential force or potential pull moving the vis along. My intent could only influence how my body and mana interacted with it.

That got me confused. If intent did not exist outside of manipulating the forces that moved mana, how come I was able to make the supersensory matrix with a simple crystal and some gold. The answer was simple yet again. This time I even reached it myself. It only took half a day. While intent of an individual could not make mana do something specific, aspects took over that role. I could make aspects by breaking down or combining them to reach a certain effect on the world. The best example of this were the large nodes. The one filling up the lake constantly produced water while the one refilling the quarry did just that. There was no will behind it, the mana simply acted according to its aspect. That was why my projectiles from [Winged Death] could be so destructive if I used the aspects of void or destruction. And why my body changed so easily and drastically when shifting. I simply changed the aspects of my being making me a new thing.

Coming to that conclusion was nice but I had no idea what to do with it. So we decided to simply continue with our planned experiment. Vivi started with her water and poison mana, shooting it as physical attacks as released claws of water. They struck the thaumium mesh and quickly dispersed. The water dripped from the metal but it had lost both its momentum and a large amount of its volume. Most of what got past sprayed as a fine mist behind the mesh. The poison acted just the same, being ‘just’ destructive water. I wondered for a moment why we still caught this much mana since a single attack filled one of the small scale crystals. Then I noticed on Vivi’s next attack. She used water or poison mana to conjure her claws. That much I had understood. From there, she infused them with movement mana as she swung her paws. That mana was caught in the mesh before the water mana. Only the remaining momentum was able to carry some water past the mesh before it got absorbed. The few drips landing on the table came from a similar reason. The mesh was overwhelmed. It could not absorb all the water. This was a little disappointing.

Riggard was not disappointed. He rejoiced about our success and asked me to use my shadows and ‘anything else’ I had at my disposal. I stopped him right then and there.

“This won’t do much. My magic Attributes are much higher than Vivi’s. I can easily produce more vis into my attack. We need to upgrade it. Otherwise, it’s gonna be useless.”

The dwarf considered with a distraught face.

“How? We don’t have more thaumium…”

I rolled my head.

“I’ll get started on my heating plate and try to make some. If we can do this in just under two weeks it might save some lives.”

He looked up, a glimmer of hope and greed in his eyes.

“Right. Can I… watch? Maybe I can learn… to make my own?”

I nodded.

“Sure. I have no idea if I’ll succeed. The faster we finish the heating plate for my crucible, the better the chances we can get this done before the hunt.”

The smile blossoming on the dwarf’s face had a hint of insanity. He might make for a good thaumaturge…