She sighed and nodded. "Thank you, sir. I'll keep studying. One thing I've been wondering about: why there isn't more machinery combined with magic?"

"There aren't that many people able to exert a powerful force by magic, compared to the might of a Centaur or a big Human or a Kobold brute."

"I was on the receiving end of a force spell, down in the Dungeoneers' practice hall."

Zahar laughed. "But again, there are fewer good Mages than muscles. And while you can make a magicite shard hot or noisy or what have you, the sizes large enough to do anything useful outside of a wizard's hands are rare treasures. I'd focus on more accessible inventions. A hundred decent non-magical drills are better than one good magical drill, yes?"

Selen nodded. "That's sort of what I was thinking about having more readers. But yes, that's true for tools."

She'd heard vague things already about experiments with steam, so maybe a steam engine could exist here -- or the strange physics would just make it not work. She wondered about gunpowder now and whether that was arbitrarily off-limits. Nuclear power? Electric power? She had too many ideas now, and too little experience and credibility. She went home feeling blunted, spread out across too wide a field. It might be nice to go downriver sometime and see where nature itself had proved the power of blasting one focused stream at something.

#

Couriers Sunflare and Newroot invited her to an early dinner at the Shrike with them, and with a pretty young Centaur mare that Newroot had met. Selen felt vaguely jealous, then realized she was on a double date, and got flustered.

Sunflare told the newcomer, "Selen here built this game table. Want to play?"

They took over the pool table. Sunflare had boasted about conning people into betting against him. Wooden balls clacked and bounced. Selen had sold two more of the simple games to other taverns at a slight profit, which she'd spent on snacks for her co-workers, but hadn't quite re-earned the Woodworking skill. Both customers had asked her to copy that notch in the playfield that she'd introduced by mistake.

"Let's hear one of your stories," said Newroot.

She thought back, and related something she'd already told to Zahar and his assistant. "After a civil war in a certain land, that nation was known for being clever Engineers. A club among those people worked with Alchemists who had a worrisome interest in explosions. One day, one of them said, 'What if we could build a device to blast ourselves into the sky, so hard that we fly from the world to the Copper Moon?'"

Her friends laughed but she went on, trying to tell Jules Verne's story in a way they could understand. The idea of intentional explosions was still unfamiliar to most, but the new Engineer class had gotten a reputation as mad scientists already. The culture was prepared for tales of the future being different and better, like some of Selen's favorites.

#

On the first day of autumn, Selen had a new project to show off. After frustrating experiments with pigments that kept fading or washing out, she went to the temple with a brand new sash. This one had swirls of red and blue in a style nobody seemed to have heard of. Tie-dye!

She beamed as a few townsfolk turned to look. She arrived in the crowded building to find a trio of Humans, a few years older than her, showing off the horned head of a scowling monster. "Where'd that come from?" she said.

They'd come unarmed except for one man who had a dented shield and the other a bent spear, as their respective trophies. "A dirge-singer from Melody Bay, carried all the way here just to display it in a better town."

"And because we live here," the spearman said.

The priest on duty was obviously impressed, but ushered them over to the altar of the Triad gods to get their meditation over with. "Fighters all, yes?"

"Of course."

Selen tried to sit apart from them and concentrate on her own work, but kept peeking with one eye. All together, the trio reached the sort of enlightenment you could get from killing things. The silver hovering effect was real, yet another magical thing she had no way to explain.

She shook her head. Come on, focus. She thought about her fancy cloth and the way she'd found the right chemistry to make it take up the colors and keep them through washing. She had ideas already for recreating Egyptian blue, an ancient color, if she could get a furnace hot enough. The work was alchemy, officially, but she was working within the System to see how much of her old knowledge applied. Not just copying knowledge but refining and adapting it.

The System's judgement soon appeared in her vision. [Learning +1! Craftsman level converted. You are now a Level 1 Alchemist!]

She'd forfeited Craftsman to get a more specialized class she could raise later. Then she'd traded in Elemental Magic and Literacy, one point of each, plus one point of Healing Magic, a topic she'd studied a bit and wanted to improve. She'd also quickly gained a point of another magical area, the control of raw force. Her teacher, the man from the Knowledge Society, had basically shut the door to her further learning until she agreed to join his guild. But he'd seemed startled by how well she took to the lessons, or at least was trying to seem encouraging.

She took stock of what she had now.

[

Selen Moonlit, Aves Female

Mage 1, Alchemist 1

Physical: Agility 1

Mental: Learning 2, Wits 1, Sanity 2

Social: Charm 1

Feats: Slowfall

Skills: Dodge (Agility), Flight (Agility), Staff (Agility), Hiking (Toughness), Bureaucracy (Learning), Elemental Magic (Learning), Force Magic (Learning), Literacy (Learning), Storytelling (Charm)

Health (Toughness + Will): 25/25

Mana (Sanity + Will): 45/45

Stamina (Toughness + Sanity): 45/45

]

Not bad for being only three seasons into this new life! She was hitting every possible chance to upgrade. It was a System-directed kind of progress, though, that kept her thinking about problems like the numeric cap on her magic skills. Or special abilities, which she hadn't yet qualified for. Or the fact that each increased level required greater and greater deeds.