It was different to the chest that they had found in The Woods. It was jet-black like the rest of the furnace, and it wasn’t obviously made of wood like the other one. Instead, it looked like pieces of metal riveted together into the shape of a box.

Chrys squatted low, bracing herself as she reached into the mouth of the furnace and grabbed the chest.

It didn’t budge. She almost stumbled as it stayed stuck, steadfast and stubborn. She poked the sides of it, seeing if there was any way to move or dislodge it, but just like the gunk in the cracks and crevices of The Pub after Alan “cleaned”, it stayed exactly where it was. Chrys huffed.

Sparrow looked at Theo. “Theo’s pretty good with internal magic. Do you want him to give it a try?” Chrys tutted, shaking their head (before realising that it would be rather difficult to see when the majority of her upper body was obscured by the furnace).

“Thank you for the offer, but I believe I will be just fine.” Her voice had a tinny, echoing sound to it, and was slightly muffled by the swirl of wind around her head.

Theo didn’t know how to feel about being unneeded in this process. He forced his mind onto other thoughts, absentmindedly wondered how the bubble of air stayed so clean and didn’t pick up any of the dust. It looked like a giant glass marble.

Theo and Sparrow took a step back as Chrys carefully removed herself from the furnace. While her head had been protected from the dirt by the sphere of air, the rest of her person wasn’t so lucky. Small puffs of ash formed a cloud around her body.

With a sigh, she traced a symbol into the air, and Theo felt his hair lifting off from his head as a strong suction force appeared in the room and acted as a vacuum. Chrys patted the dust off her person, looking pleased as everything that came off entered a vortex that was deposited in what Theo assumed was a trashcan. Somehow, even though the room was covered in paper, none of them had moved.

In an instant, multiple questions that Theo might have had were answered. With a gesture of her hand, a third of all the paper in the room levitated, before converging on Chrys’ location.

While their flight was chaotic, it quickly became apparent that the pieces were interlocking like armour, and in a moment Chrys was dressed in her armour (although it looked slightly different from when Theo last saw it).

“Right, let’s attempt that again.” The bubble of air appeared around Chrys’ head again as she entered the furnace once more. She grabbed the chest, and tugged.

Her face was set, unimpressed, as she tapped a finger on her forearm and the entirety of her armour started to glow an electric blue. It contrasted with the orange light already in the room, an eerie feeling charging the air (then again, that could have just been the mana).

Once more, she pulled on the chest, and Theo felt the hair on his arms start to stand up. The blue glow intensified, swallowing the orange light almost entirely.

One by one, pieces of paper started to burn as mana overloaded the runes on their surface, disintegrating into floating cinders. With each piece, the blue presence in the room dimmed.

The room started to shake as the weeping groan of warping metal made its home in Theo’s ears. He winced, plugging them with his fingers.

Thankfully, it did not last much longer, as Chrys came rocketing out of the furnace’s mouth, banging the chest on the roof of the furnace (and leaving a dent) as she held it triumphantly over her head. She placed it on her workbench with an echoing thud, as she dusted her hands and stretched out her back.

Theo noticed the rapid way her chest was moving, and the sheen of sweat on her neck in the (once-more) orange light of the room. Her armour was flaking off, and there were large patches where the pieces had all burned up.

With a tap on her collar, the sphere of air disappeared, and with another (rather complicated) gesture of her fingers, all the remaining pieces of paper fell unceremoniously to the floor.

“And now my contribution is done. Feel free to examine the chest while I take some time to rest.” Chrys walked to the other end of the room, and with a wave of her hand, a doorway appeared hidden amongst the paper. She stepped through, and it closed back up after her.

Even though Theo just watched it open up and close, if you asked him to point to where exactly the door was, he wasn’t sure he would get it right.

Shaking that thought from his head, he turned his attention to the chest on the workbench. He carefully picked it up, feeling its weight and the weight of its contents. It was light, but he couldn’t tell if it was lighter than the other box.

Looking at it carefully, he was stumped. Stuck on the bottom of the chest was an extra piece of jagged black metal from the furnace (which Theo assumed is where the shrieking groan of tearing metal came from), warped at its edges. Where it had been torn from the furnace, Theo could see strips of silver between all the black.

He focused back on the actual chest. The sides were slightly caved in, which confused Theo... until he saw the finger grooves in the side. He realised that with the help of her suit, Chrys had been able to warp the metal.

He felt less conflicted about not being needed to extract the chest.

Looking over at Sparrow before opening the chest for confirmation, they nodded, encouraging him. Theo nodded back, took a deep breath, and opened the chest.

His first thought was wondering if this was how all the chests were going to be. Which was, mostly filled with nothing but paper. Unlike the last chest, there was nothing besides the paper, but given how fragile the last one had been, Theo gingerly shut the lid, and waited for Chrys to come back before assessing the next step.

After a few minutes, Chrys emerged from an entirely different section of the paper than Theo remembered her entering. Her hair was wet, and she looked refreshed. Sparrow whistled.

“What I wouldn’t give for a setup like that.” They muttered under their breath, as she rolled her eyes.

“Let me know if you pick up runesmithing.” She walked over to the (once-more closed) chest, glancing at and checking in with Sparrow and Theo. “No surprises?”

Theo shook his head, but before he responded, Sparrow beat him to the punch. “Not unless you consider a tree’s worth of paper to be surprising.”

Chrys nodded, as she opened the chest. She gingerly picked out the paper, skimming them.

Or at least, she started with the intention of skimming them. As soon as she started reading the first page, she slowed down, wide eyes drinking greedily from the details there.

“Incredible.”