"See here," The engineer assigned to teach Caeden, Drew, leaned over the disassembled guts of the etherskiff he was supposed to be learning to drive, pointing at a series of red and yellow alternating ether crystals housed in bronze settings lining a bowl-shaped cavity in the machine.

"That right there is the other half of the resonance chamber. That's where we get the ether mixing into the sustained reaction chain that powers the flight crystals. It's a lot more complex on a big dual-engine, quad-crystal setup like this big girl has." Drew slapped the side of the skiff affectionately. "Those skippers are a simple, single crystal affair. These have to balance more internal and external ether factors, so there's more going on internally."

Drew had been more than willing to give Caeden a look at the inner workings of the flight engine, happy to have someone so keenly interested in his job for once. Most highbrow shrouded considered ethertech a useful convenience but slightly beneath them. Much of that prejudice came from the fact that ethertech, like ethersmithing, could be performed by unshrouded. A fact that tainted the entire discipline in the eyes of some.

Drew was shrouded, of course, seeing as he was a part of the military. He was a continental coming from a similar situation to Caeden, but instead of being raised on ethersmithing, his family had run a small ethertech store in a much more affluent city closer to the islands. He was contracted to the shrouded family that owned large sections of his home island, and placed as an ether engineer and mechanic in the military for the next eighty years. He had already lived twenty of those years and was very good at his job.

They had spent the last few hours just as they were, bent over the back of an etherskiff as Drew slowly disassembled the flight engine and explained its functions piece by piece. Caeden was fascinated. Ethertech truly was an evolution of ethersmithing, especially in a practical, mechanical application like this.

Ethertech was the name for any equipment or tool that relied on multiple pieces of infused materials and raw ether working in conjunction. Whereas ethersmithing was the act of infusing ether into something, ethertech was about taking the product of that and putting it together to make an even grander effect that was greater than the sum of its parts.

The flight engine was a great example. The centerpiece of the engine was obvious, a large sky blue crystal of flight ether. It jutted out from the engine, half of it buried in the structure. Caeden didn't know who had figured it out or how, but someone had discovered that certain combinations of ether, when exposed to each other near the flight crystal, could cause it to spontaneously generate lift and thrust.

The entire engine was just a large, complicated system to create and manage that reaction to directly control the results. It was a marvel. Using specific sets of ether reactions triggered by pressing on specific levers that would open or close valves in the depths of the engine, one could manage the reaction in the flight crystal, varying the direction, power, and acceleration of the thrust the crystal created. That was what the controls of the ship were actually doing, adding and removing ether from the resonance chamber through other, different ether reactions.

The whole system required an almost absurd level of complexity, but building it the way it was made the reaction almost completely self-sufficient. For example, ice ether was a main component of the flight reaction, kept in a gaseous state in the resonance chamber. When the skiff needed to sink, heat ether was added to the chamber in crystalline form, reacting with the ice to form steam ether that coalesced into little pellet-sized crystals that would then fall into tubes set at the bottom of the chamber. The steam ether would go through three more transformations and combinations before the ice and heat ether were separated out and moved by the mechanics of the engine back into their proper place, ready to be used again.

This was also why the skiff, built for speed and versatility, had two engines, each with two flight crystals and resonance chambers. The reactions could take a while to propagate back to their original positions. This meant that with only one engine, sudden and rapid sequential changes in height and speed could use up all the ether in the system, leaving the craft stuck at whatever speed and altitude it settled on. Such a problem was acceptable for something like the Turtle Fortress, which was built for long-distance non-combat travel. For the swift and maneuverable skiff, it was a fatal flaw.

The extra engine and double resonance chambers granted versatility. If one chamber was out of transitional ether, another could pick up the slack. There were downsides. One of the benefits of the Turtle Fortress's single massive flight engine with only one resonance chamber was its simplicity. All the extra ethertech and mechanical actuation that went into balancing dual engines, each with twin flight crystals, created additional points of failure. The skiff was far more likely to have an engine malfunction than a single-engine contemporary.

Drew explained all this to Caeden, showing him each major failure point in detail and explaining how to check for wear and damage, as well as how to make emergency repairs if that proved necessary. Caeden ate it all up, asking questions about various transformations and learning how simple levers and stop valves managed most of the system without any of his input. The whole thing was fiendishly clever and relied on a deep understanding of the fundamental mechanics of dozens of different ether types.

Caeden could only marvel at the ingenuity involved. It was a delicately balanced meshwork of dozens of processes running in tandem. The decades of research involved in optimizing the transformations alone must have required hundreds of minds working together. That didn't even mention finding a way to make that happen while remaining stable. If this system had been set up improperly, any flight engine would be a bomb waiting to go off. Caeden kept looking for failure points, drawing on his own experience as an ethersmith to find points of failure, and only found innovative solutions to any problem he foresaw. It was a masterpiece.

Caeden sat back, shaking his head. "What can I say, Drew? She's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Masterfully crafted. The materials, the infusions, the transformations. She's a work of art in motion."

Drew got a big smile on his thick features. He was a heavily built man with a broad face that made his smile something to see. "I'm glad to find someone else who appreciates her. I gotta ask, what's your investment? Most shrouded don't give a hoot about how it works. Some think flying a beaut' like this is fun, but they won't get to know her."

Instead of answering, Caeden handed over his student ID after fishing it out of his robes. He knew what it would say.

Sharp, modifier aura category 5, invasion pressure 10,420, 7th tier control. Incarnation: Toolset

Physical Enhancement, modifier infusion category 5, invasion pressure 5,550, 3rd tier control.

Ethersmith Rank: Master

Caeden's Sharp IP had exploded with the reveal of his incarnation, along with a few other benefits. That wasn't what Drew would be interested in, though. He would be looking at the last line.

"I…Wha- Are you having me on, kid?" Drew kept looking between him and the card skeptically.

Caeden shook his head, expression completely serious. "I was raised in the smithy since I was nine by my uncle. Taught me everything he knew. Apparently, he was pretty good."

"Was?"

"Revolution bombed his shop when I was there to say goodbye before heading to the academy. Fucked up his hands something fierce. CA refuses to fix him." They're bastards like that, no doubt." He looked down at the ID again before handing it back. "Damn, you're a nascent already too. No wonder the CA is holding out. You're gonna be a real powerhouse if you can make it that long. They'll want some leverage for when you're older and kicking ass."

Caeden snorted. "Jokes on them. My friend had the Stitch shroud. We're trying to get a splinter with some proper healing for him, then he can handle it, and they can't say shit."

"I don't know about that." Drew's face darkened. "You pull a fast one, and your uncle might end up disappearing. Just be careful, yeah? Oh, and whatever you do, don't sign-"

"-A contract with a family, I know." Caeden finished his sentence for him. "I was warned by a Keeper from a similar situation when I got picked up."

Drew whistled. "Damn, he must of had some balls on him. CA watches Keepers real close. Not like an engineer. I get free run of this ship so long as I keep the things running that are supposed to run. Keepers aren't like that. Plus, all the family dicks in the higher positions hate them."

"Yeah, I saw a bit of that. The Commandant on the War God that picked me up didn't want to let me grab my stuff or see my uncle. He wasn't happy when the Keeper stepped in."

Drew grimaced. "Not a good spot for anyone, something like that. Commandant has to follow the code; Keeper has to tell the Commandant. No one's happy."

"Well, want to show me how to actually fly this thing?" Caeden changed the topic, wanting to shift from unpleasant stories. Caeden had nothing but fond thoughts for Anthony, the Keeper that helped him, but they had met during one of the worst periods of Caeden's life.

"Yeah, we should do that. You'll want to be heading out as soon as possible. No one wants to be the last to complete their mission." Drew quickly began piecing together the disassembled engine. It took several minutes, considering how far he had broken it down to show Caeden the guts.

They took the skiff out of the Turtle Fortress and flew over the city for several hours. They started with Drew showing him the controls, taking him through it step by step. Then he ceded the reins to Caeden while watching carefully. By the end of it, Drew was hardly watching the controls, and Caeden felt confident in his ability to manage the flying vehicle. Funnily enough, he felt like their long talk about the internal workings let him handle the controls much better. He knew what each of them did internally, after all. He could imagine in his head what each lever would do, what was happening every time he turned.

The controls themselves were simple enough. Three levers and the control stick. The stick was for basic motion. Up, down, left, right, and all the angles in between. The levers started with the 'mode' lever consisting of four options. The first one at the bottom was off for when the skiff wasn't in use. Next was takeoff/landing, which limited the engine's output to a minimum amount. Next was normal flight, which opened up the skiff's full flight capacity. Last was combat. It set the four resonance chambers to the maximum without accounting for the ether transformations, allowing for incredible feats of maneuverability and speed in a short burst after which the vessel had to recover.

The second lever was for acceleration, starting in a neutral position. Push up to accelerate, down to decelerate. Very simple but hard to do properly while turning. It took practice. The last lever was the emergency stop. With a flick, Caeden could cut all ether input to the resonance chambers, and they would be purged of whatever was in them. This was a safety measure in the event that the engine suffered critical damage and was likely to vent raw ether. Depending on where you were and the environment you were in, that could be deadly.

When they got back to the ethership with Caeden carefully and slowly docking them back into the open vehicle bay, Caeden knew he wasn't entirely comfortable with the controls yet, but he was confident he could get the team to their destination no problem. He just wouldn't be having any midair etherskiff battles any time soon.

Hopefully.