So this is the part where she gently crushes my dreams.

Dorian fought to keep himself from snorting. “This,” said the girl, sweeping her arms out like a bad actress, “is artificing!”

A herd of fools sweating it out over basic metalworking? They don’t even have free-hand Inscription? And my goodness—where are the heatproof gloves, the plated helmets? Have they no regard for their hands or eyes? She may as well have shown him a tribe of cave-people banging rocks together.

She looked at him, expectant. At which point Dorian remember he was supposed be a flabbergasted tribe bumpkin.

“Woah!” he went.

“See that man?” she pointed at one of the artificers below. He was wrangling a little squirt of flame with one hand and tapping a cube of silvery metal with the other. “He’s a Tier 1 Artificer, the lowest rung of the Artificer profession. See how he’s grabbed hold of the flame?”

He nodded.

“That skill is called flame-throwing,” said Lin. Her tone was as though she were telling him a spooky story as she tucked him into bed. “It’s the most basic skill in artificing, but it takes years of practice to do right. If it’s not right—if you lose your focus for a mere second—you may blow your hand off! It’s tough, risky work.”

There was that expectant look again. I’m supposed to be scared, I gather? Or awestruck? How amusing.

“Awesome!” breathed Dorian. He turned back to her with stars in his eyes. “When do we start?”

“E-eh?”

“Flame-throwing!” said Dorian, leaning in and clasping her hands. “Please teach me!”

She stared at him for a few seconds. Then she burst out into a peal of musical laughter.

“I see how it is. Is flame-throwing not impressive enough for you?”

“It is,” gushed Dorian. “That’s why I want to learn it!”

“Hmm…” she pressed a finger to her lip as she scrutinized him. By impressive, she means frightening. She wants to scare me off artificing. He grinned innocently. You’ll need to try harder than that.

“Alright! If you’re still this eager after we’re done here, maybe I’ll teach you,” she mused, smirking. “First—let me show you my favorite station in this room…”

She looped an arm around his, pressing her head and chest tight against him as she led him along. She’s gotten pretty daring. I got the impression the Oasis was a conservative culture. Dorian’s eyes glanced down involuntarily. In the heat she’d loosened her blouse, which fell carelessly down her shoulders. His gaze fell lower, down the curve of her neck to other more shapely curves…his arm burned at the spots where it met her softness. He was already sweating in this sweltering heat; she was too, he noticed, glistening softly in the red light… A different kind of heat rushed up his body; a cacophony of unwelcome thoughts rushed to mind. He wrestled them down in an instant. Until now, he’d kept Io’s baser instincts firmly in check, too—no matter how much chest-tapping she’d done. “Tch!” What an embarrassing lapse.

“Something wrong?” she said, looking up at him, and this time it was her turn to blink at him innocently. She was very satisfied; he could see it in her eyes. He realized he’d been staring.

You devious little…

“N-no! Nothing!” he yelped, flinching and turning away; his face red-hot as she giggled. This time, his feigned embarrassment mixed with a smidge of real feeling.

It wasn’t that he’d not seen her kind before. But in Io’s body, his predicament was rather like being a great driver stuck on a piss-poor locomotive with a wheel missing. He’d shed most of Io, but was still some annoying vestiges stuck in him like gunk in the little spaces between teeth. He was affected by nonsense that ordinarily was nothing to him. He pursed his lips.

The rows of Artificers were organized by rank; the farther they went along the catwalk, the more heated the flames in the furnaces got, the louder the bangs. The first three rows of Artificers had all been either peak-Vigor or early Profound in strength. They arrived at the fourth row, which was peopled only by Profound-realm veterans. Each of them dealt with colossal, steaming chunks of metal; they used miniature spears to carve in runs to their sides. Each station exuded an aura of electric wildness, a tension, as qi was stuffed and trapped within the runes with each stroke of a spear.

“These are the Inscribing tables,” said Lin in hushed tones. “All Inscribing Masters must pass three rounds of Artificer’s Debate with Guild Elders, attain high reputations for craftsmanship, and have at least two decades of experience.”

She batted her eyes at him. “You’ve not even lived two decades yet, have you?”

“No, miss,” said Dorian, wide-eyed and demure.

“I didn’t think so. Can you imagine spending twenty years of hard work here? Working metals hours upon hours a day?”

Dorian didn’t miss a beat. “Ooh, I’d love to!” he grinned. “It looks real fun!”

She took a step back, an inkling of a frown on her lips. “You think so?”

“I can’t wait to try it…” It was his turn to look at her expectantly.

Her cheek twitched. “See those runes?”

“Yea?”

“Each of those takes hours for a Profound-realm master to carve. Simply learning it is impossible for most, and takes years for the talented. And it drains you, too—more than if you ran from here to the horizon and back!” She arched a brow at him. “Sound fun?”

He nodded fast.

“Hmm…” This time she leaned in so that their faces were mere inches apart, so close he could smell the scent of citrus in her hair. She squinted at him. A beat. Then she stepped back and giggled.

“Alright. I like a challenge. Let’s see if you find some of the Furnace’s other offerings impressive.”

She took him by the hand—not the arm this time, he noticed, just the hand—and dragged him to the next show-and-tell spot. A high-level Profound Realm master with fire-aspect qi was breathing fuming air on a massive wrecking-ball of steel. Dorian clapped happily at the sight. She dragged him to a Tier-3 Alchemist welding together a cannon; he oohed at it, entranced.

Her cheek twitched again. “Alright, mister,” she breathed. “Let me show you Master Yi! He’s carving a rune that could down a Flood-Dragon. When he failed his first attempt at it, it took off one of his arms!”

Dorian gasped. “He’s doing all his inscribing with one hand?”

“Yes,” said Lin with poorly contained smugness.

“Woah! He’s got such heart!” He gasped. “So inspiring. I want to be just like him…”

Lin let out a high-pitched squeal of frustration. She tried to play it off as a cough.

At each failure to frighten him off her cheek twitched a little more, her frown grew a little more pronounced. By station six she wasn’t even holding his hand anymore. Still he held steadfast in his convictions. All the while she went about, wearing herself out from post to post. By her ninth try at scaring him she was grinding her teeth. He nearly laughed.

She may as well try showing a blind man Mt. Tai.

***

At first she thought he was cute but dumb. But it was the cute sort of dumb—like the dumbness of a canine chasing its tail.

Now she thought he was cute but very very dumb. And this dumbness was not cute. Not at all. In fact, it was starting to irritate her.

Artificing isn’t for you! Why can’t you get that through your thick little skull?

She had half a mind to dunk him headfirst into a Furnace himself. That’d teach him a little fear. A waste of that face, but the brute has got to learn somehow…

Then a new idea occurred to her. She smiled. She must’ve let a little of the venom of the idea seep into her smile, because he recoiled a little at her. “Miss?” said the dumb stupid idiot, his brows pinched together with uncertainty. “Are you fine?”

“I’m as well as can be,” she said, still smiling. He hesitated. “Um, miss, you look a little—“

She dragged him in and latched onto his arm again. He squawked at the sudden move. “I’ve got one last place to show you,” she said. Before he could say another word, she dragged him along.

She hadn’t planned on making a scene, but at this point she was beyond caring. Whispers drifted over from all around them as they passed.

“Where are we going?” said the stupid dumb dummy.

She thought about replying with ‘you’ll see,’ all mysterious-like, but she was too exasperated. “The artificing rooms,” she said primly. “My private workshop, in fact. You want to see artificing close-up? You’ll get it.”

She took a vicious joy in seeing his dumb dimwit face light up. Just you wait…

They crossed the foyer, passed a sputtering receptionist Tao, and curved into a hallway after she fed the gate her IT.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leo emerge soot-ridden from one of the rooms. Oh, Leo. She could tolerate him most times, but she was at the end of her stick. His smug face made her chest prickle with annoyance. She watched discreetly as he took in her on the daft dolt’s arm. Then she watched his face twist red with rage.

Now, Lin was a good girl. This was an undeniable fact. Lin went out of her way to help others—she was the one who’d pushed for and designed last year’s aqueduct expansion plans to bring the Outskirts fresh qi-water. She was the sort of girl who picked up any stray litter she saw on the streets. Hells, she was helping this dumb stupid idiot dummy with his stupid dumb stupid dream! She was the kind of girl her grandmother would’ve been proud of.

But sometimes—just sometimes—she liked to be a little bad.

She leaned over, hugged the dope’s arm tight, and snuggled into his chest.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leo’s face fall. She could see the steam rising from his piping-hot ears. She giggled.

In learning artificing, she’d studied the Laws of Conservation of Qi from since she could walk. She had a theory of her own: the Law of Conservation of Happiness. She’d come up with it one fine summer day twelve years ago, when the neighbor-boy—the son of Azcan’s Minister of Finance, no less—had called her a “big fatty.” That had made him happy and her sad. Then she kicked him swiftly up the balls. That made him sad and her happy. Happiness was conserved. It was her first big revelation.

Now she could see Leo was growing very unhappy, and she could feel satisfied happiness at that fact flowing into her.

“This way,” she said as they reached the end of the hallway. She pressed her token to the indent, swung the door open, dragged the stupid dumb-dumb in and shoved him onto the bench.

Then she flexed her fingers, forcing down the urge to cackle madly. Behind her, the Furnace roared to life with a crackling bang. Her eyes flashed. “Let me show you,” she breathed, “what real artificing looks like.”