Arcaday morning, John starts coughing from time to time. "Must be all the dust in the air from the construction," he says.

I was wondering about that at one point. "So you live over on the west side of town? Near the gate I guess?"

"Yeah. Been really busy over there lately. Lots of work, and some really nasty animals and monsters were attacking. I could hear it from my house. Kuh!" he coughs again, making me wince a little. Once the fit passes, he apologizes and clears his throat. "Hope they finish up soon," he complains lightly.

It's not long until we get to the refinery, time for class. I only have one week left before I go into battle, but I'm determined to not let that get in the way of my studies. Just like I promised, I will do the best I can here. Panicking can come later.

But when Claire shows up, she turns to Eryk and brings up something that I don't expect.

"So, we are coming toward the end of our scheduled lessons," she starts. "We should start negotiating the next contract."

"Yes, I wanted to talk about that now that Aria is feeling better," Eryk responds. Wait, right! That contract was only for six weeks! I've been so out of it that I forgot all about it. Eryk turns to me when he goes on. "I do need to discuss the terms of Aria's next contract."

"Huh?" I immediately go stiff. "But I didn't finish the last one!" My mind starts stumbling back over the terms of the contract, but it was a month ago. There was stuff about me investigating things, and different forms of payment, but then Mister Fredricson made him rewrite it and... I never even got to read the new one, did I?

While my thoughts ramble, Eryk grins at me, showing his teeth in a way that's actually a bit scary. "The contract only said you had to investigate certain information. I say that you investigated it successfully, so you've fulfilled the contract."

I open my mouth to respond. But I have no idea how to respond. I just kind of fumble for words for a while. Before I can collect myself, Eryk goes on. "So, I was thinking we can work out another contract for the next month-"

"W-wait!" I stammer, half rising out of my chair when I realize that there's another problem with this. "I have, uhh, something coming up, so I don't know if I'll be around next week," eyes skipping between Claire and Eryk nervously as I speak. And then they both make the exact same questioning face and ask-

"What's next week?"

"It's next week?"

- at the same time. Then they look at each other for a moment, before Eryk gestures for Claire to go first.

"What's next week?" she asks again.

"Sorry, it's sort of, uhh... personal," I settle on awkwardly since I can't tell her. Claire shrugs slightly, turning back to Eryk.

He follows up, "So, next week?"

"Well, Shanaday, but I don't know when I'll be, uhh, back afterward. It's... sort of hard to say for sure." I can only gesture vaguely with my even more vague explanation. Of course, this is all based on the assumption that I'll actually survive the battle somehow, despite a god telling me I shouldn't be able to. Ignoring that for now...

He thinks for a moment, then says, "That's understandable," with a small nod. I think he's assuming it relates to Reena? I can't imagine what else he would be thinking, at least.

"Well, that's fine. Next week is still within this education contract," Eryk points out. I squint a little, trying to remember.

I started classes on the twenty ninth of Bora and they go for six weeks, so my last day would be the tenth of Rosen. The battle is on the third, so the week after the battle is the last week of my current education contract, right. I look back up at Claire to apologize, but she holds up a hand to stop me.

"You gave advanced warning when we started that there would be a few days you were already occupied," she says, seeing right through me. "They will count against the contract, just as we already arranged."

I smile and lower my head. "Thank you."

So Claire adds, "You will be expected to make up any assignments you miss when you return." I look back up at that, and she's frowning at me.

Cringing a little, I answer, "I will."

"Good," with a curt nod, she turns back to Eryk. "I suppose you two need to work out your own contract first. Let me know when that is finished so we can set up the next."

"Sure, let's do that," answers Eryk. Then he waves for us to go on, time for class.

As it turns out, Claire uses the morning to test me. Now that I'm feeling better, she has me go over everything I learned so far. She calls it a 'monthly proficiency test.'

We cover all my letters and words, I write them left and right handed to make sure I can do it all right. Then there's reciting all sorts of spelling and grammar rules, the things I've learned about different animals, all of it. It takes the entire morning, even though it feels like I've hardly learned as much as I should have these last weeks.

At lunch, I take my normal seat at the table, with Claire at the opposite corner with something she brought to eat. It looks like some kind of bread. Eryk is directly across in his normal seat. I slowly and politely eat the food that John brought. My appetite seems normal for once. Not a huge or tiny amount of food this time. I ignore that though, and focus on Eryk.

"We're still working on hammering out the kinks in the last project, you'll be helping with the last of that this week." I'm a little worried talking about secret work stuff with Claire here, but he's not getting into any details, so I guess it's fine. "Following that, I had a few different projects in mind, but most of them need more prep work first." He shakes his head lightly. "For now, just continuing with product design work would probably be best." I guess that means he wants me to figure out more metal combinations, more things he can sell.

"Ok, let's do that," I agree between bites. Eryk nods, and starts writing.

"How should we set the terms? The next six weeks to match the length of the education contract?" he asks, sending a look to Claire. Since she is still chewing a bite of her bread, she returns a small shrug and nod. "Aria?"

"Yeah, that sounds good," I agree. He continues writing for a while, and I finish my food. Then he holds up the contract, eyes scanning over it briefly.

"Alright, this should work," he says. "I'll read it for you."

"Aria should read it," Claire suddenly chimes in with a tiny smirk.

That draws a questioning look from Eryk, who then asks, "Can she? Already?"

"I believe she can at least make the attempt."

"Alright then. Aria, give this a read, the best you can." He stands, sliding the paper across the table to me. Just looking at it makes me gulp nervously, but it's not actually that bad. Eryk's handwriting is neat and easy to read. I stay calm and start at the top, just like I was taught.

"By signing this contract, Aria agrees to work on a project for Eryk." I remember to pause slightly at the end of the sentence. Then I go on, needing to slow down and sound out some of the longer words as I continue reading. "Aria will work to develop new products for sale. The duration of the project will be six weeks, beginning on the eleventh of Rosen and ending on the twenty third of Hurven. As payment for the project, Aria will receive one hundred iron pieces. In addition, Aria agrees to pay Eryk fifty iron pieces to negotiate with an instructor for a..." I pause, then give it a try. "Com-pre-hen-sive education on her behalf."

"Bee-haff," Claire corrects my pronunciation quietly.

"Behalf," I repeat, correctly this time, then return my attention to reading, but that's the last line. "That's all," I sigh out with relief.

"How does that sound?" Eryk asks.

"Uhh..." I look at him blankly for a moment. Then I light up bright red when I realize that I was so focused on reading and pronouncing everything right that I didn't actually read it. "H-hold on," I stammer, then quickly read it over again. It's much easier since I've already read it aloud and I know pretty much all of the words, if not by their spelling, then by the way they sound when read aloud. It still takes some time for me to read over every word, working to put the sentences together and understand what they're actually saying.

Once I do that, I look back up. "Yeah, this sounds good." It's just like last time. One hundred irons, half going to Mister Fredricson, the other half going back to Eryk for my education. The work isn't quite as... opaque, as last time, but it still doesn't give much indication of what I'll actually be doing since it basically just says 'making stuff' in fancier words.

"Product development?" Claire questions, "at her age?"

Eryk levels her with a knowing grin. "You taught her to read. Work contracts. In a month."

"Heh," she chuckles, "fair." Are they actually complimenting me?

After that, Eryk has John bring the work contract to Mister Fredricson to sign. Then he and Claire take the rest of the lunch break to write up the education contract, but don't sign it. They need to wait for Mister Fredricson to sign my work contract first.

Then it's back to my afternoon classes, where Claire suddenly jumps into economics, explaining a bunch of stuff about money, how businesses are run, how the government deals with them, taxes, and a bunch of other related topics that end up leaving me dizzy from all the brand new information. She only covers the most basic parts from the sound of things as she describes them, but it's still an incredible amount to take in all at once.

I guess now that I'm feeling better, she's doing her best to get me back up to speed with everything I was moving too slowly to learn before.

The next thing I know, class is over. Even using water mana again, I end up sitting at the table in Eryk's office for a while afterward, staring off into space and trying to let it all sink in.

"Aria," Eryk finally calls me.

"Ah, yes? What?" I give my entire body a quick shake. "Sorry, we started economics and it was, uhh, a lot," I say.

"I bet it was." He nods a bit. "Learn it well, all of that information is very valuable."

"Ok," I agree seriously. No wait, was that an economics joke?

"Here, Fredricson signed the contract this time," he says while holding it up, "so we're good to keep working next week."

"R-right," I stutter, still trying to move past the random joke out of nowhere. Then I nod thankfully. I'm really glad Eryk didn't have to go through any of the trouble from last time.

"Now, come on," he waves me over as he gets up from his desk. "I want to show you what we've gotten done while you've been out of commission."

"Ok." I follow him over to the workshop. We go past the furnaces, Eryk calling Patrick over as we walk. The three of us head straight into the back room.

As soon as we get there, Eryk tosses me up onto the table where the sword used to be. In its place, there's a weird round metal thing. I'm confused for a moment, but he gets right into explaining it.

"This is what we've been working on lately," making a small gesture toward Patrick. "Like you said, it works best when it's circular and you move the magnet directly in the center. Apparently rotating it counts as moving it," he points out, "that might be useful depending on what we come up with. It could be easier than moving the whole magnet." I nod slowly, and he goes on.

"So, we started with a bunch of rings like I told you, but the lightning we got was split up into all of the rings. At first, we tried working with the metal to bring it all together. There were problems." He waves a hand, dismissing the idea. "Eventually we came up with this instead. We had the copper forged into a coil so all the lightning would collect over the length of it."

As he speaks, I study the metal. A coil shape... Yeah, I see how that would work... It's a little rough, not perfectly smooth and circular, so I can tell it was forged like Eryk said, not cast. And I can actually see seams too, the spots where they attached pieces of copper together, I guess. Taking a moment to compare it to my own copper ingot, each part of the coil is maybe half as thick. The length of the coil is only a little longer than an ingot too, circling around about ten times from top to bottom.

Satisfied that I understand where they are now, I ask, "So how is it? Does it work?" Eryk sighs, not a good sign...

"Can't say, we can't test it. Turns out, it's really easy to mess up those magnets. One drop and they stop working."

"Wha- Why didn't you tell me?" I gasp. "I would have made..." Oh, right.

He shrugs. "You worry too much. No reason to tell you when you can't do anything about it. We took the time to finish making the coil. Now that you can help again, we can get to testing it."

"Sure," I say immediately, "I'll make more magnets this time. Just in case."

"Alright, let's get to it." With Patrick trailing, we grab a few durite ingots from the workshop. Then they stand outside briefly while I magnetize them, since it's supposed to be secret. Once they're all done, we have to be careful to keep them all separated around the small back room so they don't stick together and become almost impossible to pull apart again.

"How were you going to test it anyway?" I ask as I look at the coil and the magnet sitting next to it on the table. I'm up on the table too so I can actually see.

"I was just testing it with a finger before. The lightning runs through it and you can kind of feel it."

"You were- But that's dangerous!" I gape at him. "It'll burn you!"

It's subtle, but his mouth definitely twitches up toward a smile. "Like I said, it was such a small amount, I could hardly feel it."

"What about now? What if the coil makes it a lot stronger?"

"I don't think you're one to talk," he comes back, amusement slipping into his tone even as he holds a straight face. "I've seen the way you work with lightning."

"Hey, that's because I can," I complain. I can tell he's teasing, but I pout at him anyway. He finally gives in and chuckles, ruffling my hair.

"We'll just have you do it first to be safe, sound good?"

"Fine," I relent, then look over at Patrick, who's just watching, confused. "What about him?"

"Patrick? What about him?"

"Well, you said you already tested some," I begin, "does he know all about how lightning works and everything?"

"Yeah," Patrick answers, "got the whole rundown from Eryk." I nod slightly, then turn back to the coil.

"So we're just testing whether this shape works well for generating lightning energy? How do you want to do that?" I ask. Is there anything to compare it to? Do they still have any of those copper rings Eryk talked about? When I ask about all of that, Eryk quirks up an eyebrow.

"I could barely even feel it during our last tests, it should be pretty clear if it worked," he says. He digs out a single ring of copper with a small cut taken out from a nearby crate anyway and sets it on the counter top. Well, I guess that's good enough, so I get to it. Still sitting up on the table, I set out a few things from my basket to use. First durite, and some ignium, a few pieces of iron set around just in case. I'm a bit worried with Patrick watching, but have to remind myself that he has no idea why I'm doing any of this as I convert some fire and lightning mana. Then I grab some copper, though I'm not entirely sure if I need it. How am I testing this anyway?

I stop to think about that. I need a magnet and a full circle that goes through the coil. I can just touch both sides for that, but how do I hold and move the magnet? Oh, I can just lean on it, that'll work.

So I get to work, organizing the lightning mana inside me, I lean so my arm rests on the top of the coil, durite magnet in hand, and touch the bottom with my other. Then I just move the magnet up and down a couple times, trying to do it as steadily as I can. I can feel how the speed and placement of the magnet inside the coil affects how much lightning energy is created, so I try to keep everything even to get a feel for it, before going over to the ring and repeating the test similarly.

One thing jumps out at me almost immediately, but I want to double check it, so I go back to the coil and just generate a mana field from my arm and feel the lightning current the copper coil creates. Another repetition with the ring proves my guess.

"The coil works, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. I don't know how much lightning we need, but it still doesn't make much."

"No good, huh," Eryk sighs. He looks away briefly, thinking.

"Oh, no, it's fine," I immediately go on. "It'll work, you just need to make a better one."

"Huh?" he turns back, both of the men giving me confused looks. "What do we do to make it better?"

"Pretty much what you already said you were doing last time, make more rings."

"More rings? How do you know that would work?"

"Well, the current that came from the coil felt almost exactly ten times stronger than the one from the ring." When Eryk doesn't put it together after a few moments, I explain. "The coil has ten, uhh, circles in it." I stumble a little, not knowing how to describe the shape that aren't exactly circles, more like spirals I guess. Does that even matter? "I mean it goes around ten times from top to bottom."

I stop briefly when his eyes scan over the coil. When he nods, I go on. "It could be a coincidence, but you said that's what you were trying to make it stronger before you decided on a coil."

"It's worth a try," he agrees immediately. "Patrick, can you go get another made at the blacksmith?"

"Sure, but how should he make it? If it gets much larger than this, it might start to be an issue." Oh, I didn't think of that. If they just make the coil go around and around a ton of times, it'll get really big.

"How does the thickness affect it?" Eryk suddenly asks. He picks up the copper ring and inspects it. That's right, it's a good deal thinner than the copper in the coil, but still worked a tenth as well. I'd kind of thought that more metal would be better somehow, but I guess that's wrong.

"I don't think it does," I answer Eryk's question. "Maybe there's some limit, but I guess we could start by just trying to make it as thin as we can."

Eryk suddenly cracks a big grin. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asks Patrick.

"Sounds to me like you're asking for copper thread." Patrick starts cackling for some reason.

"Alright, change of plans. We're going over to the blacksmith. I have to see Ebbin's face when we make this request." Eryk is shaking and laughing.

Ok, I'm lost, what's so funny?

Besides, can you even make copper as thin as thread?