The moment we enter the street outside the Ebock Blacksmith shop, I can feel the eyes watching us. And it's nothing like earlier - nothing like that strange, hidden feeling. I have too much air mana - I sit straight up in John's arms before I can suppress the reaction. A glance to the side immediately spots the person moving away into the crowd and slipping around a corner.

"Someone was watching us," I report quietly. "A man. Vulgant, early twenties, blond hair, brown cloak, green shirt, a little beard." Air mana can be really useful. Just need to get better at not being so jumpy...

My description raises eyebrows all around, but Eryk recovers in a moment.

"Good to know. Let's get back quick in case someone has something planned." The other men nod, and we set off at a very fast pace, practically rushing the few blocks to the refinery. Chisa is too far away to make it in time to spot for me, so I keep a careful eye out the whole way.

"There," I call, just as we're coming up on the front of the refinery. I point down the street, where someone just came around a corner. When John's hands shift and tense under me, I push off from his chest, out of his arms.

He flails, but just for an instant before he sees me dropping to my feet, and his gaze sharpens, one hand moving to the hilt of his sword as he shifts to the left side of the group, putting himself between us and the approaching man.

From down here, I can barely see him through the crowd at all. It's only thanks to the tiny glimpses I get with my air mana that I can follow anything. One look and I see him spot us, our group already in front of the refinery and nearly running. He doesn't even attempt to hide his surprise, and breaks into a sprint, startling everyone around him, a number of people jumping aside, which lets me see a little better.

Without the time to fight with unlocking the door we normally use, Eryk instead waves our group toward the main storefront of the refinery, even though it's closer to the coming man.

Clearly seeing this, and how he isn't going to make it, the cloaked man swerves, roughly knocking aside a woman and stumbling into an alleyway across the street. We make it through the door, John spinning to a stop, blocking the entrance with his stance set for a fight. We all slide to a stop so we don't crash into any of the customers in Eryk's shop, who all turn to look.

"Well," Eryk huffs out a panting breath, blinking and straightening his jacket, like he doesn't even know what to do here. Without another word, he ignores the staring customers and waves us forward. I take one glance back as we start, to see John still outside, back to the doorway and visibly prepared for anything. But, it looks like the danger has passed. I'm glad that we reacted fast enough that we got out of the street and scared off the guy before he tried anything.

We quickly walk across the store, through the door behind the counter, into Eryk's office. Patrick thumps the crate down on the table, and we all lean against the walls or shelves, catching our breath. I put a hand to my head too. The headache that started at the blacksmith's is pounding worse after running like that. We're quiet for a little while, until the battle-like energy fades. Once it does, I make a bit more colored mana. I'm not sure what will help with something like a headache, so I try fire and lightning, and continue breathing deeply until I feel the headache and nausea in my stomach clear away too.

By then, Eryk and Patrick who clearly aren't as used to dangerous situations, look like they've calmed down and caught their breath. Eryk rings a bell on his desk to call in one of the shopkeepers, and has them fetch John.

"Anything?" is all he asks when John steps into the office.

"No," he replies, still visibly alert, but without the edge of panic that Eryk and Patrick have in their faces. "All quiet out front once you made it inside. Whatever they had planned, they abandoned the attempt."

"Good," Eryk sighs. "I've dealt with underhanded tactics before, but never anything this brazen."

"What do you think they wanted?" I ask. We had the box of slag samples with us, but those aren't worth anything, it all gets thrown away normally.

It's actually John that answers. "If I had to guess, they've staked out the road between the blacksmith and refinery. They want to steal anything they can get their hands on, as long as it relates to the star metals. I've seen things like this happen a couple times before."

"Mm," Eryk nods while rubbing his chin in thought. "We're going to have to be more careful in the future. Any products coming in or going out the front door will need more protection so a thief doesn't simply grab it and run."

Even Patrick adds in his own thoughts. "There's no way to tell star metals apart from regular business. They might just hit us at random and hope for the best."

"Good point," Eryk agrees, "I need to start looking into more protection around here." Then with a sigh, he mutters under his breath, "No wonder they're like that..."

After almost another tick with us all standing in silence, just letting the situation sink in, Eryk speaks up again, clearly pushing all of those thoughts off for later.

"So, Aria. Are you ready to get to your own experiments?"

"Y-yeah," I stammer, trying to switch my thoughts back over as well. "Umm, yeah, I think I'm ready. In the back room?" I question, and he nods. With another thanks to John and Patrick, we split up. I walk into the back of the workshop with Eryk, who carries the crate with us, and sets it down on the back counter once we're locked securely inside.

While he's lighting up extra candles in the high-placed wall holders so we can see as well as possible, I kneel on top of the counter, squeezed between the box and the wall. I reach inside and carefully pull out the first two boxes. These would be tin slag. I climb down to the floor, then pull them off the counter after me, and set them in the middle of the room, while Eryk is finishing with the candles. I take a deep breath. Time to find out more about this...

I pull the tight lids off of the two wooden boxes to look over the rocky, crushed up whitish gray stone inside. I take a little piece and roll it between my fingers. When I apply a bit of force, it crumbles apart without much effort. "Hmm..."

As I thought before, the contents of both boxes are exactly the same. The look, the feel, the weight of them, all identical. I guess since there's nothing in the tin ore besides the tin and this crumbly rock, there was nothing to combine after all...

Still holding a bit, I sniff at it. "Blegh," I wrinkle my nose. This is clearly where the nasty smell comes from. Then I lick it. It's... dark and not exactly pleasant, but nothing like it smells...

"I'll give it a mana test now," I say. Like my other tests before, I make sure to prepare in case of fire, lightning, or anything else crazy that might go wrong. With everything set, I extend a hand toward the first box, using the mollite in my wrist to start. I give it a tiny nudge with a mana field, and nothing immediately happens. A slightly stronger push, and I get very small amount of colored mana back. Switching to one of my little alba balls, I try again, finding that this strange gray rock makes mixed, fire-air type mana.

"Weird..." I mumble. Switching back, I push harder this time, feeling for any lightning energy in the air, any heat, or anything else, but there's nothing. This one just converts mana. I say as much to Eryk, who notes it down on some paper, then move on to the second box.

"Yes, it's exactly the same," I confirm. Look, feel, smell, taste, mana, it's all the same. "The tin ore must not have anything else in it, that's why trying to combine them with lightning didn't do anything."

"Mm, makes sense," he agrees, still writing while he nods slowly. "So that's tin, what's up next?"

"Mollite," I answer, mentally moving down the list.

After packing up the first two boxes and setting them carefully aside, Eryk places the next two down in front of me. I refocus, opening them up to reveal the powdery white stuff inside. Ebbin said this one burns? How?

I carefully poke it with one finger, but don't really feel anything. Huh. Then it suddenly begins to sting sharply, just moments after I touched it. I quickly wipe it off with one of our burnt up leather scraps from when we were making all of these, but the feeling doesn't go away. My heart thumps louder, with a hint of panic. Eyes narrowing, I pick out the tiny little bits left over, too small to even see without air mana.

Since I don't have water to try washing it off, I instantly jump to the closest thing and spit on my finger. For no apparent reason, heat rushes out on contact. Thankfully, the tiny flecks of powder left over don't get hot enough to burn me. Or at least, not any worse than the strange powder already is...

It takes some time (and more spit) to wipe it all off thoroughly with the bottom edge of my shirt. That works, but it hurts now... Looking closely at the pad of my finger, it's bright red, but definitely different than a normal burn. Instead of heat, it's more like my skin is starting to peel right around the edges of the burn, and the tiny ridges in the skin of my finger are almost entirely gone. It's noticeable enough I'd probably see it even without air mana. It reminds me of how there were spots dug out of that metal table...

I want to double check this, but it's clear how dangerous this powder could be, doing that much damage in less than a single tick, so I grab my ignium and generate a whole lot of fire mana, and repeat my test. As expected, it starts to burn my other finger just the same, before I quickly get it all off so it won't do as much damage. I still lose most of the ridges on the pad of my finger, but it's not as red as the other, so that's something.

Alright, so the burn is clearly caused by something other than heat, I confirm with a nod. It also produces heat when I spit on it, which makes no sense to me, but that heat is way less dangerous than the powder itself, so it's more of an afterthought.

I test the second box the same way, confirming it also burns, but don't bother with the fire mana test again. No need to hurt myself without a good reason, and three of my fingers are already stinging.

With that done, I clear most of the extra fire mana and explain my observations to Eryk, who just gapes at me.

"Come on Aria, don't just go burning yourself to see how it works..." he groans with a stern expression.

Oh. I flush, immediately feeling bad at his clear disapproval. I mean, the burns aren't that bad... And I wanted to know! Still pouting quietly, I move on to the next part, sniffing each, but they don't have any scent. I make a point not to lick them since that would clearly be a terrible idea. I move on to poking a mana field at the first box instead.

At first, all the tiny flakes of rust that got mixed in with the powder jump out of the box and stick to my hand, trying to reach the magnetic mollite. Right, the metal table Ebbin put the powder on started rusting on contact with the weird burning powder... I don't know what t make of that, so I toss the rust off to the side and try again, now on the pure powder.

Nothing.

"Mmm..." I mumble, swapping to alba, then back, then pushing harder, and still nothing changes. Like with the tin, I focus my senses in on the box, feeling for any possible changes. Heat, lightning, movement, anything. But there's nothing at all. The white powder is like titanium, completely unaffected by-

Fwoom!

"Eep!" I yelp as the box bursts into flames. I half-hop, half-fall backward the instant I spot the fire. I roll into the wall behind me, ending up upside down, feet flailing in the air.

"Gods!" Eryk barks, but doesn't say anything else, and I quickly work to right myself. As soon as I look back at the box, I realize the fire has gone out. A few long moments pass in silence, like we're waiting for something else to happen, but nothing does.

"Ok..." I raise my voice uncertainly and start to crawl forward, back to the boxes. Examining the first one, it's empty now, the sides and bottom scorched slightly, little blackened parts stretching across the inside. "So... fire? But delayed?"

"Fire..." Eryk mutters as well. In that case, it's like ignium, how it sets itself on fire if you scratch a small amount off. But with mana instead...? Probably not too useful normally since only I can do it, but it's certainly interesting...

Now that we know what it does, at least we know what to expect. So for my test with the second box, I hit it with a mana field, then back up and wait.

...

Nothing happens.

"Mmm..." I hum. Before I move forward again, I double check that I still have a decent amount of fire mana left over. If this blows up in my face, at least it won't hurt. Then I go up and try again, just a wave of a mana field over the powder, but after another few ticks of waiting, there's still nothing. "Any ideas?" I ask Eryk, who is all the way back in the corner near the door out.

"I don't know, what did it the first time?"

"Nothing in particular, I just put it in a mana field for a bit while I was trying to feel for any changes."

"So, you held it longer? Could you try a more sustained field?" he suggests, so I nod and give that a try. Simply holding my hand beside the box and pushing a weak mana field out over it. I wait, and wait, and I'm starting to wonder if there's something different about this after all, when with no warning, it finally works.

All at once, the insides of the box are filled with a whooshing burst of flames. I flinch, but stay in place this time so I can watch. The fire scorches the wood, but without it catching there's nothing to burn and the flames go out after just a few moments.

I continue staring for a tick or so afterward, just replaying what I saw in my head. The powder didn't look like it caught fire. There was no heat, no spark. It wasn't like ignium. There was no spread, even rapidly, across the surface. The powder wasn't consumed by the fire.

Instead, it was like I remember with those hobins. Like the powder just became fire. "I think there's something else going on with this one. I'm going to test the others."

Going through the samples of nuvrite slag, I confirm a few things. First, they are the same burning white powder as the mollite slag, and second, they definitely become fire. If that wasn't strange enough, the way they do it is unlike anything I've seen before.

"The strength of the mana field changes how long it takes, but it has to be continuous," I explain to Eryk after the last one is gone. With a weak mana field, it took nearly three ticks, but with a stronger one, it took less than a single tick. If I really hit it as hard as I could, it would probably be almost instant.

But for some reason, it has to spend the entire time in the field. If I push a bit at a time, it won't happen.

"So the effect isn't cumulative," Eryk voices, still rubbing his chin, but then he has to explain the new word to me since I don't know that one yet.

"It doesn't build up..." I murmur while thinking over it. "I'm pretty sure it is... cumulative-" I try out the word, "-with nickel." Since that's the only thing that really changes from mana fields, it's all I have to compare this to. Nickel will only produces so much absolute mana before it breaks down, it doesn't matter if it's all at once or stretched out over a long time. This one needs it all at once.

After a few more words between us, and Eryk scribbling down more notes, I move on to the next.

This one is the only outlier, the copper slag. The one that gave me that special light mana, and the only one to have the things inside combine like we originally expected. Which must mean there's more than one substance left over in copper slag.

Looking at the two boxes, the contents are completely different. The uncombined one is another grayish silver rock, currently shattered into jagged, straight-edged shards, which kind of look like jewels, but maybe not quite as shiny. The other is a... the only way I can think of it is a blob of dull colored metal.

Before I even think better of it, I poke that one, surprised to find that it gives a tiny bit beneath my finger. Thankfully, it doesn't do anything else, like burn my already badly stinging fingertip, so I pick it up and give it a little squeeze. "It's stiff, but also kind of squishy," I say absently, rolling and forming it between my hands with a bit of effort. "Hmm..." I purse my lips and lean closer, noticing how when I keep rolling it around, tiny bits of white powder keep coming out on my hands. But this white powder doesn't immediately burn me. Also, it's... just a bit more gray than that other powder was. And kind of... clumpy? Like, the pieces are smaller, but stick to each other, and to my fingers. And... I sniff it. It doesn't really smell good, but not bad either. Kind of dusty I guess?

"This is... strange." I voice my thoughts as they come to me. "This one should have combined, but something else is coming out of it..." I rub my powder-covered fingers together, and they feel strangely dry, like, the powder stops my skin from sliding over itself easily. It's a strangely familiar feeling for some reason... After a few more moments, I lick some from my fingers.

"Blech!" Why do all these non-food things taste so bad?

"Aria..." Eryk sighs from the side, but doesn't say anything else, so I eventually return my attention to my work after wiping the nasty taste off on my sleeve. I squeeze the soft metal around some more, covering my hands and the inside of the box with more powder, trying as hard as I can to think of why it feels so familiar.

"Ah!" I perk up when it comes to me, and dig through my basket. Ignoring the metal ingots, I grab my chalk. I hold it up, mouth falling slightly open in awe. The powder feels exactly like when my hands get covered in chalk from writing practice! I lick the chalk stick. "Yuck." I grimace again, but... huh. They don't taste the same? "This powder, it's like chalk, but different somehow? They taste kind of similar, but definitely different."

"..." Eryk opens his mouth, but can't come up with a response for a bit.

"Hmm..." Then, my mouth starts to tingle. I stop for a moment, worrying that this powder also causes burns, just slower than the other, so I didn't realize it until now. Or is it the chalk? No no, I've had chalk all over myself before, and I'm sure I must have tasted it at some point before without anything like this happening.

So it must be this new powder. And it's already in my mouth, where there's no way to get it all off easily. But I'm not feeling anything from my hands, and they're covered in the stuff... I wait anxiously, until I also feel a prickle of something from my hands too. And heat starts building up. Just like the burning powder, but slower. But it's way more noticeable in my mouth than on my hands... "Eryk, can I get some water?" I ask, keeping my tone calm, but also add, "quickly, please," to let him know that there might be a problem with this one too.

While he moves to unlock the door, I generate a bunch of fire mana to help with the slowly growing heat, then follow him quickly out of the back room, over to where a number of buckets of water are set, beside the crates of ore. I dunk my hands into one of the buckets, the powder seemingly heating up on contact. Since they're fine for now, I pick up the bucket and take a gulp of it into my mouth. Just like with my hands, the water makes the heat up a little more. I swish it around, then spit the water out on the floor and take another mouthful. My hands are heating up too, but the fire mana does its job, I don't feel anything burning.

I repeatedly wash out my mouth with water until the heat starts to lessen, then return to dunking my hands into the water and rubbing them together, trying to wash them off too, and immediately notice something.

It feels like soap. The dry powder suddenly feels all slippery now that I've added water. After a number of rounds splashing and washing away the stuff from my hands and wrists, the feeling is unmistakable. Besides being kind of irritated from that stuff sitting on my skin for some time, they feel clean. Extremely clean, like I just washed them with soap and hot water, over and over again.

When I look up at Eryk, crouched next to me, he asks, "Doing alright?" He's definitely worried, though he's trying not to show it in front of all the men in the workshop. It probably helps that I'm staying calm too, so he must not think it's too serious.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I confirm, then move on to what I just noticed. "That powder, it was like soap. It started cleaning - and getting hot for some reason," I add. "But it cleaned just like soap does. I left it on too long so it kind of started burning a little, but look," and I show him my sparkling clean hands.

"Mmm," Eryk hums, thumbing at his chin in thought. "So, like some kind of powdered soap?"

I ask, "Do you know of anything like that?"

Eryk shakes his head. "Sorry, I can't say I'm too familiar with soap, myself." I nod along a few times. I don't know that much about soap either, do I?