Devrum handed the mask over to Rory, who stared down at it. The contraption was strange. It was shaped like a surgical mask, but there was a bit of thickness around the mouth and nose area, which likely held what the mechanisms needed to make the air of the world breathable for the elves.

“Do you know how this works?” Rory asked Devrum.

The dwarf nodded. “Yes, I do. Do you know why exactly the air in this world is toxic to the elves?”

“The minelord mentioned something about toxic percentages and pressures. I’m assuming there’s too much of a certain substance that’s poisonous to the elves.”

“There is, but it’s a little more complicated than that.” Devrum cleared his throat as he prepared to educate Rory and the others on the mechanism of elven breathing. “Their lungs take in air and perform a breakdown process on it to release the energy inherent within particles. Unfortunately, drawing away this energy causes the particles to break apart to form new particles. Sometimes, these particles are toxic to the elves.”

“Wait, wait,” Viv said, holding up her hands. “Are you saying the elves’ lungs perform nuclear fission?”

“What is this nuclear fission you mention?”

Viv took her rime explaining how there was an existing process of radiation that allowed particles to be broken down to release energy, usually used from that point on to power up various stuff in artificial cases.

“Interesting,” Devrum said. “I had no idea such a process already existed. But yes, the mask makes it so that the exact elements causing the toxicity are mostly removed.”

“Do you know what elements those are?” Viv asked.

“Yes. One of them is apparently extremely abundant here, over three times as much as the next most, and the other is the one that’s vital for most living things here. Both cause deleterious effects on the elves when broken down. The mask reduces their concentration.”

“I see.” Rory looked at the mask, trying to see if he could spy into the mechanisms. “I think I can focus my Weaving on the little processes needed to decrease those specific elements. That should be good enough, right?”

“I cannot say. It would be better if an elf was here to help you test it.”

“True.”

Hopefully, Arelland would appear before long. It had been almost two days since Rory had sent the Wraith to hunt him down. Still nothing. He supposed the elf was quite busy with the war and everything, but they needed help with a few things. It was hard not to feel anxious when he focused on all that was beyond his control.

“I also have everything I need to set up your defences,” Devrum said. “You will have your own cloud generator by the time I’m done.”

“Excellent. You know the way to the tower-top, which is where I assume you want it to set it up, right?”

“Correct. The higher the point, the more effective it will be. I’ll get going, then.”

Rory waved goodbye as the dwarf headed off.

“So, this mask.” Viv plucked it from Rory’s grasp and looked it over. “Are you going to use your Weaving on it directly?”

“I’m not sure. I figure I need to know how it works first.”

“Then let’s take it apart!”

That was another thing Rory was a little afraid of doing. As an antiquarian—or rather, a former antiquarian—he had always been afraid of damaging his goods. Pulling them apart was out of the question. But engineering was very different from selling antiques.

Viv recruited Harlow to check out the mask together. They had some tools to help them pull it apart, though they needed a lot longer than expected to figure it out. The engineering method was wholly unfamiliar to them, which wasn’t unsurprising, considering it was essentially alien technology. For all they knew, the place Otherworlders had come didn’t even have the same governing laws of physics.

Rory watched them work for a while, and when he started to get a little bored by the process, he decided to check up on the dwarf. The climb was tiring on his old body, but he did appreciate the work Devrum was doing.

He had set up what looked like a mechanical pump with a motor attached to its back. It was shaped strangely. There was one section that looked like a vacuum nozzle, a tube attached to the walls which looked as though it had been mined open, and finally, what looked like a stove under the contraption.

Rory would have asked how it worked but he was sure he’d stand witness to the process when the dwarf got it running.

Besides, Trish came running to tell him that Viv and Harlow were done with their tinkering and pulling apart their elven mask. Rory quickly followed her down, trying not to feel bad about the ache in his legs.

“What did you find?” Rory asked as he reached the table Viv and Harlow were using.

“You won’t believe this,” Harlow said.

“It’s amazing.” Viv’s eyes were shining with the rare glint he saw whenever she discovered something brand new. “It’s a lot more intricate than I was expecting.”

“How so?” Rory asked.

“It’s essentially a layer of several complicated filters. One of them removes the nitrogen form the air, then the next reduces the amount of oxygen taken in. There’s nothing for the trace amounts of other gases like Argon and anything else we have here, so I can only imagine their main intake is Carbon Dioxide.”

“Though there is a strange amplifier,” Harlow said. He tinkered some more into the broken pieces of the mask. “It’s for… water?”

“Water?” Rory and Viv asked at the same time.

“That’s what it looks like. Hmm, considering the process they undergo, that makes sense.”

Rory frowned, unable to see anything different between the tiny components of the mask they had scattered out over the table. “What do you mean?”

“Water is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen. When you combine them separately, they form a very explosive mixture. Hydrogen is rocket fuel, after all. So, it’s probably not just the fission energy that the elves use, there is an actual combustion element going on in their lungs.”

“That’s actually really interesting.”

“Isn’t it?”

Viv nodded. “Fascinating how the physiologies of other beings work.”

“But I’m not sure that helps me figure out what exactly I need to focus my Weaving on,” Rory said. “Though I guess I could focus on the elements you mentioned to get their Sigils. And then I’d have to focus on the bits of the mask you pulled apart. You said there were multiple filter layers, right? That might give us enough Sigils, but they’re so small…”

“You could use our normal masks,” Viv said. “This is basically that other Sigil you created a while back, when we first met the Emberteeth.”

Rory smiled and snapped his fingers. “The Sigil of Nasal Filtration! That’s a great idea. This would essentially be a similar Sigil, just targeted to the specific elements in the elves need.”

Harlow and Viv had the same excited expressions Rory felt clothing his face. This could work, and if it did, he was confident about having something that could really impress the Coalition. Not just the elves, but the rest of them as well.

Rory turned on his Weaving and focused on the air around him. The specific components that made it up wasn’t visible or tangible to him at all, but maybe he didn’t need to see it. As long as it was present in abundant enough quantities, it would work. So, he focused on the nitrogen, oxygen, and moisture in the atmosphere around him.

It took longer than normal. Understandable, since air was a sparse quantity and as more of the components were Woven away, the vacuum left behind drew in more from the surrounding air. That meant Rory had to wait until more of his targets were available.

But it worked. As Viv and Harlow started to look doubtful about the attempt, three different Sigils flashed into being on Rory’s palm. All three were somewhere between silver and white, apart from the with the blue circle and triangles indicating their Cerulean Tier. Strangely, the image they showed were letters.

“Let me see,” Viv said when Rory asked what they were. She took one look at the Sigils and nodded. “They’re the element and compound formulas. That N-2 means Nitrogen, the O-2 is Oxygen, and the H-2-O is the water in the air. What does their descriptions say?”

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Atmospheric Oxygen. Breath in deep, the lifegiving air you take for granted is now yours to control.

[Cerulean VII] allows creation, manipulation, and imbuing of element in a 51-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [28%]

The rest of the Sigils showed much the same description and stats. He couldn’t see any use for any of them. They were too… normal. Good thing they had an idea where they’d be useful.

Rory gripped the Sigils of Atmospheric Nitrogen and Moisture, then walked over to the table. “Which ones are the filters?”

Harlow pointed them out to Rory. Just as he had suspected, they weren’t big. His Weaving always took time to draw in the required amount of its target before manifesting the appropriate Sigil. But there was so little here… Rory wasn’t sure if all total was enough for one Sigil.

Nevertheless, there was no point in not trying. If it didn’t work, he had a backup option that he could attempt as well.

Rory used his Weaving on one of the filters. Like before, he received a Sigil of Nasal Filtration. Next, he could combine the latest Sigil with the other three he had acquired before, though he had another problem to contend with first.

He hadn’t found a way to Weave in the exact amount and method the filtration would occur. Rory had a feeling those parameters weren’t built into the new Filtration Sigil he had obtained.

“What’s wrong?” Viv asked, clearly interpreting his expression with her regular ease.

Rory explained his conundrum. “Maybe I need to focus on those percentages and methods when I Weave the other filters, but then, are the amounts and other things like that built into the filters?”

Harlow shook his head. “These masks are configurable. My best guess is that the elves can change their settings so that they work differently on different planets with different atmospheres.”

“Great. That complicates things a lot.”

“Hmm…”

Harlow started filing through the other components of the mask Rory had ignored. They were all small enough that he hadn’t paid much attention to them. But Harlow seemed to have an idea, one that Viv had also apparently landed on. She joined his side so fast, it was almost as though she had teleported to him.

“Are you looking for the toggle?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Harlow said. “It looked like a knob. Did you see it?”

Viv reached forward and plucked something from the far end of the table. “This is it, right?”

Harlow smiled and accepted the tiny component. He presented it to Rory. “Try this one. It might give you the option to change the settings for different elements and compounds and amounts.”

“Oh, yes, this might work,” Rory said.

He took the tiny component and used his Weaving on it. The Sigil he received glowed silvery-white as well, though this one had the image of gears on it.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Intensifier. Everyone needs a valve to control the amount of everything that happens. The ability to tune something to one’s personal requisite amount is an undeniable right of all living things.

[Cerulean VII] allows toggling anything to 0.1% of intensity.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [36%]

Rory took a deep breath. This was going to have to do. It struck him then that he was essentially creating a replacement for the elves’ mask, and he wasn’t sure if they would even need or want it when they had masks.

But in case Arelland and the others were wholly dependent on one tool for something so integral as their ability to breathe, Rory was just giving them valuable new options. Whoever was in charge of manufacturing and supplying these devices had to be the richest elf in existence. There could very well be a monopoly over the entire industry.

Rory combined all the Sigils he had acquired. The new one he obtained was vivid orange.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Atmospheric Control. Tune the content of the atmosphere to your liking, whether making it easier to breathe, raising the humidity so you’re swimming in the air, or summoning miniature storms around you.

[Cerulean VII] allows creation, manipulation, and summoning of multiple atmospheric elements in a 17-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: High [64%]

Rory stared at the Sigil. When Viv and Harlow eventually asked him to describe what it was, Rory explained the description.

“So, you haven’t just made a Sigil that replaces their mask,” Viv said. “You made a Sigil that can control everything about the atmosphere around them.”

She grinned, and Rory felt his mouth widening in a similar smile. It would have been hard to sell the elves something they already had, even with the angle of relieving the pressure of their dependence on the mask monopoly. But now, he had something actually better he could offer.