6.71 - A Wheel of Cheese Will Do
It had been a while since Theo went to the Marsh Wolf Tavern himself. He sat at his private booth–which Xam had held all this time for some reason. Perhaps she kept it free for him because he still used his bath in the bathhouse. Even at noon, the atmosphere was lively. Patrons from within the alliance and without were enjoying the food she had prepared for them. But the alchemist was there for only the moss tea and the atmosphere. Well, that and a conversation with Salire.
“Once we infuse the base reagents with mana, we’ll have a much higher success rate,” Salire said, taking a tentative sip of her tea. She added some amount of cream, which Theo wasn’t aware they had access to. It made sense, since the karatan produced milk.
“I guess we need to be worried about safety now,” Theo said.
The Newt and Demon was already introducing more safety measures. The first thing they added was the vapor detector that Throk had built. That would help them avoid any mixing vapors in the air, which could cause unexpected effects. Next was procedural, involving heavy testing before using any new alchemy techniques. Theo didn’t want to employ a new technique until it had been tested in a safe environment. Their testing with the first round of artifices had shown him the advantages of caution. Those early stills were all time bombs, ready to go off once some random condition was met.
“Have you been practicing your mana control?” Theo asked.
Salire averted her gaze, taking a sip of her tea and shaking her head. “Kinda. I was never very good at it to begin with.”
“You were fine. Let’s see.”
Salire held her hand out with her palm up. Prismatic mana flowed into her palm, sloshing like liquid before evaporating into the air. Her control wasn’t bad. Theo had found the hardest part to start was bringing the mana out from his soul. And he had made sure she practiced it weeks ago, drilling it into her it was vital to good alchemy. That was more true than ever, and she had a great point to jump off from. But it made the alchemist wonder about how attributes played into actions like this.
Theo summoned a glob of mana without issue, allowing it to float in the air before them. Perhaps Tero’gal was still figuring out what kind of mana it wanted to produce. He had seen it change colors before, but it current held a shifting scheme that never settled on one color for long.