Tabith started sketching designs on the paper before her.

Cass couldn't read any of the words the smith added to the margins of her plans, but she imagined it was notes on sizing or material.

"So, a new staff?" the smith asked.

Cass nodded.

"You sure? If you are going to change your mind, this is the moment. And, since I'm making you something new from the scavenged pieces, it could be anything."

Cass hesitated. She hadn't even considered there were other options.

You should pick what you are comfortable with, Salos said.

Her eyes lingered on the broken staff amid the other materials at the end of the table. Calling herself 'comfortable' with fighting with it was generous. It was what she knew. But she'd rather not need to use it at all.

That was a useless sentiment. This world had more than proved she had to fight if she wanted to survive.

But if you have any thoughts of changing your weapon of choice, now at the Gate is probably the last time you'd want to consider it, Salos continued. Much of your skills and Concepts can still change and evolve, but it's hard to build a second weapon mastery unless you have a particular affinity for such skills.

She hadn't exactly chosen to fight with a staff. It had just happened. Would she have picked something else if all the options had been equal?

You have a bonus to Staff Mastery's growth, so abandoning it is something you should consider carefully, Salos said. But it is worth thinking about the fact that if you used a ritual blade instead, I could use my blade skills more easily when we swap.

A few ritual blades hung from the workshop's walls. They were mostly short blades, only a little longer than the Erizen's Blade Salos had gotten from one of the trials in Uvana.

There was an appeal in a sword. Heroes carried swords. Swords were cool. Her skills should work just as well with a blade as they did with her staff. She probably wouldn't have to worry as much about a sword snapping on her as she did her wooden staff.

But Cass didn't know how to use a sword. She could learn. There was no shortage of teachers. Salos, Alyx, and Marco would all be more than happy to show her.

But taking the time to learn would detract from the time she had to do things she actually wanted to do. Not that she should waste time on things that wouldn't bring her closer to Kaye or Robin.

"I'm sure," Cass said finally.

Approval and disappointment twisted across their bond. That is probably the right call.

Tabith started sketching some profiles of staffs, some of which had intricate heads.

"She can make it a glaive," Alyx chimed in.

"Oh, right. You're a spellsword," Tabith said.

Right. That was probably an important detail for the smith making her new weapon to know. Her stomach twisted. Was there anything else she was forgetting to tell her?

"You're bashing this around a bunch, then?" Tabith asked.

Cass nodded. "Usually, the summoned blade more than the staff itself."

Tabith crossed out a few of her designs and started again, these all significantly less ornate. She tapped the Stormcaller's stone. "Storm spells, I take it?"

"Skills, not spells," Alyx interjected before Cass could answer.

Cass bit her lip. Right. Those were different. Same effect as far as she could tell, but different execution. But the execution probably mattered here.

"Oh. Sorceress then, not a wizard. Interesting. Then the staff-to-glaive spell is a skill, too?"

Cass nodded.

The sketching intensified. "Okay, big question now: What do you want this staff to do for you? Increase your oomph, your cast time, your control, or your capacity?"

Cass hesitated. Alyx looked at her expectantly. The smith tapped her paper, her enthusiasm billowing in her wide eyes.

Most combatants at the Gate probably knew what they wanted out of their equipment already, while she'd barely accepted that was her role.

Salos? Cass asked.

It's your staff and your fighting style, he said.

But you must have some insight, right? This was going to be her weapon for the foreseeable future. She couldn't afford to get this wrong.

This isn't that different from choosing new skills or trial rewards, he said. Consider your victory conditions and your weaknesses and go from there.

Most of her victories had come from reframing what winning meant. Running and escaping with her life before impossible odds. Holding a superior opponent back while allies escaped. Throwing enemies against one another. Arranging for reinforcements to save her at critical moments.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Was that the only way she could win?

She wouldn't have won a straightforward fight against any of her previous opponents, she knew that much. She couldn't imagine beating the paladin captain one-on-one, no matter what kind of equipment she had.

An unconventional victory was the only way she could come out on top against that kind of opponent.

What would help her more with that?

"I think capacity is my priority," she said. More Focus meant more uses of her skills. More chances to experiment. More time to find a way out of an otherwise impossible fight.

Too many of her recent fights had ended with her burning her Health to supply her skills with more Focus. It was a useful backup, but she was still feeling the consequences days later.

"You sure?" Tabith asked, her hand suddenly still. Waiting.

Was she? She already had a stupid amount of Focus, according to Salos. Maybe she'd get more out of her already deep Focus pool by augmenting the power of the skills she could already throw.

It's a reasonable choice, Salos assured her. But none of them—except perhaps cast time—are poor choices.

"I was sure you'd pick oomphm," Alyx said.

But is it the best choice? Cass asked him. Was she underestimating how much equipment could increase the power of her skills?

It isn't a choice that will kill you, he said.

Salos! That was not a reassuring answer.

He snorted, hopping into her lap. Doubling down on your Focus advantages is a strategy. A good one, too, he continued. He was warm. Her hand drifted along his fur. And that's all you can do.

Tabith scrawled something on her paper. "Only a small subset of mages focus on oomph."

"Why are we calling it that?" Cass asked, trying not to cringe visibly.

Alyx shrugged. "She said it first."

"It's fun?" Tabith cocked her head to one side. More seriously, she said, "Spellswords often choose to maximize the power of their spells. Often, they are weaving in other martial skills with their magic, so they don't need the same amount of Focus as a dedicated wizard. Also, they are usually trying to make up for more widely spread stats."

But neither of those concerns apply to you, Salos said. Despite fighting at melee, you do so exclusively with Focus-based skills. Honestly, calling you a spellsword is somewhat misleading. Not wrong, but hardly representative of the standard either.

"But most of my pure mage clients eventually settle on more spell capacity. Unless you can reliably take out an opponent in a few spells, being able to cast more spells—or skills in your case—is generally more useful from what I've heard."

It sounded like there was a lot of variety possible in the kind of combatant one could be. And she'd barely scratched the surface of what was possible.

Tabith began sketching again, outlining another set of elegant staff profiles on the paper. How did each of those differ? What was the significance of the angle of the wood or the shape and position of the crystal? How did her powers affect which of these the smith would make?

She wished she had time to learn. But Tabith was already moving on to the next question.

"Now, there are broadly two methods for increasing capacity." Tabith raised two fingers. She dropped the first as she said, "One, you could add a mana reservoir to the staff. Doesn't have to be on the staff, technically. But it's better if it's closely attached to the magic focus.

"The reservoir can be filled ahead of time, converting Focus to mana. Then, when you want to use it later, you draw on the stored mana to complete your skill or spell later. This is a popular choice because the reservoir can be as deep as you can afford to make it. I once installed a magic crystal that could hold a thousand points of mana for a client. Boy, was that a gaudy staff."

In other words, they could stick a battery on it. Pellen had at least one of those somewhere. "Do we have anything here that we could use as a reservoir?"

"Silly question," the smith said. She pointed at the pink crystals across the table. "Those are unprocessed mana crystals. This is the primary use of them."

Oh. Cass tried not to look away in embarrassment. Pellen had said something about that before, hadn't she? Asking questions was how she got answers. There was nothing wrong or unexpected with her not knowing. "These aren't the weird ones we found in the backroom, right?"

Pellen or Salos had said something about the ones they found in the room with the Crystal Keeper were tainted with Concepts or something.

"I collected some from the sixth-floor mine on the way back out," Marco said. "Those are perfectly ordinary."

"Weird ones?" Tabith asked, her eyes widening.

Alyx waved her off. "I'll tell you about it later. How much do you think you can store in those?"

Tabith picked up the larger of the pieces. It was about the size of her fist. "Mmm. Hard to say without shaping it, but it's a good size. Probably about 50?"

"50?" Cass had 630 Focus. Fifty wasn't even ten percent of that. That was one Wind Step. Half a Confounding Mists.

"I'd assume that's a 25% to 30% increase in your Focus reserves?" Tabith guessed.

Cass shook her head. It was a drop in the bucket.

"Less?" Tabith stared at Cass. "You don't look like a Resolve specialist."

"Do Resolve specialists have a particular look?" Cass asked.

"They don't." Alyx rolled her eyes.

"They do," Tabith insisted. "They've got auras that just kind of feel…" The smith waved her hands ineffably. "And yours is more." She waved her hands differently. Neither gesture meant anything to Cass.

Cass glanced at Alyx. The swordswoman just shrugged. It was almost a relief that she wasn't the only one lost this time.

Regardless, if that was all she could expect out of additional capacity, maybe she should give control or power another chance.

"Well, if you have that much, option two might be better for you."

"And that is?" Cass asked.

"Skill discount!" Tabith said with jazz hands. "We can craft your staff to more efficiently structure the Focus pattern for your skills or draw ambient mana to augment your skill costs."

"How much of a discount can we expect from that?" Cass asked.

"With these materials?" Tabith tapped her foot, humming to herself. "Using your existing staff as a base… I think I could get 20%. Maybe a little more for any storm skills, given we have that Stormcaller Stone."

That was much better than the 7% increase the reservoir had provided and also promised to scale with her ever-increasing Focus pool.

"Luckily, you have those alke antlers. They accumulate mana like little else. I think if I powder those, we can add another layer of etchings to the existing ones, then fill all of it with a Soulsilver and Alke antler powder." Tabith was drawing quickly, nominally speaking to Cass, but clearly more focused on the draft in front of her.

Cass watched, anticipation buzzing in her chest. The shape of the staff took form on the page, the sketched designs coalescing from a myriad of palm-sized thumbnails to a handful of full-sized designs. Each had swirling runes climbing the shaft and the Stormcaller's Stone set in the wood's break.

"Something like this," Tabith said, tapping the paper.

That is promising, Salos said, peering at the page from Cass's lap, his eyes barely clearing the table's surface. A fitting partner for a young combatant such as yourself.

Cass traced the profile with a gentle hand, careful not to smear the charcoal lines. This was for her. The first equipment made with her in mind with her input.

Maybe she hadn't chosen to fight. Maybe she hadn't chosen the staff. But she couldn't deny that these were things which were a part of her now.

And she couldn't deny, she was excited.

"It's perfect."

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