Giggles from Baryl soon spill over to Avelina, like water overflowing from one bucket to another. Mikko snickers at my betrayed look. Even [Lady] Evershed joins in the fun.

I crack a smile. It was pretty funny.

"Give me a few minutes to recover my mana," I wheeze, gathering myself and standing u up. I'm still shaky, but my strength is returning as I take a few deep breaths. Gradually, the spinning stops and I don't need to lean against the mahogany chair anymore for support.

"Whew! That hit me like a runaway carriage."

"Poor carriage," Mikko deadpans.

[Lady] Evershed stands tall, her hands clasped in front of her as she studies me. There's a complex undercurrent in her voice when she speaks. "A small Index node. Just like that. I see I have some catching up to do."

"Let's go to your studio," I suggest. "Lately, I simply make the glass I need, but I'm not sure I want to push my Skills at the moment. It's not often that I drain myself like that anymore."

"It's paramount we push you to the next rank." Now that Evershed has recovered from her shock—and was it just my imagination, or was that envy twisting her face?—she is all business once more. "Take a sleeping tonic tonight, even if you don't think you need it. Tomorrow, after you rest, we'll set you on Nazarovas' Path."

We follow [Lady] Evershed out of the garden, sharing quizzical glances at the unfamiliar name. She doesn't shed any light on the subject for some time, letting us walk under a cloud of curiosity as we traverse one long corridor after another, and eventually descend a staircase that terminates into a heavily-fortified room with a thick, mana-infused steel door barring our way.

A few muttered words—some sort of passphrase—and a pulse of mana to confirm [Lady] Evershed's unique mana signature satisfies the security measures. The door creaks as the heavy swings aside, revealing additional sets of staircases.

We trudge downward, entering a basement that's considerably more decrepit than the grand edifice upstairs. Precision-cut stone gives way to patchwork walls, with splotches of brownish-red patina from many years of water trickling down the rougher hewn stone. Mana lamps are spaced farther apart, and the floor is compacted dirt instead of pristine marble.

Overhead, the stone archways holding up the tunnel are thicker than I expected, as though they're the bones holding up the city of Grand Ile itself.

"Shortcut. My studio isn't this dank," [Lady] Evershed says with a self-amused chuckle as she notices our bewildered gazes, finally breaking the silence. "We're using old escape tunnels that go underneath the canals. I have a connecting entrance underneath my glass studio."

"You don't have a new, upgraded hot shop in your palace?" I ask, a hint of surprise leaking into my voice. "Not that I didn't like your studio. But it's not that big."

"I don't always feel like acting the [Lady]."

Avelina nods sagely. "Sometimes you need to get away from it all. Glass is more malleable than people. At least if you make a mistake it's your fault, and not because some fool ruined your plans."

"Therapeutic to step away," [Lady] Evershed agrees. "Plus, it's simply more nostalgic to work in my old studio. I hope you will forgive the meager lamp working accommodations. That was never my area of specialty."

"Fine by me! I'm a bit rusty, since I've been furnishing our new house and then traveling here. It sounds nice to just make something away from prying eyes, without a commission or any restrictions."

The two soon fall into a comfortable conversation about glass making, home furnishings, and favorite tactics for dealing with incompetent help.

"Hope you're not talking about me," I quip.

"Not at all," [Lady] Evershed replies easily. "It's clear Avelina had you well trained. I had wondered who had whipped you into shape so thoroughly."

Mikko throws a heavy arm over my shoulders and nods toward the pair. "Starting to regret this alliance?"

"Nah. Makes me feel right at home."

"Lionel walked so [Lady] Evershed could fly," Avelina says with a burst of infectious laughter.

The good mood continues despite the damp environs and the oppressive weight of a city above our heads, and the ten-minute walk goes by in a flash. We soon make our way up the stairs and encounter another locked gate. The steel bound-door leads into Evershed's quarters, which explains why I never saw it before. Abandoned or not, her room is immaculate, all cream walls and green accent trim.

"No wonder [Lady] Evershed didn't think you were underdressed. Mikko, You match the decor of her old room," I say, turning and smirking at my brother.

"Must be fate."

Moments later, we emerge into the familiar glass studio where I learned how to improvise and improve my craft with only one hand. Memories rush in like the tide, and I stagger as my heart clenches. The sensation passes almost instantly, but I find myself feeling strangely detached as we get a grand tour of the shop.

I expected more melancholy at what I left behind, or maybe pride over my accomplishments here, or a complicated mix of competing emotions. If I peel back the layers, I suppose all of that is there, but deep underneath the surface. Muted.

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I bounce on the balls of my feet, limbering up as though I'm preparing for a spar. If anything, the predominant emotion is simply excitement. I can't wait to share what I've learned with my master. She will undoubtedly soar to dizzying heights I've never even dreamed possible. Talent will shine as soon as I shift her perspective. I'm sure of it.

Baryl settles in at his old spot, with an entire handful of candies and a satisfied grin on his impish little face. He kicks his feet up onto the counter, crossing his shiny black boots at the ankle, and pops the first candy into his mouth.

Mikko wanders over to some of the displays to observe the wares, and I catch him surreptitiously holding up a few of the pieces of jewelry when he thinks no one is looking, his eyes flicking sideways to compare his wife's complexion against the subtle carmine coloring of the glass.

I smile. He's a good man.

Back on the hot shop floor, [Lady] Evershed approaches the crucible. Scrollwork engraving of fanciful beasts and delicate wild flowers covers the heavily-enchanted, heat-resistant blast door, and I take in the runes at a glance. Gold-tinged heat spills out into the studio. A batch of molten always swirls in the superheated furnace, even if Evershed is absent from the studio, since it takes a week or more to bring the huge oven up to temperature. Letting it all cool down is likely to crack the entire thing, leading to costly repairs and weeks of downtime, so glass is always at the ready for as long as the hot shop is in production.

Fingers twitching, [Lady] Evershed levitates a gather of glass using her domineering Skill that leverages reputation as weight. A flourish of her wrist brings it over to her work bench, and she raises a pontil in a fencer's stance, skewering the molten glass and twirling it into a ball.

Strictly speaking, she doesn't need any of the somatic elements to make her Skill work, not if I'm parsing the runic arrays in her Skill structures properly. Not that I peeked too closely at my former master's inner world earlier. Making elegant gestures and grand statements is simply part of her dramatic nature.

"I'm ready for your instruction, Nuri," she calls to me. Her stance is steady, and her face appears serene, but my enhanced senses note the tension in her shoulders. This matters to her far more than she's let on so far.

"It's my honor to share what I've learned, master Evershed. All I can do is return a small portion of the time and knowledge you've poured into me. Let's go over the imbuement I coaxed into existence earlier when I created the node to connect to Rakesh's Seed of Hope. Tree of Knowledge? Sanctuary Index? I'm not sure what to call it. We can figure that out later."

"Naming things is important," Mikko encourages me.

"Is that why you spend half of each project perseverating over names?" his wife teases. Sparks flit in a halo around her head, telling me she's in an excellent mood.

"All right, newlyweds," [Lady] Evershed admonishes. "Go make something pretty at the lamp working station. I'm trying to focus."

Mikko salutes, then gently guides his wife across the studio to where a shelf of colorful glass rods of various sizes await, ready to be worked. Beside them, looped up and tucked out of the way, a set of tubes ending in nozzles are set up to provide directed flame. Avelina doesn't need them to work, not with her specialized Class, but it still gets the two of them out of our way so we can focus on the work in front of us.

"Before we begin, why don't you make something simple, master Evershed, while you tell me what you gleaned from my demonstration. Don't worry about precision or technicality. In your own words, describe what you saw, and more importantly, what you felt, while I imbued."

[Lady] Evershed nods, a focused frown on her face, and rolls the hot glass across the marvel. She breathes in a slow rhythm, shaping the glass, and sighs and transfers it to an actual blowpipe. A few steady breaths inflate the bubble inside the glass until Evershed's reached her desired working size, and she goes back to rolling it on the marvel, flattening out the top and preparing her work.

"Earlier, when I asked you what Densmore is, I alluded to the idea that it's a dream. Our homes are as much conceptual as physical; we can move to a different house, but that doesn't make it our true home. Likewise, we can be set adrift, our shelter destroyed, but if the people of our hearts and the hopes we cherish still remain, then we consider ourselves 'home' after all."

Her frown deepens, and she picks up a pair of jacks to further refine the shape of her glass creation. "I suppose I start there, because it's the easiest way for me to describe what I saw. I need to frame the discussion as the conception of a dream. Imbuing is sharing with the world a vulnerable moment of hope, which in turn blossoms into a dream. It transforms what is into what could be."

I scratch the back of my head, suddenly itchy and all too aware of my inadequacy as a teacher to someone of [Lady] Evershed's stature. For once, I keep my mouth shut while I think. I'm trying to understand her perspective thoroughly before I respond, instead of making a joke or giving some off-the-cuff advice. I take a deep breath, squeezing my eyes shut and calling to mind the feeling of imbuing, even if I'm not creating an artifact at the moment.

"If I may humbly object, master?" I venture quietly, opening my eyes and watching her face for signs of irritation. When she nods, a hint of approval in the crinkling of skin around her eyes, I find myself more sure of what I wanted to say.

"Not to sound cruel, but with your current framework, you'll never succeed at imbuing. You're so close, but you have things exactly backward."

Her eyes widen fractionally, but she regains control so quickly that I almost convince myself I imagined it. Almost. "Go on, young man. You have me intrigued."

"It's not about transforming what is into what could be. It's about presenting what could be to the world and inviting it to become what is. To make that vision reality. Does that make sense? At all? Or am I just jumbling things for you?"

For a long, humbling moment, all I get is a blank stare in return. Then, by degrees, like the sun peeking up over the Eastern horizon, the light of comprehension dawns on her face. "Now that is interesting," [Lady] Evershed murmurs. Her eyes grow soft, and she seems to stare into a great distance.

Pacing back and forth, she leaves the glass on the bench to grow cold. I snatch up the pipe and roll it back and forth, warming the glass with the folded-in version of my [Greater Heat Manipulation]. I'll tend the hearth fires while she goes on a mental—perhaps spiritual—journey of discovery.

[Lady] Evershed's voice becomes more and more subdued as she talks to herself, then gains speed. She's still quiet, but there's a feverish energy to her words as everything falls into place for her. "Yes. Yes! I see it now. One way is tyranny: forcing the immutable to change, to bend to my whims. The other, unity and community, synergy and symbiosis. All this time wasted in the pursuit of power when I ought instead to have celebrated the boundless and euphoric offer of a hand in partnership, a show of trust, an act of co-creation!"

Her final words ring out with the clarity of a clarion call to arms. The energy of the world swirls faster and faster in a joyful symphony all around the glass studio, with the venerable, white-haired [Lady] as the epicenter of the storm. Like a flash of lighting, the mana rushes into her in blinding streams of power that sting my eyes, filling her to the brim.

She seizes the pipe out of my hands, shaping the glass faster than I've ever seen before as she paints her watercolor, sings her aria, composes her poem. As the glass takes on a new form, the mana gleefully accepts her vision of possibility, acting in accordance with its nature as a raw agent of change, and rushes into the little vase. She lifts it overhead, and power explodes outward in an argent nova of pure brilliance as her ascension begins.

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