It was maybe fifteen minutes later that Falk came running back into the room with a crate full of supplies and books, only to see that Ben was still blushing and Thera still had her face buried in the bed.
“Am I maybe interrupting something?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Nothing uncle.” Thera said as she jerked upwards, her face flushed gold.
“We were just chatting while we waited, now come on, let's get started.” He would have been willing to go up against the alseer again to dispel the current atmosphere, and thankfully Falk was merciful and let the matter drop.
“Alright boy get ready for one of the most grueling tasks I’ve gotten for you yet, here's some cloth and just do what I say to make a fanet’ail cloak.”
Ben was handed a square piece of cloth, about a foot by a foot in size, and immediately had questions. “Isn’t this a bit small? And what does that name even mean?”
“The fella who invented it just named it after himself as creatives tend to do and that's just for your practice while I’m still here. Make no mistake brat, that small piece will take you almost a day to enchant if you're efficient. Prove to me you can manage it and I’ll prep a full cloak for you to work on while I’m gone.”
He looked at the small piece of fabric in front of him. If this would be a full day then how long would it be to make the full thing? It was a daunting question but it would be a good challenge, not to mention good experience for his enchanting. At the stage he was at he wasn’t using too many techniques more advanced than just layering them up. “So what do I do?”
“As I said before, you're just using fragments of skills. Not a single enchantment you add should actually be able to display its effects, it should feel more like making a sculpture from one grain of sand at a time, and much like sculpting with sand if you’re not careful the entire enchantment will collapse. This won’t break your material thankfully but it could still signify a significant loss of time, especially if you mess up toward the end. Now what you’re going to do is only use your skills for this, don’t enchant attributes or affinities. If I remember right you only have seven which is going to make it harder than what most people who have to make one of these will deal with but it should be manageable. You’re just going to pile up a fragment of skill at a time until the entire thing is saturated, but you have to make sure none of the fragments are touching fragments of the same skill or it will collapse. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” He was a little overwhelmed by the sudden stream of information but also sure he would manage.
“Good. I’ll be in town for a couple more days so I’ll stop by to see how you’re doing and if you need any advice. Last thing, unlike the way you currently do your enchanting, where you have to finish the enchantment all at once, this way you can at least take breaks from it thankfully since it’s building it up from many parts, so you won't need to stay awake for a week. Now good luck and check some of the books if you need to.”
With that done Falk went back to his shop to finish up some of the work he was going to show his client and bid both Ben and Thera a good day. After he left Ben immediately started to focus on how he was going to approach the task while Thera went to prepare lunch.
He thought she would be gone for a while but only a few minutes later she came back with a small plate of diced vegetables for the both of them.
He happily took the plate and began eating but had to ask. “Are you a vegetarian by any chance?”
She looked down sadly at the plate of food in front of her as she picked through it herself, letting out a regretful sigh. “No, it's just that this is all I can manage."
"What do you mean?"
"I can’t cook alright.”
He hadn’t been expecting that and immediately burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny.” She said in a huff. “You try learning to cook something when your mana will strip the enchantments from the stove.”
He tried to contain his residual giggles. Admittedly breaking any enchanted tool you try to use was a pretty good excuse for not knowing how to cook. “Sorry, sorry, my bad. Do you mind if I use your kitchen? I should be able to whip us something up.”
Her eyes seemed to light up. “You can cook?”
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“What’s there to be so surprised about? I have crafting, it comes with the package.”
“But you’re always eating at food stalls.”
“I just like trying different things is all."
“Then that would be great!” She told him before calming down. “Wait, no. Falk just said it’s going to take you a day to work on this, and you’re still recovering. I shouldn’t waste your time.”
“I feel good enough to move and if it's already going to take a day then what's another hour? Come on, show me your kitchen.”
“Alright let's go.” She stood and waited for him to get up but he didn’t move.
He cleared his throat and awkwardly told her. “Um Thera, could you wait outside the room? I need to get dressed still.”
With the problem revealed to her she quickly ran outside to wait, another blush spread across her face. Ben idly wondered if she was always blushing under her hood, or if it was just going to be today as she got used to him.
After getting up and dressed Ben came to an important conclusion. When Sonya told him that he was out of danger but would still need a few more days to heal, what that meant was that his organs were probably better, but his ribs were still very much broken, and as soon as he started moving around he could feel the pain from them.
Still it was bearable and even if he could be satisfied with a plate of vegetables, he wanted something a bit more substantial after being out for a couple days.
He made his way out of the room and was shown the way to the kitchen by Thera, before he started rummaging around their cold box for ingredients, making sure to supply it with some mana after it was done so it would keep its power.
He diced up some meat and started cooking it on the stove. It was here he had to take some care. With his low fire-based affinity even using a fire enchantment could have a high mana cost, so he had to just try and keep an eye on it to make sure he would stay conscious. It seemed that since Sonya was the one who did the cooking and presumably had plenty of mana as a life mage she didn’t feel the need to spring for a stove with a fire affinity tied to the enchantment to lower the mana cost and he was feeling it. While he was at the church still Lehie had warned him about plenty of fools who had accidentally run out of mana while cooking and managed to burn their houses down or get themselves killed, and Ben was in no hurry to join their ranks. He would have to cook it a little longer than he would have liked to but it worked out for his mana recovery, he just needed to have patience. Supposedly he could also use his crafting to run mana through the ingredients to make them cook faster the same way he could work with other materials faster by doing the same thing, but he hadn’t gotten the hang of that yet, probably because he was so focused on not using up all of his mana while he cooked.
Once the meat was almost at the level of doneness he wanted he added the veggies that Thera had cut up to soften them up a bit, while adding just a bit of water to the pan as well as some spices. He would have liked to make a thicker sauce for it but he wasn’t familiar with some of the ingredients they had and they lacked others he usually used, so he couldn’t get too creative. But still it was done. Thera pulled out a couple of bowls and they dug into the stirfry Ben had put together.
“It’s good.” She told him as she wolfed it down. “If we don’t have leftovers I’m usually just stuck eating chopped vegetables when my aunt's working late.”
“Well thanks, while I’m here I can help out with cooking at least. Maybe we can get Sonya or Falk to grab some of the ingredients I’m more used to or show me how to use the ones here, then I can really get creative.”
“Sounds good to me.” She told him as she continued eating.
Ben smiled. It felt good to share a meal with someone.