[Oooooh, dream madra! This is...very exciting, but...are you sure there isn't more to it?]

Eithan picked up one of the scales and held it out to Dross. “Why don't you try cycling one? You might like it.”

Dross' eye swiveled to Lindon as though looking for approval, but he snapped up the scale between his teeth before Lindon could say anything.

[Mmm ga mmph muph,] he said.

Did having something in his mouth really stop him from talking clearly? Or was he imitating humans?

Dross slurped up the scale, making an exaggerated gulping sound and then closing his eye. He started to shimmer with a violet light, and Lindon could feel madra passing through his channels and into his core.

[Yes, yes, I think I do like this. It's kind of a tingly feeling.]

“This is only the key,” Eithan reminded him. “I want you at your peak condition before I try my experiment. Can you show Lindon an illusion?”

Gesha let her drudge walk her over to a nearby table, where she started polishing a tool. “Do they need to be in my place of work?” she said loudly. “No. Bothering me at all hours. Could have come and found me when I was needed, done all the rest of this outside.”

[Anything specific?] Dross asked.

“Dealer's choice,” Eithan responded.

Dross thought for a minute, and suddenly Lindon saw a horse burst through the doors. It wasn't a very convincing horse; it was largely transparent, and as it tossed its head, sparkles flew from its mane. It trotted around the room, demonstrating that it was as long as a wagon train and had sixteen legs.

[Majestic creatures.]

“How is it, Lindon?” Eithan asked.

“It's a beautiful horse,” Lindon said to Dross, “but it isn't quite realistic.”

[Well, maybe I didn’t get the shading down. Or the shape. It’s really a lot easier if I have something to model it on.]

“Keep cycling,” Eithan instructed, then turned to Gesha. “Fisher, I apologize for the delay. Could you give Lindon a project he might complete, given a little experimentation? Something with the materials you have here.”

Fisher Gesha grumbled, looking Lindon sharply in the eye. Without a word, she let him know that if this ended up being a waste of her time, he would be the one to suffer.

But in the end, she popped open a series of boxes, laying out the ingredients for a simple construct. First, a crimson Truegold-level fire binding shaped like a thin, twisting corkscrew, which hissed as it sat on the table. Second, three collections of dead matter, like piles of Remnant bones: one pile white, one gray, and one striped in multiple colors that she had no doubt stripped from the rainbow Remnant that day. Finally, she set down a Forged circle of madra the rough size and shape of a scale: the sample of the customer's madra.

“The customer would like an explosive construct that will detonate when he wants it to, with minimal power loss, and of course without exploding in his pocket, hm? However, he has brought us only one binding to work with. What would you do?”

Lindon knew the problem. He had to test the interactions between the binding, his own madra, and the sample from the customer without destroying the binding itself. Then he had to try it with all three types of dead matter, choosing the best one. Incompatibility might result in weakening the binding to Highgold or Lowgold output, effectively wasting the Truegold technique. But instability could result in the construct exploding on its own.

If he had three bindings, he could be fairly confident of success. If not in his own safety. With only one...

“Apologies, but I can't do it. I would need a drudge.” A drudge would be able to test each sample in detail, giving him a much more thorough understanding of the composition and how they should interact.

“Hold that thought!” Eithan said. “Instead, use your perception to sense each piece deeply. Get a complete feel for it, and how they relate to one another, as though you were the drudge yourself.”

A still-cycling Dross cracked his eye and drifted slightly closer, as though he found the task intriguing but didn't want to admit it.

This was an exercise in futility, and Lindon looked to Fisher Gesha for support, but she gestured for Lindon to get on with it. He would never be able to duplicate all the functions of a drudge himself. If he could, there would be no need for drudges.

But he tried, spending five minutes apiece on the binding, the customer's sample, and all three piles of dead matter.

At the end of the process, he had a guess, but it was like guessing how to glue together a broken vase using only his sense of touch. One of the piles had come from a force Remnant; would force madra add the right punch to the fire binding, or so much that it canceled out the flame? Would the rainbow Remnant's lingering resentment spitefully interfere with the bomb's activation, or not? He couldn't tell.

He pointed to the third pile, the white parts that looked like a disassembled claw and felt like razor-sharp wind. “This matter in a shell around the binding, bound with pure madra, should have minimal interference with the customer's madra.”

Gesha's wrinkled face was a mask, giving him no hint if he had succeeded or failed. She turned to Eithan.

“Dross,” Eithan said, “did you still sense what Lindon felt?”

Dross' eye opened, and he frowned at Eithan. [How could I? I'm all the way over here. I would have to reach into his memory and...oh, never mind, I actually did. Sorry, I was paying attention to something else.]

“If you would, please simulate the experiment in Lindon's head.”

Dross helped Lindon visualize the experiment. Lindon saw himself taking the white Remnant pieces and Forging them into a shell around the corkscrew binding. The whole thing turned a pink color, bound with his pure madra, and sealed into a shape like a lumpy stone. He rolled it across the floor and activated it with the sample of the customer's madra, and it detonated violently, blasting a crater into the floor and cracking the walls and ceiling, filling the room with smoke.

In the vision, Lindon felt no impact, only observing the successful explosion.

[It's a very nice image,] Dross said, [but I couldn’t tell you if it’s what would really happen. Here, look at this.]

The scene repeated successfully with the gray dead matter. And with the one made out of rainbows. And when Lindon sealed the construct with Blackflame, which changed the entire nature of the experiment.

[See, I can make it show any result I want. Couldn’t even tell you which one was most likely to work.]

Lindon sighed and opened his eyes. “He will tire himself out at this rate. The only way he'll be able to accurately project the experiment is by using my senses to understand all the madra completely. And if I could do that, I wouldn't need him.”

[That seems deliberately hurtful.]

“He's still a great help,” Lindon hurriedly added, “just like before. But he can't replace a drudge.”

Eithan smiled as if Lindon had stepped into his trap. “So he's lacking knowledge of madra aspects and how they interact.”

[You know, it's nice that someone pays attention and speaks properly. Hey, what do you have there?]

Eithan held up a ball of spinning copper plates. He caught a glimpse of colored lights flashing from between the plates themselves.

Lindon's heart leaped. The Arelius family library had all the information about Paths and techniques they had collected over generations. It could simulate hundreds, maybe thousands, of different Paths and their permutations. Lindon had missed it ever since leaving Serpent's Grave.