The Kiln

Angela wakes up and emerges from her shack only to be greeted by a drone. Excited that her kiln was finally ready, Angela grabs her 'blast rune' as she dubs it and rises into the air, flying forward at a leisurely pace while admiring her work towards the scenery. By this point the trees that she had planted were all somewhat grown, though at varying heights as she only planted 5 each day.

Its not long before Angela reaches the hive and she does a loop de loop to show off her vastly improved flying ability before heading inside. After all of her trips to chat with Lenara, Angela almost has the layout of the hive memorised, only having to pause at a couple of intersections before she reaches the construction site.

The hollowed out kiln looked out of place for sure but in Angela's eyes it was beautiful and as they say: "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Lenara stood out to greet her, she had become a lot more relaxed around Angela the past few days and had even dropped the 'miss'.

"Angela, you are looking beautiful today. How did your tests go, did you get what you wanted?"

Lenara's formal countenance had dissolved completely and they chatted like they had been friends for years.

Eventually the small talk ended and the two got around to the main topic, the kiln. Though the main reason for the kiln was to create bricks for the furnace and forge Angela also had a secondary project: creating a house.

Angela placed some clay bricks carefully on the shelves, stopping after there were about 15 (five for each shelf) before setting up the blast rune. Normally it would take almost 16 hours to fire a clay brick but due to the... unorthodox source of the fire the process was shortened to about 8 hours instead, allowing for the production of 45 bricks if kept going 24 hours a day. Unfortunately the drones could not use the runes as they had no means of controlling anima and both Angela and Lenara kept strict sleep schedules.

If a wall of a house takes roughly 250 bricks then it would take slightly more than a week per wall. At that rate getting the house and furnace done would take months; they would have to make more kilns.

While the bricks were being fired Angela and Lenara moved to a more comfortable room - Angela had been getting used to the alien environment after the previous visits - and began to talk about a different project: expanding the hive.

With the danger of the Slag elemental, the hive's expansion was severely restricted. In order to create more drones while keeping a fully functioning work force several rooms had to be constructed. First and foremost, the current moss gathering cavern was not large enough and was already on the verge of breaking through the outer wall of the island. Secondly the drone living space where the drones slept needed expansion; although since they didn't leisure activities and comfort wasn't a factor this was a minor concern. Finally the odd carpet organism had to be expanded as controlling drones off of it was extremely tiring for Lenara.

Contrary to what Angela had initially thought, the hive didn't actually have to be built underground, it was just the most efficient use of space. This made things easier as she wouldn't have to create an underground environment, the most cost efficient method to gain more area was most likely to assimilate a new island but Angela wanted to create the forge and equip some of the drones with armour and proper weapons. Lenara also wanted to make some improvements to how the drones were made as they were woefully ineffective against stronger enemies such as the slag elemental.

With their plans made the two chatted a little more before parting ways, Angela heading to her rune work while Lenara ordered her drones to create another kiln before working on her modifications.

On her return Angela dives straight into her work creating the quill. The thing took Angela a few tries but she finished it with relative ease. Next she tried inscribing the runes onto her knife; the process much smoother this time. Once the runes had been inscribed it was time to test it out.

She channels some anima into the knife and swings downwards towards a wooden block. The knife cuts into it like hot butter but as the wood sizzles the heat produced shunts out towards her, searing her hand. Angela lets out a gasp of pain and drops the knife, stumbling backwards.

Her hand is blackened and starts to give out an acrid smell. Angela's vision blurs as she tries to deal with the pain, her teeth gritting tightly so as to not scream. It was a wound that a normal person would never fully recover from, luckily Angela was not a normal person; as much as her power sends a shiver down her spine when she sees it.

The strands of skin that wiggled like feelers repulsed Angela and she decides to bandage her hand so that she doesn't have to look at it. She then ponders why the rune reacted so differently from when it was on the quill. The only thing that Angela can see differs from the two objects is the galladium core. If that was the source of the divergence then it would mean that certain materials had an effect on the outcome of the rune, something not mentioned in the book.

The unfortunate accident puts a stop to Angela's rune work for now and so she tries to find something else to do. The idea she comes up with after pondering is decorating.