'I'm sorry; my mother wouldn't approve,' said Armin. He was a careful, dutiful student. It was fine if he wanted to be a bit old-fashioned.
Below, the team of students walked the remaining sections of the site, testing each bit of rubble, bone, and metal. Each student carried an intensity gauge, and every few moments would lean down and carefully take a reading, noting the result on a slip of paper that would go to feed Ironfoot's map. The students had caviled at the assignment at first, having not really understood what it was they were volunteering for, but they quickly got over their reser vations. The promise of free food and even the smallest of stipends would, Ironfoot was sure, convince any common student to freely give up a limb.
'Shall we have a look?' asked Armin. 'See how things are progressing?'
Ironfoot nodded. 'It won't be long now. Another day or two and we'll have all we can get.'
They had both unconsciously begun breathing through their mouths; they started down into the crater that had, a year ago, been the Seelie city of Selafae.
There was a peculiar smell down in the crater, one that nobody could quite recognize, though it had components upon which everyone could agree. There was a hint of cinnamon to it, a bit of roasted pork, almost pleasant but undercut with an ugly ratlike stink that lingered in the nose. They'd been here for six weeks and no one had yet gotten used to it. Some of the students wore cloths tied around their faces, but these didn't seem to help much. A visiting professor of Elements had offered to remove the odor with a simple transmutation, but Ironfoot had refused, not wanting to contaminate the site.
The students and researchers knew better. At Ironfoot's insistence, not a single breath of re was to be expended at the site. No little luck charms, no cantrips to sing the pain out of aching muscles.
Walking among the ruins, the smell crept into Ironfoot's senses and he flinched away from it. There was something about it that he couldn't quite put his finger on, something that might be important. It was a memory, an experience from long ago; he could sense it in the way that any unique smell might recall a memory of younger days, but he couldn't place it and it was driving him crazy.
'How goes it, Mister Beman?' Armin said to one of the students, a tall pale boy who looked as if he hadn't had a decent meal since his schooling had begun, and was only now beginning to fill out under Ironfoot's auspices.
'Coming along, Professor. I hope to have my section finished by lunchtime.' He beamed, patting his intensity gauge.
Ironfoot scowled and took the gauge from him. 'You're not holding it quite right,' he said, demonstrating. 'It needs to be held as far from the body as possible, so your own re doesn't affect the readings. See?'
The intensity gauge was something Ironfoot had developed in his own student days, working under the Master Elementalist Luane, who had almost single-handedly invented the field of inductive thaumatology. The instrument consisted of a brass tube, about the height of Ironfoot's waist, with a silver tip on one end and a series of graded markings lining the outside of the tube. Inside was a silver plate, opposite a plate of cold iron. In the absence of re, the silver and iron plates nearly touched, their natural repulsion negligible. But when the tip was applied to an object or creature that was imbued with the magical essence, the silver plate repelled the iron plate in proportion to the strength of the field, moving a needle along the graded markings. Ironfoot was more than a little proud of it.
He handed the gauge back to the student, who seemed relieved when he and Armin continued on their way. He knelt to inspect a few of Beman's readings: Each item, from the tiniest pebble to the largest section of wall, had been marked with runes designating the direction and intensity of re embedded in it. All food for the map.
Once everything had been marked, all the data cross-checked and analyzed for errors, and the artifacts corrected for the many interlocking auras of re that permeated any Fae city, then Ironfoot's work could begin in earnest. Fortunately for him (though clearly not for the citizens of Selafae), the blast that had destroyed the city was massive, its reitic force so potent that it had nearly annihilated any background essence that existed in the city before its impact.
Ironfoot was eager to have this done. Eager to solve the problem and move on. Solving problems was what Ironfoot did. The specific problem didn't usually matter to him, so long as it was interesting and got him out of the city. But this one was different. This one would linger.
Once the map was complete, then, he would return to Queensbridge, and would perform what he sincerely hoped would be the greatest feat of investigative thaumatology to date: He would reverse-engineer the monstrous magic that had destroyed an entire city in an instant. He would recreate the Einswrath weapon using only its aftermath as a guide.
And after that? Then what? Would anything seem as important after this? That part of him that was the source of his anger and impatience was singing to him again lately, as it had more and more often over the last few years: time to move on.
He and Armin continued their walk, listening to the sounds of the instruments clinking against the rubble, and the light conversation of the students at their work. Someone was singing an old, sad Arcadian hymn:
