The Mesios Tinkerer's Guild turned out to be far smaller than its name implied — a squat, soot-blackened building wedged between a cobbler's shop and something that smelled suspiciously like the fish market two streets over. A cluster of gears and scrap metal had been welded to the doorframe in a shape that may, at some point, have resembled a dragon. It currently resembled a pile of gears and scrap metal.
Bruce was through the door before Xavier could even suggest they find breakfast first.
Inside, the shop was cramped and cluttered, every wall lined with shelves of tools, half-finished contraptions, and jars of loose parts that clinked ominously whenever someone brushed past. Behind the counter stood a stout woman with soot smudged across one cheek and a pair of goggles shoved up into frizzy grey hair.
"Trial's still open, if that's what you're here for!" she called without looking up from the mechanism she was tightening. "One entry fee, one hour on the clock. Whatever you build is yours to keep or sell. Impress me enough, and the guild puts its seal on you."
"How much for materials?" Bruce was already elbow-deep in a barrel of scrap iron.
"Depends what you take."
Xavier leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Bruce. We haven't slept in a real bed in two days, and your first instinct is to go build something."
"My first instinct is to go build something," Bruce confirmed, not looking up.
Behind them, Stephan had wandered over to a rack of finished gadgets and picked up something that sparked the instant his fingers closed around it. He yelped and dropped it.
"Don't touch the merchandise," the shopkeeper said, still not looking up.
A familiar chime sounded in front of Bruce.
[Spark and Steel] (Class Quest)
Description: Forge an original modification using guild materials within the trial's time limit to earn formal recognition as an Artificer.
Reward: Access to a class.
Bruce dismissed the notification with the faintest, most dangerous smile Xavier had seen on him all week.
"Stephan. Give me your sword."
"...Why?"
"Because I have an idea, and the idea involves your sword."
Stephan clutched the gladius to his chest like Bruce had asked for one of his limbs instead. "I just won this in an honorable duel of blood and steel—"
"I'll give it back. Better."
"...Fine. But if you break it, I'm telling God about it."
"I don't think that's how threats work," Xavier said, though nobody was listening to him anymore.
Bruce spent the next several minutes buying up scrap tungsten, a coil of thin copper wire, and a small clay vial of something the shopkeeper called "distilled ember-oil," which she handed over with the specific caution of someone who had clearly sold it to idiots before. Xavier watched the whole transaction with growing concern.
"Please tell me this isn't going to explode."
"It's very unlikely to explode."
"That is not the reassurance you think it is."
Bruce set up at one of the guild's spare workbenches, tools spread out in a neat, deliberate row, and got to work. Xavier had never actually seen Bruce build anything back on Earth — the most engineering he'd ever attempted was assembling furniture, badly — but here, hunched over the gladius with a soldering iron in one hand and his tongue poking out in concentration, he moved like he'd done this a thousand times in some other life.
He fitted a slim metal housing along the flat of the blade near the guard, no larger than a matchbox, and fed the copper wire down through a narrow channel he'd carved with startling precision for someone who'd never held these tools an hour ago. The ember-oil vial slotted into the back of the housing with a soft click.
Halfway through, a spark leapt from the mechanism and caught the edge of the workbench on fire. Xavier sighed the sigh of a man who had seen this exact scenario before, on a different continent, in a different life, and calmly stomped it out with his boot.
"Day two," he muttered. "We're averaging one small fire per day now."
"It's a process," Bruce said, unbothered, already re-threading the wire.
Forty minutes later, he held the gladius back out to Stephan, hilt first. A small brass lever now sat just above the guard, and along the blade's spine ran a thin seam of blackened metal.
"Squeeze the lever when you swing," Bruce said. "It vents the oil through the seam and ignites it off the friction plate. You get about six seconds of flame before it needs to reset."
Stephan's eyes went wide with the specific, unholy joy of a man who had just been handed a flaming sword. "I love you. I don't say that enough. I love you."
"Please test it outside," the shopkeeper said, already backing toward the far wall.
They didn't test it outside. Stephan swung it once, gleefully, and a jet of orange flame roared off the blade's edge, singeing the edge of a shelf and sending three separate customers diving for cover.
"OUTSIDE," the shopkeeper repeated, considerably louder.
[Class Quest, "Spark and Steel," complete! You have unlocked the Artificer class! Rewards have been distributed accordingly.]
The shopkeeper, once she'd finished putting out the small fire on her shelf with a tired, well-practiced motion, pressed a guild seal into the back of Bruce's identification card without another word, clearly deciding that whatever chaos had just occurred was, technically, within the rules.
Outside, in the square, Stephan admired his new weapon like a proud parent. "We should name it."
"We are not naming the sword," Xavier said.
"Ember."
"We are not—"
"Too late, it's Ember now." Stephan sheathed it with a satisfied nod, then reached into the pack at his hip. "Oh, right, I almost forgot. I got these too." He pulled out two thin, leather-bound scriptures, still faintly warm from wherever they'd been stored, and held them out toward the group. "Some old scholar's writings, I guess? Cassian's guy handed them over with the silver moons."
Xavier took one, turning it over. Embossed into the worn leather cover, in looping gold script, was a single name.
The Great Roswelle.
Bruce went very, very quiet.