For a month Ciaran and Diana ran around and made soap. It was weird for the young woman because when she was first told of her mission up north, she envisioned something a little more action-packed.
Not that the boy allowed her any rest. He was driven mad by the desire to complete his project. Village after village, base after base he collected his milk.
His success rate had improved tremendously. He now had success every twenty-two attempts as opposed to the previous thirty-five. In addition, he increased the quantity used in each and every one of them.
In the very beginning, he started with just two hundred and fifty milliliters worth of liquid, now each attempt saw him use five hundred milliliters. His productivity had increased tremendously, but it was still not enough.
The worst of it was, that lately every time he experimented he would suffer slight nausea. He tried his best to hide it, but each new attempt got worse and worse until Diana finally noticed.
She inspected him, body and soul, and frowned.
"Everything about you is weird Rony. I see the problem, but let me tell you, people would kill to have it. Your understanding of Water must have crossed the line, now you either have to become an Apprentice, or reach Rank Two."
Ciaran knew, that in actuality there was only one option. His body was still processing his rank up there was no way he could go through another one so soon.
The problem lay in the fact that he was a Wind mage. If he wanted to reach a new height in his magic, he first had to deepen his connection with the Wind.
Credit where credit is due, he had been feeling a stronger connection lately, but he didn't know how to push it. The first time he did, it was subconscious, he didn't even know he had become a Novice.
"How do I push it? I never learned, and my mentors never taught me." He honestly asked Diana.
This surprised the girl, as usually, people learn those things before starting their path onto the magic.
The only reason Eleftherios never thought him how to properly speak to the Wind was also that he hadn't considered his student's peculiar situation.
Ciaran had achieved a natural connection to his element. That was a very rare thing, as usually people were either thought, or they attempted a connection on their own and died.
Diana explained all that to the boy, and they both were stumped on how to proceed. She couldn't help him, because their elements didn't match, and they didn't have time for the boy to figure it out on his own.
"I have an idea. Before I try to kill myself with it, are you sure we can't ask our teachers for help?" He asked, and when he got a negative answer he sighted.
He sat on a nearby rock and rubbed his face with both hands.
"Look, we both know I can't ask you for help, without it being a betrayal to my Master, but we also both know that I am in a dire need of assistance. See that tree over there, strike it with lightning if you know of my plan." He said calmly to no one.
Diana was confused as her teacher said that no one would be providing them assistance and that he would make sure of it. She was shocked when lighting came out of nowhere, and smited the tree the boy was pointing at.
"Good, is my plan viable, meaning is there more than a fifty percent chance it would succeed? Same deal, but with that tree over there."
This time no lighting came. The boy sighed and he led the way to their next village.
"What the hell was that? Who were you talking to?" She asked him, curiosity eating her from the inside.
"I was praying to a fickle Goddess. I wouldn't recommend it, from what I heard, she could be a real
bitch sometimes." He said as he crashed into a tree.
He got up and dramatically pointed at the suddenly spawned tree, and then continued on his path. Diana was curious, but whatever could ignore the old silver-obsessed man's wishes so bluntly was not to be trifled with. Ciaran asked it for help, but he did it in a very roundabout way, and even then his expression was that of someone who had eaten something rotten.
They got to the village and sold meat, fur, and some medicine. With each item they sold, they gave out a free bar of soap, sometimes even two when they felt like it.
Now that they were used to making it, they had quite an abundance of it, and if it helped the people, why not just give it to them.
In a room of the local tavern, Ciaran was on his knees trying not to puke. The process was getting worse and worse, and he just couldn't handle it anymore. He ran outside and released the contents of his stomach.
"This is it, we are all stocked up on lactose. Not because we have enough, but because our tools broke." He said.
She didn't like the way he referred to himself or the way he sounded out the word 'broke' when he referred to himself. Now that she knew a bit about his history, she knew what the connotation behind that was.
She didn't call him out on it, nor did she comfort him. She wasn't good in any of that, she just pulled him into bed and told him to shut up and sleep.
The two always slept together. It was cheaper that way, and they could share body heat. The idea of shame never really crossed their minds, as for one, leaving his body and mind aside, Ciaran was just nine years of age, and two neither of them was capable of such a luxury anyway.
Now that their operation had hit a wall. The boy finally stopped pushing so hard. Diana decided to take advantage of that and led them to a nearby pond. It was deep into the woods, but it was still within the borders of the Empire.
This particular place was marked for all Rangers. It was a very popular resting place, as it was far from any danger, and also far enough from any human habitat that the people who came here could relax in peace.
Ciaran looked around, but the more he looked, the less he understood.
"Why are we here? I don't see anything of value." He said, earning himself a slap on the back of his head.
"We are taking a day off, and resting here. The value comes from the natural beauty of this place, and for the next twenty-four hours I forbid you from working."
He wanted to argue, but not everyone had his passion for science, and Diana was kind enough to indulge him until now, he owed her one day of rest.
But that wouldn't mean he would waste his day. No, if she refused to allow him to practice magic, martial arts, or alchemy, then he still had one last thing he could focus on.
He started a fire in a circular rock formation and took out some of the boar meat he had on him. He would show her what a good meal was when prepared by a master chef.
He skewered a few pieces of meat and slowly rotated them over the fire. He cooked and periodically made cuts into it to see if it was cooked on the inside.
When it was finally done he let it rest for a while before he went into the forest to gather mushrooms. He wanted to make a fresh mushroom souse, yet he knew he lacked the ingredients to make it perfect.
"I will make it work."
He still had a little of the milk he couldn't process from last night, and he could make it into butter. The spices he needed he could replace with whatever he could find locally.
He scouted and found a bit of thyme and he had some salt and pepper on him. With the mushrooms that he found, that would have to work.
He came back and started preparing his souse. He knew Diana liked meat, pepper, pepper, and he had seen her eat mushrooms.
'The ability of a chef is determined by the people he feeds.'
He didn't add any additional seasoning because he wasn't familiar with Diana's tastes yet. But he was sure she would like his mushroom-seasoned roasted pork.
When he was done he went to call her over. She was relaxing on the edge of the pond with her feet dipped in it. It was twilight and the dying sun's light was hitting her image just right. Her beauty was staggering even for Ciaran, who was too preoccupied with other stuff to notice until now.
He wanted to call on her, but he didn't.
'Moonlight always suited her better, I want to see her bask in its light too.' His emotions took over, and for once the boy couldn't understand what they were.
Desire, for he wanted to burn that image into his head, greed because he refused to share it with anyone else, but those were secondary, there was something else, something a lot wilder. Something new, that the boy didn't recognize.
Before he could think about it further, she had noticed him, and she came over, snapping him out of his inner turmoil.
"Dinner is ready. Get ready to taste the power of knowledge." He said, as he puffed up his chest, and lifted his chin up. If there was one thing this foodie was confident in, it was his cooking skills.
He decided to ignore the previous phenomenon and accredit it to his own fatigue.