Things were going well.

While Henrietta continued testing different means of treating hides to make leather, Clark was happily tending to the cooking fire, where droopnose meat had been propped up over several green-wood skewers and dripping its fat into the fire below. Jacob was running through some practice stances while watching the woodlands for another one of the vinebeasts, Alyssa hadn't endangered or seriously pestered anyone in three days and was sorting the spoils of her latest resource-gathering trip into the appropriate places, and Oliver seemed to be doing quite well with his latest project.

Well, he had been doing rather well. The copper-covered rock he'd made looked imposing, with a bright flame burning merrily above it, but right now he was struggling to move it to the other side of the Shelter, likely hampered by the heat it was putting off.

Henrietta hopped to her feet and walked over, "Do you need help?" she asked.

Oliver jumped at her question, apparently having not noticed her approaching, and turned to her with a still-recovering expression of shock.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

Henrietta pointed at the coppery rock, "That. Do you need help moving it?"

Now that she was closer, she really wondered what it was. It had used a lot of copper, that much was obvious, and given how limited their supply was, it had to be useful to justify that much use.

Oliver looked at her blankly for a moment before understanding dawned on him, "Right! Yes. Just move it right…" he positioned himself a couple feet away from the existing campfire. "Here."

Henrietta always kept her ink-flail wrapped around her arm, so a few moments later she'd successfully relocated the stone. Moving things with her inklings was always a bit odd, because while there was resistance the more massive something was, none of it actually affected her arm in any real way, giving it an oddly weightless-floating sensation on the whole.

Oliver gave what would charitably be interpreted as a nod of gratitude, then started muttering to himself, gesturing around vaguely.

"Do you need any other assistance?" Henrietta prompted, then frowned. "Do you need sleep?"

"I'm fine, but…" he trailed off into incoherent mumbling again.

"But?"

"I'm trying to figure out my confidence interval for letting the original fire go out, or if extinguishing it might interfere with the brazier. Hmm."

Oliver reached out with a slightly-charred wand in his hand and tapped the bowl. Before Henrietta could ask what he was doing doing, a column of flames interrupted her, and she jerked herself backwards to avoid it. "Hells, Oliver!"

Oliver seemed equally surprised, cursing before activating a Skill and belting out a quick incantation. In response to his spell, the fire slowly morphed from a veritable column of flame back into a small orb of fire hovering about a foot above the stone. It was a little rough around the edges, but seemed stable enough that Oliver relaxed and took a deep breath.

"Could have been bad," he muttered, rolling his arms seemingly to limber them up.

"So what exactly is this?" Henrietta asked, now somewhat more wary of the magical item than she had been a few minutes prior.

"It's a brazier," Oliver said, as though it explained everything.

"You'll need to tell me a bit more than that," she pushed. "What does it do and why did you make it?"

"Well, it's a… It…" he closed and opened his mouth a few times while looking for the right words, "It's a source of fire."

Henrietta gave Oliver the most skeptical look she could muster, to no avail. Eventually she just asked, "I can tell that much. What do you need it for?"

"It's an adjustable fire source," the artificer distractedly explained, "And a permanent one. Ideally, I can use it to maintain the First Flame indefinitely and with greater ease of management, and I can adjust it, like I just did, to change how that fire will behave, giving it more utility in doing fire-y things. It's pretty limited, though, especially this one. Though, even the best can only do fairly basic pyrokinesis. At the moment, because I want to use it to refine more copper, I've got the flame set above the surface and burning decently hot. It's a pretty general tool, overall, and has a lot of potential uses. This one isn't great, but it'll work for now. Can your inklings feel pain?"

"Not in any meaningful sense," Henrietta answered, appreciating the work that had gone into the brazier. As an alchemist, she had lots of experience with various sources of fire, so seeing something this advanced made from really basic enchantments and literal bronze age materials... it made her proud of Oliver. He'd come so far from being scared to do anything, just a few weeks ago. She still didn't entirely understand why Oliver had chosen to make this with so much of their copper, but as a leader she needed to be supportive. "They can be damaged, but most of the time they don't have any capacity to properly register discomfort or pain from injury."

"Excellent. In that case, can I get a bowl made out of ink down there," he indicated the basin of the brazier, "To catch the copper that will drip into it?"

"I don't have anything that could make a bowl," she thought for a moment, "Or that could withstand molten copper, for that matter."

"Pity. Alright, thanks for the help. I'll figure something out," he waved her off.

"Well hold on, what are you trying to do?"

"I want to melt the copper off of the next skull, but I don't want it to drip onto the brazier. That would… go badly."

"Why not make a bowl out of wood?"

"Catch it in something flammable?"

Henrietta nodded, "You could fill it with water to prevent it from catching on fire. Or, why would it matter if it does catch on fire? We could make a basic bowl in less than an hour of work, and it would keep your brazier safe."

"That could work, actually. That could, that could work." Oliver mused, tapping his chin. "Alright, let's do this."

"Warrior Veeran," Henrietta called for the pacing man.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Artificer Smith needs a wooden bowl. Can you make one?"

"How large?"

Henrietta deferred to Oliver, who made no motion to answer until she prompted him, "Smith?"

"About this big," he spread his hands apart, "Large enough to fill most of the brazier basin. It doesn't need to be very clean, though. The thicker, the better. And wet wood is fine."

Jacob nodded, "I can do that."

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The blade-wielding man left into the forest, and Henrietta turned back to Oliver. "What else will you need? Are you still making progress on the setup you'll need for your staff?"

"Yes," Oliver confirmed, seemingly distracted. He made a few motions that Henrietta interpreted as hitting a few different things with a hammer, then fixed his gaze off in the distance. "A chisel. I could probably work better with a chisel. For that I'll need… a hammer. And a flat rock – could you move that one into the Shelter?"

The rock in question was a decently-sized boulder partially embedded in the ground near the cliff face close to the tree line, that tapered to a decently-flat surface at the top.

"Oh, and I'll need…" Oliver swayed slightly.

"Sleep?" Henrietta rushed around the brazier to get ready to catch him.

"No, not sleep. I'll just need… I need… Is that a vinebeast?"

Henrietta whipped her head up, eyes narrowed on a moving bit of foliage. She couldn't tell if it was just a spot of wind, or if…

She cursed. "Ride! Out here, now! With spear. Smith, inside. Veeran! If you can hear me, get back here!"

Fortunately, she already had her ink-flail inkling created, and it flashed forward at high speed to crack against the vinebeast's wooden skull. This one was decidedly neither canine nor feline, but instead had a muzzle bordering on draconic. The rest of its body was still its trademark coiling vines, but it was easily twice the size of the previous ones they'd fought, and if that alone wasn't sufficient, the whole thing was flying.

Its four limbs paddled through the air lazily, each of which had several questing vines snaking off from it, ready to ensnare them if they got too close, or just their weapons if they didn't.

Henrietta's first action was to try and drag the creature to the ground. With a flick of her wrist, the flail snapped out and wrapped around the neck of the vinebeast. A second flick of the wrist later should have dragged it to the ground, but instead managed to pull Henrietta off her feet. Before she could properly go airborne, she disengaged the flail and swung it around to smack the vinebeast in the face.

Alyssa came in like a missile, and while she struck while it was still reeling from Henrietta's attack, her reed spear didn't even scratch the elemental's wooden face, it still knocked it to the side. Then she slid underneath the creature, and leaped up behind it. Henrietta caught a brief flash of something in her off hand, and then the floating vinebeast suddenly sagged, though it recovered its lazy floating a moment later.

"It's got vines in the back holding it up!" Alyssa called out in way of explanation.

That was a bit of a relief. Proper magical flight was a rather terrifying ability for an antagonistic creature to have, and it implied that whatever type of creature this was had a broad swathe of abilities to call upon. Or, if it was just the same creature that kept returning, it meant it could grow at a terrifying rate. Supported pseudoflight was much less concerning.

Henrietta's next attack, with power built up from a full swing around her back, crashed into the vinebeast's face with so much force that it embedded itself wholly within its torso. It was then swallowed by the vines altogether, and a loud curse from Alyssa confirmed that it had turned around fully.

It lunged downward, and Alyssa threw herself out of the way right before the creature's face smashed into the ground where she'd been a moment later, sending clods of dirt flying as it wrenched its muzzle from the soil and tried to strike Alyssa once again.

Fortunately, it never got the chance. Jacob flew out of the woods with perfect focus, his blade already striking. His first attack severed the vines holding the vinebeast in the air, and it suddenly slammed into the ground. His second attack cut halfway through the vinebeast's oversized neck, then he pulled back with a dizzying display of skill and struck the other side of the creature's neck.

Against all odds, the vinebeast stayed intact as its neck began to knit itself back together with vines, but Jacob's third attack severed the remaining vines, and the animate mass fell into pieces.

Jacob's fifth and final attack brought his blade down into the creature's wooden face, and the fight was over.

It had been less than a minute in total, but Henrietta's heart was still racing. Were the vinebeasts learning? It certainly felt like that, given how it had attacked within minutes of Jacob leaving their camp, but neither she nor Jacob had seen any evidence of them having awakened some kind of guardian spirit when investigating the place Alyssa had encountered the first one.

It was concerning, but there wasn't much they could realistically do about it right now. They just needed to be careful, and probably keep Jacob close to camp as much as possible until the rest of them got better weapons. Hopefully that wouldn't be especially long from now, with Oliver making copper tools, but given how only cutting instruments seemed able to properly harm the vinebeasts – Henrietta noticed Alyssa had the carving knife they'd made from the first vinebeast's tooth in her hand – it was certainly a necessity.

Neither Clark nor Oliver were anywhere to be seen, fortunately. That must have meant that they'd successfully made it to the shelter when the vinebeast attacked. The shelter may not have had the most protection, but Oliver had said he'd given it some basic protective wards, and its relatively small opening and toughened wood exterior meant it was certainly the most defensible place they had at the moment.

"Haleford! Smith!" she called out, and Clark hopped out of the shelter with an amusingly guilty expression on his face. She waved him off, and he returned to the interior as she got closer to their home.

"Smith!" she called out. He probably didn't have any particular issues, but he wasn't answering, so...

Henrietta ducked into the shelter, looking for their wayward artificer.

"Smith? Are you… ah." Henrietta smiled as she saw the artificer sitting against the back wall of the shelter, head bent over and very much asleep.

"Is this the bowl?" Oliver asked, drawing Henrietta's eye to what he was hefting.

"That's the one," she confirmed. Jacob had carved it over the course of an hour or two before he too had gone to sleep.

Because of the eternal daylight, their sleeping schedules hadn't been synced for ages. It made watches easy, because there already was no point at which everyone wanted to be asleep at the same time. Of course, the fact everyone slept when they felt like they should did make planning times when everyone was awake slowly harder and harder to manage. It was actually getting close to Henrietta's nighttime, though she wasn't able to sleep quite yet. That wouldn't happen until Alyssa was awake.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Oliver merely nodded and placed the bowl in the brazier. From there, he suspended the second droopnose skull over the brazier by wedging a decently long and sturdy stick into the rock wall nearby, then adjusted the height of the brazier's flame up until it was directly on the copper portions of said skull.

From there, Henrietta split her attention between the forest – in case another vinebeast appeared – her attempts to cure hides into something they could use for leather, and Oliver, as he melted the copper into the wooden bowl, frowned at the giant plume of smoke it let off as it burned, then took the skull off the wall and placed it on a small stony outcropping. The wooden bowl was poured out onto the flat-topped rock she'd moved nearby, and then taken with Oliver as he went inside the shelter.

He emerged a few minutes later with the bowl full of mud, and began melting the skull into it once again. That attempt was abandoned as the mud started pop-pop-popping and letting off fairly sizable clouds of steam. Once again, Oliver removed the skull from the fire and, after waiting a few minutes, retrieved the copper that had landed in the mud and put the relevant nuggets on the flat-topped rock.

He went into the Shelter again, and this time emerged with an empty bowl. Wordlessly, he wandered over to the edge of the forest – Henrietta tensed, preparing for something dangerous to leap out at him – and began filling the bowl with dirt, packing the red soil down by tamping down on it with a flat stone.

This time, he dug out a small indent in the dirt with his finger before positioning the skull over that and letting the copper drip into it. This time, he seemed content with what he found, and proceeded to melt most of the copper into it before removing the skull from the fire once again.

He waited a few minutes before digging out the rough copper ingot – from this distance, she couldn't tell what it was supposed to be – and placing it alongside the other nuggets on the flat-topped stone. From the way he touched it, it looked like it was still hot, just not unreasonably so. A few casts of a spell later, he looked at his chisel with some satisfaction.

Oliver dug around in their firewood pile for a few minutes, emerging with a solid-looking piece of wood with one fairly bulbous end. He took that makeshift mallet and his chisel and prepared to carve a line into the stone. Then he stopped, adjusted his angle slightly, and repeated the cycle.

Alyssa emerged from the shelter, rolling her arms to stretch, and Henrietta waved her over.

"Mmm…morning, Commander," Alyssa yawned. "Anything fun happen?"

"Only interesting thing is Oliver, fortunately."

"That's a relief. Well, tapping in."

Henrietta stifled a yawn, "Much obliged. You know what you're doing."

It wasn't a question, but Alyssa nodded anyway. Hopefully, she wouldn't cause too much trouble while Henrietta slept, but so long as Oliver was actively engaged in magic, she didn't think it was too likely that she'd interrupt him. She was smarter than that.

The pile of leaves and moss that had been spread across a flat-ish stone as a 'bunk' was no more comfortable today than it had been yesterday, but Henrietta was tired enough that it couldn't bother her that much. The constant noise was also something of a problem, but at this point not even Oliver chiseling stone could faze her. The ever-present light was more of an issue, but she simply unfolded a wing from the back of her dress and laid it over her eyes.

It didn't take long for sleep to claim her.

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