By midmorning the yard behind the Weary Wanderer looked like someone had opened a blacksmith’s shop, an apothecary, and a very confused kitchen all in the same ten paces.

  Kael had dragged out a big iron pot and set it over a low fire. Buckets of sap sat sweating in the weak spring light. A shallow crate of ash crouched under the eaves. Elspeth had contributed a stack of old bowls and what might once have been a broom, its bristles hacked down into the world’s ugliest brush.

  And a basket of glowgourds waited in the shade like a pile of smug, sleeping lanterns.

  I stepped out into the yard, wrapped my cloak tighter against the chill, and did what my brain always did before a complicated procedure: mentally walked through the steps. I had never actually made resin in real life before, but apparently being maxed out in alchemy meant I knew how to do it here. The knowledge was in my brain, and I could swear my fingers had the muscle memory for each step.

  Fire’s going. Sap, fat, ash, gourd. Heat, mix, cool, coat, cure. Don’t burn anything down. Including myself.

  “Morning, Miss Paladin.” The flour?dusted woman from the night before—baker, going by the streaks on her sleeves—was leaning in the open back doorway, arms folded. “Mayor says you’re turning fence into stone today.”

  “Attempting not to waste all your good fat,” I said. “Stone’s the stretch goal.”

  Kael looked up from the fire. He’d stripped down to a sleeveless undertunic, arms already sooty.

  “Got your pot. Got your fire.” He jerked his chin at the yard. “You tell us what to cook.”

  That still felt wrong. In the game, an NPC told you what to do, preferably with a yellow exclamation mark over their head and a handy objective counter. Here, a very real man with very real biceps was waiting on my instructions.

  Two boys hovered nearby—Finn, and another kid I recognized from the dinner table, the one with the moat idea. Both were vibrating with the particular energy of children who had been told they were “helpers” and interpreted that as “demolition crew.”

  And at the far edge of the yard, Beakly stood just off the packed?dirt path, one talon lifted, eyeing the simmering pot like a starving hawk at a fondue party. His feathers fluffed once in the cold breeze, then settled again.

  “Right.” I clapped my hands, which made my ribs complain. “First things first. What have we got?”

  Kael pointed with the poker. “Sap from the tall pines north of the brook.” He nodded toward a smaller pot on a flat stone. “Fat, rendered this morning. Ash from the blacksmith’s stove and the bakery. We sifted some, like you said.”

  I went to the fat first. It had cooled to a pale, cloudy liquid. I dipped a clean splinter of wood in, let a bead fall back. No floating cracklings, no meat scraps. Clear enough.

  “This is good,” I said. “Perfect, actually.”

  Elspeth, who had appeared at my elbow without me noticing, let out a tragic sigh.

  “That’s a week of pastry, that is,” she muttered.

  “Think of it as very determined pastry,” I said. “Pastry that keeps pigs out of your pantry.”

  She snorted, but the line of her shoulders eased a fraction.

  The ash crate was next. Finn and the moat boy—Jory, someone had called him—were already there, fingers black to the knuckles.

  “We did it like you said,” Jory announced proudly. “Burnt down ’til it was all white, then we scraped it.”

  Finn cupped some in his palm and then immediately coughed as it puffed into his face.

  I peered in. Half the crate was fine, pale?grey dust. The rest was blackened chunks, little charcoal islands in an ashy sea.

  “Close,” I said. “We need just the soft stuff.”

  I spread a piece of old linen over an empty crate.

  “Here. Scoop the ash onto this. Then lift the cloth and shake. The fine dust will fall through. The lumps stay on top. The lumps are what we don’t want.”

  “Like when I sift flour,” the baker put in from the doorway. “Only with more coughing.”

  Jory brightened. “I can do that.” He grabbed a scoop, Finn grabbed another, and in thirty seconds they were both breathing ash and grinning like chimney imps.

  I moved on to the sap. Kael hauled one of the buckets closer. It had an amber?honey look that I liked, but when I plunged two fingers in and lifted, it ran in sluggish threads rather than holding a good thick rope between my thumb and forefinger.

  “Hm.” I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the tackiness. “It’ll do, but we need it thicker. We’ll boil some of the water out.”

  Kael’s hand was already reaching for a second log.

  “More fire, then,” he said.

  “Eventually,” I said. “Right now, low and patient. If it starts smoking, we’ve ruined it.”

  He gave me a look that translated neatly to I have been boiling things in pots since you were in swaddling, but he took the log away again.

  “Your potion,” he said dryly. “Your rules.”

  I turned back to the kids. They’d already dumped a good half of the ash into my cloth, the heavier bits rolling perilously close to the edges.

  “Gentle,” I said. “We want flour, not gravel. If a big piece goes in the mix, that’s a weak point. Like a stone left in a wound.”

  Jory swallowed and shook the cloth more carefully. Finn deliberately made a face and blew a puff of ash at him. Jory coughed and retaliated. The baker snapped something uncomplimentary about boys and brains, shooed them apart, and then, grudgingly, helped with the shaking herself.

  Once things were more or less sorted—fat clear, ash sifted, sap as ready as it was going to get—I nodded at Kael.

  “Let’s get the sap started. Half the bucket for this batch.”

  He tipped the sap into the iron pot over the fire. It landed with a sticky squelch, slowly relaxing under the heat. The sharp, sweet smell of pine rose up, cutting through the lingering smoke and kitchen grease.

  I took the paddle and began to stir. Viscous threads clung to the wood and my wrists ached almost immediately, but the movement was familiar. Different paddles, different pot, same rhythm as any long surgery: steady, not frantic, adjust as you go.

  Finn leaned on the edge of the table, watching avidly.

  “How long d’you stir it?” he asked.

  “Until it’s right,” I said. “We want it to go from this—” I let a drip fall back into the pot, where it vanished in a slosh. “—to something more like sticky honey. Then we add the fat.”

  “How d’you know when it’s right?” Jory added.

  “You test.” I dragged the paddle up again, let a drip fall onto a scrap of old plank Kael handed me. It made a blob, slowly sagging. I waited a few seconds, then poked it with the back of my finger.

  “Still too runny,” I said. “It slides instead of stretching.”

  Jory frowned at it as if offended on its behalf.

  Behind me, I heard shuffling and a faint slop. When I turned, an older man with a lined face—one of the fence?menders, I thought—was helpfully tipping the rest of the sap bucket into the pot.

  “Figured we might as well do it all at once,” he said. “Save time.”

  My heart did a neat little arrhythmia.

  “Stop, please,” I said, too quickly. My voice came out sharper than I meant and three people flinched, including Beakly, who fluffed his neck feathers and clicked his beak once in disapproval. “If we rush it and the mix is wrong, we lose all of it. And then you have no fat, no sap, and no fence.”

  The man’s hands froze.

  “Aye,” he said slowly, drawing the bucket back. “Didn’t think of that.”

  I blew out a breath. “It’s fine. Just—let’s treat this like… like medicine. One dose at a time.”

  Elspeth’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Listen to her, Harrold. She’s the one with the armor.”

  Harrold harrumphed, but he stepped back.

  We fell into a silence filled with popping sap, the whisper of ash through cloth, the faint cluck of Beakly’s talons on packed earth as he shifted his weight. Time stretched as I stirred and watched the surface go from amber glass to thicker, slower swirls.

  After a while, Kael drifted over the fire again, poker in hand. His fingers twitched toward the woodpile.

  “We’ll be at this ’til dusk,” he muttered. “Fire’s barely kissing the pot.”

  “Good,” I said. “If it starts really boiling, it’ll scorch. You ever burned porridge?”

  He made a face. “A man never lives it down.”

  “Same thing. Except instead of the family complaining, your fence falls down and you get eaten by pigs.”

  That drew a rustle of uneasy laughter from the onlookers. Kael’s mouth flattened, but he eased the fire down with his boot instead of stoking it.

  I tested again: a drip on the plank, a poke. This time it held a peaked string between my knuckles and the blob.

  “Better,” I said. “Keep it here.”

  “Time for the fat?” Finn asked.

  “Almost.” I nodded toward the small pot on the stone. “Kael, can you bring that in slowly? Like pouring ale. Thin stream.”

  He did. The clear fat ran in pale ribbons into the dark sap as I stirred, at first making cloudy streaks that resisted blending, then, gradually, merging into a single glossy mass. The smell shifted, too—the bright pine note deepening under the savory, nose?coating scent of warm lard. Somewhere behind me, someone’s stomach growled.

  Beakly’s head dipped, following the movement of the fat pot. His pupils tightened, predatory interest flaring, then faded as he clearly decided this was an unacceptable use of animal product.

  Madness, his look said. Sheer madness.

  When the last of the fat was in and the mix moved like something between treacle and varnish, I nodded to Jory.

  “Ash time. But slowly.”

  He grabbed the bowl from the crate, nearly undercutting my “slow” immediately by enthusiasm alone.

  “Hand,” I said, holding out my own. He froze, then obediently tipped a small heap into my palm.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Like adding salt to soup. You add too much, you can’t pull it back out.” I dusted the ash into the pot and stirred. “We’re thickening it, not turning it into stone right here.”

  He nodded so seriously I almost smiled.

  We fell into a rhythm. Jory scooped. I nodded or shook my head. When it was a yes, he’d sprinkle a little more, eyes bright. Finn watched every movement as if he were memorising it for some future backyard disaster.

  The mix darkened to an opaque smoky brown. The shine dulled from wet glass to something more like fresh paint. Here and there pale clumps of ash bobbed up; I chased them down with the paddle, mashing them against the side of the pot.

  “See these?” I said, for the kids and for myself. “Lumps like this are weak spots. They don’t bond right. Like… like a clot where the blood shouldn’t stick. We want it smooth all the way through.”

  “You talk strange, Miss,” Jory muttered, but there was no real bite to it.

  The fire shifted under the pot, a small plume of darker smoke curling up. A bitter note threaded through the sap smell. I glanced up to see Kael, foot nudging a fresh chunk of wood into place.

  “Off,” I said, sharper than I intended. “Back that away.”

  His brows drew down. “Flame was dying.”

  “It’s hot enough,” I said. “If it starts smelling like burned sugar, we lose it. I’d rather wait an extra half hour than do all this twice.”

  For a heartbeat I thought he’d argue. Then something in my tone—or maybe in the way everyone else went absolutely still—made him grunt and drag the wood back.

  “You tell me when to feed it,” he said.

  “I will,” I promised.

  We stirred a little longer until sweat prickled my temples despite the chill and the mix coated the paddle in a heavy, even layer. When I dragged a little onto a test board, drew my finger through, the groove held its shape. Two slow heartbeats before it began to soften.

  “Good,” I said, softer, more to myself than anyone. “That’s good enough.”

  The next step was the part that actually made this more than glorified sticky paint. Which meant, predictably, that was the moment the universe tried to sabotage it.

  “Gourd now?” Finn asked, eyes already darting to the basket in the shade.

  “Not yet.” I nodded to Kael. “First we get the pot off the fire. Then we let it cool a little. If it’s too hot when we add the glowgourd, it ruins the… special part.”

  I didn’t have a better word for “low?tier magical reagent” in this world, so special would have to do.

  Kael wrapped thick cloths around his hands, bent his knees, and lifted the pot with a grunt. The muscles in his forearms jumped, the metal creaked, and my own ribs protested in sympathy.

  “Careful,” I said, which was less helpful than my surgical attendings liked and more helpful than nothing. He shuffled it off the fire onto two wide flat stones we’d set as a makeshift trivet. The contents sloshed, but didn’t spill.

  Steam curled up. I crouched, ignoring my body’s complaints, and held my hand over the surface. Heat licked my palm. I dipped a little on the tip of the paddle, touched it to the back of my wrist. Hot, but not the kind of hot that flashes blisters onto skin.

  “Now,” I said. “Now we wait a few minutes.”

  Groans all around. Villagers were not, it turned out, fans of procedural lag time.

  “What if we just—” Finn had already seized a glowgourd, knife poised over its hide with the confidence of someone who had definitely never cut himself before.

  “STOP,” I said. The word snapped across the yard like a whip crack. Finn froze. So did everyone else. Even Beakly’s head came up, feathers lifting.

  I exhaled, unclenched.

  “Sorry,” I said more evenly. “Just—this part matters. If we add it too hot, it won’t set right. It’ll stay tacky or peel. You’ll think it works, and then the first good rain takes half your fence with it.”

  Elspeth clicked her tongue. “You hear her, Finn?”

  He swallowed. “Y?yes, Mam.”

  I gentled my voice. “You want to help? Help me prep them properly.”

  I took the knife from him, turned the first glowgourd in my hands. It sat heavy and cool, its surface dull as old paper in the daylight. The exterior was too hard to cut with a knife, so I had to use an ax to crack it open. The interior glowed faintly, just enough that the pulp under the ax blade looked like someone had hidden embers in it.

  Jory sucked in a breath. “They look like that inside?”

  “Only when you cut them,” the baker said, half?disgusted, half?fascinated. “Nasty things.”

  “Useful nasty,” I said, remember my life debt to the humble glowgourd. I poured out the juice and scraped out the seeds with the knife tip, then used a spoon to scoop the fleshy pulp into a bowl. It was slick and slightly fibrous, like pumpkin crossed with jellyfish. The glow pooled at the center, dimmer at the edges.

  I handed the the bowl of gourd guts to Finn and got to work opening a second one.

  “You two can help mash this.”

  The boys attacked the pulp with the pestle like it owed them money. Threads broke down into smoother paste. The glow smeared through, less bright but more uniform.

  When I judged the resin cool enough, I picked up the bowl.

  “Right,” I said. “Moment of truth. This is the part you don’t mess up.”

  People leaned in. Mayor Brody had appeared at some point near the back of the group, hands laced nervously at his belt. The broad?shouldered woman with the baby stood a little apart, rocking gently, eyes intent.

  I tipped a third of the glowgourd pulp into the pot and stirred.

  For a second, nothing changed. Then faint veins of orange laced through the dark mix, branching and fading as I moved the paddle. A tiny fizz tickled my fingers where the pulp met the resin, like static under the skin. It could have been in my head. Could have been not.

  “Well, it’s definitely doing something,” I murmured.

  “Good something?” the baker asked.

  “We’ll know when we hit it with a hammer,” I said.

  Kael’s mouth twitched.

  I added the rest of the pulp in two more portions, stirring until the orange vanished completely into the brown. The smell shifted again, a sharper, almost citrus note cutting through the smoke and fat.

  I lifted the paddle and let a ribbon fall onto a clean plank. It spread slowly, holding its shape instead of running for the edges.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. That looks right.”

  “Now what?” Finn bounced on the balls of his feet.

  “Now we see if it actually does what the tooltip said,” I muttered.

  Kael had already dragged over a couple of test boards—a newer fence rail and an older, cracked plank from a scrap pile.

  “This one’s been on the south line,” he said, touching the rail. “Sound enough, just… tired.” He jerked his chin at the cracked one. “This’s firewood.”

  “We’ll start with the good one,” I said. “Rotten wood is a different problem.”

  I propped the rail across two bricks. Years of weather had left it rough and splintered. I pulled my knife and scraped along it, shaving away loose fibers and dirt, working especially at the ends where the grain showed.

  “You don’t sew over dead tissue,” I said absently, mostly to my hands. “You cut back to live stuff. Same with this. No point sealing rot in.”

  “If you say so,” Kael said, but he watched the way I worked the worst spots with something like interest.

  When the surface was as clean as it was going to get without sandpaper and a power sander—neither of which were on the equipment list—I handed the knife hilt?first to Jory and nodded at the far end.

  “Do the same down there. Don’t take too much. Just the flaky bits.”

  He set to, careful for once. Finn reached for the pot; I intercepted his hand and redirected it to the brush.

  “Here,” I said. “You can help, but let’s not baptize yourself in boiling resin.”

  He grinned, unoffended.

  I dipped the hacked?down broom into the pot. Thick brown coated the bristles. When I drew it along the rail, the resin lay down in a dark, gleaming stripe, sinking slowly into the grain.

  The smell hit properly then—pine and smoke and animal fat and something bright underneath that I couldn’t quite name. Not pleasant, exactly, but satisfying.

  “Looks like you’re painting it with treacle,” Finn breathed.

  “In a way.” I worked the brush back and forth, making sure there were no bare patches. “The first coat’s the important one. Thin, even. Get it into all the little cracks.”

  I passed the brush to Kael.

  “Your turn. Same idea. Especially on the ends.” I tapped the cut end of the rail. “Wood drinks from its ends like straws. That’s where water and rot get in, so that’s where we make it drink this instead.”

  He took the brush, hefted it like a new hammer, and started at the far end where Jory had scraped. His movements were slower than mine, but more certain. Craftsman’s hands.

  “I’ve tarred hulls,” he said. “This’s… not the same, but close enough.”

  “Less flammable, I hope,” I said.

  “Hope so too,” he said mildly.

  While he finished coating the rail, I took a little resin on my fingers and stroked it onto a corner of the old, cracked plank. The fissures gulped it down eagerly.

  “For what?” Elspeth asked, watching.

  “Curiosity,” I said. “Maybe it holds it together, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, we learn something.”

  We propped both treated pieces on stones in a patch of sun. The resin lost its wet shine gradually, settling into a satin gleam. Every so often someone would edge closer and get shooed back.

  “How long you going to stare at it?” the baker asked after what felt like three years and was probably only an hour.

  “As long as it takes for this.” I tapped the rail lightly with a fingertip. No tacky give, just a faint resistance. “You don’t want dirt sticking. But we don’t need it rock?hard yet. Just set enough to test.”

  “Test how?” Jory demanded, already eyeing potential weapons.

  “With this.” Kael hefted a mallet he’d had leaning against the fence. It looked like it could take someone’s head off. Or a pig’s.

  A hush fell. Even the baby at the back chose that moment to be quiet.

  Kael glanced at me. “You sure you want me to hit your… potion with this?”

  “If it can’t take this, it won’t take a boar,” I said. “Aim for the middle. Don’t hold back.”

  He squared his feet, lifted the mallet, and brought it down in a solid swing.

  The sound that came back was a deep, dull thunk, not the sharp crack of splintering. The rail jumped, the bricks skittered, but when he lifted the mallet, the wood was still in one piece. A scuff marred the resin where the blow had landed, but no fissures radiated out.

  A murmur went up. Someone cursed softly in what sounded like impressed disbelief.

  “Again,” I said.

  He hit it twice more, varying the angle. Same result: dents, not destruction.

  “Now the bare one,” I added, nodding at an untreated rail he’d brought for comparison.

  He swapped them over. The second rail was the same size, same age, same everything except for the lack of magical varnish.

  Kael gave it the same swing.

  This time the sound was sharper. A splinter popped off the underside. A hairline crack raced from a knot near the center out toward the edge.

  “Ha,” Finn breathed.

  Kael and I both crouched. I ran a finger along the crack in the untreated rail, then along the shallow dent in the treated one.

  “This one will still break,” I said, tapping the coated rail. “If you hit it enough times, anything does. But it doesn’t fail on the first try. That’s the difference.”

  “Pigs don’t usually get more’n three good runs before someone scares ’em off,” Harrold said slowly. “Maybe four, if they’re particularly stupid.”

  “So you’d rather your fence last ’til you can get to it,” I said. “Instead of opening like a cheap door the first time something leans.”

  Heads nodded, small and wary and hungry for that little piece of security.

  On a sudden impulse, I straightened and whistled sharply.

  Beakly turned his head, eye pinning me. It took him a moment to decide whether I was worth the energy. Then he stalked over, each talon digging little crescents into the dirt.

  “What are you doing?” Elspeth asked, hand flying to her throat.

  “Final test,” I said. “Beakly?”

  He regarded me as though he deeply regretted signing whatever metaphysical contract had landed him with me. I laid my hand lightly on the treated rail and then tapped the center.

  “Here,” I said. “Gentle.”

  He cocked his head, then lifted one taloned foot and set it down on the rail. His weight shifted forward. Wood creaked, bricks ground into the dirt, but nothing snapped. When he lifted his foot again, the resin showed a compressed patch, no worse than the mallet’s work.

  A low laugh—more air than sound—ran through the watching villagers.

  “If it holds that beast,” the baker said, “it’ll do for a pig.”

  “His name is Beakly,” I said automatically.

  His eye swiveled toward me, full of offended nobility. What was his real name anyway? Lord something something? King of something something?

  “Beakly,” Finn repeated with reverence. “Count Chocobo.”

  Beakly decided we were all idiots and went back to his stretch of yard, fluffing once before returning to his patient, looming vigil.

  Mayor Brody stepped fully into the circle at last, fingers already seeking the familiar comfort of his chain.

  “Well,” he said, voice a half?step higher than usual. “That was… remarkable.” His gaze slid from the rail to the pot, to the basket of already?butchered glowgourds. “How much of this… mixture would one stretch of fence require, Miss Easton?”

  The bubble of brief triumph thinned. This was the part where in the game a convenient tooltip would have popped up: Resin Applied: 0/1500 Feet. Instead I had math.

  “A lot,” I said honestly. “We’ll need to measure how many rails one pot covers, how many pots we can make from one tapping of sap, one batch of fat, that sort of thing. Today was one post. Tomorrow we can do… ten? See how far it goes.”

  Brody’s mouth tightened. “Sap from the tall pines. Glowgourds from the old groves. Both in those same woods you nearly died in, Miss Easton.”

  “Technically I was already dying when Beakly found me,” I said. “The woods just helped.”

  That did not, for some reason, reassure him.

  “But,” I went on, softer, “you have something you didn’t have yesterday. A way to make what you already own last longer. Stronger. That’s worth some effort.”

  The broad?shouldered woman with the baby shifted her weight.

  “I’ll put in days,” she said. “My man too, when he’s not in the fields. Better this than waking every time a fox sneezes near the fence.”

  Kael nodded once.

  “I can rig bigger vats,” he said. “Wooden handles on the brushes so nobody scalds their fool hands.” His eyes flicked to Finn, who had already been edging closer to the pot again. “We’ll need a place to work—out of the wind, plenty of room to hang things to dry.”

  The baker sighed, but there was a spark in it now.

  “I’ll keep tally,” she said. “Sap, ash, gourd, fat. Who brings what. Who owes who. Can’t have folk arguing that they did more than their neighbors.”

  Brody’s fingers stilled on his chain.

  “We can arrange… organized parties,” he said slowly. “In daylight only. Armed, not just with sacks and buckets. It will mean pulling some hands from the fields, but if—if this truly keeps the beasts at bay…”

  “Nothing keeps them,” Harrold said, not unkindly. “But this might slow ’em.”

  The murmur that followed was different this time. Still worried, still sharp around the edges, but lifted by a thin, stubborn thread of hope. You could hear it.

  I looked at the treated rail, dark and solid in the sunlight, at the old cracked plank with its corner bandaged in resin, at the villagers already slipping into argument over who would go tapping and who would stay brushing.

  This wasn’t a quest complete banner. There was no shower of gold, no fanfare jingle. Just a list of new problems blooming in neat rows in my head: resource management, labor assignments, risk calculations.

  Congratulations, you’ve unlocked: Regional Infrastructure Project. Requirements: too many things.

  I rolled my shoulders, winced, and let out a breath that misted in the cold air.

  “All right,” I said. “Today was proof of concept. Tomorrow we scale up. I’ll write down the steps as clearly as I can so people can follow them without me hovering over every pot.”

  Brody looked both relieved and terrified by that idea.

  “And the woods?” he asked quietly. “For the sap. The gourds.”

  I glanced past him to the line of trees dark against the sky, then to Beakly’s looming silhouette.

  “We’ll go,” I said. “Carefully. In daylight. With more than one sword this time.”

  Finn pumped a fist in the air. Jory’s eyes lit. Elspeth smacked the back of Finn’s head without looking.

  “And no one,” I added, “volunteers themselves or anyone else without talking it through first.”

  “That includes you, Miss Easton,” Elspeth said.

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I seem to be the only one with the recipe in my head. So I’m already volunteered.”

  The baker snorted. “That’s what you get for keeping all the clever to yourself.”

  Beakly fluffed again, then resettled, one brilliant eye half?lidded, as if resigning himself to yet another of my ridiculous side quests.

  I rubbed at the spot over my sternum where, in another life, a neat little UI would have flashed: New Objective: Reinforce Oakhaven’s Defenses (1/??? Rails Treated). The only thing there now was the steady, too?fast beat of my own heart.