Ten Consistent Ascents

Arista reviewed the successful first test with a more critical eye the following morning, two problems settling in that the observation itself hadn't actually flagged, but that mattered enormously the moment an actual passenger got involved.

"...Lyaneth. Once the stalk withers, whatever's holding the platform up just disappears out from under it, doesn't it. Nothing's actually keeping it in place at that point."

Lyaneth considered that, something faintly alarmed crossing her expression. "I... had not actually considered that. It simply hasn't come up. There was no platform attached yet, and no fall would have mattered regardless."

"But it would matter enormously with an actual person standing on it," Arista said, already sketching a fix. "Since it always grows to the exact same nineteen meters, there's no real need for catches spaced out along the whole climb. Just a cluster of them, right at the top, several hinged supports positioned at that one fixed height, angled to fold flat as the platform passes through on the way up, then locking rigid the instant anything tries to push back down against them. Multiple catches sharing the load at that single point, rather than relying on just one."

"And returning it to ground level afterward?" Lyaneth asked.

"A release lever, at the base. Disengages every catch at once, lets a second, lighter counterweight lower the platform back down in a controlled descent instead of fighting the catches the entire way." Arista tapped the sketch, satisfied. "That solves the fall risk properly, and it explains how the platform gets back down for reuse, which I hadn't actually worked out yet either."

The second problem took longer to articulate properly. "...The other issue's more about convenience than safety. Whoever's channeling has to physically reach the bean directly, which is fine at ground level, but becomes considerably less practical once the stalk's grown ten meters and the platform's climbing away from anyone standing on solid ground."

"You wish for the channeling to happen from the platform itself, as it rises," Lyaneth said, following the logic.

"Exactly. A slender cylinder, running up through the platform's own center, ending in a thin mithril plate fixed to the underside, pressed directly against the stalk's growing tip the entire way up. Channel magic in from the top, where a passenger's actually standing, and it travels straight down through the plate into the stalk itself." Arista paused, a practical snag catching up with the idea immediately. "Except a hollow tube alone doesn't actually conduct anything on its own. I'd need something to carry the effect down the shaft reliably."

She sat with that a moment, and the answer arrived almost immediately, delighted recognition spreading across her face. "...Fen's conductive liquid. The exact compound she developed for the underground growth pipelines, back when this whole project started as pure research into accelerating crop yields. If it could carry a magic effect through buried channels to a seed, it can carry one down a vertical shaft to a mithril plate just as easily. Same principle, different orientation." She grinned at the sheer, unexpected symmetry of it. "The same liquid that started this whole line of research, technically, coming back around to actually finish it."

She sketched the cylinder's core as a hollow iron shaft, meant to be filled end to end with Fen's liquid, then reconsidered the exterior. A simple wooden casing, wrapped around the metal housing, nothing structural, purely cosmetic, keeping the iron core hidden behind something that wouldn't visually clash with the platform's own timber construction or the living wood surrounding it on every side.

"That should solve both problems properly," Arista said, satisfied, rolling up the finished schematic. "Safe on the way down, and considerably more convenient on the way up."

Fen had refused, politely but firmly, to come to the elven village herself, so Arista made the trip to her instead, finding her at her usual workbench, surrounded by the familiar clutter of half-finished reagents and carefully labeled vials.

Fen handed over four sealed clay pots, two liters each, without ceremony. Arista tucked them into her inventory, and a small notification flickered past.

[Item Acquired: Magic Conductive Reagent (XL) x4]

Arista glanced at it, unimpressed. "...Catchy."

"...Can I ask why you wouldn't come yourself?" she said, once the pleasantries were done. "You're an elf yourself. I'd have thought you'd want to see the village again."

Fen's expression flickered, something old and faintly tired crossing it before she answered. "Alchemy isn't forbidden among my people. It's not even unusual, technically. It's a properly playable class, same as anywhere else."

"...But?"

"But turning one material into another isn't considered natural, by elven standards. Nature grows things. It doesn't transform them. So alchemists exist, technically permitted, technically respected on paper, and are quietly looked down upon in every single practical sense the entire time." Fen's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "It's quite a crude joke from the devs, when you actually think about it. Give an entire people a philosophy built around 'nothing artificial, nothing transformed,' then hand a portion of their own population a class that's fundamentally about doing exactly that."

"...Is that why you're in the human kingdom?" Arista asked quietly.

"That's why I'm in the human kingdom," Fen confirmed, entirely matter-of-fact, no bitterness left in it, just plain, settled fact. "I didn't actually know any of this going in, mind you. Rolled an Elven Alchemist because the racial bonuses looked good on paper, and only found out afterward exactly how my own people felt about the class I'd picked."

"...What did you do?"

"Same choice anyone in that position has, really. Reroll an entirely new character and start over. Stay, and just live with being quietly resented by my own species for the rest of the game. Or leave, and practice the craft somewhere it's actually valued instead of tolerated." Fen shrugged. "I'd already sunk too much time into this character to reroll. So I left instead. Considerably easier to build something worthwhile somewhere it's actually wanted, rather than somewhere it's merely permitted."

Arista huffed something that was almost a laugh. "...Not that different from me and the pickaxe, honestly. Couldn't get the recipe I actually wanted, so I found a way to make my own instead."

"Not that different at all," Fen agreed. "Just my equivalent took a change of address instead of a change of tools."

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Back at the elder tree, Lyaneth eyed the four clay pots with faint, wordless suspicion as Arista carefully decanted their contents into the cylinder's hollow core, saying nothing about it, though something in her expression made her opinion of alchemical shortcuts fairly clear regardless.

"Right," Arista said, sealing the cylinder shut, the completed mechanism finally ready for proper, repeated testing. "Before we run this nine more times just to confirm consistency, I want to actually test the whole assembly properly. Which means I need an actual tree to attach it to, not open air."

Lyaneth considered that. "Not one of the village's own trees, though. Not yet. This is still entirely untested hardware, however promising the first result looked. I'd rather not have anything experimental mounted directly above someone's actual home until we know it holds up reliably."

"Fair, completely fair. What about something at the forest's edge, then? Somewhere with a genuinely tall tree, but nothing anyone's actually living in."

They found one within the hour, a broad, sturdy elder tree standing just past the village's outer boundary, tall enough to accommodate the full nineteen-meter growth, isolated enough that no one's home sat anywhere near the testing radius.

"This should work," Arista said, already sizing up the trunk, sketching mounting points for the pulley housing directly onto her notepad. "Far enough from anyone's actual home that a failed test stays exactly that, a failed test, not a genuine hazard. Close enough to the village that we're not hauling equipment through half the forest for every single trial."

Lyaneth nodded, satisfied. "A reasonable compromise."

They ran the test nine more times over the following days, Lyaneth channeling fresh magic into a new bean for each trial, Arista tracking every measurable detail with the same careful discipline she brought to any repeated experiment, the complete mechanism now properly mounted against the elder tree's broad trunk, one-way catches locking cleanly into place with each successful ascent, cylinder feeding magic down through Fen's liquid without a single hitch.

[Test 2: Growth Time — 47 Seconds][Test 3: Growth Time — 44 Seconds][Test 4: Growth Time — 51 Seconds]

"...Fairly consistent," Arista noted, watching the numbers cluster within a reasonable range across each attempt. "Some natural variance, probably tied to exactly how much magic gets channeled in each attempt, but nothing wild enough to cause real concern."

"The platform reaches full height reliably in every case?" Lyaneth asked, checking her own notes.

"Every single time. Full nineteen meters, no partial failures, catches locking cleanly the moment the growth force disappears." Arista flipped to a fresh page, already satisfied. "The whole assembly's holding up exactly as designed."

She gestured at the withered remains from the previous test, still lying collapsed across the ground where the stalk had grown, a small pile of dried, brittle plant matter, entirely inert now, taking up space directly where the next bean would need to be planted.

"...The ground needs clearing between each use," Lyaneth observed, crouching to examine the debris. "Otherwise the withered remains simply block a fresh seed from properly taking root in the same spot."

"Right. So every reset cycle needs two steps, not one. Clear the old growth away, then plant a fresh bean before the next ascent." Arista considered the withered pile, entirely unbothered by the simplicity of it. "No mechanism needed for that part, honestly. Just sweep it aside and dig the next one in."

"Would the villagers need specialized knowledge to manage this themselves?" Lyaneth asked. "Or is it simple enough for ordinary use?"

Arista considered the question seriously. "It should be simple. Clear the old stalk, plant a fresh bean, done. No different, conceptually, from clearing ash out of a firebox before relighting it. The actual magic-channeling is the only specialized part, and that only matters for the up direction, the counterweight side going down doesn't need any of this at all."

The withered stalks themselves, once cleared, were simply left where they landed nearby, quietly finishing out whatever remained of their natural lifespan scattered across the forest floor beside each platform's base, slowly breaking down the same unhurried way any other fallen plant matter eventually did.

"So villagers without nature-attuned ability could still descend freely," Lyaneth said, working through the logic, "but would need someone capable of channeling magic present whenever they wanted to ascend."

"...That's a real limitation," Arista admitted, sitting with it properly. "Not everyone in the village necessarily has nature magic themselves, do they?"

"Not universally, no. Most do, to some degree: it's a fairly common attunement among our people, given how closely tied our whole culture is to natural cultivation. But not every single resident, certainly."

Arista turned the problem over, unwilling to build something that only worked for part of the population it was meant to serve. "...What if the beans could be pre-charged? Instead of requiring someone to channel magic at the exact moment of use, what if the magic gets stored in the bean ahead of time, the same way you'd charge a battery, and anyone could simply drop in an already-prepared seed whenever they actually needed to go up?"

Lyaneth considered that, genuinely intrigued. "...That would require testing whether the bean can actually hold latent magic without triggering growth prematurely. I'm not certain that's been attempted before."

"Then let's find out," Arista said, already reaching for a fresh, untouched seed, the old restless curiosity fully engaged now. "If we can pre-charge a stock of beans in advance, maybe once a week, whoever in the village has the strongest nature attunement handles a whole batch at once, then anyone, regardless of their own magical ability, could simply grab a ready-made bean whenever they needed to climb."

Lyaneth knelt beside her, palms extended over the fresh seed, and channeled the barest, most careful trickle of magic into it, deliberately trying to stop well short of anything resembling the earlier, full triggering dose.

The seed shuddered immediately.

"...That's not a good sign," Arista said, watching the same faint tremor that had preceded every single successful growth so far.

"I only gave it the barest fraction of what I normally would," Lyaneth said, already trying to pull the flow back, visibly straining against something that clearly wasn't cooperating.

It didn't matter. The stalk erupted upward regardless, considerably slower than every previous test given how little magic had actually gone into it, but climbing toward the exact same, inevitable nineteen meters all the same.

They watched it wither and collapse in silence.

"...So there's no such thing as a partial charge," Arista said finally, genuinely disappointed despite herself. "It's not a dial. It's a switch. Any amount of magic, however small, triggers the exact same, full, unstoppable process."

"It would seem so," Lyaneth said, equally unsettled by the result. "I knew the speed scaled with input. I simply hadn't realized there was no actual minimum threshold beneath it, some floor below which nothing would trigger at all. Apparently there isn't one. Any amount, however small, seems to commit the seed fully."

"Which means storage was never actually on the table," Arista said, sitting back, recalibrating properly this time instead of simply pushing forward. "The moment magic touches the seed, it's already committed. There's no 'charged and waiting.' There's only 'growing' or 'untouched.'"

Lyaneth considered the failed result for a long moment. "Then the population without natural attunement genuinely cannot use this independently. Not without someone else physically present at the moment of use."

"...Yeah," Arista admitted, and for once, the answer didn't arrive dressed up as a clever workaround. "Sometimes the actual limitation is just the limitation. Not everything has an elegant fix hiding underneath it if you look hard enough."

"That is, I think, a fair thing to accept," Lyaneth said, not unkindly. "We can simply station someone capable of channeling near the mechanism, once it's actually in regular use. It simply means the system requires cooperation, rather than complete independence. That isn't necessarily a failure."

"No," Arista agreed slowly, turning the idea over properly. "Just a genuine constraint, instead of a puzzle I haven't cracked yet. Those aren't the same thing, even if it feels like they should be." She closed her notebook on the failed attempt, something almost relieving in simply, finally letting the idea go. "A rotation, then. Whoever's on duty handles ascents for anyone who needs one. Simple, sustainable, no illusions about independence it was never actually going to have."

Lyaneth nodded, something like quiet respect settling into her expression. "You accept that more gracefully than I expected."

"I don't get it right every time," Arista said, almost amused by her own admission. "This is just one of the rarer moments where I actually notice."