“That’s a proto-Seed!” one of the watching students blurted out, one of those going through Alchemy training. His name was Chet Franklin, a good fellow eager to turn his Typeless Core into something awesome and useful.

“Damn right, Chet!” I confirmed with a pointed finger, and he beamed happily. “It’s standard type, but if more Fire is pumped into that thing, that ball of gildiron will make a Fire Seed. We have stumbled into the process by which those Families make artificial Seeds!”

I could hear the dollar signs going off in their heads. Not just removing traces of ore from tailings, but turning low-grade ore into high-grade, AND stumbling onto the process to initiate a proto-Seed formation?

This was a license to print money!

“The biggest overhead cost is the continued high-grade flames necessary to make the things. Those companies making Seeds go through an immense amount of high-grade resources, or they have powerful Beasts with unique Elemental powers, to help feed the Seeds they grow.

“We have the Refactory Towers.”

Which removed a TON of cost from the equation, and everyone knew it.

“Being able to Shape the Element needed for the Seed is crucial to its formation. How many attempts did this take you, John?” I asked him.

He reached up, grabbed Lord Quake’s muzzle wearily, and leaned into it. “Thirty attempts a day for the last month!” he groaned, and Lord Quake nuzzled him with a nod.

“Biggest finding?” I asked him.

He reached down and tapped the sphere. “This part has to be done last. You gotta Infuse the ore while it’s spread out in tiny bits and the Energize spell can work on it. Try it on this lump at the end, and all you do is melt the metal down, since all the Fire in it gathers to the middle, probably vents into the ground when surrounded by so much inert metal, and becomes worthless!” he sighed. “The Rule of Infusing little bits at a time before joining them is still in effect!”

There were some disappointed groans. A nice Ritual where people could dump Fire Mana and make a lot of Fire Isotopic metal at once would have been much more convenient!

“It’s going to take a similar number of attempts to work out the proto-Formations for the other Elemental Seeds that we can potentially grow. I shouldn’t need to tell anyone how valuable this knowledge is, and who will be willing to kill for it.”

Silence descended on the watching students. The thoughts of not just lots of money, but potentially a Seed, however average, for everyone, suddenly quieted as they realized the implications.

“Whoever knew those damn Towers were going to be so in demand, right?” I went on, and everyone nodded. “So, we just need to be able to make proto-Seeds, get them in place, and we can both store immense amounts of high-grade Mana, and generate Seeds for your use, or to sell for cash. It’s all on the table now.

“Now, you all just need to make at least Five in Artificer or Wizard and get the damn ball rolling on what to do!” I glared at them all. “The demand for Lightning and Fire Seeds is going to SKYROCKET. They are already hard to get, and it’s going to be damn near impossible now that people can be Awakened directly to them. In all cases, it is up to us!”

New enthusiasm soared through the Allegiance. If they could make their own Seeds, they didn’t have to compete on prices and funds with the Families. They could put in the time and effort and earn them for themselves the honest way!

---

-Helluva find, Fae. Good work!- Briggs /congratulated me, and everyone else involved separately. It was a major coup, even if we had a lot of work to do.

“Better. We just found the ideal things to store excess Mana in for Babe’s upgrade!” I murmured back in reply. Driver Sam looked at me in the mirror, I just pointed at my temple, and he returned his eyes to the road knowingly.

Babe looked my way, realizing the same thing. The Formation could store the Earth and Void Mana, because it was so big, but the Air and Plant Mana designs we’d had had been very imperfect.

-That is a fuckload better than draining a thirty-mile radius of all the Plant Mana,- Sama /agreed quickly. She was down in Florida setting up a place to dump tailings from the reefsilver miners in the area, for just this reason. They were really curious why she wanted the stuff, but were happy to have a place to dispose of the waste, so they weren’t arguing with her, while gleeful environmental inspectors were getting ready to descend on the place and fine the shit out of her for poisoning the place with toxic elemental runoff.

They weren’t going to be happy when they found a bunch of inert bricks there.

Swampy was being ‘ported down there tomorrow to start working on the processes with a couple Typeless and Water mages along (Driver Sam and I had extended Lived-lines into that area and all along the coasts as a matter of course). We had the Earth, Fire, and Lightning systems worked out. The other Elements were still going to take some time and work, just like they had. One of the other mounds on display here had been durastone tailings from the pikelands, or Earth Iron ore. There were plenty of Earth mages around to work on that process!

“Just have to make sure nobody finds out we’re going to make dozens of Seeds up and hide them away for Babe to eat up all in one go.” Because there’d certainly be thieves coming out our ears if they found out we were stockpiling Seeds!

Briggs burst out chuckling despite himself. -You realize this means we’re going to be able to put a price tag on Babe’s tribulation, right?-

Even Babe moo-laughed at that one. Artificial Spirit Seeds usually went for half a million or so, generally assumed to be the lowest grade of Seed you could make, generated and sold as rapidly as they could be made. Of course, we were going to use them as capacitors, so they’d likely be the equivalent of higher-grade Seeds...

“What kind of margin of error are you looking at?” I asked Briggs.

-At least fifty percent above what Babe is predicting he needs. If it’s too much, shame. Guess we get to spread the largesse.-

-Decent margin,- Sama /agreed. Overengineering stuff was a byword, and if elevating a Totem Beast to Emperor was new territory, that wasn’t going to exceed any expectations.

“What kind of interference?”

There was some silence on the matter. Babe lowed once, considering.

“Oh, wouldn’t that suck, but we can’t rule it out. We don’t know who made the Formation, but the odds the Wolverine Emperor didn’t know about it is pretty small. It’s possible they are sensitive to it, and when it starts brimming something might come investigating opportunistically.”

-‘Make plans to fight a Wolverine or other Ruler with maximal efficiency’,- Briggs /noted.

-Quit ignoring the mammoth in the room. Will the other Beast Emperors allow it?- Sama /snapped impatiently, silencing everyone.

If the Emperors didn’t want Babe to be an Emperor, then either it wasn’t going to happen, or they’d come and kill him, and there wouldn’t be a lot we could do about it.

“Babe gets along fine with the Queen and the Princess of the Lakes, but that’s really not the same,” I had to agree. “If we could, the best thing to do would be to get permission.”

-Huh,- /came from multiple throats. -Who do you ask to be allowed to become a Beast Emperor?- Briggs /wondered for everyone.

-My guess would be Thunderbird, as the most powerful Emperor, or Old Ivory, as the most relevant,- Sama /suggested. -Father White or the Shaggy Man I just can’t see, there’s no relationship.- The mighty Stormwinter Bear and Great Sasquatch didn’t have much use for Humans.

“Thunderbird is aloof, and wouldn’t bother to stop an ascension so far below him. Old Ivory is pretty patient, but the Mammoths and the Bison don’t always get along. Infinite Crag Horn and Plainstomper don’t care much for imported cattle species, either. Approaching either could generate hostility from the other,” I hazarded. “Thunderbird’s approval would have the most weight. It might not stop an attempt to interfere, but it would prevent any team-ups to do so, as that could be seen as outright rebellion and dissing the boss, right?”

Babe moo’ed agreement, with a caution.

-Yeah, won’t stop a Wolverine, we know it. But they want the Mitten back anyway, so they are coming sooner or later,- Briggs /grunted. -The only question is... how do you successfully approach Thunderbird?-

“Same way you approach any monarch who has it all with a protective streak. You offer them something for their kids.”

There was that moment of consideration from all the listeners again.

-We’re gonna have to make more stuff,- Briggs /said thoughtfully. -Them lightning trees you designed weren’t just a throwaway idea, were they?-

“Whitecrown Eagles are primarily Fish eaters. Fresh water hunting is fine at the lower levels, but as they evolve, they have to hunt at sea. That is a very difficult, very dangerous hunt, even for them, and it’s only gotten worse over the past few decades. Their hunting areas and prey have been restricted, the adult Eagles are dying during their hunts, and they’ve been getting pushed back.

“It is all because the Sea Emperors are organizing their servants and corralling the same prey animals as their own herds, the same way the ocean fishing industry is a nasty crapshow now. Thunderbird is a natural ally, as are all the fishing Eagles and Hawks, but they are proud and won’t ask for help.

“That doesn’t mean they’ll turn it down if it is sitting out there. We just have to let them know and get the buy-in to set up a discourse and possible partnership.”

-The older ones probably will be too proud to make any changes. But the younger Raptors...- Sama /slowly nodded. -If the Whitecrowns do it, there’s no Bird of Prey in the country who will refuse to do likewise.-

The mature Commander-class Whitecrown Eagles were properly called Snowcrowns, while the few Rulers were called Stormcrowns. Thunderbird himself was the Emperor of all Avians in North America (and probably the world), the strongest Emperor in North America, and the Ruling Thundercrown, as it were.

Fire Phoenix, Lord Blackwinter, and Owl Woman were the other known Avian Emperors in North America. Lord Blackwinter was a great old Hoarfrost Raven, considered one of the most cunning and clever of the Beast Emperors, on a level with Old Coyote and Winsome Scarlet the Fox Emperor.

North America didn’t have quite the history of animosity with the Beast Emperors that the Old World had, at least until the European colonizers had come here and gotten extremely aggressive about expanding. The Beast Emperors had finally pushed back against the outlander Humans starting a bit over a century ago, and the puffed-up and overconfident United States of America had suffered a sharp and deadly lesson on where it should and shouldn’t go, leaving most of the middle of the Continent and pretty much all of the northern lands, the wild lands called Canada, to the Beasts.

That didn’t mean relationships with the Beast Emperors were now friendly, but most of them weren’t overly hostile. Americans being who they were, the locals had instead taken the closest Emperors as something like mascots, completely ignoring the fact most of them were far smarter than the vast majority of humans, and could be thousands or tens of thousands of years old, or even older.

It was hard to tell if that amused some of the Emperors or they ignored it, but the Beast Emperors were mostly not Totem Beasts. Lord Blackwinter might or might not have been a Totem Beast to the native Human tribes, but his relationship with the new tribes of immigrant Humans was considerably rockier. Old Coyote could be a foil or fool, depending on how he liked to amuse himself. Grandfather Serpent dwelled in the deserts of the Southwest, and was generally acknowledged as a Totem Beast, never noted as harming a Human who did not seek to harm him.

Thunderbird was an aloof figure, kingly in demeanor, willing to punish, but not pursuing in petty anger. As the Whitecrowns and other Eagles generally ignored Humans who ignored them, their noble bearing and power had rapidly made them symbols among the incoming Europeans, much as they had been among the native tribes, if not Totems.

Perhaps we could start a new relationship, and see where it led...