The temperature logs had been on the kitchen table for four days.
Not spread out in panic. Not pawed over in frustration.
Just… there.
Skeggi moved them when meals happened and put them back afterward with the same calm inevitability he brought to everything. Which, somehow, was worse than if he’d been swearing at them.
He was close to an answer.
Everyone could feel it.
The batch had come out wrong. Not ruined — Skeggi did not ruin batches — but wrong enough to bother him. The brine note had arrived late. The binding had lagged. The whole thing had finished two degrees cooler than it should have.
His records were clean.
Which meant something else wasn’t.
Eirik wisely said nothing.
Getting between Skeggi and a problem was like stepping between a bear and whatever the bear had decided was interesting today.
On the morning of the fourth day, Skeggi finally leaned back, stared out the window for a long moment, and said:
“We’re going to the river.”
Leif looked up instantly.
“Fishing trip?” he asked hopefully.
“Work,” Skeggi said.
Rí, who had absolutely been listening while pretending not to, perked up.
“I’m coming.”
“I know,” Skeggi said.
That settled that.
The upstream stretch past the waystone still felt… different.
You noticed it before you understood it.
The air thickened first — not heavier exactly, but fuller. Eirik’s ?nd-sense picked it up ten minutes out, the background density rising like slow heat from stone.
Leif noticed too, though in his own way. His head tilted slightly, attention sliding toward the current the way it always did when water started getting interesting.
“Still elevated,” he murmured.
“Yes,” Skeggi said.
Rí just squinted at the river like it had personally offended her.
Eirik filled his jar carefully, labeling the source in his notebook. Formation residue still lingered here, faint but stubborn.
Good.
Very good.
Skeggi watched him do it.
“Hm.”
Which, from Skeggi, meant approval.
They waded in.
At first, it felt like normal submerged body tempering — deeper penetration, stronger mineral bite, the usual advantages.
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Then Skeggi said:
“Under.”
Eirik went under.
And everything changed.
The river didn’t just press on his skin.
It pressed through him.
The ?nd in the water slid along every channel at once, not sharp, not violent — just everywhere. Persistent. Curious. Like the river was asking questions his body wasn’t used to answering.
He ran the tempering cycle.
Something… unlocked.
Warmth spread through his structure, but not the usual grinding heat. This was deeper. Broader. His body map lit up all at once — feet, spine, shoulders, hips — everything talking to everything else in one overwhelming rush.
He surfaced abruptly.
Staggered.
Nearly ate river.
“Done?” Skeggi asked mildly.
“…Everything is loud,” Eirik said.
“Good.”
“That is not reassuring.”
Skeggi’s beard twitched.
“You’ve been tempering like a man hammering one nail at a time,” he said. “This teaches the body it’s one piece of wood.”
That… actually made sense.
Unfortunately.
Leif had waded only to the ankles, eyes half-closed, current-reading spread wide.
He wasn’t built like Eirik.
Where Eirik’s progress came through strain and grind and stubborn forward pressure…
Leif flowed.
His skill brushed the river like fingers over harp strings, reading density shifts, pressure lines, subtle movements most people never even suspected were there.
Different foundations.
Same mountain.
“You feel it?” Leif asked quietly.
“Yes,” Eirik said.
“You’re fighting less.”
“…I am?”
“Mm.” Leif didn’t look at him. “Before, you pushed through the work. Now the work is moving through you.”
Skeggi gave Leif a sharp look.
Then, slowly, nodded once.
“Good eyes, boy.”
Leif sat up a little straighter at that.
The Wyrd came quietly.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just certain.
[ RúNA ACQUIRED ]
Advanced Athletics · Blár · Lv.1
The body and the ?nd were never separate.
You simply learned to stop treating them that way.
Eirik read it twice.
Leif leaned closer.
“Blár?”
“Blár.”
“…Nice,” Leif said, trying very hard to sound normal about it.
He did not succeed.
Things were settling nicely.
Which meant, naturally, Skeggi made it worse.
Back at the garrison that evening, he commandeered the lower workroom again.
Barrels came out.
Crocks.
Weights.
Things that definitely did not belong in polite food preparation.
Eirik should have known.
“You’ve been tempering the body,” Skeggi said. “Now we teach the body to expect the work.”
“…Through fish,” Eirik said carefully.
“Through fermentation.”
That was worse.
Two hours later, the room smelled like something had died, reconsidered, and died again.
Eirik stood bare-armed over a brine crock while Skeggi adjusted heat stones with surgical focus.
“Hold your channels steady,” Skeggi said.
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I am—”
“You twitched.”
“I did not—”
“You twitched.”
Eirik stopped arguing and fixed it.
The brine responded immediately.
Which was deeply unsettling.
The door opened.
Bj?rn stopped in the doorway.
Rí peeked around his leg.
Both of them froze.
Inside the room:
Eirik, sweaty and intensely focused
Skeggi elbow-deep in aggressive fish alchemy
Three bubbling crocks
One low heat array
And a smell that could legally be classified as a weapon
There was a long, long pause.
Bj?rn spoke first.
“…I’m not asking.”
Wise man.
Rí leaned in further, eyes bright with scientific curiosity.
“Is this safe?” she asked.
Skeggi didn’t even look up.
“Define safe.”
Bj?rn pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’m going to regret leaving you two unsupervised, aren’t I.”
“Yes,” Eirik and Skeggi said in perfect unison.
Rí inhaled experimentally.
Then—
To everyone’s horror—
She nodded.
“…It’s actually not that bad.”
Eirik stared at her.
Skeggi slowly turned.
Bj?rn closed his eyes.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
Later, when the room aired out and the brine settled into its slow, patient work, Skeggi finally explained.
“You’ve been strengthening the structure,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been feeding the channels.”
“Yes.”
“You have not,” Skeggi said, “taught the body to welcome the work.”
Eirik frowned.
Skeggi tapped the crock.
“Most people force tempering,” he said. “Push. Grind. Endure.”
He looked at Eirik directly.
“I am teaching your body to lean into it.”
That…
…was new.
Across the room, Leif’s pen was moving very quickly.
On the walk back to quarters later, Leif fell into step beside him.
“You’re changing again,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You always do it the hard way.”
Eirik thought about Heimskr.
About the river.
About the brine crock that was probably going to haunt his dreams.
“…Yeah,” he said.
Leif nodded, satisfied.
“Good. That means it’ll stick.”