For the first time in a while, I was doing my alchemical work outside.

  I hadn’t missed doing so at all.

  The wind was polluting my brewing process. The cold air was streaming through my clothes, making me resolve yet again that I would get that warmer coat. I was getting distracted by far too many things to maintain optimal yield.

  I wouldn’t have changed things for the world.

  After all, my pregnant dragoness was nearby, radiating warmth that helped beat back Winter’s grasping fingers. She was expertly shaping a log to add to the pile of building materials waiting for pickup.

  I had missed a few things by shutting myself away in my lab every day, though I’d heard about them from Alys. One was the occasional presence of her construction crew. They stopped by every few days to pick up the materials required for building houses in town, which they were continuing to do under Alys’ instruction. I had also missed Alys’ periodic short trips to inspect their work.

  I considered the fact that she had voluntarily switched to the role of an overseer, rather than an active participant, to be massive progress. Without my involvement at all, my dragoness had taken steps to reduce the pressure and stress she was under!

  This also allowed her to spend more time properly crafting and treating logs, and also to indulge in her real passion: woodworking. She had returned to her practice of making tables, chairs, and other useful items to give away to the townsfolk who needed them most, and she had time to decorate each piece.

  Now that I was working outside, I discovered Amara had taken over the decoration duties since her arrival. Whenever Alys finished a piece, her mother happily took it and went to work. This meant Alys’ production speed had about doubled, though I noticed she frequently sent pouting looks in her mother’s direction.

  I knew for a fact that Alys enjoyed decorating her pieces. I was waiting for the moment when she decided to snatch the work back from her mother with all the ferocity of a dragoness protecting her hoard.

  Still, it did amuse me that Amara’s decorations were decidedly family-themed on this particular morning.

  Soren had been devoting his time to his wife and daughter over the past few days. He’d always been ready to fetch a needed tool, hold something in place, or play the role of a butler serving the finest torture juice. This morning, however, Shaessath had promptly dragged the poor man away so he could assist her instead.

  Speaking of my draconic grandmother-in-law, she was emitting enough warmth to make Winter’s sting vanish almost entirely as she created a wildefire fruit orchard for Alys and me.

  When she’d promised to help with that, I had imagined the two of us making a concerted effort to grow saplings out of fruits. She would contribute her flames, and I would contribute what growth boosting I could. Then we would find a shaded area to plant them, since Alys had said the trees liked dark, warm places.

  Instead, Shaessath had made her way outside shortly after breakfast, carrying the wildefire tree Alys had been cultivating. Shaessath had shifted into her true draconic form, which dwarfed over our house. Then she had breathed on the tree… and singlehandedly created a host of new saplings.

  The wildefire tree was truly a wonder of magic and nature coming together. As Shaessath poured her flames over the tree, the pieces of fruit absorbed the fire until they were all glowing from the inside. Then they fell, bursting apart as they hit the ground.

  I could only stare as, from each burst fruit, a sapling grew before my eyes.

  The dragoness turned to shoot me a look of draconic superiority. This look never left her face as she continued feeding flames to the tree. In spite of everything I knew about plants, the tree just kept producing new fruits until Shaessath had around fifty saplings at her disposal.

  If I had any doubts that Shaessath had somehow created the tree herself, or had gotten someone to create it for her so it would be as convenient as possible for a fire dragon to raise, those doubts faded entirely. In their place was a quiet awe at what could be achieved by a determined individual of Shaessath’s power.

  And that was just the beginning.

  Once she had fifty saplings, Shaessath picked a spot towards the edge of the woods and breathed. Her fire breath was a very pretty cerulean color. It liquefied the ground in a matter of seconds.

  Then I had the chance to see what made The Molten Expanse such a terror.

  I had always believed that Alys possessed exquisite control over her flames and fire abilities in general. I still believed this. It was undeniably true. Yet I also couldn’t deny that Shaessath was far, far more skilled.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  I had finally gotten the name of the obsidian-like material from which Alys had made so much of our house. It was called flameshard glass, named as such because it was made by ‘imbuing the power of our flames into common dirt.’ Alys could do wonders with it. She could toy with flameshard glass like a skilled potter with clay.

  Shaessath, on the other hand, created a vast quantity of the material with a single stream of her flames. Then, with nothing but her will, she pushed. Flameshard glass rippled, heaved, and then condensed, opening the ground into a cavern that led in the direction of the woods. The space was large enough for Shaessath to crawl inside, still breathing fire so she could continue expanding the cavern.

  Now, from what I could see, the cavern definitely had rough spots and uneven surfaces. She hadn’t just crafted a flawless chamber with a single flex of her will. Regardless, this was still an incredible show of control, spectacular enough to make Alys glance over contemplatively. I saw her claws twitch, as if she felt tempted to try reproducing her grandmother’s feats.

  If I knew my dragoness, and I was fairly certain I did, she would be making an attempt at the earliest convenience.

  Just to show off a little more of her exquisite control over all things fire, Shaessath asked Soren to follow in her footsteps as she ventured down into the molten expanse of the cavern. Not only was she keeping the flames away from her very flammable son-in-law, but she was also solidifying and draining heat out of the flameshard glass he was walking over, quickly enough that he never stumbled or even flinched at its warmth.

  Soren was carrying an armful of the wildefire saplings. His job was to press their roots into the liquefied patches of flameshard glass Shaessath was leaving in her wake. We lost sight of the duo quickly, especially when Shaessath made flameshard glass surge forward and cover up most of the entrance. This left a space roughly equivalent to a standard-sized door.

  At that point, my curiosity won out.

  I finished the batch of immune system boosting powder I was working on, then strode to the cavern’s entrance. My dragoness quickly joined me. We stood there silently for a moment, staring into the glowing depths.

  “Impressive, isn’t she?” Alys sighed.

  I detected the slight note of jealousy in her voice. Still, I could do nothing but nod mutely.

  Shaessath had already excavated a truly massive cavern. It was large enough for her to curl up comfortably in the middle, with plenty of space to spare between her and the ceiling.

  I did note that the cavern stretched all the way to the forest. Its farthest end was well underneath the trees. This caused me a twinge of both nerves and amusement, as I didn’t think it was a coincidence.

  I didn’t know for certain what Shaessath was trying to communicate to the two local nature spirits I’d told her about. Nonetheless, the creation of the cavern was one awe-inspiring message.

  “That’s the last of the saplings,” Soren called, snapping me out of contemplation.

  Shaessath waved a wing towards the door. “Then step outside. I do not want you to get caught up in what I need to do next.”

  Soren nodded and headed our way in a hurry, making us shuffle so there was enough space for him at the cavern’s entrance.

  A quick glance around told me Amara had chosen not to join us. She simply kept carving decorations into Alys’ work, which did strike me as a little odd… but the sudden swell of mana and heat distracted me from those thoughts immediately.

  My eyes darted back to The Molten Expanse, who was breathing slow and deep. Power swelled around her every time she inhaled. When she finally unleashed her breath, it consumed the entire cavern in a blue inferno.

  Heat slammed into us, but the flames stopped a few short steps away from the makeshift entrance. They roiled and raged, but never truly threatened us, though I knew that their heat alone should have fried us where we stood. We only felt pleasantly warm, and that was by my standards. Alys probably didn’t even notice any heat.

  When the flames finally died out almost ten minutes later, the cavern was completely transformed.

  Glowing blue veins snaked underneath the solidified, partially see-through flameshard surface, casting a low heat haze over the cavern. The veins were fascinating. They resembled raging flames or flowing blue magma, depending on what patch of them I was looking at.

  Fire-aspected mana filled the cavern like choking smoke, slowly seeping into the fruit trees to keep them productive. The fruit trees had shot up, too. I could already see fruits dotting their branches, so much so that I struggled to imagine how we could ever run out of them. We would need to harvest regularly if we didn’t want the trees to start bowing under the weight of their bounty.

  In the midst of everything, lounging like a very smug cat, was Shaessath.

  She was practically preening under our stunned gazes, and took her time enjoying our shock before shifting back into a draconian form and stretching. Only then did she start to meander our way, pausing to pluck a fruit and bite into it directly. She nodded, clearly satisfied with the results of her work.

  “Have you ever seen her do something like this?” I wondered, addressing both father and daughter.

  Soren shook his head. “No. Never. By the time I joined the family, the orchard she keeps was already there. It does look a lot like this, however.”

  “It does. I had no idea this is how grandmother made it,” Alys mused. From the expression on her face, she was inspired.

  “There. All done,” Shaessath announced when she reached us. “This should keep you supplied for a while.”

  “The heat veins… they are there to keep supplying the trees with what they need to grow fruit, aren’t they? How long will they last?” I asked, more fascinated by the trees than ever before.

  I had found them interesting from the start, of course. A tree with such unique abilities and requirements for growth had instantly caught my attention. However, I hadn’t been terribly drawn to it, nor had I wanted to tamper with Alys’ only source of torture juice.

  Suffice to say, things had changed, even if I already had so many projects on my hands that I wouldn’t get around to examining or experimenting with the plant any time soon.

  The Molten Expanse tilted her head ever so slightly as she considered my question. “Five or six hundred years? I couldn’t do better than that in a hurry. But it won’t be difficult to reenergize the veins, as you called them, regularly. My sweetling can definitely learn to do it.”

  “Oh, that’s… good,” I replied, pushing through my shock.

  I was a fae, yes. But five hundred years still sounded like a rather long time at my age. Not to mention we were talking about something created over the course of ten minutes or so.

  The amount of power required to perform such a feat… I already had plenty of respect for Shaessath, but that respect just kept growing.

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