As I flew back toward Bree, I felt it again — the knock against the cover.
Slowing mid-air, I descended gently to the earth, the Wind-Mover's fins whispering as they folded in.
Something new waited. A new paper to inspect.
Doll Maker of București, the title read. Elegant, sharp.
Its meaning unfurled in my mind like schematics: I would become a savant in mathematics and science, a mind sharpened beyond the ordinary. Magitech would no longer be mystery — only challenge. I'd be able to repair, modify, even recreate devices entirely foreign to me, no matter their origin.
Not just understanding but mastery.
I exhaled slowly, feeling something shift beneath my skin. The world didn't brighten, but it clarified — lines, angles, patterns. I looked at the Wind-Mover in my hand and, for the first time, saw it differently I knew I could make it better. Smoother intake vents. A more efficient core housing. Even a stabilization fin adjustment to reduce turbulence on sharp turns.
Ideas came unbidden, threading themselves into blueprints in my mind.
I tucked the device away, the wind tugged at my coat. Bree was still a blur in the distance.
Time to move.
I stepped back into the air, the Wind-Mover humming to life with a fresh understanding behind my grip.
Once I walked back into Bree, I tracked Bilbo down using his amulet — more specifically, the compass I'd crafted to locate any of my creations. It was a simple disc of polished brass and black glass, etched with lines that shifted depending on what I told it to seek. Today, it pointed me straight to the Prancing Pony.
Bilbo was seated at a wide table by the hearth, half-surrounded by tankards and deep in what looked like either a very heated debate or some kind of competition. Judging by the gleam in his eyes and the smug little grin on his opponent's face — another Hobbit with wild curly hair and a coat too fine for a traveller — it was the latter.
"Thirty white horses on a red hill," Bilbo said with a tap of his mug. "First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still."
His opponent narrowed his eyes and leaned back, puffing out his cheeks. "Teeth," he finally muttered, not quite grudging. "Classic. Let's see if you can handle this one: Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters."
Bilbo frowned, mouthing the words as he ran them through his head.
I smirked and let them be. Hobbits and their riddles. Some things never changed.
I took a seat at the bar, pulled out a pouch of alchemically treated leather, and set it on the wood before me. Time to finish it.
My prototype Bag of Holding.
The leather was deeply reinforced, capable of sustaining high-density magical structures without tearing or destabilizing. With my new understanding the whole concept had become clearer.
I pressed both palms to the pouch, let my Qi seep in. Then I layered in fire, the creative and destructive principle both — a necessary base for the kind of spatial inversion I was creating, in this case at least. Space didn't bend itself. It had to be burned open, its edges unspooled and rewoven.
The pouch shimmered, a dull heat-haze flickering over it.
Now came the infusion of intent and conceptual structure. I pictured the space I wanted: Boundless, stable, selective. The kind of storage that could hold not just physical objects, but complex arrangements — whole workshops, if I chose. The ambient energy around me fed into the opening space, pulled into the alchemical weave I'd laid.
A soundless ripple passed through the bag. The internal chamber had taken form.
Rough estimate? About two Bag Ends worth of space. It wasn't infinite, but it was vast enough for now. Still, there was room for expansion — quite literally. I could add dimensional anchors, perhaps pocketed folds of reality stitched together, overlapping planes that could be rotated through by touch. It would be complex work, requiring stabilizer runes and anchor matrices… but I understood it now. Knew where to start.
I poured more Qi into it — this time laced with my own identity. A lock. Only I would be able to access the expanded space within. Eventually, I'd add an intent filter to it as well. Reach inside, think "alchemical torch," and bam its in my hand.
With the way my thoughts were moving now, I could already imagine future upgrades:
A sorting algorithm to categorize items by material, function, or priority.
An adaptive gravity loop inside to make heavier objects weightless to retrieve.
Even a compression node to miniaturize volatile materials during storage.
I sealed the last layer and withdrew my hands, the leather cool and humming softly now — a completed prototype.
Behind me, Bilbo let out a triumphant "Ha!" as his opponent groaned and admitted defeat.
"I'll buy the next round then," the other Hobbit muttered, rising with a theatrical sigh. "But next time, I bring the riddles."
"You said that last time," Bilbo said, beaming.
I shook my head fondly. Hobbits.
While they ordered drinks, I pulled out a brass shell from my side satchel — a new project begun on the road. A pocket watch.
A Chrono-Tether, I called it. Built using the foundation of standard mechanics, but fused with directional time Qi and several failsafes. Its primary function would be as a time-marker — something that could track, hold, or even anchor time.
In theory?
I could "tag" an object or area and rewind it to a prior state. Freeze a blade mid-swing by halting its motion in a hyper-local time loop or slow perception to allow for reaction time a mortal shouldn't have. Still it was more of a experiment with time in general for instance If I could speed up the time within an area I'd be able to work at quicker paces, a time chamber maybe.
The hard part was building a containment lattice capable of housing temporal Qi without letting it bleed into the device and age it to dust. Still… with this perk? I had ideas.
Another thought struck me as I adjusted the chronograph's gears.
Why was I still calling it Qi?
Was it just habit — a side-effect of the knowledge and systems I'd inherited? After all, I had actual magic now. My Lore of Fire wasn't some vague energy manipulation; it was flame bent to my will, empowered by the Winds of Aqshy. My alchemy functioned on defined principles too, invoking change through reaction and intent as well as general energy used for said refinements.
Still... Qi felt like the right word. A catch-all for the energy that flowed through everything — ambient, spiritual, elemental. My magic could be seen as a refined form of Qi manipulation, just focused through different lenses: lore, language, element.
Qi was also my strongest alchemical reagent. Nothing else I'd found could fuel reactions with such precision, intensity, and personality.
"Energy" worked too, I supposed, but Qi was shorter. Cleaner.
That did make me wonder though: What exactly did Gandalf do?
As an Istari, was he manipulating the same energy? Or was it something higher — divine will, filtered through mortal form? He often used words in his magic. Spoke languages layered with intent. The Elves were the same — look at their swords, their artifacts. Named, sung, remembered into power.
Maybe intent was the common thread. Magic, Qi, divine will — all flowing through purpose.
Still didn't compare to Starfang, though.
I was halfway through threading a stabilizer rune into the watch's casing when I felt a light tap on my shoulder.
Bilbo.
He raised an eyebrow, arms crossed, a smirk playing on his face.
"So," he said, voice casual, "what exactly did you get up to while you were gone?"
I gave him a perfectly straight face. "Went for a walk."
He blinked once. Then just stared at me, expression flat and unamused.
"…Sure you did." he said dryly.
I gave a slow smile and returned to my tools. He didn't push further. But I could tell — he knew something had happened.
And he'd wait. Hobbits were stubborn that way.
The road home had taken them through Staddle, Combe, and Archet — the three quiet villages tucked near Bree. Each one had been a breath of calm after the intensity of the Downs. Market stalls, idle gossip, pipe smoke. Nice and peaceful.
Now they were on the road again, hooves soft against the late-summer dirt. Bree was long behind them, and the fields were turning familiar again — rolling, green, and wide. The Shire wasn't far now. A few more days, maybe less, if the weather held.
Bilbo rode beside me, squinting up at the sky, then sideways at me.
"So," he said, tone deceptively casual. "Let me get this straight. You went off into the Barrow-downs alone… alone… fought four Wights — not one, four — with fire magic and alchemical grenades."
I gave a thoughtful hum. "Technically one of them melted itself trying to stab me, so I wouldn't say I fought all four."
He stared at me.
"Barrow-wights are real?" he asked, incredulous.
Without a word, I reached into the saddlebag and pulled out the cloth-wrapped blade — one of the two intact ones I'd salvaged from the Barrow. The wrappings were heavy, layered with protective alchemical thread and a bit of fire-scorched leather, just in case.
I unwrapped it carefully, revealing the dark steel. It had once been corrupted — slick with shadow and stinking of stagnant death — but now, after long hours of purification, it was clean. The metal shimmered faintly in the light. A blade of old Númenórean make, I suspected.
Bilbo leaned in, brows high.
"…You kept it."
"Would you throw out something that tried to kill you and failed?" I said with a smile.
He didn't answer right away, just stared at the weapon like it might blink.
Then he sat back in the saddle with a little sigh.
"Thain's bones," he muttered. "And I thought riddle contests were exciting."
The horses continued their steady pace, the sun beginning to dip behind a line of hills far ahead.
By the time we reached the Shire, it would have been twenty-seven days on the road — nearly a month of travel, learning, tinkering… and danger.
Once we got back, I wondered what my Garden would look like.