"Welcome to Taarith's Wands," the colorfully-dressed man greeted the group. "I'm Ebayne Taarith. Are you looking for something specific?"

"We need to expand our options," Jax answered without hesitation. He somehow managed to seem both unsure and determined at the same time. "I, ah, heard we can do that with wands?"

"Of course you can!" Ebayne Taarith grinned widely. "Wands are an excellent choice; all you have to do is choose what effect you want and I can make you a wand that will do exactly that; all you have to do is give it mana. Whether it's regular camp chores or fighting third-upgrade monsters in the Maze, my wands can help! I have a lot of the most common ones on display in this room, but I'm always happy to make one specifically for what you need if you need something a bit less common."

"How much are they?" Jax sounded a bit nervous now. Sophia was certain it was an act, but if she hadn't known that Jax never acted like that, she knew she'd have believed it.

"The simplest ones start at a single flower," Ebayne answered easily. His grin looked a little forced, but he kept it in place. "That's things like a campfire starter; useful if you don't have fire magic of your own, but not intended to fight with. If it's something you can fight with, I can't start below a sun, and most are more. It's not cheap or easy to make wands that handle enough mana to harm enemies, even at the first upgrade."

Sophia frowned. From the way Ebayne said it, "suns" were probably some sort of currency. Maybe they were the next step up from flowers? Sixteen times the cost of a firestarter for something that could hurt enemies seemed pretty cheap, really, but then again Ebayne did mention first upgrade monsters. Monsters at the first upgrade were stronger than ordinary beasts, but they weren't so much stronger than an ordinary spear didn't work. If that was the scale Ebayne was working on, Sophia was certain that wands that could be used for spells useful against stronger monsters would be even more expensive.

"Uh, do you have anything you've already made that you might be willing to cut a deal on?" Jax rubbed the back of his neck as he made the offer. "Something useful on second or third upgrade monsters? Maybe something other people can't use because it's locked to someone else?"

Oh. Sophia felt like she'd been slow; of course that was why Jax was acting so weird. He wanted to reveal what she could do without coming directly out and saying it. Sophia knew it was more effective to let people figure out what you wanted them to know "on their own" than to just tell them things, but she'd never been any good at that. Jax made it look easy.

Ebayne shook his head, then stopped as if he'd thought of something. "The only reason I'd have something like that would be to salvage the materials for something else. I don't keep things like that for long usually, but I do have a couple of wands that might still be in usable condition. They'll still cost suns, but I can give a discount if you want them."

"What do they do?" Jax asked, still keeping up his "nervous about spending money" act.

"I'll have to examine them to find out," Ebayne admitted. "I was interested in the materials, not the spellscript, when I bought them. Give me a few minutes; I should check to see if there are any others I'm not thinking of."

Ebayne opened the door behind the desk, then paused in the doorway. "Oh, and don't try to steal anything in this room. It won't leave until it's paid for, and even if it did you wouldn't be able to use the wand without it being keyed to you."

Sophia's mouth twitched at that. Had he already forgotten that he was talking to someone who wanted to buy wands that were locked to someone else? For that matter, mentioning the ward was almost a challenge.

She looked around the room; the only magic other than the wands and staves on the walls was on the doors. The one Ebayne left through was clearly warded so that only Ebayne and people he deliberately admitted could enter without breaking the ward. It might even be strong enough to stop someone from entering, but Sophia was pretty sure that Dav could force his way in if he wanted to. She wasn't certain if she'd be able to or not, but she could definitely bypass the ward. It was almost shockingly simple.

The ward on the other door was more complex, but if anything that made it easier to break. Whoever set it up tried to do too many things and left several loopholes. The easiest one to take advantage of was probably the "wand is paid for" loophole, because there was no authentication at all; all she'd have to do was pick the wand and "tell" the ward that it was paid for and it would work. She'd literally be doing exactly the same thing Ebayne did when he sold a wand.

Sophia had barely started looking at the absolute disaster that was the authentication on the exterior door ward when Ebayne returned. He had four wands and a full-sized staff with him, instead of the two wands he'd mentioned.

"I know what two of these did, and I have a good idea about two of the others," Ebany announced as he set three of the wands down on his work table and leaned the staff against his chair. "The last one is a complete mystery; I don't even know for certain that it is a proper wand. It might be a specialty item."

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Sophia frowned at that. How could a crafter not know what the things he worked with were? Sure, he wasn't the person who made them, but surely you could figure it out. Maybe that was what he meant when he said he had a good idea about two of them?

On the other hand, he planned to take them apart for their materials instead of adapting them for a new user. Maybe he just wasn't very good.

The thing was, Xin'ri seemed to think that adapting things for a new user was hard unless you had a specific Ability for it, and that those Abilities were rare. So maybe it wasn't that he was bad compared to everyone else?

Sophia shook her head and asked a question she probably should have asked earlier. "Why do people lock items anyway, when you can just Attune them? That seems to give all the links that are necessary to use them and it can be undone if you want to pass the item on."

Sophia clearly remembered when Dav got the armor he was still using from Volat back in Old Kestii. It was an Attuned item and even changed for Dav. It also had the ability to grow with Dav, which it was clear these wands wouldn't.

"Most people can't make Attunable items," Xin'ri answered before Ebayne spoke up. "Your Sphere has to be built for it."

"Even those who can often don't," Ebayne added. "I can make Attunable wands, but I only make them when they're specifically requested. They're not significantly more powerful than forcibly locked items and you can only Attune so many things, especially if they're more powerful than you are. It's worth it for armor and anything else that needs to work without having you push mana into it to activate it, but for wands, the mana-lock is the way to go."

Now that Sophia thought about it, that explained why the contraception amulet was an Attuned item. It had to do something without her conscious input.

"This wand is actually one of mine." Ebayne held out the wand so that everyone could see it. It was little more than a stick with a spiral of what looked like red lacquer that moved up the shaft, sort of like the symbol for a barber shop. "It's one of the most common ones, a second upgrade fire explosion with variable range. It's one of the few where I know what happened; the man who bought it sold it back to me when he was a little short on aurichalc for another wand."

Sophia nodded, then realized that he seemed to want to sell them the items based solely on a description. That wasn't going to work. "Do you have somewhere we can try them out? I want to see it work before I buy it."

Ebayne shook his head. "I do have a small test area, but you asked to see locked wands; you'll have to take it to whoever you found that can change the lock before you can try it out."

"Take it to someone?" Sophia shook her head. She hadn't really expected to be put on the spot like this, but if the lock was anything like the ward on Ebayne's shop, it should only take a few minutes to figure it out. "I am the someone. Can I hold the wand for a bit?"

Ebayne paused for a moment, then seemed to decide that there wasn't anything wrong with letting her hold the locked wand and handed it to her. "I've only seen one person rekey a wand before. It took him a while to get his spirit to resonate in unison with the enchantment; it took even longer if he wanted to give the wand to someone else. So while you're doing that, the next-"

"It won't take all that long," Sophia interrupted. She wasn't sure how long "a while" was, but deciphering a ward depended entirely on how difficult it was. She wasn't expecting any tricky protections on this, so she could skip a bunch of the checks; she'd probably finish in ten or fifteen minutes, and that might well include the actual process of changing the wand to resonate with her own mana. It wasn't like there was any reason not to. "But I'm going to have to pay attention to this so I won't be listening to the rest of the wand descriptions if you go over them now. You'll have to repeat them to me later."

"That's fine," Ebayne said with a smile that almost looked like he didn't believe her. "I'll be happy to, once you show me that you can rekey a locked wand."

He definitely didn't believe her. Well, she didn't really need him to. It might be even more effective if she proved him wrong.

Sophia stared at the wand. It took a little bit to separate the locking function from the rest, since it was actually woven into the wand's spell function itself instead of neatly separated the way wands back on Earth kept their inputs, but finding the mana input still led her where she needed to go.

This wand was clearly intended to only ever be used by one person, because unlike the cube Xin'ri showed her, it didn't have a way to tell it to save a new mana imprint; it simply took an imprint of the first mana it saw other than its maker's and saved that. Sophia had to clear out the old imprint and then reset the capture mechanism to allow it to take a new mana imprint.

"...compromise between spread and accuracy, and I'm fairly happy about it," Ebayne told the rest of the group. He was clearly talking about the staff, but Sophia didn't know what he'd said other than that. "It does require even a third upgrade Called to have heavy investment in their Core, though; while fifteen is technically enough to use it, that will only manage one or two spells and they will be significantly less powerful than the staff should manage. Twenty Core is where the staff truly becomes useful. I can make equivalents at lower Core values for second upgrade Called; they're well worth the cost."

Sophia shook her head slightly and interrupted the wandsmith's sales pitch. "I'll want to hear that all later, but right now why don't we head to the testing area? Also, who wants to try the wand? I've reset it to not be keyed to anyone. Oh, hey, how do you keep the wand from locking when someone tests it? It looks like it's meant to lock to the first user other than you."

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