Channel the Forge

Kenshi rolls over on his bed mat, grumbling sleepily from one of his gill flaps. Every morning he wakes up and wishes he'd invested in a proper hammock, and every day he continues to Not Do That. Besides, he'd never get out of bed if he wasn't a little bit uncomfortable staying in it for long.

There's a different sort of discomfort this morning though: a throbbing ache rippling up his right arm.

Did he sleep on it funny...? No- he remembers, last night. Dark and cold, with flickering sparks and a huge shrouded figure. Odd hanasei. Ichorists?
He hauls himself into a sitting position and inspects his arm. It's bandaged very neatly, a now-dried poultice sitting on top of a gauze patch all held in place by a very well-woven length of linen. The edges of a burn twist their way free of the binding where the fire took hold on his skin, and he guesses the puncture wounds of the bite beneath were the priority.

Ugh.

Poking at it only makes it hurt more, but it also makes a weird heat bloom in his stomach, like his aether is generating and pooling somewhere it shouldn't.
He shrugs on his usual smithing robe, but avoids the undershirt. He won't mention the aether, but it's best he at least gets the wound looked at.

The healer tuts, his pale gills fluttering with the sound.
“I told you, if you have any more forge accidents, don't sleep on them, got it?” he says sternly. 

Kenshi is distracted by his eyeglasses. Were they flat-cast with the correct curvature, or artisanal ground crystal? The frames had a spring-hinged arm design, presumably to fit the healer's horn slope, but could a more comfortable fixture be made? Was-

Sudden pain snaps him out of his train of thought as the bandages are peeled away faster than was probably necessary. “Back to earth?” the healer asks. He taps Kenshi's arm above the snarled patch of reddened skin. “This is no ordinary forge burn. There's signs of strong aether contamination. Where did this come from?”
“...Tried a... new ionic plasma microcast. ...Didn't work.”

Talking's never been his strong suit. Lying, even less. The healer fixes him with a flat look, but doesn't press further. He packs the wound with a healing stimulant, clean gauze, and a fresh bandage. “Come back and get that changed tomorrow morning. Earlier if your aether starts acting up. And no forging for a week while it heals!”

Kenshi leaves, both of them knowing he's not going to listen to a word the healer said.

Something about the lie he flubbed spins around his head like a firefly, lit by the odd roiling sensation in his gut. He's done plenty of failed ionic plasma tests, of course – some of which almost didn't explode. But it was missing something. And that strong aether contamination...

He's tried to use static aether in his forge before too, but without any sort of catalyst or something to bring it to life outside of an organic state of being, it's about as useful as barfing into an ingot cast. But this time feels different. He can't stop thinking back to those roaring flames, the heat unusual, the tone of the sparks. Electricity crackling around the building that was slowly turning into red-hot charcoal, and the eyes of that overloaded hanasei in the seconds before it latched its jaws onto his arm -

It seems otherworldly, like he imagined it, but with every surge of the fire in his mind's eye, the more the feeling in his stomach seems to increase until it's pushing at the top of his ribcage. He reaches his home at almost a running speed; only the urgency of not spewing aether out if he ran on all fours stopping him from doing so. He almost bounces the door off the far wall in his haste throwing it open.

Plasma canisters, he has to find the empty plasma canisters – he's got crucibles, plenty of them, but they're not big enough – buried beneath scorched and warped offcasts he pulls out the cylinder he was looking for.

It doesn't take much coaxing to get the aether to flow. It rises like a volcano, spilling over his tongue in a hot current and he can taste the spark of life within it stronger than it's ever been before. It feels like he's breathing out the pure essence of a wildfire, uncontrollable and bright, and he gets as much of it as he can into the plasma canister before he has to shut his mouth. The sensation in his stomach reduces but doesn't go away entirely; he'll have to repeat this again or else risk it leaking from his gills and ruining his clothes. Still, there's plenty of it right now to get a good look at–


And oh, how it glows. 
There's an ethereal flow to the way it pulsates and ripples, the normal glittery state of it spun into something far more powerful, like a deep maroon universe swirling within the canister, and he's holding it right there in his shaking hands.
The potential of it thrums, drawing the light of the mostly-cooled forgefire, and he eyes it warily. Should he try...?

Kenshi ends up exploding another energy propulsor along with two liquid-crystal conduits and a length of high-pressure tubing, but the twisted remnants of it glow in faint ripples of that strange ether buildup, and it feels... right. Not quite there yet, but he's on the right track for something big.
He just needs more.

He needs to find those Ichorists.