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His entire reason for coming here was to watch how Abbas was handling the Candle, because he had a rather strong feeling that--even for someone as smart as the Sunsmith of Sair--this thing was a bit difficult to understand.

And Hector had seen its entire life. The memories might've been stuck in a weird, hazy vault right now, but in the short time that he'd been sifting through them, he'd been able to recall the single most important thing from his time spent within the Candle--what his overall goal had been, why he'd spent so damn long in there.

He'd wanted to understand the Candle's creation process as much as he possibly could. He'd watched and rewatched Agrian work with it countless times. He'd burned those scenes into his mind, trying to break down every conceivable thing he had witnessed.

He'd figured that he probably wouldn't get another chance to dive directly into the Candle's memories like that, so he'd decided to make the absolute most of the opportunity.

And boy had there been a lot. Even discounting all the time that the Candle had spent dormant--which was a fuckload, by the way--there had still been a ton of stuff to go through.

Agrian had used this thing precisely sixty-eight times. And Hector remembered them all.

Well, okay, a lot of those scenes were currently sitting in Sto, so if he wanted to go over them again with a fine-tooth comb, he'd have to open up that metaphorical vault, but he still retained the gist.

Not every single use of the Candle had resulted in a successful creation, and not every success was the final product. Many of them had just been for material synthesis, fusing things together for an item that wasn't fully realized until much later.