Completed Three Winds to the Sheet

[Kuvarakh]

Sometime later, there was a harmony of screams from outside the front door. Kuvarakh and Wanda exchanged a glance and hurried to the door to see a trio of young women burst in, an apparition of grotesque, infectious hate rushing maliciously behind them.

Sensing that the ghost was enjoying the fear his appearance was generating, and that he was not, in fact, particularly powerful, Kuvarakh stepped past the young women and scowled at the approaching spirit. No longer entirely sure of itself, yet loathe to allow hesitation to undermine its ghastly horror assault, the ghost slid right up to Kuvarakh's face, letting an image of rot and ooze spill over its features as its eyes came within inches of the Nuit's.

Kuvarakh stared into its eyes, seeing and enveloping the image of himself reflected in the glinting orbs of the spiteful figure. He let his djed focus take subtle control of the image of his reflection and implanted the thought of having 'seen this Nuit's face before...where was it?' in the spirit's consciousness. He then imposed a generic wall paneling background and a frame around his reflected face in the spirit's mind as he nudged at something important underneath the portrait. He allowed the ghost to train his eyes below as he placed the certainty that there had been a plaque... with a name... and that name was... something blurred... and "CRAVEN".

The ghost recoiled at the thought of the name associated with Alvadas' most powerful and notorious Spiritists. Kuvarakh's scowl deepened and he roared, "BEGONE, PEST! Before I shatter you into dust!" He embellished this threat with a classic raising of hands, fingers like claws and began to mutter indistinct syllables.

The ethereal figure shrank in terror and sped away, howling, as if the vengeance of the void was upon it. Kuvarakh watched momentarily, then, satisfied, turned away to find the three girls huddled in a trembling group hug with Wanda, who was shushing them gently. "Fortunately," he said calmly, "Ghosts are still vulnerable to a hypnotist's influence. So who do we have here?" he asked, gently the nudging closest young lady to turn her face to him.

In an uncoordinated and conflicting manner, the three young women blurted over each other in confusion as they slowly calmed down. Eventually it came to light that Alea, back at the Order's HQ had asked them to come in her place to perform the service she had agreed to. Kuvarakh was puzzled, as he did not recognize any of these girls as initiates or trainees at the facility 'and they certainly are not instructors.' he thought to himself in mild annoyance.

When He asked if they had any reimancy training, they puzzled in confusion as though there was no sense to be made of the question, and that were just friends of hers come to take her place, generating a flow of air for payment.

Wanda burst out laughing and Kuvarakh sent her a withering look. he felt entirely on the spot here. if these girls did not know that Alea was a reimancer, it was not his place to tell them. Yet how did they propose to take her place without the skill to do so? And what payment were they expecting?

After a few more questions and some negotiating, Kuvarakh agreed to pay them each 1 gold miza per day, that being one third apiece what Alea had agreed to. They were clearly disappointed, but acknowledged that, whatever training Alea possessed made it understandable that they should make less. Plus which, it would be unfair to tax the man who had just saved them from the ghost with a 50% overrun of wages. They all had large fans that they would take turns employing.

Wanda chuckled quietly as she went to secure the founts ad filters in place. She would oversee the switching of the girls to keep the generated breeze fresh and strong while Kuvarakh did the actual transmutation.

They wasted no time to get started as Kuvarakh pricked his finger and slid it along the railing, generating, in his mental focus, the sense of movement beneath his fingers. True movement was slow to gain inertia, but soon the djed streamed beneath Kuvarakh's touch and began to accelerate. He applied all his concentration on the related image of the whirlpool of water which he always used to visualize the djed stream.

As acceleration increased, the surface of the water would become violent and show indications of nearly washing over the rim of the event horizon. He applied his control to impose his vision of the water being curled back in and achieving a smoother look, as the acceleration steadied or even increased. In a distant compartment of his focus, he perceived a constant bombardment of wind on the surface of the funnel of water, but it had no impact on its smooth surface. As his endurance began to feel taxed, he became convinced that he would gain no further acceleration, nor any additional smoothing of the surface, which was nearly glass-like now.

He screwed his eyes more tightly shut as his signal to Wanda, and a moment later, released the contact with the keystone, allowing the accelerated stream to spin and condense into the folded stack of sailcloth set in the center of the ring to receive the transmutation.

It was not a large stack, as this was to be a test. And it became immediately apparent that there was both success and failure resulting. But this was to be expected and Wanda showed no excessive distress as she retrieved the cloth from the center of the ring.

[Kuvarakh]

Success was obvious in the ballooning of the sailcloth as the newly imbued wind force flared each square of cloth with a breezy blow. The stack actually climbed higher as each square was lifted by the one beneath it, compounding the growth exponentially.

But the difficulties were equally obvious, and Wanda was relieved to have decided to test her theory first. It was not just that the cloth was already being tugged by wind, making of it a material that would be extremely difficult to work with. Not as immediately obvious was the fact that every square had the wind direction blowing the same vertical direction, yet the stack was folded.

As Wanda began to unfold it, intending to check that the wind force was equally distributed throughout, the squares showed the effect of such an effect on a folded material. Each square was showing the force of the wind from alternately opposite sides. Two squares folded to face each other, showing a windblown effect in the same direction on both while folded, became contradictory in direction when unfolded.

The unfolded sheet would have as much wind pull in one direction at the other! The whole point was defeated. A boat caught in a calm would gain nothing by unfurling a sail the tried to push the vessel in both directions with equal force at the same time.

Surprisingly, the girls salvaged the effort by offering to present the material to one of their cousins, who made toys. They pointed out that the sheets would be usable for a variety of playtime items. Wanda and Kuvarakh exchanged a look. Kuvarakh shrugged as his eyebrows popped up in a 'Why not?' attitude. Wanda mirrored his gesture and asked the girls if one of them could go and inform this cousin of the available cloth, hoping he would come himself and pick it up.

The girls were hesitant to leave, still spooked by the ghostly invasion from the Sealed Grounds. Kuvarakh offered to accompany them, as he needed to regain his djed reserve for the next activation, and felt a relaxing walk would do the trick.

One of the girls asked what they were trying to accomplish with all this bother. At first, both Wanda and Kuvarakh hedged at the thought of trying to explain a complicated series of djed-craft steps to a young lady that had stared doe-eyed with lack of comprehension at the mention of the word "reimancy", but made a simplified explanation of their efforts.

"Sooo... what you need are small squares of cloth that someone with this 'reimancery' ability blows wind on, so you can transfer that effect to something else?" she asked, trying to understand.

Wanda sighed at the stating of the obvious, "Yes, that's it, basically."

"Well... umm... Why don't you just use the stuff you just made? I mean, it's just squares of cloth. And it's already all wind blown and everything. You just need to cut it up." the girl asked, equally annoyed at the stating of the obvious.

Kuvarakh started to make some comment, to reveal the girl's lack of understanding, but found himself unable to find where that lack was. He stood there, his mouth partially open, stymied for something intelligent to say.

Wanda "rescued" him. "Well said, Kuvarakh. Now pay the girls for their invaluable aid. I believe it was a total of 60 gold mizas you were expecting to pay your original cohorts. That's twenty apiece." The girls squealed with surprised delight at the unexpected windfall and Wanda stepped forward, a bright smile on her face. "Thank you VERY much. That was very sound logical reasoning. Something either Kuvarakh or myself should have been able to provide for ourselves."

The sudden influx of coin seemed to have relieved the girls of their fear of wandering spirits, and they skipped out the door, already spending the money in their conversation. Kuvarakh and Wanda watched them go, both too embarrassed to speak for a moment.

Kuvarakh broke the spell, "I feel like a petching idiot..."

[Kuvarakh]

Wanda offered a delicate grunt of agreement. "The thought that a young lady with no training or knowledge of the field just solved our problem while we were about to give away the very answer we were looking for..." she shook her head and sighed. "yes, you ARE an idiot."

Kuvarakh pointed a challenging look in her direction, which she ignored by deliberately looking at the ceiling and whistling while she walked over to retrieve the windblown cloths. "Sorry, boss. I'LL try to be smarter next time."

They returned to the transmutation room and considered the next step. "Well, clearly we have the chargers we need for the next step, but what about the cloth being all windblown already?" Kuvarakh asked.

"Oh, I'm sure you can figure out a way to cut a few squares and anchor them to the fount slots. What more is there to worry about?"

"I don't mean the charger material. I mean the stack in the middle. We can't expect a sail maker to want to work with large sheets of cloth that are flying around his shop while he's trying to trim them... to... various... sail... dimensions" his voice trailed off as he saw Wanda looking at him as though she was about to reiterate her statement that he was an idiot.

"I thought you were joking when you said you'd never actually learned glyphing. I'll have to teach you sometime. But not right now. No, this will be simple enough. Some sort of activation trigger... But what, exactly, to use as a trigger..." She cupped her chin in her hand as she slowly paced, her gaze unfocused and distant.

"Can't you just have a spoken command word?" He saw a grin forming on her face and beat her to it. "Oh no you don't! You're not using my name! YOU may feel it to be the most natural representation of 'an endless blow hard full of nothing but hot air', but not everyone knows me as well as you do." he said with a conspiratorial wink.

Wanda suppressed a laugh, "I suppose you're right. But, no, I'm not about to try voice activation. I'm not sure I could get it right. It's very complex. You have to somehow find a way to represent WHOSE voice it will be giving the command. Otherwise any stranger might trigger it without even knowing it. And even if you can actually know exactly who will be the one, How do you clarify the qualifying aspect of the triggering voice? Do you try to form a glyph that defines the age, sex, emotional state, accent, pitch? And then what do you do if that particular person suffers some kind of accident? No, we need something more basic." She continued her slow pacing.

"Like someone whistling? or..clapping their hands?" he offered.

"No, that's too random. That could happen anytime right here in town. The client could just be carrying it out the door and then, someone walks by, whistling..." she let the scenario hang unfinished. Kuvarakh began to pace slowly, mirroring Wanda. He continued to make suggestions ans she continued to find fault with them. "Too Random", "Too, Specific", "Too Vague", "Too Hard to Remember", "Too Vulnerable to Accidental Triggering", "Too Hard to Keep the Triggering Device on Hand". etc., etc.

"Good Preaching Gods, Wanda! Is it really that hard to find a suitable trigger?" Kuvarakh threw his arms up in frustration.

"For something that is only used in a certain circumstance, in a certain place, with very unique conditions, and is entirely wasted if it is triggered before being in place, yes! It has to be a trigger that CAN'T be activated while being crafted, or before being stowed on board a ship, OR being properly rigged, but then, can be easily triggered after that by some means that is easily accessed and in plentiful supply." she shot back.

"Well, then what is there that is only found at sea, won't be mistaken for something else, but is in plentiful supply and easy to get once AT sea, besides the damned seawater itself?" he snapped, stymied for an answer. He flopped back in a chair, irritated with himself and his inability to resolve the puzzle. After a moment, Wanda began to laugh. He looked up angrily, thinking she was laughing at him, but found her making a gesture of awarding a point to him in the air. He looked at her questioningly.

"The seawater itself. Very GOOD, Kuvarakh!"

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh spent the rest of the workday trying different methods of securing the small squares of windblown sailcloth he had cut for fount chargers to the slots. He was concerned that if the cloths did not stay open and ballooning evenly, they might collapse and the djed pattern imbued in the receiver would be that of a sheet folded around the ring. The resulting product may have a highly inconsistent wind stroke across its surface and twist the sail on the rigging into unmanageable directions. It may even fold up like their first receiver had been.

It was not as difficult as he had imagined to cut the squares. He simply laid it on the floor and knelt to put his weight on it while he cut. He decided to simply tie one corner to the slot on the ring itself, one corner to the chain assembly at the ceiling, and the other two to long strands tied to nails pounded into a heavy piece of wood well away from the boundaries of the djed stream. This kept the small square of blown cloth opened and filled with a full, evenly spread gust of wind. And using nothing but string to secure it enabled the simplicity of simply putting a piece of string in the filter slot.

All this was just practice as Wanda was not prepared to inscribe her glyph just yet. She was reading one of her University textbooks about the actual composition and chemical breakdown of seawater for insight into the details of her glyph's defining nature. Having some background in Basic World Ecology, she knew that water was cyclic throughout all of Mizahar. She couldn't just inscribe "Water from the Sea", as even rainwater was, at one time, part of the ocean.

Kuvarakh had suggested "Water in the Sea Right Now", thinking he had it all figured out. But Wanda retorted that if a sailor scooped up some seawater in a bucket to activate the sail, then that water was no longer IN the sea. The tone with which she said it suggested that the greatest wisdom Kuvarakh could display right then was of the sort that was synonymous with silence.

Kuvarakh could not debate the "wisdom" of her suggestion. He eventually put his set-ups in a corner, satisfied with his preparations, weighted them down and bid Wanda goodnight. She was greatly distracted, but managed a grunt of a reply as she leaned over her worktable. Charcoals, brushes, inks, blot-cloths and etching tools were scattered about its surface as her head swiveled between her books and her trial glyph mock-ups.

He took a moment to watch what she was doing. There seemed to be four figures she was incorporating. They seemed like crude doodles one might scratch on the margin of a paper one is making important notes on, but she was taking great care not to mar them as she combined them with others. Her mock-up was composed of four sections. She had made a big cross in the middle of the sheet and was trying different combinations of figures in each quarter of the page.

"You know what really bothers me?" She asked suddenly, her tone suggesting something related to attempts, like having her ink dry out or something.

"No, what?" Kuvarakh replied, stepping blindly into the wrath of her answer.

She turned slowly to face him, her expression showing an end to her patience. "It's having someone looking over my shoulder when I'm trying to concentrate! I know you don't know anything about this... I know you're curious... I know you think this a great opportunity to learn something... But if I petch it all up because you're distracting me, you won't learn anything useful anyway! This is not initiate level stuff here, it's way over your head. Just go home, I'll be here in the morning. See that you are too."

Kuvarakh grimaced in embarrassment and backed away, his arms up as if to ward off her anger. He made a quick bow and stepped away gingerly, as if the floor was covered in egg shells.

"Ku!" she called. He winced and stopped, not turning. She sighed, "I'm sorry. it's just that every part of this glyph is like a separate glyph of its own. If I get even one of them wrong, I get all four of them wrong and I might not know which one it was that upset it. I'm really pushing the boundaries of what I know on this one."

"No... I'M sorry, Wanda. I don't know anyone that LIKES me hovering over their shoulder. You're right, I was hoping to pick up some basics." he said, by way of an apology.

"Some other time, hon. There's nothing basic about this one." she smiled wearily, "Goodnight. See you in the morning."

[Kuvarakh]

He arrived early the next morning, not surprised to see Wanda ready to go. She had two windblown cloth squares set up with string the way Kuvarakh had done it. They both had glyphs inscribed on them, but they were not identical, although they were similar. Wanda motioned him over to her desk. She had small symbols drawn on small bits of parchment, each on a separate piece. She moved them around to form different pairings as she explained her approach.

"I knew you'd be curious, and it can't hurt to give you an idea of what is involved." She pointed at the first symbol, which was a hand, inside an arc which described a half circle, encompassing the right side of a circle which would surround the hand, if it had been complete. "This is the hand of whoever brings the seawater to the sail." The half circle was in gold, except at the ends, where it changed to blue. "By having color in the containing circle, but not in the hand itself, it leaves undefined as to who must bring the water, so it ought to be able to be anyone. I also have clarifying and finishing tablets, left empty of course. They would be for defining things like age, sex, order of activation, details like that. The colors of the enclosing circle are to separate degrees of inclusion, since black is the combination of all colors. For instance, if you have reds and blues for parts of a complicated glyph, you can combine elements of it by inscribing the combination symbols in purple."

Another symbol was of a very basic craft, riding on a surface of some kind. Mostly, it was just an obtuse arc, set upon a flat line, with a line running perpendicularly from the flat line, but contained within the arc without actually touching the flat line below it. Again, there were surrounding symbols, swirls, circles and such. And again, there was a half circle defining the semi-enclosure of the entire symbol, although, here, it was blue with red at the ends. There was also a line in black, running from the upright line, horizontally off the back end of "boat" to curve down below, where it ended in a stylish knot-like symbol enclosed in a swirling oblong.

"This is the boat that carries the man with the water, also being the boat that will have the sail that will be affected. That line shows that it will tie in with another set of glyphs. It's mostly for my own notes. I didn't know at the time which order these should be structured to activate, so I wasn't sure which glyphs were going to need ties. I'm going to try putting two out of four on both squares, so when it is transmuted, they will both be equally blended. If I put all four on one and none on the other, I'm afraid it would be weakened. But if I put full sets of glyphs on both, I'm afraid it would be unbalanced by imperfect duplication."

Kuvarakh pointed to the swirling oblong. "Is that supposed to mean it will be blended in a djed ring...an accelerated djed stream?"

Wanda raised her eyebrows in uncertainty, "I hope so. You can see I have the same swirl on the other set. Now they are similar, but have different focuses from the same base. The hand is repeated, but is has water flowing from it, and there are ties connecting it to the boat's position in priority, and the water is to be in the same direction as the wind will blow, so, as you can see, in this last symbol, the boat again, the water flows into the back side of the sail. See how the vertical line is straight in that last set of glyphs, but is bowed out on this one. that us because it is full of wind, which flows from the water flowing upon it."

She stood up, stretching her back. "If this was magecrafting, I think the wind itself would be another glyph, but because the wind is already alchemized into the cloth itself, it needs only to be released. These glyphs simply define the steps which create the conditions to allow its release. The boat being at sea, so it can't be accidentally be activated until put to sea; The hand applying it, so it has to be a deliberate application by something with hands; The boat with the sail already furled so if some sailor spills water on it before its rigged, it shouldn't activate; The water coming from behind, so the wind will blow from behind."

Kuvarakh's eyes narrowed with uncertainty. "But haven't we sort of already defined that there's a certain side the wind will blow on. How do we know whether the glyph will supersede the last transmutation as far as which side goes?"

Wanda nodded with satisfaction that he had thought of that. "We don't. THAT, my boy, is why we are going to run another test right now."

[Kuvarakh]

"Don't we need to be on a boat? And have the transmuted sailcloth rigged? and have some seawater on hand." Kuvarakh questioned. He had heard some of these references of glyphing before. A Hundred YEARS before! Back when he had enrolled at the University of Zeltiva. Had he not been recruited into Professor Feldorin's special class, he'd have probably set aside the class time for glyphing.

But that was then. Now, as he looked at Wanda's work, he realized how lost he was with the significance of her symbols and arrangements. He remembered such words as "barrier" and "path" and "focus", but he wasn't sure which were which among Wanda's various glyphs, or if such variations were even being used in it. But what she had just been explaining seemed to conflict with the idea that they were going to test her glyph here and now.

"No, no, Kuvarakh, and good for you for being aware that this circumstance does not match the glyph paths and foci I have in mind for the final transmutation. No, I have a similar breakdown set up for the shop setting."

Kuvarakh brightened, "Oh, okay, is it ready for me to begin?" he sounded eager to transmute the glyphed fount. Wanda realized that he must not have done it before. She grimaced slightly in the face of having to disappoint him.

"Sorry, hon, this one's on me." she raised her hand to interrupt his protest. "This is not an exact science, Ku. No two glyph crafters use all the same representations. There is no standard symbol chart. That's part of what makes it work, the crafter's focus of what his symbols mean to her. I could go ahead and use another glyph that others use, but it might not work because it probably doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to THAT crafter. If his symbol was meaningless to me, it probably wouldn't matter, but if even ONE PART of his sigil had a special meaning to me, especially a subconscious meaning, It would alter the effect."

"Well, no offense, but these symbols don't really have any meaning to me, so it should be okay. it wouldn't be any different than activating a glyphed scroll." he said with a self-assured shrug. His self-assurance wilted in the face of Wanda's open-mouthed stare and subsequent laughter.

She stifled her outburst as best she could, not truly wanting to make him feel stupid. "It's COMPLETELY different! A scroll is a finished product. All you are doing is releasing the already defined, categorized, and limiting delivery of another crafter's previously focused understanding, as represented by the symbols HE used to create it. What WE are doing is generating and applying the very limitations and definitions of the force we WANT to have when we are finished. The force is already in the fount. But the glyphs we use will determine the exact parameters allowing its release, AS we seal it in the receiver. The creation of stored magic is much more delicate and volatile work than simply releasing what has already been stored, like in a scroll."

"Okay, okay, I misspoke. I just mean that, since the symbols you decide on, based on your individual concepts, have no special meaning to me, it shouldn't matter who performs the transmutation. My personal take on various symbols won't enter into it if I have no preconceived impressions of the ones that you use. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a pest."

Wanda made a sarcastic face and patted his cheek. "Oooh, there there, Kuvarakh, you know you don't have to TRY to be a pest."

"Ha, ha...no seriously, is there any difference in ... the... FEEL of a transmutation because of a glyph?" he asked, still hoping for a new experience.

"I'VE never felt one, but you have some different approaches than I do. But it's not about whether there's an undesired result because of your lack of experience. It's the fact that we won't know whether it happened because YOU didn't transmute it correctly, or because my glyph was flawed to begin with." She gave him a sympathetic look, but it was clear there was going to be no debate.

He nodded his understanding. "Well, let me know if you need anything."

[Kuvarakh]

It turned out there was a third way of screwing the results up, and Wanda was glad that she had treated it as a test, with only a small amount of sailcloth to receive the imploding djed stream on activation. It all appeared to have worked, which is to say there was no indication of any wind blown effect when the transmutation was complete. But when the congratulations were done and Kuvarakh got water from the lake to activate the glyph which would release the wind, he had one question.

"Which side do I splash it on." he asked, expecting a quick answer.

Wanda opened her mouth and then... stopped. Her face took on a dismayed look and she closed her eyes and slapped her right hand to her forehead. "It won't matter." she said, resigned to only partial success. "I left out one detail on this test. You have even odds of it being the same side you splash it on that holds the wind. At least we'll know whether the glyph activation part of it worked."

Kuvarakh looked several questions at her, but asked none of them. He shrugged and splashed the water on the canvas, which immediately billowed with wind... towards him. 'Aaahhhhh...' Now he understood what Wanda had meant. The wind was already established on one side of the canvas. No glyph would alter that. As Wanda had said, the glyph only established the details of its release. It didn't... couldn't... change them. They still needed to mark which side of the final product would have the wind against it. For that matter they still needed to figure out HOW they would know which side it would be.

"Not the side I expected." Kuvarakh said to Wanda, who simply nodded. He walked over to her and put his arm across her shoulder. "Hey, it was just a test. You were cautious, and it was the right choice. This wasn't a complete failure, Wanda. We know the glyph works. It's just a matter of marking which side."

Wanda turned towards him and a weary smile slowly grew on her face. "Yes. I know. And it's good to see that you grasped what went wrong so quickly. I didn't have to explain it to you. What if the wind happened to have been blowing on the other side like you were expecting?"

Her smile became a short laugh as he answered, "Then... you'd have had to explain it to me." Her laugh prompted one from him, which encouraged another from her, and soon they were both laughing.

"Okay..." Wanda shook off the humor, "So, what do we need? All we need is a mark on the side to show which side has the wind. We get some ink, put a mark on that side and do another test to make sure it works."

"You just did one. Do you want me to do it?" Kuvarakh asked eagerly, his head nodding encouragingly with every word. Then he adopted a demeanor of unbearable boredom. "Or do you want to have to wait... and wait... and wait... FOREVER... for you to be able to do another one."

She could not help but laugh at his deliberate, exaggerated, childlike whining. "Oh gods, you spoiled little brat... go ahead and do it." She got a serious look, "In fact, I am somewhat curious if you sense something that I don't when you transmute a glyphed fount. Just put a mark on one side. It really doesn't even matter which side as long as you make a note of which side you marked."

[Kuvarakh]

After Wanda had spent another bell applying her glyphs to another pair of windblown samples, Kuvarakh took them and placed them "face down" so the wind was blowing down on them, keeping them pressed flat to the table top. He made a circle on the up-facing, windblown side with a small, lightly inked brush on each of the two sheets to be used in the founts. He then rigged them in the founts slots with string, the way he and Wanda had been having success with, and set another piece of the string in the filter slot. They hung two test strips from the ceiling where the chain assembly was situated. They were large enough pieces that it would really be starting to cut into the total result of this project if this did not work.

He slid his finger to the keystone the way he always did, generating the feeling of movement and allowing his mental focus to carry it over to the djed resting in the ring's slots. The movement started slowly, as always, but his concentration to relate the gathering momentum into the image of a whirlpool at sea, allowed him a focus of control over the speed, depth, width and the degree to which the various djed properties had blended and taken hold, within the djed stream.

As the speed increased, he smoothed the surface and applied touches of hindrance and bursts to bring the different "currents", "ridges" and "washes" within the water to blend into one consistency of texture. Impurities were washed up over the edge of the event horizon and expelled as the filter did its job.

He perceived no difference in the feel of the transmutation, but there were moments where it seemed that an aspect, not of his imagining, underlayed a result of his own effort to achieve a particular look of smoothness or a blend of color. All in all, these occasional flashes of outside control did not conflict with his own aims. One of these aims was to fall back on his previous tendency to build a deep, tall djed stream, since the receiver was stretched vertically in the ring. He finished the activation with no trouble, releasing his contact with the ring and allowing the blended djed ring to implode into the center where the test sheets were hanging, full length, from the ceiling chain assembly.

Wanda stepped into the ring and retrieved the receiver sheet, after dousing everything else to reduce residual djed for safety. The circle showed fairly well, if a little blurry on one side of each sheet. They attributed the blur to the fact that Kuvarah had made no real effort to duplicate the circles with any real accuracy. But that was an insignificant matter.

Wanda held her breath and tossed something she had in a cup on the circled side of the first receiver sheet. The windblown effect arose immediately, blowing against the circled side as hoped. "So far so good." she said, anxiety still showing in her face and stance. "Now for the real test."

What she feared was that the circles had no bearing on which side the wind would rise against, thereby making it virtually impossible for a sail maker to craft the intended sail properly. Stitches, pleats and reinforcements were figured into a sail's design when it was made. It mattered which side was aft-facing when it was rigged. Not just for the visual appeal of having the owners emblem on the forward side, but also because the aforementioned details were important to know when the sail was made so the strongest, most reinforced side would take the brunt of the wind. If the sail maker did not know which side this djed crafted wind would arise against, he might make a sail that would come apart too easily for being reinforced on the wrong facing.

She took a deep breath and splashed the remains of the cup's contents on the NON-circled side, her fingers crossed. her breath expelled in a loud "WHOOP" of triumph, echoed by Kuvarakh, as the wind still arose on the circled side of the second sheet. Now she knew her glyphs were working properly, and the wind would arise on the marked side, regardless of which side the trigger was splashed on.

She laughed unrestrained and grabbed Kuvarakh, spinning him in an impromptu dance and hugging him fiercely, as tears of victorious joy glistened in her eyes. "Oh, Kuvarakh, this is HUGE! This could be something employed by navies and merchants around the world! Whether merchants needing to outrun pirates, navies needing a speed boost for tactical maneuvering or whatever, this has massive possibilities. I really think this could make us famous!"

Kuvarakh was caught up in her enthusiasm, yet still held back as he noticed that the force of the wind was not as strong as he'd expected. He hesitantly brought this to Wanda's attention, dreading to see the disappointment on her face, right in the midst of her celebration. She poo-pooed the remark, to his surprise. "I had a feeling it might. We're using samples that are only a foot square on a test sheet ten-feet long and five feet wide! It's still filled with wind, just not overly powerful. So we use all four fount slots when I make them. In fact, if we two step, the fount samples, we can double the strength of each of them! Or make bigger sample sizes. We can get around that little detail no problem!"

Her eyes widened as a new thought occurred to her. "Actually we could make different levels of power that way! Some may only want a little bit of driving force, just to get them through a calm sea. Others, like a navy, may want powerful ones to run circles around their enemies! Good gods, the possibilities are endless. Let's go celebrate! Tomorrow we get to work in earnest."

[Kuvarakh]

And work they did, alternating between Wanda's four fount "Winds of War" level of force, and Kuvarakh's lighter, two fount "Easy Does it" variation. They had to hang each sheet vertically from the chain assembly in the ceiling, to avoid folding, so they couldn't do the volume per transmutation that would have reduced the workload to a few days' effort. But the customers were pleased with the different wind levels available.

They represented an assembly of traders that were seeking an edge to avoid Svefra incursions on their sea lanes. 'Raiders' they called them, their voices rife with both open hostility and grudging respect. All they wanted, so they claimed, was an equalizer to the boon of the gods the seafaring society had to give them an edge on the waves.

While business was wrapped up and casual conversations were bandied about, these traders made mention of some sort of hold these Svefra had over the very currents of the sea, as well as the creatures themselves. Some sort of mark their patron god, Laviku, bestowed on them. They spoke of mysterious tactics which disabled the traders' ships, or inexplicably drove them apart from each other, making them easy targets for the 'damned sea gypsies'.

Wanda wondered how honest these traders were in their insistence that all conflicts had been initiated and escalated by the Svefra, but kept her comments to herself. This was not her problem and if the Svefra wanted to send representatives to her to provide the same enhanced sails, she would sell them, no questions asked.

She had no doubt that it would not be long before both sides of this conflict would be aware of the benefit of her workmanship, and she could not think of a better arena for their versatility to be demonstrated. Word would leak out in coastal taverns and marinas. Pliers of the Syliras trade route would learn of it. They would tell of it to their fellow merchants on other trade routes. Soon, the Sailors Guild in Zeltiva would hear of it.

She thought that perhaps she should consider an emblem for her shop, a call sign. Some sort of 'triple-A' design. Alchemmia Alchae of Alvadas. Yes, a symbol to mark the quality of a dedicated artisan on the rise in the field of Alchemy. Her glyphing skill would aid her. Having some free time, she sat down and let the calligraphy flow on the pages of her sketchbook.

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name:Kuvarakh XP Award: +3 Socializing +2 Rhetoric +3 Observation +1 Alchemy +1 Hypnotism Lore: Eadfrid Notes: Name:Eadfrid XP Award: +2 Socializing +2 Rhetoric Lore: Kuvarakh Notes: Name:Alea XP Award: +2 Observation +2 Rhetoric +2 Socializing Lore: Eadfrid Kuvarakh Notes: Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM