Timestamp: 26th Day of Winter, 513 A.V.
Time had passed; days had gone by where all Alses had been called upon to do in the field of magecrafting was maintain, watching and waiting (im)patiently as the djed conduits accreted and strengthened, achingly slowly.
The waiting game was not one that Alses had ever been particularly good at, despite being an Ethaefal with an infinite supply of time, an endless stream of tomorrows stretching on without end. A depressing thought, actually, if one dwelt on it too much.
So she didn’t.
It was all too conducive to sloppy thinking, introspection and melancholy – and that wouldn’t do, not when there was so much to be done, so much to be getting on with, so many ways she could help her adoptive home and Syna on high.
Whistling cheerfully, Alses let herself into the laboratory with the ease of long practice, discarding her overrobe and outerwear on the hooks by the door, shimmering over to the racks of tools and thrusting a collection of them through her belt – the empress, electrum, the suzerain of disjunction and discord, copper, and as an afterthought the harbinger of chaos, hepatizon, its liverish colour glinting uneasily in the abundant light pouring in through the glass windows and dome of the Overflowing Phial.
Convulsive shiver as she stepped into the high-djed ancillary circle, charging herself up; that was expected now, her auristics giving her that long-awaited little shivering tickle, telling her that here the magic surged thick and fast and pure all around her.
Beautiful.
The transfer from ancillary to main was seamless, and Alses felt a fleeting moment of pride as she danced between the glyphic lines blazing with power. She was good; there was simply no getting around the fact.
Before the hammers sang and sealed the fate of the artifact gathering pace, solidity and reality in front of her, though – scrutiny, checking everything was proceeding on-track, letting her administer correction and improvement where warranted.
No sense in giving a paying customer a substandard item; that would never do, not with something so personal and so expensive.
So…Alses opened her eyes, and her senses, more crucially, to the deeper mysteries of the world, submerging herself in the intangible layers that were always there, feeding her resting Sight with ropes of brilliant golden magic until it burned and blazed, pouring out of her in a great wave that drew all information into itself and sent it back straight into her waiting brain.
Filtering and winnowing through the weltering rush of impressions, she narrowed and honed her Sight, paring out the unnecessary, the unwanted, leaving the glaive and its internal djedic structure glittering like the heart of winter, in solitary splendour to her vision.
Beauty, beauty.
Mind you, both her acceleration and her strengthening network were…not all they could be. Whilst she’d prevented the truly dangerous coruscant djed-spikes that had so characterised her last attempt at reckless speed in a weapon, the networks were still patchy and diffuse, fuzzed in the wrong places and slow in some, quickened and smooth in others.
This was the time to polish it up, to smooth over the rough edges, to remove the bottlenecks and make the pathways broad, clear and inviting, easy for djed to speed down until it became habituated to the new accelerations, until the whole weapon could whip through the air, preternaturally fast.
Towers of chiming magic, reaching spires of sound and powerful lines of djed, they filled the air, illuminated by the half-there reflections and echoes cast by the mirrors overhead. It was a hard, unusual environment to work with; the high-djed environment giving the normally insubstantial reflections an odd, rippling substance.
Alses gritted her teeth and pushed on furiously, battling through the phantoms and contending with the near-constant chiming, dinning ring of electrum on skyglass, jarring and jangling tunes filled the air as the empress of hammers danced a fandango along the length of the weapon, striking faster and faster as she worked.
Under the lash of the hammers, the silver-gold amalgam that combined the best of both types, the item’s djed accelerated, pulses of crackling magic urging it onward, further, higher, faster, stretching the close-woven reinforcing meshwork to its limits as charges of djed rocketed up and down and all through the branching, raying network until the whole thing practically screamed ‘speed’.
One last effort, one final burst of discordant sound, saw the last ingredient collapse to the greypoint, a perfect ring of gray, boring dust glinting dully in the light in the focus ring, even as the final burst of exuberant, enjoyable speed, everything that was quickness and fleetness uncurling from the priceless synergy of ingredients and working, facile mind, shot into the robust skyglass, raced through the djed conduits there and then spread and settled.
At last.
Now all there was to do was wait, and to, as ever, maintain.
A
Timestamp: 28th Day of Winter, 513 A.V.
Strengthened and shining, perfect across every gleaming facet of its construction, both inside and out, the glaive glimmered in the light, sleek and fast and dangerous. Positively fizzing with an excess charge of djed, it snarled and spat where it stood anchored, looking anxious for the off even as an inanimate object, as though it would go for the throat the instant its chains were loosed.
Which, of course, was the next phase.
‘Careful…careful…slowly now,’ Alses reminded herself, skin stretched tight from the phantom heat of the djed matrix, scant centimetres from her flesh, radiant and searingly hot to her enhanced senses as she worked, slow and methodical, to release one of the vices. The wingnut whirled and slowly, achingly slowly, the ugly – though supremely functional – slabs of metal widened, loosening.
With infinite care, Alses eased the vice off, laying it down in between the thin remnants of her glyphic setup, using the other two as handles to slide out the unstable artifact from where it had been securely mounted, gingerly high-stepping across the laboratory floor towards the sealing troughs and their gleaming contents.
Perspiration slicked her brow and her hands, and the glaive felt far heavier than it had any right to be as she made her achingly slow way towards the final finishing step, horribly aware of the consequences should she drop the still-volatile artifact.
Best not to dwell on it.
Eventually, she stood over the blue-tinted depths of the trough, looking down at the glinting glyphing runes that had been charging the water for days, making it ready for the final sealing process that would make it an artifact forever.
Easing off the second vice was harder than the first – Alses found herself wishing she’d used the tongs rather than the vices to transfer the artifact, but it was too late now; no going back. The glaive swayed and wobbled dangerously as the tool came off with a clang and a sudden release of weight; the blade flashed up and across, almost chipping the trough – which would have been disastrous.
The djed of the glaive was still balanced on a knife-edge; one wrong move and all her work would be wasted.
‘Slowly, Alse, nice and gently. Close as we can, as gentle as we can. Don’t want to mess up at this stage…’
Eyes bright with concentration, Alses gingerly swapped hands on the final vice, holding the glaive a mere centimetre or so above the placid, millwater-still surface of the trough. Slender fingers carefully whirled the loosening wingnut whilst her right hand kept it all steady as a rock. Her back complained, from the odd, crouched position, but she ignored it – aches and pains could be banished soon enough, a quick flash of true-blue light and she’d be good as new.
It was slipping – Alses could feel it, the subtlest of vibrations that signalled the vice losing its clamp hold on the glaive. Just a few turns more…her hand jerked upwards, suddenly, as the weight of the glaive was suddenly relieved, slipping smoothly and in its entirety below the surface, coming to a gentle rest on the bottom and leaving a hunched Alses still clutching the black vice, tired and yet triumphant.
Now all there was to do was wait for the water to work its magic.
That, and clean – but cleaning could wait at least a little while.
END
Time had passed; days had gone by where all Alses had been called upon to do in the field of magecrafting was maintain, watching and waiting (im)patiently as the djed conduits accreted and strengthened, achingly slowly.
The waiting game was not one that Alses had ever been particularly good at, despite being an Ethaefal with an infinite supply of time, an endless stream of tomorrows stretching on without end. A depressing thought, actually, if one dwelt on it too much.
So she didn’t.
It was all too conducive to sloppy thinking, introspection and melancholy – and that wouldn’t do, not when there was so much to be done, so much to be getting on with, so many ways she could help her adoptive home and Syna on high.
Whistling cheerfully, Alses let herself into the laboratory with the ease of long practice, discarding her overrobe and outerwear on the hooks by the door, shimmering over to the racks of tools and thrusting a collection of them through her belt – the empress, electrum, the suzerain of disjunction and discord, copper, and as an afterthought the harbinger of chaos, hepatizon, its liverish colour glinting uneasily in the abundant light pouring in through the glass windows and dome of the Overflowing Phial.
Convulsive shiver as she stepped into the high-djed ancillary circle, charging herself up; that was expected now, her auristics giving her that long-awaited little shivering tickle, telling her that here the magic surged thick and fast and pure all around her.
Beautiful.
The transfer from ancillary to main was seamless, and Alses felt a fleeting moment of pride as she danced between the glyphic lines blazing with power. She was good; there was simply no getting around the fact.
Before the hammers sang and sealed the fate of the artifact gathering pace, solidity and reality in front of her, though – scrutiny, checking everything was proceeding on-track, letting her administer correction and improvement where warranted.
No sense in giving a paying customer a substandard item; that would never do, not with something so personal and so expensive.
So…Alses opened her eyes, and her senses, more crucially, to the deeper mysteries of the world, submerging herself in the intangible layers that were always there, feeding her resting Sight with ropes of brilliant golden magic until it burned and blazed, pouring out of her in a great wave that drew all information into itself and sent it back straight into her waiting brain.
Filtering and winnowing through the weltering rush of impressions, she narrowed and honed her Sight, paring out the unnecessary, the unwanted, leaving the glaive and its internal djedic structure glittering like the heart of winter, in solitary splendour to her vision.
Beauty, beauty.
Mind you, both her acceleration and her strengthening network were…not all they could be. Whilst she’d prevented the truly dangerous coruscant djed-spikes that had so characterised her last attempt at reckless speed in a weapon, the networks were still patchy and diffuse, fuzzed in the wrong places and slow in some, quickened and smooth in others.
This was the time to polish it up, to smooth over the rough edges, to remove the bottlenecks and make the pathways broad, clear and inviting, easy for djed to speed down until it became habituated to the new accelerations, until the whole weapon could whip through the air, preternaturally fast.
Towers of chiming magic, reaching spires of sound and powerful lines of djed, they filled the air, illuminated by the half-there reflections and echoes cast by the mirrors overhead. It was a hard, unusual environment to work with; the high-djed environment giving the normally insubstantial reflections an odd, rippling substance.
Alses gritted her teeth and pushed on furiously, battling through the phantoms and contending with the near-constant chiming, dinning ring of electrum on skyglass, jarring and jangling tunes filled the air as the empress of hammers danced a fandango along the length of the weapon, striking faster and faster as she worked.
Under the lash of the hammers, the silver-gold amalgam that combined the best of both types, the item’s djed accelerated, pulses of crackling magic urging it onward, further, higher, faster, stretching the close-woven reinforcing meshwork to its limits as charges of djed rocketed up and down and all through the branching, raying network until the whole thing practically screamed ‘speed’.
One last effort, one final burst of discordant sound, saw the last ingredient collapse to the greypoint, a perfect ring of gray, boring dust glinting dully in the light in the focus ring, even as the final burst of exuberant, enjoyable speed, everything that was quickness and fleetness uncurling from the priceless synergy of ingredients and working, facile mind, shot into the robust skyglass, raced through the djed conduits there and then spread and settled.
At last.
Now all there was to do was wait, and to, as ever, maintain.
A
Timestamp: 28th Day of Winter, 513 A.V.
Strengthened and shining, perfect across every gleaming facet of its construction, both inside and out, the glaive glimmered in the light, sleek and fast and dangerous. Positively fizzing with an excess charge of djed, it snarled and spat where it stood anchored, looking anxious for the off even as an inanimate object, as though it would go for the throat the instant its chains were loosed.
Which, of course, was the next phase.
‘Careful…careful…slowly now,’ Alses reminded herself, skin stretched tight from the phantom heat of the djed matrix, scant centimetres from her flesh, radiant and searingly hot to her enhanced senses as she worked, slow and methodical, to release one of the vices. The wingnut whirled and slowly, achingly slowly, the ugly – though supremely functional – slabs of metal widened, loosening.
With infinite care, Alses eased the vice off, laying it down in between the thin remnants of her glyphic setup, using the other two as handles to slide out the unstable artifact from where it had been securely mounted, gingerly high-stepping across the laboratory floor towards the sealing troughs and their gleaming contents.
Perspiration slicked her brow and her hands, and the glaive felt far heavier than it had any right to be as she made her achingly slow way towards the final finishing step, horribly aware of the consequences should she drop the still-volatile artifact.
Best not to dwell on it.
Eventually, she stood over the blue-tinted depths of the trough, looking down at the glinting glyphing runes that had been charging the water for days, making it ready for the final sealing process that would make it an artifact forever.
Easing off the second vice was harder than the first – Alses found herself wishing she’d used the tongs rather than the vices to transfer the artifact, but it was too late now; no going back. The glaive swayed and wobbled dangerously as the tool came off with a clang and a sudden release of weight; the blade flashed up and across, almost chipping the trough – which would have been disastrous.
The djed of the glaive was still balanced on a knife-edge; one wrong move and all her work would be wasted.
‘Slowly, Alse, nice and gently. Close as we can, as gentle as we can. Don’t want to mess up at this stage…’
Eyes bright with concentration, Alses gingerly swapped hands on the final vice, holding the glaive a mere centimetre or so above the placid, millwater-still surface of the trough. Slender fingers carefully whirled the loosening wingnut whilst her right hand kept it all steady as a rock. Her back complained, from the odd, crouched position, but she ignored it – aches and pains could be banished soon enough, a quick flash of true-blue light and she’d be good as new.
It was slipping – Alses could feel it, the subtlest of vibrations that signalled the vice losing its clamp hold on the glaive. Just a few turns more…her hand jerked upwards, suddenly, as the weight of the glaive was suddenly relieved, slipping smoothly and in its entirety below the surface, coming to a gentle rest on the bottom and leaving a hunched Alses still clutching the black vice, tired and yet triumphant.
Now all there was to do was wait for the water to work its magic.
That, and clean – but cleaning could wait at least a little while.
END
