Timestamp: 21st Day of Spring, 514 A.V.
Time and contingency work – no madcap rescues this time; for all its occasional ferocity a djed conduit tuned to sharpness was easier to deal with than one built for speed and acceleration – had paid off. Perhaps it was because the outbreaks and hawser-whiplash slices, although painful to watch and capable of considerable destruction, occurred with a lower frequency; she was able to build in baffles and reflecting walls and dissipation reservoirs, pools of static djed that could catch and contain rampaging internal magic before it could do any real damage.
Speed-oriented conduits were just too fast for her to build those defences, and their outbreaks were too unpredictable for her to even guess where the next one might come – at least, guess reasonably far in advance, anyway. Something to work on, perhaps – most things got better with practice, and speed was a critical field to work with.
Especially in Lhavit, where speed and grace held the primacy over brute force. Generally speaking, anyway – there were bound to be a few people who favoured warhammers and greatswords and other oversized implements.
Now, it was perfectly formed, utterly directed towards the expanded field she’d hurled extra magic towards, wrangling the internal structure of the entire matrix towards her intended goal until – as now – it glimmered and glowed with that singular purpose.
A beautiful parallel track of sharp-angled conduits, supported on a subordinate network of twisted and ravelled fibres cross-bridged together again and again, strengthening the main conduits to hold the enormous djed fluxes that continually coursed along their length.
Sharpness was a constant, after all – it wouldn’t do to have one part of the blade shear through plate metal like butter and the other half get stuck or try and skitter off.
Approaching cautiously, Alses stepped over the half-ablated remains of her glyphic circles – still functioning, yes, but only just, with the majority of the more elegant, ephemeral subconnections having eroded away under the continual force of the artifact as it gathered potential, became more solid, more there, the gradual accreting process that turned a miracle from ephemeral wish into concrete reality.
It was done, at least by her own assessment, but there was still the final step to attend to, and then all the – sigh – cleaning. Not that it wasn’t therapeutic, in its own way, it just took so long.
No time like the present to get started, then.
Her vices shimmered placidly now, their jobs done. They were, unfortunately, just as black and blocky as Elena Lariat’s had been, drop-forged in Touch of Fire and brought to enchanted life in the crucible of the Overflowing Phial. They worked, and worked well – and that was, at the end of the day, all she could ask for, but still something in her soul rebelled at their dark otherness amongst the light and fantasy of the rest of her laboratory.
Something to work on, perhaps, one day. Maybe she could bribe another Akka to make her glittering skyglass vices…
Thoughts for another time.
High-stepping over the glyphic remnants of her circles and the forlorn piles of grey dust and grease that had once been her ring of ingredients, every drop of their magic drained and repurposed until their very essences had lost cohesion and disintegrated, Alses closed on the vices and their long, gripping handles with intent.
Muscles bunched and shifted under her fire-opal skin as she wrapped long fingers around the vices and tensed, lifting with infinite care and slowness, raising the glaive inch by inch out of the pedestal that had anchored it for the past few days until at last the glittering butt of the weapon escaped into the free air, making Alses lurch slightly despite all the care she’d taken.
Fortunately not enough to hit anything; the glaive was still monstrously unstable, like all fresh artifacts, and would remain so until the charged water sealed it into eternity.
Arms screaming protests, biting her lip in concentration, brow furrowed with the effort of concentration and keeping her movements slow and regular, Alses slowly rotated the weapon in midair, bringing it from the vertical to the horizontal, carefully shifting her grip on the vices as she moved, fingers making the metal slick with sweat and forcing her to grip until the blood fled from her hands.
Slow, measured steps, holding the glaive steady as it whispered through the air, Alses processed towards the glittering trough, full of water and charged with glyphery to amplify its sealing properties, the final step in the creation of an artifact, the sealant that would make it last forever.
Beautiful.
Dangerous, too – one misstep at this stage, without the benefit of the steadying pedestal and all the complex glyphery, not to mention the optic ring, would result in disaster. Unstable djed plus impact equalled explosion, usually.
The water glittered invitingly below her, now, as she leaned over the finishing trough. She forced herself to move slowly and calmly, resisting the temptation to hurry and fumble with the releases that would loosen the vices and allow the glaive to slip quietly into the water just inches below.
Wing-nuts whirled as first one, then two, and then finally, at the last, three – Alses having learned her lesson from the last glaive and the difficulty she’d had here – vices relinquished their grip, and with nary a sigh of displaced air or a splash, sliding smoothly under the glassy surface to rest gently on the bottom, the skyglass glow lighting up the water with a soft radiance.
True-blue light flashed and flared over Alses’ arms and shoulders the instant the glaive hit the bottom of the trough and she no longer had to worry about keeping her muscles tensed and rigid. They relaxed instantly under the influence of the Blessing, the built-up toxins and the needling pain vanishing, the fibres melting like butter under the influence of Tanroa’s little gift to the Ethaefal, and Alses herself sagged against the stone lip of the trough, limp and boneless with relief.
All that remained now was the cleanup, and there were cauldrons full of salt-water and cleaning philtres for just that therapeutic, necessary task.
Alses – after a little break – set to work with a will, painstakingly scrubbing on her hands and knees at the stubborn remnants of glypher’s paint on the mosaic tiles of the floor, wiping down her tools and checking them for signs of wear, sweeping up the ashes of her reagents, loosening the optic ring and returning the mirrors to their velvet bags and performing a thousand and one other, mundane, necessary tasks.
There was a warm, anticipatory glow in her chest as she worked, thanks to the knowledge that with every tick of time that passed, with every task completed and the laboratory one step closer to being once more pristine, the artifact in the sealing trough approached completion.
END
Time and contingency work – no madcap rescues this time; for all its occasional ferocity a djed conduit tuned to sharpness was easier to deal with than one built for speed and acceleration – had paid off. Perhaps it was because the outbreaks and hawser-whiplash slices, although painful to watch and capable of considerable destruction, occurred with a lower frequency; she was able to build in baffles and reflecting walls and dissipation reservoirs, pools of static djed that could catch and contain rampaging internal magic before it could do any real damage.
Speed-oriented conduits were just too fast for her to build those defences, and their outbreaks were too unpredictable for her to even guess where the next one might come – at least, guess reasonably far in advance, anyway. Something to work on, perhaps – most things got better with practice, and speed was a critical field to work with.
Especially in Lhavit, where speed and grace held the primacy over brute force. Generally speaking, anyway – there were bound to be a few people who favoured warhammers and greatswords and other oversized implements.
Now, it was perfectly formed, utterly directed towards the expanded field she’d hurled extra magic towards, wrangling the internal structure of the entire matrix towards her intended goal until – as now – it glimmered and glowed with that singular purpose.
A beautiful parallel track of sharp-angled conduits, supported on a subordinate network of twisted and ravelled fibres cross-bridged together again and again, strengthening the main conduits to hold the enormous djed fluxes that continually coursed along their length.
Sharpness was a constant, after all – it wouldn’t do to have one part of the blade shear through plate metal like butter and the other half get stuck or try and skitter off.
Approaching cautiously, Alses stepped over the half-ablated remains of her glyphic circles – still functioning, yes, but only just, with the majority of the more elegant, ephemeral subconnections having eroded away under the continual force of the artifact as it gathered potential, became more solid, more there, the gradual accreting process that turned a miracle from ephemeral wish into concrete reality.
It was done, at least by her own assessment, but there was still the final step to attend to, and then all the – sigh – cleaning. Not that it wasn’t therapeutic, in its own way, it just took so long.
No time like the present to get started, then.
Her vices shimmered placidly now, their jobs done. They were, unfortunately, just as black and blocky as Elena Lariat’s had been, drop-forged in Touch of Fire and brought to enchanted life in the crucible of the Overflowing Phial. They worked, and worked well – and that was, at the end of the day, all she could ask for, but still something in her soul rebelled at their dark otherness amongst the light and fantasy of the rest of her laboratory.
Something to work on, perhaps, one day. Maybe she could bribe another Akka to make her glittering skyglass vices…
Thoughts for another time.
High-stepping over the glyphic remnants of her circles and the forlorn piles of grey dust and grease that had once been her ring of ingredients, every drop of their magic drained and repurposed until their very essences had lost cohesion and disintegrated, Alses closed on the vices and their long, gripping handles with intent.
Muscles bunched and shifted under her fire-opal skin as she wrapped long fingers around the vices and tensed, lifting with infinite care and slowness, raising the glaive inch by inch out of the pedestal that had anchored it for the past few days until at last the glittering butt of the weapon escaped into the free air, making Alses lurch slightly despite all the care she’d taken.
Fortunately not enough to hit anything; the glaive was still monstrously unstable, like all fresh artifacts, and would remain so until the charged water sealed it into eternity.
Arms screaming protests, biting her lip in concentration, brow furrowed with the effort of concentration and keeping her movements slow and regular, Alses slowly rotated the weapon in midair, bringing it from the vertical to the horizontal, carefully shifting her grip on the vices as she moved, fingers making the metal slick with sweat and forcing her to grip until the blood fled from her hands.
Slow, measured steps, holding the glaive steady as it whispered through the air, Alses processed towards the glittering trough, full of water and charged with glyphery to amplify its sealing properties, the final step in the creation of an artifact, the sealant that would make it last forever.
Beautiful.
Dangerous, too – one misstep at this stage, without the benefit of the steadying pedestal and all the complex glyphery, not to mention the optic ring, would result in disaster. Unstable djed plus impact equalled explosion, usually.
The water glittered invitingly below her, now, as she leaned over the finishing trough. She forced herself to move slowly and calmly, resisting the temptation to hurry and fumble with the releases that would loosen the vices and allow the glaive to slip quietly into the water just inches below.
Wing-nuts whirled as first one, then two, and then finally, at the last, three – Alses having learned her lesson from the last glaive and the difficulty she’d had here – vices relinquished their grip, and with nary a sigh of displaced air or a splash, sliding smoothly under the glassy surface to rest gently on the bottom, the skyglass glow lighting up the water with a soft radiance.
True-blue light flashed and flared over Alses’ arms and shoulders the instant the glaive hit the bottom of the trough and she no longer had to worry about keeping her muscles tensed and rigid. They relaxed instantly under the influence of the Blessing, the built-up toxins and the needling pain vanishing, the fibres melting like butter under the influence of Tanroa’s little gift to the Ethaefal, and Alses herself sagged against the stone lip of the trough, limp and boneless with relief.
All that remained now was the cleanup, and there were cauldrons full of salt-water and cleaning philtres for just that therapeutic, necessary task.
Alses – after a little break – set to work with a will, painstakingly scrubbing on her hands and knees at the stubborn remnants of glypher’s paint on the mosaic tiles of the floor, wiping down her tools and checking them for signs of wear, sweeping up the ashes of her reagents, loosening the optic ring and returning the mirrors to their velvet bags and performing a thousand and one other, mundane, necessary tasks.
There was a warm, anticipatory glow in her chest as she worked, thanks to the knowledge that with every tick of time that passed, with every task completed and the laboratory one step closer to being once more pristine, the artifact in the sealing trough approached completion.
END
