[Dusk Tower] The First Commission

[Alses]

Timestamp: 1st of Autumn, 512 AV. Alses' feet dragged on the polished skyglass of the Dusk Tower's corridors as she headed up to the laboratory once more, to pit her wits and magic against the dagger. It wasn't quite like that – she and skyglass had reached an understanding, of sorts, and so it was less of a pitched battle and more like delicate, fiddly work – par for the course, in magecrafting. Nevertheless, today was just one of those days when work was the last thing she wanted to be doing. There was a new flavour to her celestial form, brought with the dawn and the flaring of the Watchtowers, and it was still a shock to see a golden crown-of-horns and brilliant crimson hair having completely replaced the colours of summer. The change had been creeping up for a while, her hair flushing crimson at the tips, a gilt cast coming over her horns, but even so she jumped every time she caught sight of herself in a mirror or reflecting pool, not quite used to her own body just yet. In a few days, her new self would be familiar after looking at it in the mirror over the washbasin every morning, but for now, she was skittish, always thinking someone else was creeping up on her whenever, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of reflection. It was distracting, and not at all conducive to work. 'Next time,' she resolved grimly, stumping up yet another flight of stairs 'I'm taking a few days off. I will read books, drink tea and muck around in the garden by myself until I get used to my reflection again.' Tea. Now there was a thought. Or, or maybe a debate in the Basilika – yes, that was a better idea. She could work out some of the vitriol productively like that, and have a grand old time doing it, too. Alses' mouth curved up in a catlike grin. The Basilika really was an excellent institution, a formal soapbox encouraged, rather than suppressed, by the city, where graybeard scholars and indigent young rascals (to use each group's term for the other) crossed verbal swords about everything from the latest decision of the Council of Towers – the advisory body to Aysel and Talora, the rulers of the city - to the most esoteric aspects of academia. She cast a longing glance out of the window, towards the elegant spire of the Dawn Tower, once more serene and undamaged, with the Basilika sheltering in its lee. Then, too, there was the artwork everywhere there – from cyclopean statues, larger than life and yet still, somehow, holding the eye and defying belief, to intricate murals that drowned her wondering mind in their elegant, carefree patterns and brilliant daubs of colours, to canvases that captured the world and magnified it in paint. What Alses really coveted, however, were the – usually – smaller bronze sculptures, lovingly cast – or carved, or whatever it was one did with bronze – down to the smallest detail and then buffed to a darkly burnished shine, somehow shimmering with the sense of liquid movement although they would always be static, a moment captured in eternity. Her particular favourite at the moment was one which stood on a rather out-of-the-way pedestal near the edge of the Basilika, a small and unassuming statuette of a winged man gazing out and yet somehow inwards, his face impossibly serene and contemplative, the body too perfectly-muscled and lithe to be real – unless it was a representation of an Ethaefal, of course, the wings being some sort of allegory, but there was no crown-of-horns adorning the bronzed head. Whenever she found herself at the mortal maelstrom it pleased Lhavit to call the Basilika, she found her eyes continually alighting on the statuette, never quite sure why. Her hand slid along air, having met the end of the banisters and the flight of stairs that led onto her floor, disrupting her wayward thoughts. Halfway down the corridor lay her laboratory door, time-darkened oak and thick bands of iron beckoning, and beyond that... Work, work, work. The laboratory smelt familiar when she stepped over the threshold, a potpourri of smells from the various reagents, coupled with fading attar of roses and the general smell of the Dusk Tower itself, a not-unpleasant mix of the detergents the cleaning staff used and old books. Nothing had changed – to the mundane eye, anyway – since yesterday; there were still the heaped piles of paper and books on the desk, the creaky chair tilted away at an angle, the various pieces of glassware still sparkling in the sunlight. As ever, though, the centrepiece of Alses' attention was the engine of magic pulsing and thrumming around the dagger, djed continually cycling around the sinuous loops and whorls of her exacting glyphery. 'Perfect.' The inspecting lens slipped easily into her hand, the metal cool against her skin, the wood pleasingly rough. One had to take pleasure in the little things – especially since Alses didn't really care to work today. The old excitement grew, however, as she examined the project in hand. The night had done her creation good – the ephemeral lacework of djed channels, new and pale and unsure, had strengthened and firmed under the steady, beating pressure of the purified work area. More assured, more present, interleaving strands that could be relied upon not to discohere into oblivion at the lightest touch of the craft. “You're beautiful,” she murmured, only half-aware of it, examining the gently-shining complexity of it all through the lens, not looking for anything in particular and just enjoying the elegance her hard work had forged. Still not finished, not quite strong enough, and still a blank slate, but there was progress and it was beautiful anyway. Her lips quirked as a thought occurred – the intelligence she could feel every time she struck the dagger with a blooded hammer, growing stronger with every erg of djed she fed into the hungry artifact, it was sleeping – dreaming, almost, half-there with its function and purpose, becoming more complete with every scrap of knowledge and extra connection she forged into its core. “Time to work,” she carolled – and this time, it wasn't with heavy voice and leaden reluctance. Somersaulting traces of djed shimmered and flickered as the hammers danced in the air, filling it with liquid chimes, sonorous notes that blended together into something entirely new, characteristics rising and falling like the waves in a sea, depending on her will. The pure connections of sentience, still locked in dreaming, were stronger for a night of steady reinforcement, easier to work with given their more robust nature. She'd given some thought about the stubborn areas of resistance – where a single conduit of djed might not break through, many smaller ones might; the death of a thousand papercuts, in a way, eroding away at the opposition piece by piece until the bulwark crumbled into nothingness. Copper sang, a purposefully-disjointed array of notes as the hammer met and skittered along the shining skyglass, leaving curling disruption in its wake – under the pressure of the purified, high-djed environment of the circles, the frayed ends firmed and began the long process of transformation into conduits in their own right, each one teasing slightly deeper into the recalcitrant skyglass, making it yield inch by stubborn inch. The twelfth bell had just pealed out from the gongs and bells of the city by the time Alses was finished with the first phase of her work – the artifact's djed had been altered and glutted once more, shimmering in the centre of her glyphic setup, and all that there really was to do for the rest of the day was the occasional strike to keep everything ticking along nicely, correcting instabilities before they could damage anything – or make extra work for her the next day. 'It'd be nice to have an apprentice, or a colleague,' she thought absently, someone to watch over the artifact in the night or help with the fiddly bits, or just someone to talk to when there wasn't a great deal that could be done – but just enough to warrant keeping an eye on things. What she really meant was a friend. This part of the craft was really quite restful – she just had to keep a weather eye on the circles, nipping aberrant behaviour in the bud with a corrective bash of the hammer. Time, then, to take a proper look at the final components at last. Chair dragged close to her circles and with book in hand, she considered the blood vials, placed strategically on the periphery for ease of access. 'Stop admiring the shine,' she snapped at herself, when her eyes followed a glimmering trail of sparkles the light struck from one of the phials. It was habit – no, deeper than that, almost instinct, to follow the light. 'Now, let me see...what are you going to bring to this?' she asked of the vial she was observing, in the privacy of her own head. Blood could be leveraged for all sorts of purposes, not just binding – it was the stuff of life, after all, cargoed with all the knowledge of its creator, and if one had the knack of it, that information could be brought to the fore, flayed of its allegiance to blood and poured into an artifact. A sardonic grin slashed across Alses' face for a moment – wouldn't it be perfect if one could do the same thing for people? Magic was so fickle that way, alas, alas. And...relax...Alses shifted position in the chair, frowning at the usual barrage of wooden protests, then settled, happily ensconced. The day was a warm one, still clinging to summer, and it acted as a calming soporific on the sun-loving Ethaefal, soothing the choir in the back of her mind and letting her gently drift into a quasi-meditative state, waking her (admittedly meagre) auristic powers and making the soft shimmers of colour which now always adorned her sight rise and unfurl, a veil that revealed rather than obscured, more and more as chimes flew past. It still wasn't easy, that process of synchronization with the world, made less so by the clamour of disjointed recollection and the sheer unreality of Mizahar that she felt on some days, but the warmth and comfort of Alses' surrounds had quieted the braying masses and she felt almost – almost – as alone as she was in her mortal chain, perfect for this sort of investigation.

[Alses]

Timestamp: 11th of Autumn, 512 A.V. Ten days. Ten days of strengthening conduits, of weaving djed in and out of itself until a reinforcing pattern built up inside another, of continually tying and retying djed connections until they habituated together and fused, seamlessly melding one into the other with the slightest direction from a magecrafting tool. Now, whenever she sacrificed a drop of blood to the altar of her circles and hammers, she could hear the intellect she was fostering, locked in a state similar to deep dreaming, but on a vastly reduced scale, faint wonderings at its own purpose and power, tentative manipulations of the djed connections within which it resided, testing the bounds. Today, by her judgement, the djed channels which held the burgeoning intelligence she'd given up the last ten days of her life crafting were strong enough to bear the waking process. First, though, before she provided the last djed pulse that would connect every part of the dagger to the intelligence that now perfused it, the dagger master's blood would finally be used. There was no point in letting a mind – such as it was – manifest without knowledge of its prime purpose, after all; no telling what it would do, turned loose in an unfamiliar shape. Best, then, to put that sticky red stuff to use, and quickly, before the pressure of the purified, high-djed environment inside her circles did the waking work for her, before the artifact was plunged into charged water to finish it. Fortunately, the phial was of a reasonable size, and – thanks to the already-present bloodline binding, wound tight about every strand and continually throbbing with collective life – she could afford to be generous with the amounts she used. Some correction would be necessary, of course – blood was persuasive and pervasive both, and she didn't want vestigial links disrupting her commission. That wouldn't do at all. Stepping from her first entry circle into the main work area itself, Alses wrinkled her nose at the copper tang of blood as she flicked open the top of the vial with a snap. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just...unusual. Her examinations last week had given her a feel for the blood's aura, a remembered sense of it that enabled deep synchronicity with just a modicum of effort and djed expenditure – useful, when working in the middle of a complex glyphic setup, with auras flashing and flaring all around. The liquid was thick and viscous still, thanks to the tireless glyphs maintaining that state, building up in large scarlet drops before reluctantly falling to smear the dagger with red. Drops on the pommel, the crossguard, up the spine of the blade to the very point, they outlined the cardinal dimensions before Alses took up gold and copper hammers once more. Gold, for power, authority and great change – she wanted to work fast, to lock the burgeoning mind to its purpose before it awoke fully, and for speed, there was nothing better than gold – at least, for her. Refinement could come later – that was copper's purpose, for gentle changes and discordancy, to correct mistakes and enforce her will. Had she been more proficient in glyphing, more confident of her skill, she'd have channelled the djed through glyphs of intent, perhaps modifying her circles or tools, to strengthen the transfer of knowledge and limit the action of blood, but as it stood, she didn't dare – this would have to be done just through the strike of djed on djed. Now...'Concentrate, Alses,' she told herself, examining the dagger and blood closely, every sense extended to its fullest and her sight enhanced by the lens, swimming through a sea of crimson shades hanging in the air like smoke. One aura was overlaid like a cloak on the other, half-smothering the bright intricacy of the dagger as the blood slowly wound into and through the fabric of the artifact, aided by the djed pressures of her work area. Still, a bit of help wouldn't go amiss – Alses was on a tight schedule. A few days of dripping dagger master blood, and then straight into leveraging the Flux master's blood for speed. Fortunately, the knowledge transfer was one of the faster aspects of this particular commission; with the underlying intelligence structure reinforced and the stabilising effect of the reagents in their foci, Alses could really lay into the artifact, cramming knowledge in with every strike, secure in the knowledge that the reagents, her circles and the robust nature of the djed connections already forged would ensure that Ald'gare Dusk's dagger would survive it – indeed, thrive upon it. Brassy and confident, her first strike set crimson drops a-shiver, liquid fleeing under the rounded head as it came down, flashing physical force into djed at the instant of contact, taking its cue from the wielder, drawing down intent from the blood-daubed surface and thrusting it into the very core, cargoed on a brilliant spike of magic – to those with eyes to see, at any rate. It was an eerie feeling, each time, focusing furiously on all things dagger-related and seeing each contact blow as a spire of coruscating djed rather than a hammer on skyglass. Alses wrapped herself, immersed herself in the aura of blood, seeing how strands of it, purposeful and quick, were drawn down each time she worked at her craft, taking in the knowledge of form, granting the sleeping intellect buried in the artifact's core the information necessary to make the best use possible of its body. She couldn't drive everything down into the dagger, no – that was beyond her skill, both in terms of her auristic Sight and her magecrafting ability; juggling so much djed and in such intricate and carefully-balanced patterns in order to maintain the meaning encoded there, well, that required greater mental and physical acrobatics (and better tools) than she possessed at the moment. Still – she laughed, happy, as the lazy djed flows in the conduits began to move with more purpose, anticipatory almost – it would be a fine piece of work, at least, for its intended recipients. Yes, there it was – she felt a surge of vindication and a smile stretched her lips; the bloodline binding was strong, already redoubling its efforts to bind every filament and repair the damage to its webwork that her spikes of djed had caused, beating back the unwanted influence of alien blood whilst wholeheartedly drawing in the knowledge, making it an integral part of the artifact. Just as planned. Several days of needling the djed pathways with fresh information, until the artifact almost bled from a thousand insertions, and she could dispense with the dagger master's blood, having pulled all she could from the richness of the life it carried. Things were moving along nicely, very nicely indeed. To her augmented Sight, the dagger looked rather like a porcupine at the moment, riddled with a great many fading spikes of djed, mute testimony to the sheer number of times she'd struck it, each time imparting infinitesimally more knowledge about its form, its function, and how best it could be used until the dreaming mind embedded within it was saturated with information. Her injection method was perhaps not the most gentle, but it served its purpose – and with a bit of encouragement, the bindings she'd already placed onto the artifact repaired the damage in short order. Step three completed. 'At last,' she sighed. There was just one other concern, aside from the final enhancement - to deal with; the preparation of the charged water in which to finish the artifact, to wake the intelligence that guided it and seal in all the properties of her hard work over the past month or so. The trough in the corner, with its glyphic runes on every facet, had been well-prepared by whomever the Dusks had got it from, but really, it was far, far too large for her purposes. It would work, of course, but it was messy. Inefficient. It would have done for an entire suit of armour and really was overkill for a small dagger. Perhaps it was vanity, but following that line of thought she'd borrowed a stone jar that looked about the right size from the Tower kitchens, and was now ready to make her own charged water. It was good practice, too – soon enough she'd be doing this for herself, and on a regular basis, too. Out came the glypher's paint once more, and the brushes from their place by the water-butt. Charging water wasn't exactly difficult, but it did need to be right. The ornate shape of her focus glyph took form with well-practised curves and flicks of the brush – the sequence of movements was becoming more and more ingrained every time she used them, but it was the other glyphs that would take the time; the glyphs which represented the fundamental nature of water, its fluidity and power, and then described the properties of crystallisation, of stability and anchorage, of sealing and binding that had to perfuse every drop before it would be suitable to finish an artifact. Alses dipped her brush in the thick black glypher's paint and, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, and breathing heavily as she crawled around on the floor yet again, she began to carefully write the cardinal glyphs, of definition and – crucially – change. Beads of perspiration dotted her opalescent skin as they began to take shape, the rippling sinuous curves of the definition glyphs melding – with a thin line of combination sigils, intricate djed connections writ large in ink – into the charging runes, seeking to alter some of the properties of the water, to grant it binding and preservative powers. It took a long time – much longer than usual, since she regularly had to break from inscribing her runes to keep the artifact on the straight and narrow, as it were, and still more time went on examining the runed trough and her notes, making sure she understood the patterns and interactions of every glyph and how best to apply them to her smaller jar. It was quite a different pattern and method of work than the ones she was used to, but there was a fundamental similarity in the effects, which provided her something known to work towards.

[Alses]

Timestamp: 15th of Autumn, 512 A.V. Alses attempted to stare the smug jar into submission through the sheer heat and ferocity of her glare. It was getting a bit worrying, really – it never seemed quite right, no matter what she did to her glyphs. The aura was always slightly off, for one, and the charging properties seemed weak - incomplete, almost. The first effort had been, to be blunt, pitiful. The djed in the circles had curled and writhed in on itself, turning and turning in confusion – almost as if it were alive - as her amateurish glyphs first pulled it one way and then the next, the convulsing colours giving her a headache as they squirrelcaged around. Successive attempts to make the whole thing work more smoothly had helped, true – more runes to reinforce each concept and a more fluid design for the whole circle had aided in djed circulation overall, but she was no closer to making what would have been deemed an 'acceptable' pot of charged water. It'd been far too long since she'd been called upon to do it. Frustrated, Alses absently tapped the wooden handle of the brush against her teeth, a rhythmic 'clack' that echoed slightly in the silence of the lab, accompanying the useless thoughts bouncing in her head. It really was becoming quite pressing, now – the deadline for the artifact's creation was looming large, six days away, now – or five, really, if she wanted time to clean up, burn her notes to prevent any secrets of the craft being displayed to all and sundry and get the place looking presentable again – both in terms of appearance and djed. 'If I don't manage to get the glyphs right today,' she thought – and it rankled, it really did '-then I'll have to use the trough.' Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, though. Fuelled by the unwelcome thought – and after a glance at the circles surrounding the artifact to make sure everything was stable (or at least, acceptably unstable) – she turned over a page of her notes and began to draw out yet another diagram of her charging circle – the elaborate focus glyph in the centre, attached by raying lines of pathing runes to principal sigils. In this case, both were the representations of adra – or liquid, in the common tongue – a flowing, curling rune that caught the eyes and drew them along its sinuous curves, an unsettling suggestion of motion. There was also a sense of cleanliness in the lines, each one stark and unbroken, not interrupted with connections or junctions, just one melding seamlessly into the other; she'd incorporated aspects of the ocean symbol, cha, to further define it, establishing the combination rune as 'water' specifically. Precision, for this sort of work, was key – best to leave as little as possible vague or ambiguous. Further glyphs were then linked to these primary runes, modifiers to the main concept. On the left, they represented fluidity, mutability, change - and a certain amount of chaos, defining the undesirable properties of the water to be charged, and on the right, sealing and permanency, the key traits of charged water that would crystallise the artifact into its final form, damping down any further connections and leaving it finished and whole. Both sides were stitched together with lines of pathing glyphs incorporating the runes of change and improvement - 'Dala,' Alses reminded herself, reflexively – coupled with the delicate feather-touches of yaq, so that the change wasn't abrupt and fierce. Leaning back in the chair, she squinted critically at the inked lines. 'Now, is there anything obvious that I've missed?' she thought, grumpily, arms folded under her chest and half-rocking the protesting furniture back and forth with a foot. Her eyes flicked over the dense notation, drinking it in – adracha sigils, dala and yaq repeated many times throughout the whole setup, the focus itself...by all accounts, it should have been working perfectly. 'So what in the name of Syna's flaming knickers is going wrong?' “Why aren't you working?” she asked of the air, annoyed, clutching her diagrammatic notes in one hand and stalking around the small circle, eyes darting from paper to glyph and back again in quick succession. No, everything was in the right place, all proportionate, no linkages that she could see were fuzzed or shorting – in short, it was a circle she'd have been happy to be assessed on, back in Zeltiva. Although...she almost dropped the diagnostic lens in her haste to fumble it out of its sheepskin case – perhaps there was something wrong with the djed balancing, maybe there were interactions that cancelled one another out at some point, wasting their energy fruitlessly. She planned her circles, oh yes, but errors could always creep in when translating a design into an actual full-size circle. Scaling, that was a perfidious enemy indeed. Eager, she pressed the lens close to her eye and squinted, scrutinizing every coruscating curve and line. No. No, everything seemed fine there. No angry clashes, no fading connections – her meticulous agents of change all seemed to be doing their respective tasks admirably – and still most of the water remained stubbornly inert whenever she tried the charging process. Hands on hips, thoroughly ticked off with the recalcitrant setup, Alses glared at it some more, just in case that would help, and then started to walk. “Perhaps it's too well balanced?” she mused, pacing the length of the laboratory and back again. “Maybe we need to increase the change rate from one to the other, and perhaps be a little less gentle with the charging – there could be reversion going on, if it's too gradual a process, after all.” Energised by this possible solution, she flourished her brush and set to work with a will, multiplying up the number of changing glyphs and their connections as well as – with damp rag and vengeful expression – erasing several of the gentling yaq runes. The sun was high in the sky by the time Alses finished, panting slightly and very hot. Stray strands of crimson hair were plastered to her face and hung limply through the intricate crown-of-horns where she'd been bending forwards, every strand darkened with her own perspiration. “Syna above, Starry Zintila, Laviku...please let this work!” she begged. Failure tasted horribly bitter, after all. Carefully, she ladled water from the water-butt into the jar, taking pains not to wet the container or let water spill over the rim – that would blur and damage her circles, and that would never do. She set it down with barely a ripple, thankful for the nth time for the natural grace her celestial form was blessed with, and swiped one finger over the activation glyph, before turning her attention resolutely towards the artifact itself. She had wrung as much as she was able from the dagger master's blood – the phial was now three-quarters empty and, no matter how much more blood she used or how much power she invested in transferring the information, nothing more could be gleaned – which was infuriating, because she could sense more, just beyond the reach of her skills, teasing her. If she had a reagent, things might have gone very differently; the added stability and control they granted an artifact – any artifact – would have let her thrust more information into the dagger's djed matrix without sending the whole thing tottering towards total collapse, but nonetheless, she'd managed to inject a good deal of knowledge into it before coming up against that hard barrier. Personally, she had mixed feelings about it, but thrust them aside as she settled into her entry circle, to better focus on the success which lay ahead. Which had to lie ahead. Failing with the charged water was humiliating, yes, but fortunately not the end of the world – “Stop it,” she half-snarled, rising into a squatting position. “We haven't failed yet – and there are more important things to think of.” Heeding her own advice – for once – and pressed on all sides by the djed of the world, Alses straightened up fully and danced her way into the main circle, stepping lightly between glyphic relay and ingredient focus, towards the last, the very last piece of the dagger's commissioned puzzle, gleaming smugly red inside its glassy container. There was, very definitely, the sense of a project in its end stages in the laboratory. Most of the ingredients in her carefully-prepared focus circles had collapsed; some had evaporated completely, others left a greasy, rather unpleasant smear on the skyglass, and the majority had simply slumped into fine, featureless gray dust. The artifact, too, at the centre of the glyphic arrays, was more visible to the aurist's attuned eye, no longer hidden under many connections and support pathways. As each ingredient had expired, giving up the last of its properties to the artifact's creation process, another connection was closed, and now only a few – mostly carnelians - still pulsed lazily, giving a near-unobstructed view of the intricate webwork that the dagger's once-simple djed structure had become. 'One last effort,' she thought, gladly. Magecrafting was a delight, of course, but also hard work – and it was always nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then, too, there was the fact that her dwindling supplies of kina would be bolstered (hopefully substantially), too. 'Fur coats, and, and, and warm gloves, and silk underthings again,' her mind carolled with glee, and she smiled involuntarily, looking forward to it. Now...she pulled a face at the final vial as her hand closed around the neck. Whenever she cast a glance at it, the blood seemed to be in motion, a continual roiling boil always just on the edge of sight. After a bit, the secretive movements made her feel quite queasy – this was one vial she'd be glad to empty – if only so she didn't have to look at it so much.

[Alses]

Timestamp: 20th of Autumn, 512 A.V. Really, it was criminal, using that Flux master's blood for her artifact. Every strike evoked a rich tapestry of djed from the loosed blood on the skyglass surface, the very barest fragments of which she was able to capture and drive into the structure of the dagger, the majority of it simply peeling off and fleeing away into the ambient. Such a shame, elaborate filigree diamonds jinking away from the hammers, slipping her nets and shattering into nothingness with every strike, just leaving the bare essentials behind, a thin crimson and blue smear compared to the glories that vanished without trace into the djed of the world. Still, it was effective, she had to admit – the speed that so characterised the blood's own djed seemed to leap like wildfire to the artifact's own conduits given only the smallest amount of encouragement – indeed, it was keeping the djed flows under control that was the difficulty – not something Alses had ever anticipated when she began the project. Five days, and half of those nights, too, spent mostly wrestling with that wretched sense of movement, ringing the elusive effect in with copper chimes only to find it breaking out halfway down the blade again, had resulted in djed flows around the dagger that were altogether simply faster than before, a sense of swiftness becoming a fundamental characteristic of every facet of the artifact with each strike and extra drop of Flux master blood. The djed along the principal conduits she'd leveraged most strongly continually seemed to race from pommel to point and back, occasionally erupting in brilliant prominences of disorganized magic that needed quick, decisive action to contain, lest they ruin weeks of hard work. The hammers had barely left her hands for days, not since the first time using the Fluxed blood, returning at the next dawn to find the dagger tipping dangerously towards the brink, brilliant eruptions of out-of-control djed threatening the whole structure. Correcting them hadn't been difficult, more a case of sealing the djed back in place with some well-placed corrective force and sending it on its way with a quick pulse of directed djed than anything, but it was a continual process, until the artifact's channels became habituated to the new stresses and pressures – something that, unavoidably, took time. It was worth all the frustration, though, and the deep tiredness that had settled into her bones – the djed now coursed quickly and with deadly purpose along the conduits and connections of the artifact, its aura looking sharper, indefinably faster and, quite simply, lethal. She smiled, tiredly – if this was what it looked like before the final sealing, before the intelligence she'd painstakingly crafted into its very fabric awoke to take full possession of its faculties, then it would surely meet Ald'gare Dusk's exacting standards. 'Is it ready?' she asked herself, apprehensive. The silver-and-skyglass tongs for final transfer from pedestal to charged water gleamed in the abundant light, looking anticipatory, waiting – and, admittedly, faintly predatory. It was a big step, plunging an artifact into its final bath – nothing could be changed from that point on, no matter a mage's skill or power. Best to be absolutely sure. The proverb 'Look before you leap,' came to the forefront of her mind, along with the almost-tangible memory of warm, djed-scarred hands on her shoulders – it had been one of her old master's favourite sayings, uttered like a mantra in the final stages of any crafting. Lips pursed, Alses hefted the examination lens and began a careful scrutiny of the dagger from every angle. The glyphic circles which had sustained her work area and channeled the djed of various ingredients towards the artifact were mostly quiescent, now, the final few reagents having crumbled to dust, spent, leaving the dagger shining – to an aurist's sight – like an earthbound star on its pedestal. She moved fluidly closer, drinking in the sight of the fruit of her labours, examining every facet of its aura for changes, weaknesses, anything that shouldn't have been there. The conduits looked slick and healthy – that would be the influence of the Fluxed blood and the extra djed she'd leveraged to make the connections more robust – every interchange gleamed smugly, seamlessly melding one into another with no messy wastage or faulty interaction that might have weakened the final artifact. The deeper layers, too, shone through clear and bright, unfettered and precise – a piece of work that Alses was proud of. The core of the dagger was now an intricate thing, garlanded about with buttressing djed connections of all sizes and strengths and perfused with a sleeping intelligence that confused the examining lens somewhat, almost as though it were a living thing not sure how to represent the limited abstractions of that drowsing mind, but there seemed to be nothing wrong there, either. It was only as she began to pull away from her examination, ready to reach for the tongs and transfer the dagger to the water, that she noticed – not a problem, exactly, but something that could do with some improvement. It was the very first thing she'd done, the bloodline binding. What with the needle-injection method that she favoured and the eruptions that the speed enchantment had caused, it was beginning to look a little ragged, the scarlet marbling looser and coarser than when she'd first wrapped it around the conduits, appearing somehow stretched and thinned to her auristic sight. A bit of strengthening couldn't hurt, just to be on the safe side. This time, reinforcing the general bloodline binding was much, much easier – the existing djed there called out to its own strongly, working against the extraneous portions of the combined blood along with every chiming strike of her hammers, sending great curling strands whipping away into the ambient, twisting and kinking into nothingness. It was somewhat difficult to see the scarlet webwork of the binding, though; the general aura of the dagger had become tinged crimson, given all the blood that had gone into the various enchantments, staining the general surrounds with its colours. Nonetheless, given the strength and versatility of the established binding, Alses had no qualms about striking with all of her strength, a rising mountain of gold-toned notes that quickly pressed the essential nature of the combined blood deep into the heart of the dagger, where it was quickly incorporated, strengthening with every chime the scarlet and brown webwork that continually pulsed with life, binding it tight and strong once more about the blazing djed conduits until the binding glowed redly once more, present and powerful. Anyone not of the blood – and that included herself, but there was no time to rectify that now – would find wielding it properly a very tricky proposition indeed, with that wicked little binding wrapped tight around every conduit. Even more so, come to think of it, with the intelligence inside it set to actively work against them. Appropriately, the sun was low and red in the sky by the time the last hammer-strike rang into gentle oblivion, leaving the dagger pristine and complete – truly complete, this time, to her satisfaction in every aspect. Her hands didn't tremble as she gripped the dagger in the tongs – there was a faint chime as the skyglass scraped along the stone of the pedestal and then lifted free – turning gently and with measured step moving towards the trough, its glyphs shining with strong, steady light to those with the sight to see it and full of charged water. A grimace tugged at the side of her mouth as she passed by her own attempt at charging water, still stubbornly refusing to yield to her glyphic commands. That had been a stinging realisation – that she wouldn't be able to figure out whatever had gone wrong with her circles in time, that she'd have to rely on the provided glyphery rather than her own, more efficient solution. Ah well. As soon as she finished up this commission, she'd be trying to charge any and all water she could get her hands on, to discern exactly why she'd failed this time around – and she'd make sure to record the humiliating error in her journals, for future reference. Alses had no intention of being caught out a second time, thank you so very much. Nothing for it now – she'd taken the dagger from its pedestal, and it was now mere inches from the surface of the charged water. It was rather anticlimactic, really – the dagger slid in with barely a ripple, with no showy flash or boom of noise; even the clink of it settling on the stone bottom and the tongs relinquishing their grip was dampened by the water. After contemplating the dagger's blurred form at the base of the trough for a few moments, Alses turned with a weary sigh, absently flicking the tongs to rid them of water before placing them on the windowsill, where they would dry the fastest from the vestigial heat of the day. She yawned, catlike, in the fading light, and it was as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. There was nothing further she could do on her project, now – everything was down to the sealing properties of the charged water, locking the djed into its new, final patterns over a number of hours before the whole thing was ready to be dried and presented to its (presumably eager) recipient. Or rather, since this was the Patriarch of the Dusk Tower, put in a warded box and sent on its way with a trusted Tower servant, at the discretion of the Tower's dapper and efficient secretary. 'Sleep,' her mind commanded, and willingly, she followed its direction, closing and locking up her laboratory and then stumbling out into the gloaming, hurrying to make it home before the last of the light faded.

[Alses]

Timestamp: 21st of Autumn, 512 A.V. The day was an unsettled and overcast one – and at present, it was raining, a grim, gray drizzle that looked set in for the duration. This was coupled with the louring clouds, the near-empty streets and the banners hanging limp and sodden overhead; Lhavit was at its least attractive, mountain winds rushing down the streets and alleyways – continually frustrated by the spiralling, curving layout of the city, true, but no less powerful for that whenever they howled at full fury down an avenue or boulevard. Alses kept her head down as she ran for the Dusk Tower's welcoming portico, eyes resolutely fixed on the slick flags beneath her feet – she'd learned her lesson from the kuhari debacle that summer, and had no desire to suffer poison again any time soon. Her clothes, despite her best efforts, were sodden from the wind and the rain, the fabric sticking to her like a second skin and her hair hanging down in wet rat-tails about her face. She shivered convulsively as a vicious skirl of water-laden mountain wind caught the back of her neck and dumped a trail of raindrops onto the last patch of dry skin she had left. Cursing the slowness of her chilled fingers, she finally managed to fumble the timeworn doors of the Dusk Tower open and, once inside, made a beeline for the nearest fireplace, heedless of anything and everything else. The fire was bliss, it really was, merrily blazing and throwing out enormous amounts of heat. Another shiver – but this one a delicious feeling – coursed up her body as she turned and turned, almost in the leaping flames, skin tightening on one side from the welcome warmth, prickling into gooseflesh on the other from the chill of her waterlogged clothes. For perhaps a quarter of a bell, Alses drowsed amid the welcome heat, drinking it in, enjoying the flickering play of red lights on the inside of her closed eyelids, the snap and crackle of firewood and the clear, autumnal scent of woodsmoke. Steam rose in ghostly whorls from her clothes and hair as she dried out, fervently blessing whichever servants maintained the Tower fires for their skill and foresight. Alas, she couldn't spend the day in front of a roaring fire, no matter how much she'd have liked to – there was just a little more work to do. Reluctantly, Alses drifted away from the welcoming fireplace – regretting it with every step, the slightly-damp hem of her dress leaving chill imprints on her legs – and began to climb the stairs; fourteen flights of them, always a good bit of exercise. After a month of slogging up them every day, she wasn't red-faced and panting by the time she reached the seventh floor, but they were still something of a workout, and her fingertips tingled with returning circulation as they left the banister. The laboratory doors clicked shut behind her and Alses strode purposefully forward, tongs in her left hand, reaching into the trough and resolutely not looking at her own, failed attempt nearby. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, she carefully angled the grasping tongs until they caught around the dim shape of the dagger, resting serenely at the bottom of the trough. Twice she almost dropped the weapon, but at last managed to get a proper hold and drew it completely out of the water in one smooth movement, laying it to rest on the laboratory table nearby. To the mundane eye, it seemed as though nothing had changed; there were no outward signs of a month of blood, sweat and tears, after all. Alses sighed, shoulders slumping from their tensed pose. “And now for the test,” she murmured, with a soft smile. Hopefully, if she'd done her job, the artifact would hate being wielded by her. Creator or no, she wasn't of the blood, and so to the binding and the intelligence which now (hopefully) drove the dagger, unworthy. The instant her hand closed around the hilt, she felt a frisson of shock at the sheer weight of the thing – it seemed much more massive than its delicate form would have suggested. The intelligence driving the dagger didn't speak to her, but there was a definite sense of its presence, and of its displeasure - she swung it, experimentally; the dagger seemed almost to twist and writhe in her hand, tangling her fingers and making her swipe even more clumsy and slow – a wide arc that would have been easy for a novice to parry and counter. She grinned, exultant. “It worked!” she cried, unable to keep it in. A chuckle, rich and full of delight. “It actually worked!” Carefully, almost reverentially, she set the dagger down on her desk, letting it dry slowly whilst she set to work. Today's purpose was threefold – one, to write a letter to the Patriarch, for inclusion in the box package, two, to clean the laboratory from top to bottom, erasing all signs of her presence and ensuring her notes were copied into her book and then burned, and three, handing back the key to the Dusk Tower's secretary. Then, and only then, would she regard the commission complete and could look forward with a light heart to getting paid. Now then...how to begin, how to begin...there'd been no furious correction to her last letter, so perhaps following the same format would be advisable. 'Date and year, Alses – for the records. Best make a note of this in my book, too – in case I ever want to look up this dagger's provenance.' She dipped her quill in the ink-pot, fastidiously making sure to take just the right amount, no more – there could be no unsightly blotches or runs of ink on a letter to one of the most powerful men in Lhavit, after all. The twenty-first day of Autumn The five hundred and twelfth year after the Valterrian His Excellency Ald'gare Dusk, Patriarch of House Dusk, Master of the Dusk Tower and Member of the Council of Towers of Lhavit, My lord, I trust this missive finds you in fine health and good heart both. I have completed the commission you awarded to me on the eighty-second day of Summer in this year – please find Saving Grace enclosed, enhanced in the areas of speed and structural resilience as well as with knowledge of its own use and further a bloodline binding, as discussed. I hope it will serve the intended recipient – and his family, in the fullness of time – well. I look forward to future endeavours for House Dusk, and to remuneration for my efforts. Should you ever wish to commission further works from me, I shall be only too happy to oblige. May Syna's light guide you in all things. I remain, my lord, Alses Magesmith and Apprentice of the Dusk Tower The chair creaked alarmingly as she tipped it back – familiar with the tapestry of woody groans, moans and general protests it made, after a month of heavy use, she tuned the noises out, rocking it slightly to and fro, pensive. 'Was putting in that bit about money too blatant?' she wondered. 'Maybe, maybe...but we would rather be upfront and lay everything down in writing than have to contest it somehow a little further down the line. We were commissioned, after all, quite separate from our apprenticeship here – we should be paid for our effort and skill.' Well. No sense waxing philosophical about it now. A flash of true-blue light, and the short letter was perfectly dry. A few careful folds and an envelope later – neatly addressed to the Patriarch, of course – and she was happily and vacantly absorbed in dripping red wax to make her seal, getting just the right thickness and regularity to take the sunburst impression. Perfect. With a satisfied smile, Alses set the letter next to the dagger and turned her attention towards the bulk of the tasks for the day – cleanup. The few notes she hadn't already copied into her book would have to be transcribed, and then the whole lot of them burned. No sense in giving away secrets to all and sundry, after all. Then the laboratory would have to be thoroughly scrubbed with saltwater – her master had always sworn by saltwater as a dampener and purgative nonpareil and a list of the ingredients she'd used copied out neatly and taken to the Tower's Exchequer, to ensure that supplies were maintained. She flipped open the book of magical observations that she always carried with her, now, noting how close she was getting towards the end already. Quickly skimming through the painstaking pages of notes and theories, she slowed as she reached a page entitled 'Saving Grace', running her finger down the dense paragraphs explaining how to elicit discoherency from skyglass, that normally-impervious substance, the helical reinforcement procedure she'd used for the structural enchantment and much else besides. Happily for Alses' writing hand – which had a tendency to cramp rapidly and make her script almost illegible – there was little enough to add, just a few observations on the nature of using Flux in artifact creation. When leveraging the discipline known as the Flux for magecrafting purposes, I noticed the tendency of the charged material to induce unwanted acceleration and alteration of djed flows along the conduits in the artifact. This could – and did – result in spiking ruptures and prominences of suddenly-uncontrolled djed where the conduits were not prepared for such sudden and rapid influxes, which caused secondary damage to other aspects of the crafted artifact before I corrected them. I hypothesise that this aberrant and destructive behaviour could have been controlled and mitigated had a master of the Flux been physically present, to control these faster flows of djed – however, until such an opportunity presents itself, this must remain a hypothesis. Reference standard texts for a possible explanation of the djed prominences observed. Alses nodded. That would do, for now – it was mostly a memory aid. Soon, she'd buy a new set of blank books, for her musings on magecrafting, on auristics, on gardening and so on, and then she could write more comprehensively on what she'd learned. Now...she quickly riffled through the pages of her master list, trying to find which cabinet contained the pouch of sea-salt. Adding that to the water-butt would suit her purposes admirably. Slightly salty water rushed in an expanding wave over the slightly-dusty skyglass, a cleansing wash that purified and simplified. Where it met the glypher's paint, to her aurist's Sight, there seemed to be a sort of conflict going on, the complex djed curves of the runes fighting back against the restful blue-and-white of the water as it eroded the lines. Rags wrapped around her hands, Alses followed the water wash with old-fashioned elbow grease, scrubbing and scrubbing at the tough paint and liberally applying more saltwater until every speck of black was gone from the gently-glowing skyglass, any higher-order djed patterns completely dispersed, returning the ambient laboratory djed to a more normal state. It was hot work, cleaning, even though she was on her hands and knees in the middle of a lot of cold water, and the salt stung in her eyes – whether from beads of perspiration or the saltwater she'd made, she didn't know and it didn't matter. It was well past noon by the time she was finished – the laboratory smelled fresh and clean, now, the scent of saltwater overpowering the potpourri of attar of roses, books and the general, indefinable scent of the Tower itself that had dominated the room for the past month. Her notes were neatly gathered together in a sheaf, ready to be tossed on a fire – or several fires, just to be on the safe side – the cabinets securely locked and a list of the ingredients used made for the Exchequer. Most things went into her backpack, but the dagger she wrapped in a square of dove-gray silk and carried. A Alses cleared her throat, standing diffidently in front of the marble reception desk. The secretary nodded his head, to show his awareness of her presence, but finished writing his sentence before laying down quill and looking up. “Yes? What can I do for you, Alses?” “May we have a warded box? Our commission for the Patriarch is completed, and we – I – would like to send it to him properly.” He nodded his head, quickly and jerkily, already rising from his desk and pulling out a silver chatelaine from the depths of his clothing. Many keys glittered from its chains – his nimble fingers unerringly picked one out of the many and opened a dark old cabinet to reveal shelves full of the fine boxes. Soon enough, he turned back to Alses with an open box in hand, eyes expectant. With all due ceremony, she laid the dagger and letter in the velvet-cushioned interior and gazed at the secretary with expectant eyes – he flipped it shut with a very final snap and gave her a wide smile, hands once again busy with paper and quill. “Very good,” he congratulated her. “Here, take this.” He handed her a slip of paper with the Tower's crest prominently stamped on it. “Just a receipt to say I've taken charge of your work. I'm sure the Patriarch will be pleased – I daresay the Tower will be in touch in a few days.” Alses let out a sigh she hadn't been aware of holding in. “Thank you,” she breathed, heartfelt, before turning and leaving the Tower, a parade of empty days stretching gloriously out in front of her. END

[Elysium]

Alses

Magecrafting	+5
Glyphing	+5
Auristics	+1
Observation	+4
Rhetoric	+2

How to Catalogue a Laboratory

The Advantages of Auristics while Magecrafting

How to Amend Defective Glyphing

How to Magecraft Skyglass

Activating Djed Connections while Magecrafting

Completing the Steps of Magecrafting

How to Amend a Failure while Magecrafting

How to Compile Observations

How to Successfully Magecraft an Item

How to Successfully Use an Optional Reagent

How to Extract Knowledge from an Optional Reagent

How to Successfully Complete a Bloodline Binding

Additional Award: 250 kina

Notes: Very good work! As you can see, you more than earned the XP here. I especially appreciated the trial-and-error regarding glyphing and the dilemma of how to unlock djed channels in skyglass! If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to PM me.