Auristematician (Solo)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

43rd Day of Summer, 512 AV Over the last few weeks, Tock had been pondering the problem of using magic to study architecture. It had been a 'bottom of the pile' project, pushed aside when she was too busy with work, too busy making a new Automaton, or generally distracted with other problems that popped up. Thus she had only had time to poke at the papers here and there, taking an hour before work, or a bit of time between studies at the University, to attempt to figure out the puzzle before her. The last three days or so, however, she'd been able to devote a bit more time to it. She'd brought some books on mathematics from the University, and was working on trying to deduce a numerical pattern of some sort. The problem was complex, since she didn't really know WHAT she was looking for. But she had a long list of notes with three sets of numbers, all related to her Auristic study of a damaged stone wall. She had spent a full day studying all of the stone blocks of the wall, learning as much as she could from their auras. Though since her understanding of Auristics was still so limited, she didn't know how to interpret what she had learned. It had kept her head spinning in circles every time she looked at it. She woke early this day, laying the papers out across her table, along with her books on mathematics. She had some time before work, so she began reviewing the numbers. One set of numbers was based on the structure of the auras; she had learned, after studying both solid and broken blocks, that a broken block would show a fragmented aura. Much like looking into a broken mirror and seeing multiple, separate images of one's face, when she has studied the aura of a cracked block, the aura had been seen split and broken. She had recorded how many 'sections' each block's aura had shown, when compared to the number of cracks in the block. Unfortunately, the numbers didn't quite match up... it wasn't as simple as a block with three cracks showing three aura segments. The second set of numbers related to the coloration of the aura. One of the first things she'd learned in Auristics class was that different colors were common in many auras. In her limited experience, she had learned there were certain patterns to these colors. Plants often had green auras, while animals might show a different color based on their species. Humans tended to have shifting colors in their auras, based on their changing emotions. Mundane, inanimate objects usually had dull, dark colors. All the stone blocks she'd studied only had a dull grey aura. But, when she started comparing all of the different blocks, she found there were different shades of grey. She had assigned a number to each shade she saw, based purely on her own judgment of the color, ranging from one to ten. She had a sketch of the building she'd studied in front of her, with notations in each block denoting what shade that block's aura had been. The last set of numbers, also varying from block to block, was the density of the aura. Some of the auras had been slightly more transparent, others more opaque. Yet she didn't understand why. Sighing, and rubbing at her aching head, she started up a new chart to graph out the patterns: Fragments (# of pieces)/Shade (1=light, 10=Dark)/Density (1=transparent, 10-opaque) 1/10/1 1/8/1 1/7/1 2/7/1 1/9/1 1/6/1 1/9/1 2/6/1 1/8/2 1/10/2 1/7/1 1/8/1 1/7/1 1/9/2 1/9/1 1/5/1 1/10/3 1/7/2 1/9/3 1/7/2 1/9/3 1/7/1 1/8/3 1/6/2 1/8/4 1/7/4 3/5/4 1/7/4 1/6/4 5/4/4 1/7/4 1/6/4 1/9/5 4/8/4 1/7/4 1/6/5 2/6/4 1/7/4 3/6/4 4/4/5 1/8/4 1/8/5 1/6/4 1/7/4 1/8/4 1/7/3 1/6/4 1/4/3 1/8/7 3/6/6 2/5/4 1/7/6 1/7/5 1/5/4 3/6/5 6/1/6 1/9/7 1/7/4 1/8/6 1/9/6 1/8/6 1/6/6 1/5/5 1/4/5 1/7/8 1/8/7 1/6/8 1/5/7 1/5/7 3/3/6 4/3/8 7/1/7 1/10/10 1/9/9 1/10/10 1/9/9 1/7/7 1/8/8 1/6/6 1/7/7

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

This new layout told her two things. One, that the density of the auras increased based on how far down the wall the block was. This made it clear to her that how opaque an aura appeared had something to do with how much weight the block was supporting. Though there were discrepancies she couldn't fully account for. The second was that both the density and the shade of the auras were reduced or lightened when in close proximity to the cracked blocks. It was quite obvious; the numbers were consistently much lower in the sections where the cracked blocks were. But what she didn't understand was what it all MEANT, or what the pattern was. She could take an educated guess that the lighter shades indicated areas of structural weakness. But what she needed to know, if she was going to make a science out if this, was exactly how aid why the auras were being affected, and how to properly judge and measure the differences. Otherwise all she had was vague opinions that one area was 'sort of weaker' than another. But if she wanted to be able to do a proper, professional job, she needed to be able to measure and predict the changes. Otherwise it was as good as useless to her. Unsure how to proceed, she tried several mathematical formulas out of the books she had. She plugged the numbers on her chart into the formulas, working the math in order to see if anything worked out. She kept getting errors each time, much to her growing frustration. If there WAS a definable pattern, it didn't seem to fit into any existing theorems. Which meant she would have to try and devise her own theorem... something she wasn't even sure if she COULD do. And doing so first meant figuring out the pattern, and defining it. She couldn't create a formula without knowing how the pattern would fit into it. After another long morning of banging her head against charts, graphs, and long lines of numbers trying to work out some sort of pattern, Tock realized she was running late for work. So she shoved the papers into her backpack, along with a couple of the books, and headed on down to the job site. Maybe inspiration would hit her on her lunch break or something.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock showed up on the job site and immediately set to her own tasks. She wasn't in the mood to be social today (not that she hardly ever was), and thus wanted to get right down to business. Her task today was carving designs into the end posts of a stairway banister. It was indoor work, in the foyer of a large home for a fairly well-to-do client. The main staircase to the second floor had identical carvings on each end post, each in the design of a foot-tall seahorse. The one on the right had suffered some serious damage, and had to be completely replaced. The seahorse was jagged, with a big crack running down the middle, and some pieces missing off the head and tail. Before she began work, Tock decided to scan both pieces, and see what she could learn from their auras. Her coworkers, working nearby on repairs to the walls and stairs, didn't realize she was doing anything other than staring intently at the wood. They were used to her 'eccentricities' by now, and mostly ignored them. She focused hard first on the intact pillar, channeling Djed slowly and carefully until the aura appeared. It was a greenish-gray, indicative that the wood came from a once green plant, but now had no life in it. She jotted down some notes on the color, the shade, and the density of the aura, while her coworkers no doubt thought she was simply planning the carving. She scanned the broken pillar next. It showed a fragmented aura, just as she expected. And as expected, the shade of the aura was several degrees lighter. This confirmed her suspicions that the shade of the aura was somehow linked to the stability and wholeness of the object. The weaker and more fragile an object was, the lighter and more ghostly the aura appeared. The density, however, was the same on the damaged piece. Despite being a lighter color, the aura was no more transparent. But since her theory was that the density increased based on the weight atop an object, as if the weight somehow compressed the aura and solidified it, this also seemed to make sense. She grew out of breath and felt a twinge of pain in her head, and knew it was time for a rest from the magic. She cut off the Djed flow, finished jotting down her notes, and then set to work on her actual job. First was just cutting away the damaged piece. It was sawed off below the square cap atop the pillar, taking the seahorse carving and the square cap all off together as one piece. She then cut a new block of wood, initially cutting it into an upside-down T, the wide base forming the new square cap, and the vertical section of wood awaiting carving into the seahorse's body. Curious, she scanned the new block's aura as well, so she could make a comparison. The color was slightly greener, which she theorized was because this was newer, freshly-cut wood. She made some notes about this, intending to study it further. Perhaps the color of an aura could help her tell something old from something new, allowing her to identify sections of a building that had been repaired and replaced. She also noted that the uncarved block's aura was a fair bit darker than the carved one. This further supported her theory that shade was linked to strength and stability, since she knew that carving into the wood inevitably weakened it by comparison to the solid block. With her notes complete, she cut off the Djed flow once more, and began tracing the outline of the design onto the wood. She took measurements of the undamaged carving and transferred them over to the uncarved block, ensuring the replacement would have the same proportions. Then she set to work with her mallet and chisels, cutting off slices of unneeded wood to begin bringing out the shape of the seahorse.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock hummed softly as she worked, using simple hand pressure on her files and gouges to bring out the details of the carving. A round file worked into the wood in gentle strokes brought out each groove that formed the scaly shape of the seahorse's body, and fine toothed picks were used to bring out the details of the eyes and other fine points. She wasn't happy with the appearance of the original carving, since it looked to have been done by someone of lesser skill. Part of her wanted to respect the original carver's art, but there were a few clear flaws that she insisted on fixing. She went back and forth between both carvings, sometimes measuring the dimensions of the original in order to duplicate them, sometimes filing out a flaw here or recutting a detail there, and always making sure the resulting modification was copied over to both carvings. As the hours wore on and the work neared completion, she paused to scan both pieces again. While the color itself was still different on each piece, their shades were now very much alike. Both were light, yet stable, showing a steady color without any noticeable fluctuation. If not for the different tint to the colors, she might have thought the auras identical. After scanning first one, then the other, she noted everything she'd seen, feeling satisfied with the study. It hadn't brought her any intense revelations, but it had confirmed some of her earlier ideas. She set her notes aside and set about sanding and polishing the carvings. She not only sanded out the areas she'd worked on, but also sanded down the entire original carving so she could clear away some of the signs of age from the wood. Then she carefully polished both pieces to a lustrous shine. By the time she was done, the two pieces were as good as identical. With the modifications to the original, and the new sanding and polishing work, most people would never be able to tell which was the original and which the replacement. Though their auras were a dead giveaway.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock finished her carvings with like an hour left to kill before quitting time. Technically she could have gotten permission to go home early, but she preferred to use times like this to her advantage. In this case, she decided that as long as she was still on the clock, she could find another way to mix her job with her own personal studies. She went outside and found James working on repairing a small garden wall in front of the house. It was only about knee-height, a short layer of bricks holding up the dirt for a flower bed. The task was fairly simple, and that happened to make it ideal for experimentation. She wordlessly knelt besides James, and began the slow process of scanning a series of bricks, one at a time. To conserve her Djed and try to avoid overgiving, she stuck with just scanning a series of five bricks, laid out as the bottom row of an as yet incomplete section of the wall. James watched her for a moment, but said nothing. They weren't exactly quite on speaking terms at the moment, but he was no doubt curious as to why she was staring at the bricks so intently. She took notes on the auras as she had on the stone wall the other day. She wasn't surprised by the initial results: Shade (1=light, 10=Dark)/Density (1=transparent, 10-opaque) 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 The problem was, this wasn't giving her any new data. The shade, representing stability, was naturally dark since these were brand new, solid bricks. And their auras were largely transparent since there was nothing compressing them. She sighed and cut off her Djed flow, resting her mind so she wouldn't wear herself out. She then grabbed a trowel and the bucket of mortar, and started laying out the next section of bricks. "I'm not done the first layer yet," James protested. He was still laying out the rest of the bottom row, which stretched all the way across the front of the house, starting at the corner and stopping at the door. James had already finished the section on the opposite side of the door, which was four bricks high. "I's jus' doin' 'is section," Tock gruffly replied, not really in the mood for any lip from the boy today. He just shook his head at her and continued his work in silence. Meanwhile Tock began silently spreading the mortar and carefully setting part of the next layer of bricks in place. She started where the short wall jutted up against the side of the house, setting a series of eight bricks in place, one after another, just to make sure she had a decent layout of the section. Then she paused once the partial row was set, channeling her energy to read the auras of the next layer.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock focused on the central five bricks, ignoring the ones past the edges. The others were just there to make sure the section of the wall was properly stable. She set the trowel aside, focusing one at a time on each brick, getting a read of its aura and recording the results among her notes: Shade (1=light, 10=Dark)/Density (1=transparent, 10-opaque) 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/2 10/2 10/2 10/2 10/2 She sighed in frustration and sat back, cutting off the Djed flow and rubbing her sore temples. Nothing new. Nothing unexpected. She was tiring herself out quickly, and not getting any truly useful information. Yet she knew she had to get the baseline readings first. Otherwise she'd have nothing to properly compare it to once she started experimenting. By the time she finished studying the section of bricks, James had laid out the rest of the second level all the way down this half of the house. He frowned at her, seeing she had only laid out eight bricks in the time it took him to set a couple dozen. "What are you doing?" he asked her. Twitch. She turned a glare on him and snapped, "What business is it o' yers!?" The man had barely spoken to her in weeks, and now he was bugging her about her experiment. She stared him down until he shook his head and turned away, continuing at his task. Tock just sat there until he had added on the beginnings of the third layer of bricks, resting her mind and recovering her energy. Once James had moved along, she got to work on the fourth layer. She spread the mortar carefully, not just because she always took pride in her work, but also because she didn't want to ruin her experiment by creating any flaws in the initial layout. She set another eight bricks across the top of the fourth row, each one carefully aligned and tapped into place until the mortar held it fast. Then she set about another series of scans, though she already knew what the results would be: Shade (1=light, 10=Dark)/Density (1=transparent, 10-opaque) 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/2 10/2 10/2 10/2 10/2 10/3 10/3 10/3 10/3 10/3 10/4 10/4 10/4 10/4 10/4 She leaned against the wall of the house, groaning. It almost seemed pointless to have performed the last set of scans, considering there was nothing surprising about the results. The shades of the auras weren't changing, because there were no damaged bricks. Without some sort of damage to reduce the strength and stability, there was no reason to expect to see a lighter shade. Likewise, the clear and obvious pattern on the auras' density was exactly what she expected. Each time she added more bricks on top, the weight and compression on the physical material translated into a similar compression of the auras. Nothing unexpected. But she had to be thorough. Now that she had a complete set of data, she could start experimenting.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock woke with a start to someone shaking her shoulder. "Hwuh?" she snorted, looking around, hand straying to the dagger on her belt. She looked up and saw one of her coworkers leaning over her. "Falling asleep on the job, Tock?" he asked. "Come on. It's quitting time..." Tock rubbed her eyes and looked around. She hadn't even realized she'd fallen asleep. Her Djed use had tired her out. She couldn't have been asleep too long, though. It had been nearing the end of the work day anyway. James was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he either hadn't noticed that she'd fallen asleep, or hadn't been bothered to wake her up. Yawning, she stood up and stretched, looking around. The crew was packing up and heading home, though the yard was still filled with a few stacks of bricks and lumber. There was some more work to be done here tomorrow, so any of the supplies that weren't valuable enough to steal would be left here overnight. "You coming?" the man who'd woken her asked. "We're heading down to the Councilor's Head..." Tock shook her head, leaning down to examine the short brick wall. "Nah," she told him. "Catch ya later, mate..." He shrugged and headed off. Before long the whole crew was gone, and she was alone. That was just as well. She took the hammer off her belt and smashed one of the bricks as hard as she could.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

She took her time studying the blocks this time, realizing she'd worn herself out too much earlier. It took her the better part of the next hour to read the full set, since she paused for breath in between each one. Finally, fatigued and feeling a bit numb in her lips and the tips of her fingers, the early signs of overgiving-induced sensory loss, she had a set of readings for the section of bricks she'd been studying: Shade (1=light, 10=Dark)/Density (1=transparent, 10-opaque) 9/1 9/1 *5/1* 9/1 9/1 10/2 9/1 9/1 9/1 10/2 9/2 10/3 9/2 10/3 9/2 10/4 10/4 9/3 10/4 10/4 She set the notes aside for awhile, unwilling and unable to concentrate on them until the pounding in her head faded. She sat and rested for awhile, until the headache and the numbness faded. It was getting late, and she knew she couldn't be out here much longer. Finally, she looked over the notes with the daylight she had left, recording the patterns. These numbers were much cleaner than the complex ones she'd seen when studying the full wall from the first day. Much cleaner, and much easier to trace the patterns. She sat there for a time, drawing some graphs and plotting the numbers she'd recorded. In the long run, she'd need a lot more experiments in order to get a proper feel for this method. But for now, she definitely had something to work with. There was a clear pattern in how the auras' density shifted, both with each brick laid atop, and with the location of the break. The weight distribution through the wall had clearly been affected by the break, and with only a single break to read, she was able to tell something else as well. The auras seemed to lean towards the break. As if the blocks below and diagonal to it had been squeezed so much by the weight above them that their auras were trying to escape through that weak point. It reminded her of squeezing jam between two slices of bread, and watching how it oozed out the edges. While physically the weight distribution might not match up perfectly with the pattern shown by the auras, there was a definite magical reason for it. She wrote herself a series of notes on this, theorizing about other ways that auras could shift themselves around pressure from other, adjacent auras. The energy, compressed by the dense Djed all around them from the auras of the other blocks, was just waiting to be released. She suddenly wanted to smash a glass bottle on the ground to test if there would be a similar effect, as the auras of the individual glass shards broke free from their containment as a single object into many scattered pieces, the Djed spreading across the ground like liquid freed from the bottle. She was still sitting there taking notes and attempting to calculate a formula that would represent her discoveries when she was interrupted by a man clearing his throat. She glanced up at him, vaguely recognizing him as this week's client, the owner of the home the crew had been repairing. He looked her over, no doubt wondering what she was doing in his yard, and asked, "Can I help you, Miss?" Tock briefly considered arguing with the man or making excuses for herself, but she was quite tired and just wanted to go home. So she just told him the truth, or most of it. "I's wit' the work crew," she said, brushing away the broken bits of brick from the short wall. "Jus' stayin' late fer ta finish up one last thing, aye?" With the debris cleared away, she set about replacing the broken brick with a fresh one, though she had to chisel away the dried mortar before she could replace it. "Oh," the man said, glancing around and noting that she was the only one here. "I would have assumed you'd all be gone by now..." "Aye," Tock said with a nod, chiseling quickly to break off the dried pieces of mortar. "All 'em went off ta go drink. Jus' stayed back ta finish up 'ere right quick. Ain't wanna leave a job 'alf-done, aye? Aye." "Very well," the man said, giving her a nod. "A good evening to you, then..." He headed inside, no doubt to a hot dinner awaiting him. Tock remained behind long enough to apply a new layer of mortar and replace the broken brick, then she tossed the broken pieces of the destroyed brick in with the rest of the scrap and waste from the job. Bricks broke now and then... no one would notice that this one had been smashed on purpose.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock continued studying the auras of bricks, stones, wooden beams, and other aspects of architecture over the next few weeks. While the numbers she had collected that first day seemed fairly straightforward, things proved more complicated under some situations. The patterns were harder to trace when there were multiple breaks, or when a wall was curved instead of straight, or when there was a doorway or window within range of the cracked bricks. Deducing a finalized formula to work in any situation was proving very difficult, but she was continually learning more and more. Even when she couldn't calculate the results, she started to develop enough of an understanding of the pattern to be able to feel her way through it. It was like rolling a ball down a hill and being able to predict whether it would bounce left or right, even if she lacked the skill to calculate the exact velocity and force involved in the process. She brought her notes to work every morning, recording the results of her studies without ever being able to DO much with the data. While she found the subject fascinating, she wasn't yet able to find a practical use for what she was learning. Until the morning of the 61st Day of Summer, when she found a way to put her studies to use. Recently promoted, Tock came along with Jacques, her employer, and Jacob, the chief architect, when they went to meet with a client for a small job. The big office they were designing for Mr. Marshall was still in the planning stages, and there would be other small jobs in between until they were ready for the main work on the office to begin. She was ordered to wear one of her nicer shirts that day (not that she had much of a selection to choose from), since they had to make a good impression on the client. There was a competitor bidding on the same job, a man named Carl who ran a crew that was also helping out with Zeltiva's reconstruction. Jacques had told her that Carl's crew had just done repairs for the potential client's home, and thus they would have to make a great impression to get hired for the new job, for the client's office down at the docks. It wasn't an easy thing to win over a customer who was already satisfied with the job Carl's crew had performed on his home (doubly so considering they worked for a cheaper price, though Tock took that to mean they weren't as skilled at what they did). Introductions were made, hands were shaken, and negotiations began. They were meeting in the garden of the client's recently repaired home. The client, a man named Wilhelm who worked for the Sailor's Guild, had invited both bidders to an outdoor lunch, laid out on tables on the lawn of his modest home. Tock could tell from a glance around the place that he wasn't supremely wealthy, but he wasn't piss poor either. Tock was quickly growing bored. Her input was asked for once or twice, but mostly this lunch was about negotiation, and she wasn't much of a negotiator. She could offer a tidbit about her own expertise here and there, trying to impress the client with her knowledge and skill, but mostly she kept her mouth shut. Jacques had warned her repeatedly on the walk down here that she had to watch her language and her attitude, and she found the easiest way to do that was to not talk. Bored and uninterested, Tock's mind started to wander. Her seat was right near the front wall to the house, so with nothing better to do, she began to study it. Maybe some days on a recently repaired wall would come in handy. No one had any idea she was using magic as she began invisibly channeling Djed into her eyes, and slowly scanning the nearby stone blocks. Almost immediately, something struck her as odd. When the wall's aura began to show, there were multiple variations in both the shade and density of the individual blocks. She frowned in confusion and leaned closer, wondering what the deal was. There was no visible damage, but it could have been covered up with a thin layer of stone in front of the main wall as a facade. Of course, since the house had just been repaired, there should have been NO damage, but the aura reading was clearly showing something her eyes couldn't see. "Miss Zipporah..." Her eyes roamed the blocks, scanning each one's aura one at a time. The pattern of the auras seemed to be leaning in to the right, indicating where the broken blocks might be. She leaned that way, nearly falling out of her chair. "Miss Zipporah!" She looked up in a start, cutting off her Djed flow and seeing her boss, giving her that look. The one that told her she was doing something wrong. She frowned in confusion, unsure why he was irritated. She wasn't DOING anything. The whole table was staring at her. Had someone asked her a question she hadn't heard? They seemed to be waiting for her to say something. So she said, "Ya know yer wall's got some big nasty cracks in 'er?"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"What are you talking about?" Wilhelm asked with a laugh. "Master Carl here just finished repairing all the damage." Tock looked Carl over, and thought he seemed suddenly nervous. Jacques was looking her over curiously. He knew she was a Magus, strange as such a thing was among a construction crew. He had learned to cope with it, though it still wasn't something he advertised to his clients. Such a thing would drive some people off. And while he didn't know the first thing about magic, he was a smart enough man to make the connection that a Magus staring intently at a wall then declaring there was some kind of hidden damages meant there was magic at work. Thus his eyes met hers with a look of warning and an urge for caution. She slowly realized that if she wasn't careful, she could cost them this job. She didn't know how Wilhelm felt about magic. Some (very few) simply accepted it. Most were nervous around it, something Tock experienced regularly. People tended to move to the other side of the street when they saw her coming, since it was becoming somewhat known that she was 'That redhead with the magic contraptions.' She made people nervous, and that sometimes drove them away. Which was not to mention the occasions when someone would react in outright fear or pure hatred, the way nearly everyone in Sunberth did. Zeltiva was an enlightened city, so most people tended to at least be civilized in their fearful reactions. But the fear could still be there. If Wilhelm was one of the outright haters instead of merely the nervous and uncertain, then any talk of magic might cause him to cut off negotiations right then and there. Tock would have to proceed with caution. She'd have to be subtle. That thought sent a surge of dread through her. Tock was most definitely NOT a subtle person!