Silver Lining

[Kuvarakh]

45th of Spring, 513 AV

It was finally over. The bugs hadn't been seen since the day they'd almost killed him. Drowned in the lake, metal-bodied, stone-eating bugs, the result of an uncertain variety of freak djed mutations, had been stuck to sheets of metal and thrown in the lake. It may have been all due to alchemical transmutation residue, or lingering effects of the past djed storm, or both, but somehow, it seemed that they must still need air. At any rate, they'd either drowned or stayed magnetically stuck.

But not before they'd mauled Kuvarakh's old body to the point of coma. He had a new one now, but it had taken far longer to assert his nerve-affinity into this one than any previous one. He'd assumed it was the fact that his old body had had an arm, a leg and half his face chewed off, as well as a large portion of his back flesh pinned to the metal from the bugs having chewed their way into him and then been stuck to the metal through his skin.

Only mindless desperation had given him the strength and endurance to rip himself free. The loss of Nuit ichor had sunk him into a coma bare moments after making his boss, Wanda, understand that she needed to get him a new body. A friend and guild mate had known where to get one, but they'd had to do the application of Nuit-transferal glyphs themselves. He'd had diagrams, but they lacked the instinctive racial knowledge to do it perfectly.

Then there had been the restitution made to neighboring homes and buildings, that had also had walls, floors, pillars and what-have-you chewed up by the bugs. They had scammed Wanda's business to an almost criminal degree, bringing a bounty of items to be repaired or replaced, claiming them to have been damaged when they fell from shelves, fallen from walls weakened by the bugs. Or crushed, ripped and stained by falling debris. When they went to confirm the damage to these buildings and property, it was obvious that less than half the items they'd been "obliged" to repair were truly the result of the bug catastrophe.

But it was all behind them now. The neighbors were satisfied. The earth-reimancer trainees at the guild house had had a great deal of training resettling and stabilizing the stone buildings, statuary and streets. The shop itself, nearly a total loss, was rebuilt better than new, with a new twenty-foot transmutation ring installed. The increased production allowed by the larger ring went a long way to regain the financial stability Alchemmia Alchae had enjoyed prior to the disaster, and now things were looking up further still.

There was one other side benefit. Kuvarakh walked through the door of the shop, giving a satisfied look at the newly reformed walls, the old stains folded into the stone to present clean new surfaces. He went to the door going down to the newly expanded storeroom. There was an odd muffled buzzing coming from the large shelf array to his right. Kuvarakh walked over and stood rocking on his toes, grinning at an extra large glass jar with a steel lid. The glass itself had been imbued with the strength of steel but was still transparent. Inside, along with an amount of stone, some untouched, some chewed and excreted in exotic patterns unique to termite mound-building tendencies, were the three bugs that had been found stuck to one of the magnets in the storeroom after Kuvarakh had been restored to his new body.

[Kuvarakh]

He examined the "tubes" these bugs were creating. They were made of the very stone he'd been feeding them, chewed and spat out. He'd added glass and wood, and the bugs had devoured it all with constructive gluttony. All leveled and worked with such brilliance as a master mason could only hope to achieve.

But the artistry was, quite literally, inhuman. Bizarre swirls and coils, weaving and stretching, knotted closely here, reaching for emptiness there, tucked and twisted, elegant and enveloping. Spherical arrays, repeating hourglass flanges. A combination glassblower, smith and sculptor gone artistically insane.

Kuvarakh had already decided to generate a much larger enclosure for them. There were already a variety of crafters requisitioning lengths of this tubing. Filterers and chemists wanting delicate, clear tubes with the attributes of wood and stone for endurance. Engineers needing tubing light as wood, strong as steel. There was even a musician working some version of a glass flute.

And while these things could be made easily enough through alchemy, that took time and effort. This saved a good deal of such effort. Much of the demand was simply for the artistic novelty. Desktop sculptures and conversation pieces. Flowing wall art and shelf displays. The alchemical efforts were more to embellish the items with color and gloss and such.

The odd concern was that, while the creations these bugs generated would be permanent, the bugs themselves would be subject to the halflife duration of any alchemical result. Kuvarakh wanted to capitalize on what these bugs would "spit out" while they could.

He had found, somewhat by accident, that including a small piece of this blended matter in a fount, greatly increased the speed and effectiveness of certain transmutations. Primarily the type where the blending of attributes, rather than the altering of them, was the desired goal. He assumed that since this matter was created by the blending of different substances by a completely natural means, that this very trait was easily imbued during an activation.

Even though he was including an additional fount in the process when he used it, the process was smoothed to such effortless fluidity, that he could do twice as many activations in a day as usual. Indeed, he wanted to obtain as much of this matter as he could while the opportunity presented itself.

[Kuvarakh]

He went to daily trouble to create more of the blended stone, wood and glass material that he had used to make the tribute carving of the "Inou's Feather" sigil he and the other founding members of The Order had had bestowed to them. He fed this to the bugs in small portions several times a day, and they, in turn, chewed and excreted and shaped a bounty of the extraordinary tubing.

Mostly he left it in the big enhanced glass enclosure as it seemed to keep them mollified. But every so often he would extract a large portion of it, being sure to account for all three of the bugs as he did. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of last Winter's debacle.

He came up from the storeroom to find Wanda, again, enjoying a girlish gossip fest with the adorable, sprightly little old lady from the gardening club. He'd first met her back when he'd stumbled across Wanda's old ring, left over from her unfulfilled engagement. He was glad to see that, whether she was reminded of that event or not, she appeared not to be downcast by it.

The sweet old gal left after several chimes and Wanda came back, looking like she was, once again, hoping Kuvarakh could "find a way", where she had not. She acknowledged that this was not really "alchemy", but she thought perhaps some of the earth reimancer trainees could again come through.

Kuvarakh winced at the suggestion, stammering to diplomatically state that he was not intending to allow the guild to be reduced to a "standing repair corp" for the city of Alvadas. Their goals were much higher and more philosophical than that. It had been bad enough that he had played favorites with them to have then render such service to the shop already, but he justified it on the basis of on-the-job training. But it was a well he did not want to go to again if he could avoid it.

"Speaking of 'wells," Wanda countered, "That is exactly what the problem is. That dear lady's well is deteriorating a ways down. The bricks have apparently crumbled and the wall may cave-in. The mason moved several years ago and no one else will honor his promise of repair. I guess I can't blame them, considering how fresh the exploitation by our neighbors is on my mind."

Kuvarakh was thinking the same thing, but he had a great fondness for that spunky old gal. Her lively spirit had been a significant factor in digging Wanda out of the heartbroken funk brought on by his finding of that old ring.

His attention slipped to the ten-foot alchemy ring propped up against the far wall of the activation chamber. They had not yet decided what to do with it. As he looked at it, it struck him that this angle was unexpectedly unfamiliar to him. It made sense though that it should be so. Always before, he stood at the side of the ring, looking across its diameter, if looking at all. This was almost like an aerial view, like he was floating over it looking straight down into its limitless, mystic center.

His reverie was broken when Wanda commented that he ought to put the bug tubing away, before he spent the whole day standing there like an idiot. He flashed her a sour grin and looked at the tubes he had in hand. Most of them had a twist, a swirl to them. But there was one that was quite straight. Without really thinking, he held it up and sighted down it to see just how straight it really was.

By chance, he had it faced in the direction of the old transmutation ring. Out of a fixation with symmetry, he centered the tunnel view of the tube within the ring. An idea started to take form. He held the tube up again, pulling it away from his face to varying degrees, lining the diameter of the end of the tube up with the circumference of the ring. He started to grin.

Wanda noticed that grin and started to grin also. "I knew it." she said.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh made his way across the irregular landscape of Alvadas, wary of scenery that altered from day to day. He had been spending so much time at the shop and The Order's back-up facility that he'd lost the sense of "home" that his own house used to give him.

He saw it as he made his way to a part of town where the home of the lady from the Garden Club was expected to be found, according to today's shuffling of buildings. His own house was on a large outcropping of stone halfway up a massive waterfall encompassing one the walls which encircled the city. He stopped and chuckled, shaking his head as he continued.

He found the house and knocked on the door. The little woman came out and he introduced himself, taking into account that she would not recognize him from before, as he had a new body after the bug attack. He simply told her he was "Mr. Lashman" from Miss Wanda's Alchemy Shop. She brightened up and showed him the well. The inner wall was bulging in on one side and many of the bricks had slipped out.

He took out a rope, tying a metal loop to the end for weight and lowered it until it reached the bottom. He let a little more drop and let it get a little momentum swinging side to side as he dipped it and lifted it several times to get a feel for exactly where it caught on the bottom end of the shaft. He then marked the rope at the top of the well so he could measure the true depth of the shaft. He also measured the diameter across the top.

He told the sweet old woman that he would return and was going to try something new that he believed would restore it to new condition. he asked her if she had any preference of color. He nearly burst out laughing when she chose pink, but he promised her that he would at least get that much done.

Returning to Alchemmia Alchae, he took the measurement of the depth of the well from the mark he'd made on the rope. The well was five feet across, measuring from the outermost side of the outer ring of bricks, and forty-two feet deep. He measured across the end of the straight length of bug tubing. It was just about exactly one inch across, also measuring to the outer sides.

So, to stay in comparative scale, the end measurement would be sixty times as wide. This meant that the length, to able to be enlarged by a factor of sixty and equal forty-two feet, would have to be cut to eight and a half inches, slightly less, actually, but it would work.

[Kuvarakh]

He took some time to run a quick activation to create some pink bricks and then returned to the home of the lady from the garden club. It was a real bother bringing the ten-foot activation ring with him, but he managed. He warned her that what he was trying was something he hadn't tried before. She bubbled delightedly that she had complete confidence in anyone that worked for Miss Wanda.

Kuvarakh felt a pang of apprehension over the possibility that this would not work the first time, and promised that anything that was not up to her satisfaction would be corrected at no charge. She downplayed his concerns with a friendly snort and a dismissive wave. She said she would be in the front yard if he needed her for anything, flattering him with the parting comment that he looked like he could handle anything just fine.

Kuvarakh's grimace of foreboding intensified. This was something he'd only speculated on. It was not that long ago that he first began to work on controlling the depth or height of the djed acceleration stream. He had a tendency early in his alchemical career to whip up tall streams unnecessarily. More than once, he had 'scraped off' qualities from the ceilings of the rooms in which he was doing activations. Usually, this was nothing more than an added tint of color. But at Alchemmia Alchae, he had added steel hardness into a pile of cloth by accidentally touching on the chain track assembly overhead in the chamber there.

So he'd had some help from a friend of Wanda's to learn depth control. He had not cared for the technique the man had used to motivate him, but it had been effective. What he was going to do was the flip side of that same concept.

He'd learned to adjust his acceleration depth, while separating different aspects of control, in order to maintain the speed and power, while compressing the vertical spread created by the natural inertia of a fluid kept in a boundary while being subjected to a high rate of spin. In all his other activations, the constant of the floor was a given, so the spread was always embodied in a "lift" of the stream.

What he had learned was to put a "cap" on this spread. What he wanted to do now was to invert the gravity of the activation, maintain the cap on the stream, and allow the spread to manifest in a downward spread from ground level. There were a couple of conceptual aids he wanted meditate on, to ingrain in his thoughts before he started.

First, he set the termite tube on the top step of the porch. He crouched by it to bring it to eye level. He then focused on it intently, excluding all else in a meditative tunnel-vision, as the rolled it across the step, staring into the center of the spinning, open end again and again until he could 'see it' with his eyes closed. He stifled a grin as he imagined the little old lady's reaction to what he now needed her to do.

She stared in disbelief and suspicion as he repeated himself with an honest chuckle. "No, I am not kidding you Ma'am. I need you to have one of your workmen hang me upside down from that tree branch for a few minutes."

[Kuvarakh]

Tied at the ankles and suspended a few inches above the soil, Kuvarakh meditated on both the sense of being "above" what he could see, and the re-visualizing of the rolling termite tube. He wanted to associate them in his mind without having to make conscious, separate efforts to grasp each concept.

He had the lady's workmen disassemble the decorative roof over the well, until there was only the brick cylinder extending downward from the top rim, three feet above ground. Then he placed the ten-foot activation ring over the well, measuring to center it within the ring. He took a moment to recall his meditative sensory state and then pricked his finger.

Three dimensional perception was going to be far more important with this activation than any other he had done. Always before, he had only concerned himself with the more or less flat plain of the shop's floor. Receiver items were rarely stacked in the center of the ring to the point that depth was a concern, and he had the ability to allow a high djed stream during activation to accommodate this. The only real reason he had learned to attune himself to controlling the height of the spinning djed was to prevent it growing too high, never to expand it further, higher. And there would be no trial runs, once he started, he had to get the feel for it quickly. He believed his preparations would do the trick, though.

He set his punctured finger on the ring and slid it onto the keystone, getting a sensation of movement beneath the digit. He let his mind retain that sense of movement under his finger and soon felt it to be reality as the acceleration began. As usual, his affinity for the process created the metaphoric shape and vision of a whirlpool. He did not attempt to increase the speed yet. He wanted to apply the visualizations he had been fixing in his consciousness before he went for power.

He soon realized that vertical growth of the spinning wheel of djed was stymied for that very lack of power. He recalled with some dismay that this was the very thing that had brought about the vertical growth in the first place. Well, he would have to "wing it" and hope to work his concepts into it after speeding it up some. He went ahead and concentrated on pure speed for a few chimes. There was a reflex to inhibit the height as it started to stretch upward, but as he made conscious effort to release that constraint, he lost some power and the "tower" of spinning djed shrank slightly for that lack.

He went through the steps again and found himself hindered again. He was at an impasse. He let the momentum and inertia become static for a moment as he thought through this barrier. He had applied a certain order to his mental focuses. But he was well aware that this was a different approach to acceleration and shape control. He would have to approach it differently. He would have to order it differently.

The pink color the little old gal wanted was no difficulty. In fact, he was already able to visualize that effect on his metaphoric 'whirlpool' of djed. But he was still looking across the top of the funnel, and he knew right from the start that this needed to be changed. He had planned to apply this change last, and then go for sheer power to grow height to compare with the termite tube's comparative dimensions.

Instead, he would do this step first. He was glad again that the nature of 'blended properties' inherent in the termite tubing was making it second nature to maintain the blended properties of the materials of both the founts and the receiver. That was not the problem. It was all in the speed and the shape of the 'whirlpool' funnel. It was time to do the inversion. He leaned forward slowly, as he maintained acceleration, and set the top of his head against the ground. There was a sense of brief disorientation, but it was what he wanted.

[Kuvarakh]

Crouched now on hands and knees, his head drooped upside down to rest on the ground, his perspective changed. He focused on the sense of rising that he had experienced when the workmen had hauled him up to hang, upside-down, from the tree branch. 'Upside-down and rising...upside-down and rising' he repeated to himself. Not the words themselves, but the ideas.

Slowly his angle of view altered to reflect his meditation. Always his metaphoric 'djed whirlpool' was a phenomenon he looked 'across', a spinning stream of djed, represented by a watery maelstrom, over the top of which he looked. He had never really looked down into the funnel. There were times when he had flattened one down to such a shallow stream that he could see the bottom of it while looking across, but he had never experienced this "overhead" perspective.

He continued to carry his eye view to a point dead center over the funnel itself. Now he regained the mental image of the termite tube, rolling as he kept his gaze on the end of it. He overlaid that concept onto the funnel of the maelstrom and slowly aligned them.

The funnel began to change. Slightly at first, but steadily coming into focus with the tube end. The funnel became thinner, narrower, while the actual wall of water encompassing it grew thicker, spinning faster as the span became consistent throughout its length, without any tapering effect. The outer plain of water, normally part of his usual maelstrom image, became static and slowed to a background calm, almost no more than scenery.

He was on the brink of success, but not quite. There was some way in which the watery tube did not match the termite tube's dimensions. The wall was thick enough, the funnel was comparatively narrow enough, but the extent was not deep enough. He considered the possibility that it didn't matter. He was certain that he was passed the point where the inner lining of the well had weakened. It would surely be shored up.

But he could not discount the likelihood that the entire inner wall was weakening and that one point had simply been the first point to give out. But he was at his limit of speed visualization. He was not yet exhausted or anything, but he could not generate additional visual speed to cause the tube to lengthen.

He very nearly ended the activation figuring to hope for the best. But an image of Wanda, staring with disgust at the notion of "settling for good enough" stopped him. What was it? There was a key he was missing. He had felt this sense of failure before. That there was a source of additional speed that was right before his eyes, but somehow unseen. Right before his eyes...

[Kuvarakh]

'...eyes...visual...of course...The maelstrom I visualize isn't what's really there. My senses are responsible for the mental focus it takes to accelerate the djed stream. At least in part. I've only been thinking in terms of what I SEE in my mind.'

Kuvarakh's thoughts flashed across his other senses, and how much they contributed to the seeming reality of the whirlpool metaphor. 'Taste...negligible...Smell...more, but not that much, the sea smelled much the same, whirlpool or not...Uh, what else...Touch...yes...I can feel the spray and the wind. Maybe if I tried to feel an increase in the wind. That could work. I will have to add to the noise of the wind in my ear-...Duh!'

He felt like slapping himself for being such a moron. The NOISE! it was far more than just wind. it was the roaring of the sea itself, below him! He focused on that, establishing an overall pitch. 'Don't lose touch of the visual now' he reminded himself, recalling the narrow, straight, thick-walled funnel of water. 'Now connect the two. The noise IS the image...the image IS the noise...together they ARE the djed stream.'

Slowly, the sound of the roaring wind and water rose. Barely perceptible, a quaver...a half-step...a full tone...another...and another. He was not sure how long it took. He noticed how the sound not only rose slowly in pitch, it became smoother, less abrasive, less dissonant. It almost rose to the point where he could perceive an actual NOTE! His attention to this effect was distracted by a sudden feel of moisture gathering and running in rivulets on his face.

He allowed his focus to shift slightly to the visual and saw that the funnel had risen to where the mist whipping around the rim was actually misting his face. It was plenty tall enough now! In fact, it may be too tall. His visual focus shifted briefly to the tube image. Yes, the water funnel was now extending too far, but with his focus more on the visual, the speed began to wane, the extent of the water tube slowly shortening.

He waited, '...still too long...still...just a...little...more...Now!' The images overlaid perfectly, to the point of accenting each other's three-dimensional perfection. He released the activation and the whirlpool imploded below him and his perspective reeled and shifted violently. Disorientation muddled his equilibrium. he felt as though he was tumbling forward into the ring. He had forgotten he was leaning forward, touching the top of his head to the ground. He reached out with his hands to stop the forward roll he imagined himself in the process of.

They hit the ground and a flash of cold tingling seized them. His situation came back and he pushed off, swinging his head up to see. The last wisps of djed swept across the ground into the well. Pink stone, perfectly formed, extended just the right distance from the ground in a cylindrical enclosure five feet across. He got up to his feet and walked over to it. It was exactly what he'd hoped. His grin was not enough. He broke into a full, wildly satisfied laugh and pumped his fist several times.

The little old lady came out, hearing him laugh and stood in shocked joy. "Oh, Mr. Lashman! It's perfect!" She skittered across the ground towards him, her hands extended with the clear intent of locking hands and dancing over the success. They both stopped in sudden shock as Kuvarakh's hands extended towards her, coming fully into both their fields of vision. They were PINK!

With sudden dread, Kuvarakh tried to wriggle them normally. To his immense relief they responded normally. He realized now that the cold sensation had been the absorption of residual djed in an unprotected dose on his hands. For that brief moment, he feared they had been turned to stone as well. But it occurred to him, accompanied by gratitude to fate itself, that he had negated the strength of the djed stream beyond the funnel to "no more than scenery" at the outset. He could only assume this was the reason he only received this small affectation to his hands.

Now he started to laugh anew. A laugh not only of success, but of disaster averted and avoided. The little lady, perplexed for a moment that a man, having just had his hands turned pink, would laugh about it, soon accepted the plain truth that he was not upset about it. She laughed with him as they danced in circles around her new pink stone well.

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name: Kuvarakh XP Award: Alchemy- 3 Mathematics- 1 Meditation- 3 Observation- 3 Lore: Aftermath of the Mutant Bug Attack The Inverted Man Having Pink Hands The Pink Well Notes: Please remember to contact me about your wages, then Ill reward them for Spring. In the future when you are working with Alchemy, or perhaps it was just this thread, could you specifically state what you load the ring up with? I sort of assumed it was the with the pink bricks that were made prior to Kuv's arriving, but I had nothing to really verify that. So yeah, before you start the alchemical process please state somewhere IC that the circle is loaded and with what (Even though it might seen obvious) Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM