51st Day of Fall, 513 AV
Zeran took deep breaths, replacing the long strains that left his mouth, as he continued to haul the human-sized, metal ring into the centre of the Overflowing Phial. Gripping the leading edge, he crouched, lowering himself to roughly half the height of the ring. Too much force above the halfway point and the ring would start to tip. Zeran had already made that mistake, and almost had the thing toppling on top of him because of it.
Resting the inside edge against his shoulder, Zeran stepped forwards, leaning in to the ring, and pushed again. Beads of sweat conjoined with new ones, as they raced down his forehead. Heat raced to escape from his face, arms and legs, most focused on his hands, red from his grip and imprinted with recurring trenches from the copper wire coiling around the framework like snakes on a tree. The grating sound of metal against stone was the most obvious reassurance he received, telling him the metal hoop was moving and he wasn't wasting his efforts.
"Out of everything you could've saved your kina on," he forced through breaths, "why did you decide to buy a heavy, metal ring without wheels?" He wouldn't have been touching the ring, had Elena not decided once again to include him in one of her experiments. He didn't even know what it was, let alone what it was used for.
"They don't make any," Elena wandered about the Phial, collecting items and objects intended for use in her experiment and arranging them on the table. "An Alchemy Doorway needs to be stable, and an Alchemist can't afford having their Doorway rolling across the room with djed spinning faster than a ballista bolt flies." She spoke as if Zeran was meant to have an idea of the basics of Alchemy. He'd only now learnt the ring was called a 'Doorway'; that was the extent of his knowledge. "I think they assumed a Doorway was going to be kept in the same place throughout its life. Thing is, I like having the open space when I'm working, and it doesn't look right just sat in the centre when I'm not. Besides, The Phial isn't just used for Alchemy. It also accommodates for Magecrafters and Animators, provided they either work for me or have the kina."
A wry smile took its place as Elena watched Zeran still dragging the Doorway to the centre. The marks it left in the stonework were beginning to become unsightly, and would require the affected bricks to soon be treated or replaced entirely.
Relief came quickly as Zeran fell to the floor at Lady Elena's command, succeeding in gaining a laugh. Something gnawed at the back of his mind that moving the Doorway should've been a two-person job. Why Elena had then decided to only ask Zeran to move it was a mystery, although Zeran had the thought she was testing his limits again. To find what he was and wasn't capable of. Though he'd been capable enough now - just - Zeran hoped he'd have an extra pair of hands next time.
"Comfortable?" Her voice came ahead of the sound of her steps, as his eyes found her from the floor. Running lithe fingers along the edge, Elena sauntered around the table, attention shifting between the items on the table and her collapsed companion on the floor.
"I've been on the floor enough times to admire a good floor." It was a jab at her, at the number of times she had rolled him out of bed, and she knew it, responding with a brief smile before childishly sticking her tongue out. There had been times where Zeran had ended up on the floor for other reasons, and in different places, so he knew the difference between a good and bad floor.
"Well, when you're ready," she paused, letting the pop of a lid from a pot of point fill the silence, "you can take your shirt off and draw some glyphs on yourself."
"Again? What are you planning to do now?" Hands scraped along the stone as they set to work pushing him up to his knees. And how many of her experiments involve me taking my shirt off? And how many of the other companions have the same luck?
"Nothing along the lines of what you're thinking." She was certain. The confidence she spoke with, combined with a smirk, made it difficult to believe otherwise. "I need speed from Projection today for safety reasons. Nothing more provocative than that. And, as I'm hope your aware, a damaged glyph is dangerous. Your shirt is a risk when wearing glyphs up your arms."
The swirls and wisps winding around her didn't show much. Some positive emotions, a bit of playful mischief that had become a constant shade within Elena's aura, and nothing more. Zeran couldn't see anything that suggested she was telling half-truths again. Then again, he wasn't that good at aura reading, but she was that good at fibbing.
The paint always had a faint odour to it from an ingredient he could never identify, but Zeran focused more of his attention to the other items on the tabletop, rather than the paint and brush Lady Elena had handed him. A steel ingot, a feather, a rock and a moss-covered branch. If Zeran didn't know any better, he'd have thought to dump the paint over the items and call it art. He couldn't see any other reasons for the random assortment of items.
"I'd ask, but I know you'd only tell me when you wanted to."
Elena leaned over the table, separating the items in to two groups. She first gestured to the ingot and feather. "The two founts I intend on using." He hand swung gracefully over to the rock and the branch. "And my two filters. These are going to go in their respective slots on the Doorway." Zeran turned, finding the four rings. Two on the top, two on the bottom. He had knocked his head on the two upper ones and almost tripped over the two lower ones enough to know of their existence. "And, since you're not using it, your shirt goes on the pedestal. If this work, your shirt becomes better. If not, it becomes worse." She explained very matter-of-factly.
"There is always one more thing with you," Zeran groaned, now looking at the platform in the middle where his shirt was going to be. "And I'm sure this isn't the last thing either." |
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