Reimancer's cube mark I

by **Clyde Sullins** on February 28th, 2014, 11:49 pm

45 Winter 513

An idea had occurred to Clyde awhile back. Did one really need a trigger for a scroll? A scroll of course being any basic focus/barrier/trigger setup so commonly used to store magic in for later usage.

But did one need it to make a spell storage device? Technically no... All you really needed was a means holding it, a focus, and a means of keeping it from escaping, a barrier. A trigger was unnecessary for strictly holding a spell... It was only the execution and release of the spell, that required a trigger.

A trigger was of course one of the most finicky things of Glyphing. Even a simple scroll was a well made or complex trigger, could show ones ability far faster than any other usage of Glyphing. It was also something a Glypher never really mastered. Clyde was constantly fine tuning his scrolls triggers, their wording, seeing its results and making new ones.

Even if he mastered Glyphing in general, he would still continue to refine and rework his triggers.

But were they needed? For storage, no. But for release? Perhaps not.

After all, what did a trigger do, but lower/interrupt the barrier, which allowed the spell to leave... What if... What if? What if he where to find a way to manually interrupt the barrier, and release the spell that way?

As Clyde sat out on the rocky surface of Sahova, far from any prying eyes in the citadel, Clyde smiled.

"Perhaps I don't need a trigger after all..."

Looking down at the earth below him, the stone, he thought of what he should do next. What did he really need? A scroll? He had done that before... A rock? Why not? It would allow him to engrave on it directly using Reimancy, and a rock seemed a better avenue for editing his Glyphing from afar, such as through Reimancy, than paper. Also when a Glyph was used up, the scroll tended to fall apart and crumble to dust. But if he used rock, he could perhaps have more than one spell on the spell capture device...

Placing the palm of his hand on the rock before him, Clyde slowly began to exude some liquid res, and flowed it into the rock.

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 12th, 2014, 4:21 am

A normal person would need to physically break the object to release the spells held within. For such a usage, a easily breakable substance was preferred, some kind of thin or weak stone. But that brought issues of durability into question. What if it got jostled, and a bit broke or shattered off, and a spell went off by accident?

Since he had his Reimancy to alter or damage the Glyphs, he did not need to worry about that though. He could make the object of a sturdy enough rock to take most wear and tear and gentle tumbles, and so not have to worry about it going off randomly. Or at least, less so than a person using a variant of weaker make.

Flowing his res downward into the soil, Clyde felt at, and grasped as the rock. As his res soaked downward, he could feel as it moved with more difficulty or less. Clearly there where harder spots of stone, and softer less dense spots, perhaps even some small hollow spots. This rock was not as solid as he might have liked.

Twisting his hand above the res, there was a small cracking sound, as a chunk of the rocky ground broke loose. Using his res and attraction he pulled the rock out of the ground, a rock about half again the size of his fist. But it was also oddly lumpy and misshapen, which meant it would become smaller once he refined and smoothed it into a usable shape. But what shape?

The first shape that came to mind was a circle, or a sphere in this regard. But as he thought on it, he realized engraving the Glyphs on a curved surface was likely beyond his current skill. He needed a nice flat surface to see and look at. The simplest shape to make that had a lot of sides and faces, was a cube. So that would be his shape for this work. Simple enough.

Miming chopping something with his hand, he broke off chunks of the rock with his res, a combination reimantically attracting and pulling, and grinding and breaking. After a short series of motions, he was left with a vaguely cube shaped rock, however without any refined corners or edges.

Focusing on his res in the bits that had been broken off, he floated it back to the main rock he was working on, and held the rock in place. Glaring at the side closest to him, he willed the earth to flatten and smooth and become without bumps. Slowly the shape of the side of the rock became smoother, appearing like the rock was half melting, half being molded into shape. When he was done he made a casual flick of his wrist to turn the rock, and continued on with the next side of the cube. He kept at this until all six sides where more or less uniformly flat. The corners and edges where perhaps not at flat and jagged as he would have liked, but he was satisfied with simply making the rock look more or less like a cube.

However as he felt at into the res soaking the cube, he noted a issue. As before, this rock was full of impurities and hollows and weak spots. While he could melt/carve the rock into the shape he wanted, inside it was still the same. His shaping had only affected the topmost layer.

How was he going to fix the issue? A idea occurred to him soon enough. If the issue was not enough rock in a place, why not just fill it? Focusing on one of the spots that was hollow, Clyde moved a small glob of res to it, centered it on the empty spot, and willed it to transmute into earth and stone like the rock around it.

As he did this, a almost immediate reaction occured. The rock exploded sending fragments and little bits of rock flying in every which way.

"Petch!"

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 12th, 2014, 4:31 am

As the rock cube exploded, Clyde closed his eyes, and felt as many little bits of rock pattered across his face and body. The rest flew off in random directions and scattered across the rock.

"What... What the petch?"

Clyde was not sure what had just happened. All he had tried to do was fill in a hollow spot, and the rock had exploded. Keeping his eyes closed, he took in a breath, only to quickly cough and hack the mouthful of air out. Using attraction once more, Clyde pulled at the rock and dirt in the air, using it to clear out the dust that was thick in front of him. After a few ticks he opened his eyes and was glad to not feel any stinging. He tentatively took in another mouthful of air, and was glad to see it was dust free. Clearly when the rock had exploded, many minute particles had been sprayed out, and had not yet settled to the ground.

He willed his res upward, and watched as small globules of it floated upward and out of the random bits of rock that had peppered the ground from the explosion. He also felt a small pebble fall out of his hair, as the res inside of it had been pulled out yanked it forward. He spent another few moments brushing the rocks out of his hair, which seemed to have collected there.

As he thought on the explosion, and the aftermath, he knew he had done something wrong... He had been filling in a hole with res... A hole inside of a rock... Had perhaps he used to much res? If he tried to transmute more rock than could fit in the space, it would be forced to expand outward... As it did so, more rock would be pushed, cracks and weak spots would open... And the rock would explode.

Having followed the events to their logical conclusion, Clyde knew now what he had done wrong. Clearly using res to fill in the spots was not the issue... But then, if he could melt and mold and shape the rock using his res, why not also use it to fill in those spots?

Turning to a new spot on the ground before him, Clyde willed his res back downward at the ground, along with a small ball of dust and dirt particles which he released beside him, and then soaked the res once more into the rock before him. He exuded out a small extra bit of res to replace what was lost in transmutation and attraction, and then willed the res to expand outward like last time. With another twist of his hand, a second rock broke from the earth.

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 12th, 2014, 3:30 pm

As the rock rose at his bidding, Clyde set to carving out the cube from the mass of stone. Now that he had done it once, he could repeat the action, making the same chopping gestures to shear off the excess stone. However unlike before when he had simply let the excess drop and sucked the res out of it, this time he held it off to the side.

After the motion was repeated and he had a more or less uniform cube, he felt out with his res at the internal nature of the stone. This one also was not totally uniform. He could feel as his res soaked through it that it had a crack here, and a hollow spot here, and an occasional lower density mass.

Concentration on the res and contracting it via attraction, he molded the rock into shape, pressing the stone inward to even out its density. As he did, several small dips appeared in the surface of the cube, where there had been a need for filling. After a chime of feeling it out, he could tell it was all uniformly built, no gaps, no cracks, nothing. However its surface was now pockmarked.

But that was what the other rock was for. First he compressed the excess rock, to make it as dense and solid as the cube. Then he broke off bits of stone and fitted it into the recesses formed in the surface of the rock.

All it took was a tiny bit of transmutation at the edges of the rock to act as a glue of sorts for the stone, and it appeared as if it had always been one stone. Then a small motion to shave off any excess stone, and then a repeat at another spot that had a recess. And another, and onward until he had a fully solid cube of rock.

Now that the cube was done, Clyde set it down on a bare patch of the rocky soil, and withdrew his res for a few moments, absorbing it back in.

He spent a few chimes to rest his body and mind, taking a sip from his water skin, breathing, and examining the sky, before heading on to the next step. Glyphing.

And Glyphing was where it was going to get tricky. Carving out the mass of rock into the shape he wanted was one thing, and had less need for perfection. But engraving in the Glyphs into the surface of the rock via Reimancy, that took a more refined and careful touch at a much smaller scale.

He certainly had his work cut out for him.

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 13th, 2014, 1:28 am

The next step of Clyde's work for his new Glyphing device, was to carve the runes he needed directly into the surface of the stone, using his Reimancy. Or was it engraving? He supposed technically it was engraving, since carving was more making something new out of a whole, like when he had been making the cube, while this was more about precision and cutting out a thin layer for the Glyphs or words or depictions.

Holding his hand over the top of the cube, Clyde flowed out a small layer of liquid res, and let it flow over the surface of the cube. Before he had totally saturated the cube with res. Now he just needed a thin layer along the outside of the stone.

After a few moments that was done, and Clyde thought out what Glyphs he should do. He was no expert in engraving, so his Glyphs would need to be simple. For a focus, probably just a basic circle. For a barrier, a slowly curving series of lines surrounding it, perhaps crisscrossing and overlapping... And for a trigger... Nothing!

Holding his index finger over the middle of the top face of the cube, Clyde focused on his res, and began to use it as a cutting and digging tool, pulling out a tiny trough of stone as he went along. In the wake of his moving finger a part in the stone formed, as if a tiny blade was cutting into it. Clyde slowly curved the motion of his finger from that of a straight line, and slowly a "circle" began to form on the side of the cube. Not a perfect circle, it was a bit lopsided and off center, but it could be visibly recognized as a circle. And that in Clyde's book was good enough.

Turning to the next side, Clyde focused on the action of cutting with his res, and on making a better circle than the last one. This time he moved a bit faster, but did not cut as deep with the motion. Instead of doing one slow movement of his finger of cutting out the needed engraving, Clyde did it layer by layer, repeating a circular motion with his finger over the face of the cube.

This seemed to work better than his last attempt. Although he was still not making a perfect circle with his motion, it averaged out to a rough circle, and so ended up making a better one. Of course, it also ended up being slightly wider than his first circle, the actual trough in the stone that made up the circle cut into it being a bit wider. This was because the occasional motion of his finger wavering outward or inward from the line of a perfect circle would also cut, and thus made it wider. But it was also much cleaner and more of a actual circle.

Regardless, Clyde knew he needed to work on his hand motions, on keeping them steady, unlike now. But then, that would likely get easier the more practice with this technique he got.

Clyde continued onward, slowly engraving a circle into the middle of each of the six sides of the cube, a circle that took up about 1/3 of the diameter of a given face of the cube.

Once he finished all six of them, he prepared to do the next step on all the sides, the barriers.

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 13th, 2014, 1:42 am

Done with the focus on all of the faces of the cube, Clyde began on the barriers. As he thought on the curves of the circle, he realized a curving motion was not easy to make on stone, not when one was engraving. A straight line was surely the easiest method of cutting out of the stone, and so a rune using as many straight lines as possible, and as few curves as possible, was sure to be the best method.

Thinking back to his plan before the focus, that of making a series of slowly curving, snaking and overlapping lines to act as the barrier, he knew that was not the best way to go. Not at his current skill.

Instead, he would do a series of lines, of dashes, and make them overlap. Instead of curving it by bending the line into a curve, he would curve it by changing the direction of the lines as it went around the circle, slowly altering it so that it would loop all the way around the barrier.

Starting next to one of the focus on the last face to be worked on, Clyde made a straight line motion about 1/3 of the way away from the edge of the cube face. This way the barrier would end up being about equally between the focus and the edge of the cube's given face.

As he worked, there was a gentle spray of stone and dust as he cut into the rock with his Reimantic engraving. He occasionally had to stop so as to blow the dust off of his work, as it would eventually settle. He could have used attraction to keep the rock dust from resettling, but since this was his first attempt at doing this he wanted to totally focus on the work and not distract himself.

Like last time he had to repeat the motion, making a series of overlapping line motions with his finger, and slowly cutting into the surface of the rock. When he was better he could likely do this much faster, being able to get the right depth of the engraving on the first pass. But right now he either had to do it really slow so as to get just the right depth, or he needed to pass over the same line over and over so as to cut it away layer by layer until he got it deep enough.

The next line was bent slightly to the right, instead of being lined up with the prior line. There ends would cross over, making a small X within the rock, but the rest was not parallel and did not cross over. The one after that bent slightly more, and its starting point cross over the previous lines end. He did this over and over, till the lines of the barrier slowly curved all of the way around the focus circle, making up one full barrier sigil.

Then he turned over the cube to a new face, and began anew making the exact same set of glyphs. He did this over and over till he had all six faces just the same.

Picking up the small cube in his hand, he looked it over, blowing the leftover stone dust off of it. It seemed so simple, and yet it could do so much if his theory was right.

Exuding a bit more res, he surrounded the cube in a small cloud of gaseous res, and then swirled it about with a casual wave of his hand. As he did, he also activated some attraction, and pulled the stone upward and out of his hand, so that it would float there. The res that was left coating the surface of the rock began to boil and emit off of the stone, joining the cloud around it.

Then with a heavy exhale, he sliced his hand through the air, and made chunks of the res move inward in six spots and directions, towards each of the six faces of the cube. Just before it struck the surface of the stone he willed the given res to transmute into air, and watched as six puffs of wind blew and then vanished into each of the focus.

by **Clyde Sullins** on March 13th, 2014, 1:55 am

As the res was transmuted and turned into air, whereupon it entered each of the given focus, there was a moment where nothing happened.

Then the cube lurched downward, and began to descend. Clyde had forgot one small thing, without all of the res in the cloud to hold it up there was not enough attractive force to keep it suspended. Quite a novice mistake to make, but then Clyde had been distracted by his interest to see if the cube would work.

It fell to the stone with a *thunk* and a clatter, and bounced twice before rolling over and coming to a halt. Clyde let out another breath, glad that he had decided to only put air in the cube, instead of something more dangerous. Luckily while the fall had scuffed up the cube a bit, it had not damaged it enough to break any of the Glyphs, either barrier's or focus, so the spells had held.

But not for long.

Picking up the cube once more, he began to pump more liquid res into the cube, saturating it. This did not take long, both due to his skill in exuding res, and due to the fact of how small the cube was really. Only about the size of his clenched fist, perhaps a small bit larger.

Once it was saturated Clyde held it in his palm with his hand open, and willed the earth to attract upward. As he did, the stone cube floated up and out of his hand. With a small motion of his hand, a swat, the cube moved forward and away from him, seemingly suspended in midair. Of course, clearly some magic was at foot, as he could see the ethereal glow of his res soaking into the cube emitting outward.

With another small hand swat the cube evened out and turned to face him, one face of the cube facing directly at him. Holding it level, he willed the res coating the face of the cube closest to him to cut through one of the barrier Glyphs on that side.

As he did, there was a puff of air, and the wind emitted out of the focus where it had been held, puffing into his face. There was also a small cracking sound, and the Glyphs on that face of the cube broke all at once. Each and everyone one of the glyphs had been broken, cracks spider-webbing across the face of the cube to obliterate each and every one.

He paused for a moment, and waited to see if the other faces of the cubes would break, if the cracks would spread and ruin all of the faces, or just this one... A tick. Two. Three. Nothing.

A small smile crossed Clyde's face, as he looked at his Reimanced cube, sending it rotating with a thought. All of the other faces of the cube where the same as when he had Glyphed them, only the one face was broken, then one he had purposely damaged so as to release the spell held inside.

Of course, this was not a total test, Clyde had only stored air inside. More powerful spells or reactions issuing out of the storage device might not react so well, and might cause further cracking that could spread across and damage the entire cube. But for now, he had worked out a successful way of making this Glyphing storage cube, one that was specially made to work for a Reimancer. It was a Reimancer's Cube, Clyde's first attempt at it, and it was a success.

by **Mirage** on April 10th, 2014, 6:22 pm

Clyde

Glyphing	+2
Carving	+3

Lores :

Truth Hidden by a Mirage :

Solo Reimancer's cube mark I