The burst of magic which howled out into the aether at the meeting of hammer-purposed djed and the self-contained circle of the ring was bright with deadly purpose, a vicious whip of refracted, toxic magic that tore across Alses’ painstaking circles like a hawser.
Glyphs flamed and pulsed in its wake, the vast machinery she’d painstakingly inscribed flaring into rippling life as they took the blunt strike of inimical magic, catching it in reaching filigree fingers, spinning it through the dancing cascades and mirror-mazes of dissipation and reworking, taking the jagged blaze and soothing the hard fire, putting it all through the shimmering mazework until it lost all anger, all toxic contagion and fury, becoming a lazy blue ouroboros of ambient magic that could be safely breathed into the world again, without the bubbling corruption that usually accompanied the waste magic from such a working.
Alses had suffered the consequences of her own carelessness in that field once before, and had absolutely no desire to do so again.
As the ringing bell-like shocks of the initial strike faded from the world, Alses contemplated the ring and its coating of blood. Overhead, the optic ring, suspended on steel cables in midair, glimmered and glinted faintly, quiescent – for now, at any rate. When she was working properly, then the mountain of metal and silvered glass would be roaring at full spate to cope with the poisoned magic that boiled off her changes.
Carefully, she followed the golden-glimmering conduits and webbed networks that were the heart and soul of the ring, the distinctive glit and shimmy which told the physical shell which constrained them that they were a rose-gold and diamond ring, rather than, say, a fish.
Circles were hard to break; it was why magesmiths liked them so much, for their protective capabilities even in the face of titanic forces, and this one was no exception. Even though Alses had twisted and funnelled the spike of djed her hammer-blow evoked, even though she had winnowed and ravelled the burst of magic through the tiny weaknesses inherent in the ring’s structure, the ouroboros shape of the djed conduits inside had taken the insult, bent and reflected it along their curving length, swallowed the infinite regressions and broken the back of the first strike with an almost insolent ease.
There was almost no sign that she’d achieved anything, no infiltration of crimson spikes that would signal her blood being drawn into the essential arcane matrix, no discohesion, not even any collapse of tertiary djed conduits.
No, all that Alses had to show for a haematite drained almost to the brink was the slightest elusive fuzzing, a touch of static in the smooth flow of the djed conduits. To a beginner, unnoticeable, and even to someone used to the intricacies of the craft, barely worth remarking on. But to Alses, her own particular genius singing in her head, it was an encouraging sign, a little extra instability that, with time and djed, she could lever open, cracking the artifact-to-be wide and letting it – making it – no, encouraging it to drink deep of all the magic she could provide it, and in so doing become something greater.
No time to rest, though, no time at all – such a small wound would quickly heal unless she moved fast, dancing a tango and ringing in further changes with bursts of actnic magic and the very essence of her reagents.
Ringing chimes built and built as Alses danced amid the complex glyphs of her protective bubble, her hammer striking out again and again, tearing long skeins of inimical magic from her reagents and then, in one fluid movement, whirling round to direct the striking-snake of that fresh-torn djed to dash itself into oblivion against the ring’s fraying circle structure.
Only…it wasn’t quite oblivion, not any more; each strike widened the gaps, each roaring tsunami of djed eroded still more of the ring’s defences, and the backwash of the magic fizzed and crackled in the impossible spaces, fuzzing and damaging the once pristine-perfect arrangement, a war of attrition in the shadows that Alses would surely win.
The sonorous sounds of metal and magic meeting in violent conflict made the entire laboratory ring like a bell, the metal vine leaves shimmering and dancing under the onslaught, and some of the more minor protections evaporating silently under the lash of bright violet toxic djed and the subtler aurora-borealis lightshow that wove the inimical stuff into something a little more hospitable.
Alses’ bones were jarred by the continual impacts as she sashayed from reagent to pedestal and then back again, the hammer a silver-gilt flash of light as it sang and screamed in her hands, flipping from one to the other with perfect ease, entirely under her control and the herald of her indomitable will. Her knuckles reddened and cracked from the relentless djed discharges – even with her powerful glyphs, even with the optical ring overhead flashing and flaring in a thousand coruscating tyrian shades, they were not fast or complete enough to deal with every hawser-whip of toxic magic at the very moment of its genesis.
No time to stop – Alses was flying on silver wings of thought, mind dancing through the steps of her sovereign craft even as her sluggish body lagged behind. Through the panoptic eye of her thoughts, she followed the jinking argentine thread of unleashed magic, seeing it dart into the ring and begin wreaking merry hell on the ordered interior structure, every curving spike and flange and impossible geometric regression ripping into the far more natural and ordered internal matrix, flaying it open for future modification.
By the time Alses had finished her ministrations, the ring had been bleeding from a thousand entry points, its strength spent and at a low ebb, precariously flickering and fitfully surging as though in a nightmare around its primary coil, the formerly-simple and well-demarcated matrix having been split and blurred and forced into something a lot more open, and a lot more intricate.
Many of the new connections that Alses’ minstrations had forged would die away soon; there was too little in the way of underlying infrastructure to support them at this stage, but whilst they were there they would serve admirably; they were conduits, lines of weakness down which the essential character of her blood could slide, infiltrating into the very soul and centre of the artifact-to-be on gentle waves of restorative djed, courtesy of the immense glyphic apparatus with which Alses surrounded all her workings, in equal measure shield and sustainer.
The pressure of all the djed gathered would slowly impress her blood deep into the heart – she smiled at the pun in her own head – of the ring, gradually accreting over the silent bells of the night, whilst Alses slept.
Thus, the slow accretion of strength, allowing it to bear the quicker and more invasive needle-spike procedure that would positively saturate the very core of it with the rich bronze-crimson of her blood, her identity, her unique djed signature that would – all going well – keep her safe from her own creation.
Glyphs flamed and pulsed in its wake, the vast machinery she’d painstakingly inscribed flaring into rippling life as they took the blunt strike of inimical magic, catching it in reaching filigree fingers, spinning it through the dancing cascades and mirror-mazes of dissipation and reworking, taking the jagged blaze and soothing the hard fire, putting it all through the shimmering mazework until it lost all anger, all toxic contagion and fury, becoming a lazy blue ouroboros of ambient magic that could be safely breathed into the world again, without the bubbling corruption that usually accompanied the waste magic from such a working.
Alses had suffered the consequences of her own carelessness in that field once before, and had absolutely no desire to do so again.
As the ringing bell-like shocks of the initial strike faded from the world, Alses contemplated the ring and its coating of blood. Overhead, the optic ring, suspended on steel cables in midair, glimmered and glinted faintly, quiescent – for now, at any rate. When she was working properly, then the mountain of metal and silvered glass would be roaring at full spate to cope with the poisoned magic that boiled off her changes.
Carefully, she followed the golden-glimmering conduits and webbed networks that were the heart and soul of the ring, the distinctive glit and shimmy which told the physical shell which constrained them that they were a rose-gold and diamond ring, rather than, say, a fish.
Circles were hard to break; it was why magesmiths liked them so much, for their protective capabilities even in the face of titanic forces, and this one was no exception. Even though Alses had twisted and funnelled the spike of djed her hammer-blow evoked, even though she had winnowed and ravelled the burst of magic through the tiny weaknesses inherent in the ring’s structure, the ouroboros shape of the djed conduits inside had taken the insult, bent and reflected it along their curving length, swallowed the infinite regressions and broken the back of the first strike with an almost insolent ease.
There was almost no sign that she’d achieved anything, no infiltration of crimson spikes that would signal her blood being drawn into the essential arcane matrix, no discohesion, not even any collapse of tertiary djed conduits.
No, all that Alses had to show for a haematite drained almost to the brink was the slightest elusive fuzzing, a touch of static in the smooth flow of the djed conduits. To a beginner, unnoticeable, and even to someone used to the intricacies of the craft, barely worth remarking on. But to Alses, her own particular genius singing in her head, it was an encouraging sign, a little extra instability that, with time and djed, she could lever open, cracking the artifact-to-be wide and letting it – making it – no, encouraging it to drink deep of all the magic she could provide it, and in so doing become something greater.
No time to rest, though, no time at all – such a small wound would quickly heal unless she moved fast, dancing a tango and ringing in further changes with bursts of actnic magic and the very essence of her reagents.
Ringing chimes built and built as Alses danced amid the complex glyphs of her protective bubble, her hammer striking out again and again, tearing long skeins of inimical magic from her reagents and then, in one fluid movement, whirling round to direct the striking-snake of that fresh-torn djed to dash itself into oblivion against the ring’s fraying circle structure.
Only…it wasn’t quite oblivion, not any more; each strike widened the gaps, each roaring tsunami of djed eroded still more of the ring’s defences, and the backwash of the magic fizzed and crackled in the impossible spaces, fuzzing and damaging the once pristine-perfect arrangement, a war of attrition in the shadows that Alses would surely win.
The sonorous sounds of metal and magic meeting in violent conflict made the entire laboratory ring like a bell, the metal vine leaves shimmering and dancing under the onslaught, and some of the more minor protections evaporating silently under the lash of bright violet toxic djed and the subtler aurora-borealis lightshow that wove the inimical stuff into something a little more hospitable.
Alses’ bones were jarred by the continual impacts as she sashayed from reagent to pedestal and then back again, the hammer a silver-gilt flash of light as it sang and screamed in her hands, flipping from one to the other with perfect ease, entirely under her control and the herald of her indomitable will. Her knuckles reddened and cracked from the relentless djed discharges – even with her powerful glyphs, even with the optical ring overhead flashing and flaring in a thousand coruscating tyrian shades, they were not fast or complete enough to deal with every hawser-whip of toxic magic at the very moment of its genesis.
No time to stop – Alses was flying on silver wings of thought, mind dancing through the steps of her sovereign craft even as her sluggish body lagged behind. Through the panoptic eye of her thoughts, she followed the jinking argentine thread of unleashed magic, seeing it dart into the ring and begin wreaking merry hell on the ordered interior structure, every curving spike and flange and impossible geometric regression ripping into the far more natural and ordered internal matrix, flaying it open for future modification.
A
By the time Alses had finished her ministrations, the ring had been bleeding from a thousand entry points, its strength spent and at a low ebb, precariously flickering and fitfully surging as though in a nightmare around its primary coil, the formerly-simple and well-demarcated matrix having been split and blurred and forced into something a lot more open, and a lot more intricate.
Many of the new connections that Alses’ minstrations had forged would die away soon; there was too little in the way of underlying infrastructure to support them at this stage, but whilst they were there they would serve admirably; they were conduits, lines of weakness down which the essential character of her blood could slide, infiltrating into the very soul and centre of the artifact-to-be on gentle waves of restorative djed, courtesy of the immense glyphic apparatus with which Alses surrounded all her workings, in equal measure shield and sustainer.
The pressure of all the djed gathered would slowly impress her blood deep into the heart – she smiled at the pun in her own head – of the ring, gradually accreting over the silent bells of the night, whilst Alses slept.
Thus, the slow accretion of strength, allowing it to bear the quicker and more invasive needle-spike procedure that would positively saturate the very core of it with the rich bronze-crimson of her blood, her identity, her unique djed signature that would – all going well – keep her safe from her own creation.
You lost me a couple of times, but I still think I awarded you with everything you could gain 
