Reese’s eyes sprung open to the cool darkness of his room. His heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. He couldn’t remember it, the dream, the words. Only the shadows of echoes; all those voices. He had nightmares like this all this life, well, lives. But recently, they had been feeling more vivid, more real. Then, there was always this ominous feeling in the background, like somethings were, chasing him across existence itself. Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t remember it.

‘You should visit the shrine.’

‘Don’t listen. Just build.’

More voices suddenly echoed in his head again. Was it his own voice? Maybe he was still dreaming.

Rubbing his eyes, he was exhausted from sleeping. He stopped to look around in the dim twilight of the morning, ensuring what was real truly was real. Outside his window, the deep black and purple sky was starting to warm with the colors of the morning. Looking to the side, his clock continued its unsteady rhythm, punctuated by tiny hiccups, minor fluctuations in friction caused the by the world’s mana effects. Still, it was accurate enough. In the dim haze of the dark morning, he could just make out the single hand’s position. It was a little before 5AM.

His head fell back on the pillow of his bed. It was much softer than the one from back home. At first that felt good, almost divine, but now it had begun to just feel different. A part of him longed for his old less plush pillow. In truth, he longed for the other comforts that pillow implied, the familiarity of it, his family and his friends. Well, what few friends he had left there. Shaking his head he rolled out of bed.

Laying here thinking about such things wasn’t conducive to anything useful. It was still quite early, but not too early, he should get up. His hand moved over a tiny red stone that glowed ever so slightly. A simple and cheap flame stone. On the flatter side was a simple enchantment he had engraved into it. It wasn’t a strong enchantment, but by connecting a small gap in the gold lines with his finger, like so.

A couple of small sparks came from the other side of the stone as it was coerced into letting go it’s mana. His body couldn’t conduct mana, for reasons he still didn’t fully understand. But, the surface of his skin did seem somewhat able to channel mana around it, if not though it. At least, that was his current working theory. He found that the effect would be a bit more pronounced if he rubbed over the gold traces first. Perhaps it was just a thin layer of gold atoms that was doing the actual conduction. More questions for his journal.

Regardless, the sparks weren’t particularly bright in either case, but they were hot enough to light one of the candles he had in his room. Candles weren’t particularly bright, compared to the ‘artificial light crystals’ on the wall. But, he couldn’t use them anyway, not without mana. What he had here wasn’t an ideal solution, but it did work. Candles could get expensive. Cheaper rushlight or reed lights would have been better and were what he used back home.

In the end though, he wasn’t the one paying for them and the Vallhorn seemed to have an unlimited supply, so he guess it didn’t matter. Still, it did kind of make him feel like a leach at times. At least, till he remembered just how insanely wealthy his protectors were.

His room had the same artificial light crystals that were along the walls of the castle. They were interesting little devices, frosted glass shells with either a cheap light mana stone, or a more expensive and better, light crystal in the center. They were connected to an outer golden framework with some gold foil which could let someone’s mana charge or discharge them. Effectively turning them on and off. Even without a gate he could still turn them off at least, just not on. Which was a point in favor of his outer skin conducting mana.

Anyway, these were similar to the simple mana crystals his house had back in Wollseeth, but lasted much longer, looked brighter and had a cleaner color. Along with a few other improvements, like being controlable. Light crystals weren’t cheap to begin with, but these so-called artificial ones were a step above that. Even the ones that used the cheaper light stones would have been beyond his well-off family’s means.

Though, when it came to him being able turning them on, he did have an idea for that. In one of his books was a sketch for an enchanted light stone, much like this flame stone. A kind of solar powered flashlight that could also power other light mana devices. Well, he’d need a suitable mana stone first. Even the ones he had back home probably wouldn’t have worked.

Sitting at his desk, his mind drifted as he reviewed one of his journals with a deep yawn. The second week of Feuer’s tutoring was finally at an end. Reese couldn't remember a time when he felt so exhausted. Even his final run in his last life didn’t leave him this drained, and that had killed him. Maybe it was just these nightmares that were tiring him

On the plus side Feuer had kept coming to class every day, despite her earlier insistences on only showing up the one time. That really did make it easier to deal with. A solvable challenge was preferable to an easy failure, in his mind anyway. She had really enjoyed the two Srijedeg’s history lessons, which wasn’t surprising. He was thankful he found that text on Hesion so quickly. Being the want-a-be knight she was really infatuated with his exploits, and it gave her an anchor in the storm to stay steady on. Without it, she might not have come this week at all. But now, he had a preverbal carrot that was even better than candy.

Despite people's impressions of her, she was quite intelligent, in her own way. She was badly dyslexic for sure. It's probably why she hated math so much. Her mind just couldn't make sense of the arbitrary shapes and how they link with their values. Currently he was experimenting with different ways to present information to her. Drawing letters and numbers in slightly different styles was a big part of it, there had to be one that would work. If he could just keep her focused on the task and not be pissed off at everything. Something else, he had begun to wonder if she might have had something like ADHA. But that would be harder to treat here. Regardless, even if she did have another learning disability he only had the bandwidth to work one problem at a time. Getting around the dyslexia would have to be first.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Her fire had tempered off, a little anyway. Though, she would still find an excuse to hit him, and would get particularly violent if he even came close to touching her, even by accident. Yet, she was ok with sparing, which seemed odd. It felt like there was a deeper trauma at work he couldn’t really understand, then again, maybe he was just overthinking it, like he tended to do.

Speaking of trauma, he also noticed how her larger family treated her. Dinner she was always place away from everyone. Almost no one inquired about her beyond those two times. Well, there was that question Beeson asked him a few days ago, “Is my daughter still attending your tutoring?” The older elf hadn’t even bothered to check back in on her in person. But, at least he asked, which was better than the rest.

As much as he enjoyed the sparring, he decided to drop it for now. Shevana was trying to get her to use techniques and his interactions were likely interfering with that. His time there served it’s purpose, including giving him that one win. Something he duplicated twice, much to his body’s regret. He would still like to find some time to pick up a sword, just, not right away. To be fair, it’s not like he’d ever have the same kind of potential she did. Without a gate and mana, there was no way he’d be able to use actual techniques.

A sudden thought crossed his mind as he thought more about it all. Feuer had dyslexia and seemed to have issues with using techniques. Perhaps there was a link there? He opened his teaching journal and made some note to follow up on latter. What even was a gate? Most people seemed to have one, but what was it physically? He jotted down a few more notes. Perhaps he could be adding some of these to his more general journals.

As he continued writing his mind drifted back to memories of those two sparing. He did like watching the two girls move together in mock combat, well really just the one. For all her speed Feuer just couldn't compete against Shevana's graceful movements. That woman had been a sword fighting her whole life, and it showed. Her body was sculped for combat, and her swings looked more like a carefully choreographed dance, or maybe that’s just what he wanted to see. She almost reminded him of Athenia, a bit anyway.

Thinking about Shevana, Reese almost wished she was a bit older. If she was closer to his own age than maybe... His thoughts drifted, until that question hit him again and dropped him back to reality. Just how old was he, really? Shaking the nonsense from his head he glared at the wall of his room just above his work bench, the clockwork device continued to tick along at a mostly steady pace. It’s tick soothing him and quieted his mind. He’d have to actual work on something rather than waste the early morning with circular questions.

Moving to the jig he had been making; it was just about done and was already partially usable. In theory anyway. Some of his plans called for a grid of wires. It would be hard to keep them separate while weaving, and this precise gird would let him do that. 512 by 512 very carefully constructed slits and guiding pegs, over about a foot by a foot, the inside had a movable platform that could be raised and lowered as needed, to accommodate different sized materials and multiple layers. The lines and physical size were decent for a small screen, or the memory circuit he had been sketching out over the past week. A simple grid of gold wire, at the intersection of two wires, would be… something. He just wasn’t sure what yet, maybe a smaller mana circuit, though making over 250,000 of them, one for each intersection, wasn’t viable, at least not by hand. It would also have to encased in some kind of epoxy or resin.

He’d have to figure something else out, but later. The whole idea would borrow from some earlier computer concepts, like rope memory core. Only this was going to use mana instead. Which might have entirely different designs. He just needed to find them.

On his work bench were some scattered ideas written on various loose papers. His calculator worked well, very well in fact. He just needed to expand its operation now. These would be the blueprint he used to do that. There were problems though, and gaps in the papers. Ultimately, the discrete components he had been using were quite large. He needed some way to shrink them. Of course he had some ideas, the jig being one of them, but even that would require new materials and techniques he didn't know how to replicate.

What he really could have used was actual plastic, but that was a hard thing to make. Requiring high pressures, petrochemicals and some advanced equipment like fractional distillation towers. His knowledge of chemistry was also severely lacking; he knew roughly what to do and the chemical intermediaries, something like PLA would require a lot of research to get right. Also, a full lab. That he didn’t have.

He needed other options. Even just mounting the components would require new methods. The old resin he had been using in Wollseeth wasn't really available here, and these would be much smaller than those anyway.

Opening an older notebook, he turned to a sketch he had made a little over a year ago and compared it to his newest one. While he had never bought that crystal artifact from Ethmond. Somehow, someone, a long time ago solved the very problems he was working on. He just had no idea how. He should have found a way to buy that crystal. Oh well, can’t change the past. Something he knew well. Though the proof of that crystal did mean at least one thing, there was at least one solution out there waiting to be found. Maybe more than one.

For now, he did have alternative ideas to try. The jig would let him build grids of smaller circuits. Possibly acting like a crude logic-gate array, like in magical equivalent to an FPGA, or a programable circuit. Each junction could act like a mini circuit or logic gate. Maybe. That was the hope anyway. He’d only know for sure it worked after a lot of testing, and somewhat importantly, actually building it. Which he still wasn’t completely sure how to do yet. Again, given the more 250,000 junctions it just wasn’t possible to do by hand. He’d need to find some way to automate it. But, that was still a few steps ahead.

What he really needed at the moment was wire, gold wire specifically, not just the foil he used before. He kind of knew what to do to make some. In the modern era, you'd pull wire through a machine of progressively smaller holes, and that would shape it. The more ductile the material, the easier it would be. At least, that’s what those internet videos showed, though it had been over a decade since he saw one.

There was a blacksmith on the grounds, mainly for the horses and dragons. But, presumably, the forge she ran could be used for other things, like repairing metal work, tools and maybe more importantly to his need, pulling wire. Reese had bumped into her, only briefly, when he first arrived. She didn’t seem particularly interested in talking with him. Maybe Reese could convince Beeson to talk to her on his behalf and give him access to the small forge?

It had been several hours since he got up and it was now about 7AM on a Setnesdeg, basically Saturday. He had the day off, so he’d have some time to try. But first, finding Beeson would be no easy task though.