062 – Foundation
***
For the first time since reincarnating, I experienced a sense of freedom. All the people who had persecuted me during my captivity in the citadel had floated away. My two seniors, Zambulon and Yurk, graduated from disciples to being real officers of the Void Cult, so they no longer forced me into grueling training exercises or punishing sparring matches. My new senior disciple, Hwilla, had thankfully transferred her romantic obsession from me to Yurk. She spent all her time chasing him around the citadel and left me in peace. The man who should have been overseeing our education, Fightmaster Putrizio, did the bare minimum to qualify as a teacher, visiting the Hall of Discipline for an hour or two a week.
The only schedule I had to follow was that of the communal mess that served meals twice a day.
I returned to my workshop to find it in total disarray. The lids to the lock boxes hung wide open and most of my beads had disappeared. Nimblesto the goblin ransacked the place while I was away. He wanted to get his tiny little hands on the core to the defunct golem and tore the place apart trying to find it. I had to spend a day cleaning up and reorganizing.
The sub-building which I claimed as my workshop had three stories. On the first story, I built my main workshop with furnaces, bellows, hand mills, whetstones, cauldrons, anvils, and stills. The antique equipment now crowded the main room. The second story had been mostly unused except for a cot and small stove for heating tea. But now it also contained a writing desk and shelving for any more books I might add to my growing library. It made for an austere office. I had, while in the capital, purchased a dozen blank books for keeping research notes in. I wasn’t used to writing with brushes or quill pens, and my penmanship suffered for it.
The third floor of the sub-building was completely bare. It had narrow windows and a high ceiling of mergestone. To spruce the place up, I knocked down all the old wasps nests and sealed some cracks in the roof with a concoction of homemade rubber. The main attraction of this room was its perfectly smooth floor – a polished slab of mergestone. This is where I would inscribe my magic circles.
With my limited knowledge of engineering, I couldn’t improve my physical tools beyond their current state. Advanced machining and metallurgy was out. I certainly couldn’t bridge the gap between modern and ancient technology. But deamonics and aetherics weren’t material. They existed in a sort of world adjacent to our own and loosely connected to it at certain points. With just my current set up, I could, in theory, advance from simple glyphs, to simple arrays, to complex glyphs, to daemonic cores, to all sorts of technology that would seem miraculous to the people of this era. In theory. That road was sure to have lots of bumps and detours.
The first step was already complete: to create a basic set of glyphs inscribed in semi precious stones. The next step was to create arrays. The simplest arrays had to be quite large, but later iterations would shrink in size. I started by drilling a hole in the floor and inserting a small metal post. Then I attached a length of string to the post and marked a perfect circle on the floor with chalk. Some quick measurements and geometry produced a five pointed star, a pentagram. At the points of the star, I began to chisel out indentations in the floor where I would later add the glyphs or inlay molten metal. It was a shame I wasted all my gold as money instead of using for something productive.
“Hello? Master Strythe? Are you home?” Zvidsi the dressmaker came up the stairs. “Oh, you’re in the attic making a mess.”
“I’m making magic.” It was true that chalk and grit covered me from my work. I dusted myself off.
“I’ve never seen it done like that before. It seems more like tiling a floor than sword fighting.”
“Swords are the standard type of magic, but I like to swing a chisel instead.”
“I thought I’d stop in to visit, since the citadel is quiet with the witches away.”
“You don’t have anymore dresses for Veylien?”
“I do, but they’re so boring. It’s happened even faster than I anticipated. Working in monotone can’t keep my attention. Black. White. It’s not enough. I need something more colorful” Zvidsi stood at the edge of the stair craning her neck to see the circles on the floor. She didn’t want to enter the dusty construction site. “I need something novel to capture my interest. Speaking of, I heard the Cult has recruited a handsome new swordsman. Maybe he could distract me from my worries.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“That’s Yurk.” I had almost forgotten how blindingly handsome Yurk was. After growing accustomed to his face on our mission, he now looked to me merely dazzlingly handsome. “Yurk’s not new. He’s been here the whole time training as a masked minion.”
“What a crime to hide away a prize like that. If only I’d known sooner.”
“I’d stay away from him if I were you. He’s already got a girlfriend, and she’s trouble.”
“Is she the jealous type?”
“The obsessive, stabby type.” I motioned with my chisel.
“Bother. I can never have any fun.” She batted her eyelashes dramatically. “Unless, of course, you’d like to entertain a girl.”
“Sure. Grab a hammer and chisel. There’s plenty left to do.”
“Master Strythe. A young swordsman like you needs to learn to flirt with the ladies. Just for fun. Even if you don’t mean anything serious by it. Flirting lightens the mood. A bit of flattery makes people happy. You should try it some time.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
I cleared my throat. “Ahem… Zvidsi, you look very sexually attractive today.”
“Ugh.” She recoiled from the compliment and made a sour face. “On second thought, flirting isn’t for everyone. And there’s something to be said for being yourself. Follow your own truth, Master Strythe. I believe in you.”
“Thank you for your support.”
“Would you mind if I used your workshop? I have to stitch together three full replacement costumes before Veylien gets back. What a chore. It’s impossible to keep a swordsman dressed in white with all that monster blood flying around everywhere. All my hard work will get ruined within the span of a year.”
“Be my guest,” I said. Now that Malisent was out of the citadel, Zvidsi could spend time in the workshop without fear of an awkward encounter. Those two still hadn’t patched up their broken friendship.
I continued to work on my first arrays. To speed up the process, I had crafted a few tools out of my limited supply of spiritual steel. Extending my fire into the blades let them chip through the dense rock as though it were pumice or sandstone. In one afternoon, I cut deep grooves over the chalk markings to fix my pentagram in place. After getting everything ready, I went down to the workshop to sort and assemble my glyphs.
“Strythe! So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself,” a voice called out.
I whirled around to see Hwilla coming in through one of the windows. A truly frightening sight.
“So you’ve finally found me,” I said.
Hwilla pulled back her mask and looked around the workshop. After traveling on the Peninsula for weeks, it now felt strange to speak with our faces covered. She spotted Zvidsi, who was cutting lumps of white glass down to bits of diamante for one of your new dresses. “And you’re shacking up with that other woman, I see. I knew you were up to no good, you devil.”
“I am not ‘shacking up’ with anyone, thank you very much. This isn’t a shack; it’s a workshop. And our ‘shopping up’ together is a matter of professional courtesy between fellow craftsmen.”
Zvidsi darted out from behind the counter and flung aside her leather apron. “Why hello there, young mistress. You must be the one I’ve heard about. Oh ho. Such a pretty young girl too.” Zvidsi hopped from side to side, examining Hwilla from multiple angles. “Master Strythe. How foolish of you to let a charming doll like this slip away from you. A girl with clear skin and big, dark eyes. You’ll never get your hands on her now that she’s found a better man.”
“Oh well,” I said with a shrug.
She leaned in closer to Hwilla and gave her a conspiratorial whisper, “Rumor has it, my dear, you’ve nabbed yourself a first rate handsome swordsman.”
“I… Um… Something like that,” Hwilla stammered. Zvidsi’s sudden friendliness threw her off kilter.
“Well, you have quite a task ahead of you. It’s a universally known fact that wandering swordsmen have wandering eyes – and roaming hands. They’re natural born philanderers. And the swords-women aren’t much better. Be glad our three resident witches are on vacation, or they’d descend like harpies to snatch him right out of your hands.”
“I thought as much!” Hwilla gasped.
“You’ll need all the womanly tricks you can muster to keep that boy’s attention. But I think sweet young morsel like you might be able to pull it off.” Zvidsi whipped out her measuring tapes. “Let’s see what we have to work with…”
Hwilla stood frozen with her arms extended as Zvidsi took her measurements and wrote numbers down on a scrap of cloth.
“Oh. I almost forgot what I came here for, Strythe. You’ve been skipping all your exercises and drills at the Hall of Discipline. As your senior, it’s my job to supervise you.”
“Don’t worry, senior. I’ve been working day and night.”
“Working on your weird projects. We’re supposed to be thinking about our first techniques. Not only that, you’ve stolen the fightmaster’s book so I can’t read it myself.”
“Oh. Sorry about that. I was copying sections to my notebooks. I have it up in the library if you’d like to have it back.”
“It’s not enough just to read it. You’ve got to put it to practice. Have you even thought about what type of technique you plan to develop?”
“Somewhat. Before reading the book, I had only seen a handful of swordsmen display their powers. So I had a limited idea of what techniques were possible. The catalog fixes that problem, but its vast amount of information is overwhelming. It will take me some time to digest it all.”
“I don’t know either.” Hwilla exhaled and deflated a little. “I don’t even know what methods to choose. But I want to develop one quickly so I can join Yurk and Zambulon. I’m going to get left behind at this rate.”
Zvidsi, “So. You’re going to be a swordsman soon? A debutante? You’ll need to have some clothes to replace this old uniform and skull mask. A real eye catcher. Tell me, what do you think of the color black?”
It was amazing to watch Zvidsi catch a new customer. First she hooked Hwilla by playing on her insecurities, and then she reeled her in with promises of a splendorous transformation. The flip side to being a craftsman was the need to be a salesman as well.
“Black’s not a color. It’s a non color. I’ve never thought about it before, but I suppose it’s rather bland. Like the night before sunrise.”
“What a nice answer! You’ve got real spirit, my girl. I’m sure with a little polish you can make those old witches shrivel up with jealousy. But first we have to start with the basics. The art of cosmetics. Sit down over here, child, and we can have a consultation.”
Zvidsi grabbed her by the hand and led her to the couch. From there, she made some chalk drawings on the wall and gave a long lesson on hair styles, shape faces, and the supreme importance of choosing the correct eyebrow shape. At sunset, I activated the lumestone lanterns to dispel the growing shadows while the two continued their session.
“Is there a reason you’re doing this in my workshop?” I asked them.
“You should pay more attention, Master Strythe. These are important topics. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about women.”
“I’d like to forget what little I do know. This whole citadel is filled with difficult women. Things would be a lot simpler for me if it were just men and monsters around here.”
No matter how much I wanted to be a hermit dedicated to science, no one in the citadel would let me get away with it. It was an inescapable fact. There were too many weird characters and too much activity.