“Sure about this?” Ray asked, gloved right hand outstretched toward the tubular wall of compressed air suspended between two ceramic disks. The top disk prominently displayed a glowing red sigil, far too complex for him to decipher. Hence, the question.
Spencer’s small blue eyes blinked a couple of times. “I’m sure.”
Sensing his boyhood friend was hedging the truth, as was often his habit, especially when it suited his needs, Ray rounded on him. “You’re sure it is safe?” he asked. “Sure like that time when you had been absolutely convinced you had found a safer alternative to gunpowder.”
The Artificer Testing Bunker they were standing in, the most secure out of three available to members of the Artificers’ Society and Alchemists’ Association, had required Emedin’s help to restore after that particular fiasco.
Or a tiny percentage error, as Spencer kept insisting while the two of them spent a good couple of days recuperating under Emerya’s expert ministrations. “My eyebrows took days to grow back, even with Growth Potion.”
In recompense, Spencer had gifted the pair of gloves Ray had been wearing ever since. A fair trade – two eyebrows for a couple of expertly crafted gloves made by a Master Artificer who also happened to be a Sigilmaster. But Spence didn’t need to know that, or else it might be all of Ray’s hair next time.
“This will be much safer.” Spencer’s trademark goggles instinctively adjusted with a click, making his eyes appear even smaller. He then ran a hand over his balding head. “At least, it should be. Nothing should explode if you proceed slowly.”
Even though they were the same age, having grown up together after joining the University, Spencer had lost most of his hair by the time he had turned twenty-five and refused to use Growth Potions. Just one of the many oddities that distinguished his close friend. Since Ray didn’t possess many of those, he cherished the friendship all the more.
“Explain it to me again. For my peace of mind,” Ray said. “That way, if it blows up in my face, again, you could argue I have only myself to blame.”
Spencer’s small eyes appeared to grow larger. “I thought I already did.”
“Yeah.” Ray gave a smile that hid his frustration and fondness. “This time do it assuming I am not a genius Sigilmaster.” He moved over to the edge of the vast chamber – almost hundred and fifty feet to the side – and plopped down on a low stone bench.
To his left, a stone door led to a small anteroom, used for entering the testing chamber. It also held the facilities for safer observation of potentially volatile or explosive experiments, including an exceptionally sturdy transparent window made of specially designed ceramic glass, and more comfortable seating arrangements than the one he was using now.
Spencer came over and sat, right at the edge of the bench, his nervous excitement clearly visible in his posture. “This is just the first prototype, more to judge how much tweaking the sigil still requires than anything else.” He glanced toward the two feet tall cylinder made of air and topped off with disks. It stood inside a groove on a granite platform located at the center of the room. The platform itself had various permanent sigils engraved on and around it. The air positively buzzed with the increased essence density.
Ray gave an acknowledging nod. “Proof of concept.”
“Precisely,” Spencer continued, getting warmed up. “The concept being preservation of perishable food items,” he paused, “or any item for that matter, for later consumption.”
This skirted his own field, so Ray immediately understood. At least the need for a construct such as this one. “Heat. Is that construct acting as an insulator?”
“Yes. Heat is the biggest enemy.” Spencer looked down, scratching the small tuft of hair around the ears on his otherwise bald head. “And time, but can’t do anything about that.” A thoughtful frown appeared on his clean-shaven face. “Wonder if the two are somehow related.”
“Air is an insulator?” Ray asked, pulling him back on topic, a frequent necessity when Spence got overenthusiastic about anything.
“Yes. But not the best, at least for my purposes. As I said, devising the material for the cylinder and improving that of the disk, will come later.” Ray could almost hear the gears spinning in Spence’s head. “Couldn’t use what we’ve always used. Metals or alloys are good heat conductors. Developed the ceramic myself. Took me a couple of years, since it had to be conducive to essence as well as a heat insulator,” Spence informed without a hint of pride in his voice. As one of the leading Master Artificers in the world, he had reasons aplenty for pride. He was just too busy thinking up ways of improving his invention to be proud.
Even though a fair few of his inventions would be used against Aiminia in the coming war, Spencer was deemed too potentially useful to meet with an unfortunate accident. Ray said a silent prayer to Allfather. Small mercies.
“What does the sigil do?” he asked, extensive experience ensuring his inner thoughts remained his alone and weren’t betrayed by his face. “I got as far as the fact that it redistributes heat, then got waylaid by dozens of concepts too bewildering for my taste.”
“It also generates and maintains the air column. And can redistribute heat, at a slower rate, from anything it generates.”
Remembering one of his own past experiences with heat distribution, a sudden thought occurred. “Spence, why did you book this bunker?” he asked, glancing at the windowless walls covered in complex warding sigils drawn in essence, visible only to those with Awakened Heart Chakra. “Wouldn’t have been cheap. A smaller one would have sufficed.”
Seeing the look of forced innocence on Spencer’s face, Ray let out a sigh. “You said it won’t blow up!!”
Spencer was already shaking his head before Ray finished. “I said it shouldn’t. There is a small chance that all the redistributed heat might end up at a single point. The ink is untested.”
Ray frowned. “The base of the solution isn’t Khudra?”
“Trying something new. Khudra is too damn costly.”
“With the aditarus hoarding it like treasure,” Ray said, not withholding his frustration, “that isn’t going to change anytime soon.” Unless something drastic happens. Like a war spanning the entirety of Sindria. While the former sentiment of his was widely-known and shared by many, including Spencer, the latter desire was not, a fact both fortunate and lamentable. “What is the ink made of, then?”
“A joint venture between Rishika and me. Only a small percentage of the base is Khudra. Costs less than a tenth of normal ink this way.” Spencer’s voice rose in frustration. “You might remember a similar device that I installed last year at the Mess Hall, on Subhanya’s insistence. You remember her, don’t you?”
Deciding it was not a rhetorical question, Ray kept a firm leash on his tumultuous Heart, and gave a nonchalant nod. “Yes. Gabriel’s assistant. Old Cook’s daughter.”
“That’s her. Has a good head on her shoulders. Pointed out, rightly, that it wastes far too much of the ice. As a result, the whole thing costs as much as a powercar, not that we could afford to buy one of those, even if we were sitting on a mountain of gold.” His tone turned angry, something that prevented him from analyzing his friend’s face. “What good is a Preserver if the only person who can afford to use it is the Aimin-damned king?”
“Preserver?”
“We’ve decided to call it that. It needs ice to begin with, which is where you, my friend, and other Power Clerics, would come in handy.”
“Rishika, eh?” Ray gave his friend a suggestive smirk. “It only took you a couple of decades to work up the nerve to talk to her. I fear I will not live long enough to hear the wedding bells.”
“As I said before,” a red-faced Spencer got to his feet, “we’re just colleagues,” he insisted, unconvincingly, and then stormed off in the direction of his latest creation. Ray gave a happy shake of the head. Spence was still secretly in love with their old classmate Rishika, now a Master Alchemist. All was right in the world.
For almost two decades, Ray had lived with the fear that someday he would end up being the agent of sorrow for his friend, even the agent of death. But if events turn out as anticipated, that would be an unfounded fear, at least partly, since sorrow is an essence of life. As is friendship, even one eventually lost.
Ray stood and followed Spence, inwardly glad his friend hadn’t fallen in love with someone who would require Medilam’s attention. Or his.
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Rubbing his hands to warm them up a bit, he approached Spence who was fiddling with his unique eye-wear. “So how slow do you want me to go?”
“As slow as you can,” Spence said, untying the dimension bag from his belt and taking out a handful of ice cubes with his left hand. Then, his right index finger danced above the top disk, performing a series of quick and precise taps, causing the air shield to vanish. He plucked the disk before it could fall down, placed the cubes of ice on the bottom disk and using his left hand to hold up the top disk a couple of feet above the bottom, his right index finger worked its miracle again and out popped another air shield, enclosing the cubes neatly.
“Remarkable,” Ray said, and then extended his right hand toward the odd cylinder, feeling more than a little anxious.
A glowing point of amber flame formed about a digit in front of his right palm, the sigils of the glove making the process far smoother, and a lot more inconspicuous, than it otherwise would’ve been. The tiny point, bursting with Energy essence in the form of heat and light, expanded conically to envelop both the disks and the ice contained in the space between them. After a couple of blinks, he stopped, fearful of having melted the cubes too quickly even with very much reduced power. He closed his eyes, waiting for them to adjust, and after silently counting to ten, blinked them open.
Only a couple of the dozen or so ice-cubes had melted, creating a small pool of water at the bottom of the container. The crystal on the top disk was glowing purplish-red in his essence sense.
“Continue,” urged a gleeful voice from behind.
Ray shrugged and extended his right palm again, giving it slightly more juice. After about five blinks, he stopped again, and saw that only three cubes remained floating in a glass of air halfway filled with water. Then, just as his eyes shifted over to the crystal, now glowing red, it cracked and exploded, sending out a vaporized blast of water and air. It struck an air shield a foot in front of Ray as he flinched. His own Shield – the fire one and not the other one – required some time to set up properly.
“Thanks,” he said, moving over to Spence who was eagerly going through the wreckage of the disks, both completely melted, now little more than blobs on the stone platform. Other than a large scorch mark, the platform itself seemed to have suffered no damage whatsoever. “You said it shouldn’t explode.” He gestured at their surroundings. “I’d call that an explosion. Wouldn’t you?”
Spencer waved a dismissive hand, not even glancing up from his work. “A mere passing wind.”
Ray let out a groan. “If the one passing the wind was one of the Pentaguards.”
Spence grinned, rubbing the viscous fluid that had previously been the disks between his fingers. “Sigil looks good though. Both it and the new ink held up longer than I expected.” He looked up with an exuberant smile. “Dinner tomorrow?”
“Faver’s at eight,” Ray nodded, heading for the anteroom.
Outside, in the foyer, behind a large chest-high desk, a middle-aged man stood erect, casting nervous glances through the door toward the antechamber beyond. “Fear not Jason, the building still stands.” Ray said, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Of course, Master Ray,” the man replied, heaving a sigh of relief, which he didn’t bother to hide. Although Spencer was well-liked by the general members of the staff, his propensity for blowing things up tended to make some of them wary.
“Norina sent a runner,” Jason said, handing Ray his cloak. “Wondered if you’d be free to look in on them.”
“Anything urgent?”
“Possibly, sir,” Jason hesitated. “Heard they got an odd new kid.”
“I was just on my way there.” Ray slipped on his cloak, then stepped out of the bunker, emerging out onto the northwestern side of the Hill, on the Upper Ring. Roughly five hundred feet beneath, past the ledge circled by iron balustrade, electric lights peeked through the dense foliage. Given the dilution of the blood, most cottages in the Journeyman Quarters stood empty and dark. The situation was even worse in the Staff Quarters, which was practically a ghost town. Before going home, however, Ray needed to take care of a few things.
Far in the distance, over the Telis and the rooftops of Edelis, Surya dipped below the western horizon, casting the waters of the sacred river crimson and orange. The dark clouds in the southwestern sky promised an end to the couple of days of sunshine. Turning around, Ray tightened his cloak and set off in the direction of the Labs, mind relaxed and heart content.
Despite its several drawbacks, including leaving you vulnerable to exploitation through them, having friends – true friends – was undoubtedly the greatest of boons, something he’d come to realize only after coming to the Uni, over twenty-two years ago.
As he crossed the tall iron-bound gate guarded by a couple of Journeymen, and entered the Laboratory section of the Upper Ring, a harsh angry voice reached Ray’s ears.
“Still laboring over those useless disks, is he?” said a middle-aged man with dark-brown hair on his bull-like head and gloating smile on his bearded face. “Tell your friend plagiarism will only take him so far.”
One of the aforementioned drawbacks was getting pulled into disputes through proxy.
“Didn’t think you were naïve enough to confuse another Master for a messenger boy.” Ray fixed the odious man with his best disapproving glare. “Tell him yourself, Grimaldi. But before you do, be advised he has started improving those small sound-recording devices that the stonehorns use. Now, it can store entire conversations, not just a few sentences.” Of course, the voices were still all but unrecognizable, but Grimaldi didn’t need to know that.
The grumpy Master Artificer harrumphed and growled under his breath, but didn’t utter another word, instead heading toward his own Lab in the middle of the large compound.
On the opposite side of the broad stone-cast road, the lights in Spencer’s Lab were on, though no living soul could be sensed within. A long-term experiment in progress perhaps, or simply a bluff to ward off potential intrusion by foolhardy thieves, or even more foolish Masters whose actions, in the name of healthy competition, sometimes crossed into the realm of sheer stupidity. After the last thief had died of necrosis, quite literally within blinks, even Grimaldi dared not poke his nose in there.
After all, accidents happen in the labs, sometimes on a weekly basis.
Just like the Bunkers, each of the thirty-odd labs here extended dozens of feet into the ground, creating a labyrinthine structure that merged with the Tunnels at various points, most unexplored, even to this day. Almost three thousand years’ worth of secrets wasn’t easy to dig out, even with Earth Clerics doing the digging. The original Builders had taken that possibility into consideration, and had come up with all sorts of counters: from rocks mixed with Basil to evolving Tunnels.
Most Master Artificers or Alchemists didn’t bother investigating the corridors, instead either sticking to his own research or trying to poach his rival’s. This apathy had worked in Ray’s favor countless times before, so he wasn’t going to complain, but still he felt a sense of disappointment at his fellow Masters’ lack of adventurous spirit. Curious souls like Spencer were rare, one of the reasons he’d struck up an instant friendship with him when they were Novices. The other reason being he was ordered to, since even back then, his potential was there for all to see.
Apart from him and Winston, who had chanced upon an apparently lost and starving Aiminian teenager during his field-duty at the desert city of Dorfnal, Ray didn’t have any friends, though he was careful to make sure he was on amicable terms with all but a few like Grimaldi. Unfortunately, possessing an Awakened Heart Chakra doesn’t exempt one from the baser instincts. Some simply spurn Allfather’s Gift by wasting it on mundane emotions.
Ray shook his head and moved on, exiting through the old gate into the Central Green. From there a long brisk walk took him down the winding road to the Guild Plaza in the Lower Ring which was bursting with people even this late in the evening. At the southern end, to the left of the main gate of the Uni, stood the ancient Healers’ Hall, the greatest of the four Guilds in Ray’s mind, since it served the highest purpose.
A fifty-feet-long queue of disease and desperation stretched from the southern gate to the Outdoor Clinic, a massive structure of red-stone and brick that dated back to the 18th century, back before the death of the Creator. None of the patients or relatives spared Ray a second glance once they noticed the color of his cloak. No color other than green held any interest for them.
Matter truly was the only thing that matters to most people, as according to most simple folk, our world is a world of matter. From the medicine they need, the food they eat, to the land they wish they owned – everything is made up of matter.
As always, Ray spent a few blinks analyzing the kernel signature of the kids in the queue, of which there were a good twenty in this batch. Past experience had taught him that standing in line behind countless others in sweltering Monsoon heat was an extremely stressful event. Consequently, it wasn’t uncommon for the wait to trigger the Awakening event of a prospective Material Cleric. The corresponding Lineal Chakra – the Plexus – often skipped the dormant stage altogether, going from being open, with barely noticeable kernel density, to blazing bright and spinning ferociously, all in the span of a glorious heartbeat.
They had it easy. Only one Awakening event, and that too nothing more than a mild inconvenience compared to the two Awakening events a prospective Power Cleric had to go through. The second one especially could be deadly – to both the kid and those unfortunate enough to be near him at the time, even if everything went as it should. And if everything didn’t….well, it would only serve to make the populous at large more fearful of Clerics. Having all your hair singed off while bits of your pulverized boy rained down on you tended to have that effect.
As for Enfolders, it was still a mystery, even to this day, though supposedly it had something to do with their sacred lake, at the bottom of which lay an ancient ruin. No aditaru even under duress or Compulsion would reveal more. The rare few half-aditarus in human kingdoms who have undergone the Awakening process all shared the same reticence, one brought on by severe trauma, some theorized. But again, a large body of water was usually involved, though forcing the Awakening event didn’t seem to work.
Ray had been fortunate that, due to the intervention of Allfather, he’d been able to skip the worrisome step. Emotional trigger wasn’t needed in his case since it was a direct impartment, and not an Awakening of latent abilities through Bloodline Resonance, which was fortunate as Ray didn’t have any. Shrugging off the past, he looked to the present, and immediately noted an alarming incongruity.
Standing near the back wall of the Healers’ Hall, in front of a small oaken door that led to the orphanage, his trusted and usually-steady subordinate, Norina, waited with a restless spring in her steps. Even without sensing her signature, from as far as twenty feet away, Ray felt her unease.
“Heard we got a new kid,” he said, giving the diminutive young woman a greeting nod. “Anything I should be aware of?”
Looking at her dimpled oval face with a button nose, one would never guess that she was a sterner taskmistress than Medilam’s Master, whoever he happened to be. Solution to that mystery still eluded him.
“You could say that, sir.” Norina turned toward the door and began explaining. Hearing it, Ray’s brows shot upward.
Hopefully, this won’t turn to violence, or else I’ll have the blood of another kid on my hands, not to mention, be subject to a disciplinary committee hearing. Always to be avoided, those.
“Does he have any next of kin?”