Zoop Zeelba.
***
Never in all my years have I been so proud to hand out endorsements as I have with these two. Prodigies, they were! Touched by some God of Creation, they had to be. They had to be!
They had to be…
That was the only explanation for the abundance of divine magic flowing through the halls of this once-calm place. Calm for artificers, at least. Explosions and bursts of magic ticked like clocks in places like these. But nothing could so much as hold a candle to this prowess. And the other students didn’t seem to mind, for they had it too. That strange and beautiful blue glow.
I almost felt trepidation, moving through the guild for my daily passes. Why, I did not know. A gut feeling, perhaps it was. Something that told me that today would knock me off my feet for sure. And so, as eager as I was anxious, I moved through the compound to the forges and workshops.
Within were the dwarves. Heralding from a legendary clan, Elsgril Silverforge was as dwarfy as a dwarf could get. He was a Grandmaster Weaponsmith like countless dwarves before him but the speed at which he churned weapons from his forge was unparalleled. Even the other dwarves were amazed by his seemingly limitless stamina. And they were the dwarves he arrived with. Indeed, the same was true for the Grandmaster Armorsmith, Forgruna Drakehorne.
They became the talk of all dwarves in Shavew within days. Lured from afar by both the mountain of crafted items strewn about them and the strange songs they sang from lungs as powerful as their bellows, they came in droves. Like the vast majority of dwarves, however, they didn’t allow anyone other than those they absolutely trusted to look at their creations. They guarded them furiously, much to my dismay.
Luckily for me, they had no endorsements to receive. They only tested and passed a few trials that ensured they knew how enchantments were to fit inside their creations and that was that. So I happily trotted over to the wreckage yard instead, and that was a marvel. The machinations made by Matthew Reid, a Demolitionist, could blow through any defense, I was sure. He had everything. rock-sized balls of steel that could detonate in fantastic explosions. Wires that could detonate other things in fantastic explosions. A block of mud that could detonate in a fantastic explosion. And not to mention an assortment of cannons, barrels, and weird metal wands that could pack a mean punch from a distance.
Naturally, it took a while to dodge the deafening shock waves to give him his endorsement; which he happily accepted and continued blowing any and everything he saw to smithereens as he laughed maniacally. And then… it was onto the most anxiety-inducing room. The Halls of Enchantment.
As I fully expected, that was where the true marvels were seen. The true wonders.
The room was starkly empty when I entered. Only serving to add to the suspense while I put my limited investigative skills to use. The only sign of anyone being present was a single crystallization chamber closed and in use.
It… wasn’t hard to miss. It looked like the pissing booths you see in rural areas. A trough with waist-high- to humans at least- walls that made for some privacy while the log leaked away. Modified in the sense that the trough was actually an enchanted table with a collapsible shield that allowed only Mana Hands to be used once closed. Explosion, corrosion, and all the other ‘ion’ proofs one could think of, it was the safest way to create enchantment crystals known to the realm. And, while they could be used without supervision, it was ill-advised.
Fearful I’d have to engage in a scolding session, I approached the glass and nearly fainted in place once I saw the impossible. Two tiny figures, both humanoid, were standing behind the enchanted glass before a massive blob of fluid.
Mana- made visible due to one of the various enchantments in the chamber- was elongated in some places and compressed in others to form a lattice of lines and points that was spread all around them. Into those lines, the semi-amorphous fluid of volatile materials flowed and filled the lines and points before the energy suddenly ebbed, filling in the gaps entirely. It was compressed still, but only hardly. ‘Stiffened,’ would’ve been the proper word to describe the process. Or better yet, coaxed into cooling into a solid shape by stilling the semi-solid fluid to rest.
In the end, they stood before a lumpy sphere of sorts. But that was hardly worth noting. The astonishing part was that, comparatively, the crystal stood around five times their height. Like two men standing before a recovered object of legend, they stared with eyes of pride, accomplishment, wonder, and imagination as deeply as I stared at the purple glow pouring off the crystal. But then, Ed formed his mana scalpel, nicked a corner, and rested the head of his chisel in the groove. Then gave one powerful strike with his hammer.
As if that legendary item had been made of glass, a thousand cracks rippled across the crystal’s surface and it broke apart in a tremendous crash. Invoking a tidal wave of pale blue crystals to scatter across the vast floor of the otherwise small chamber until they crashed into the glass with a subtle vibration of the structure.
Not being able to help it, I leaned forward to take a closer look at the sea of jewels and saw hundreds if not thousands of uniformly shaped crystals, each of them with twelve, neatly cut diamondoid faces shrouded in a purple aura. But the miraculousness continued still.
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The chamber opened, spilling a few palm-sized- human palm-sized crystals onto the ground whilst simultaneously enabling Amun and Edward to step out of the spatially distorted box and grow to their proper forms in a mind-numbing scene.
“Spatial magic.” Amun cheekily explained in response to my shock.
Of course, as a Grandmaster Artificer, I could also make pristine crystals. But not nearly as easily or even remotely as fast. Though I wanted to desperately ask, I dared not inquire about the trick to his trade, knowing full well the ferocity at which some artificers defended their secrets. So instead, I congratulated them both immensely on their work and gave them all the luck for their work to come. And with tears in my eyes, I held out my hand.
“These were due to you once you became Enchantment Creationists, they were!” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I am. I am! Forgive me, but you two had such drive in your eyes when you stepped through these doors and it never died, not once. Felt bad interrupting you, I did, yes I did!”
With a pulse of energy, I summoned my sprite, the green leaf of the Bodhi Tree with the hammer, cauldron, tongs, and chisels of the trades. Catching along, the two lads before me did the same, spawning nightly spheres limned in lights of gold, silver, blue, and a beautiful oceanic green.
“Ah!” I beamed at the eccentric half-drow. “You’ve got your own sprite? You do! Yes, you do! How fantastic! A true guild, eh?”
“I don’t have a core annex yet.” Amun turned away from Edward’s surprise with a charming shrug. "But yeah."
“Only a matter of time. Only a matter of time!" I waved it off and sent the mental command through.
“Is this like a business card?” Amun squinted at his sprite, now engraved with the same four symbols beside his name, endorsed with my credentials. A subtle but loud thing that declared him across all the realms as an approved entity to create and distribute enchantment crystals.
“It is, it is!” I beamed. “Good to know! And I’m sure you’ve both blasted past the eleventh step and have gone on to be Master Enchanters! Ya have to be! All these immaculate crystals you made. Flawless! They’re absolutely flawless!”
“That we are.” Amun calmly nodded amidst my antics.
“Then I’m sure you know that to gain the title you’re looking for, you have to create a name brand of unique enchantments, you do. Yes, you do! Any idea what you’ll be making if I might be asking?”
“Several.”
“Oh yeah.”
Their snickers came as one. And mine followed soon after.
“Well, don’t let me hold ya.” I waved. “Just show me the perks of your last two levels for me by making something new. Then you’ll be on your way. I’ll be watching from here. Good luck!”
With that, I turned to give them some privacy and elected to return in an hour or so. All they had to do was coax their mana onto the duds in the corner to Recycle the contents; then coax more mana from their wells to activate the Fabrication perk and make something new. An effort that could take hours if one didn't account for the design aspect. Yet, they surprised me again.
The crystallization chamber slamming shut made me jump in place and wheel around in the same motion. I was in front of it before I could breathe and immediately jumped back once that absurdly divine magic radiated from Amun like heat from the sun. Strange veins of the purest blue light spread across Amun’s skin first, forming angular vein-like marks on his hands and around his eyes before the same thing was seen in Ed.
The Recycling was already complete. Thus I leaned ever forward to see them Fabricate.
Fabrication alone was the reason many decided to become Grandmaster Artificers in the first place, for the perk allowed one to create any non-magical thing from their knowledge base out of raw materials. A single Master Enchanter with a specialization in architecture could process boulders or trees and build a bridge in a mere hour. Or, if they had arcana, they could carve a city from a mountain in under a day. That was only the beginning, though. A place I knew they had yet to reach. And yet, I couldn’t help but believe they had access to some perk I had yet to obtain. Of course, there were perks such as those. But none recorded to be as grandiose and fantastical as a web of screws and plates and other bits and bobs arranged in a fine lattice that stayed suspended in the air.
It was almost like a blueprint was realized in three dimensions and then put into motion. Some components were welded together. Some were wound into strange shapes. Others were heated and sprayed or dipped into various chemicals and fluids. Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, those perfect crystals were etched and inscribed and blinked out of existence in what felt to be the blink of an eye and returned just as fast, primed with various types of energies. Fire. Lightning. All of the elements, it seemed. And energies that I’d never seen before.
The lattice began to shrink when those were put into place within the field. And then I saw something I recognized. The strange pipes were fashioned into housings while others became conduits. Screws threaded themselves into metal plates filled with strange green boards that, I realized, boasted the same angular veins seen on their flesh.
I was completely enamored with the process and remained stuck in awe, even as entirely mundane objects were realized before me.
Mundane, they were, but so too were they amazing.
Ed’s creation was a chair. A fine chair that looked more like a padded chair dyed a smoky gray with a fiery red trim had been placed inside a massive egg. By those metrics, it was a strange but undoubtedly beautiful chair. By the other metrics, however, it was anything but.
Firstly, it was entirely missing its legs, choosing instead to float through some unknown force. Then there were the antennae-like protrusions drooping down from the arched top. I knew not their function, nor could I ponder them as Edward settled his bottom in the chair and attuned his magic to it, prompting two metal arms to sprout from seamless housings in the shell's sides.
“Incredible!” I gasped, turning to Amun with expectations of something equally amazing.
What I saw, though, was a relatively large bell of oiled brass that hung from a handle of wood clenched tightly in his hand. Many concentric rings and dials and circles of sea-green mithral spanned the face of the object, giving me the strong impulse to spin and fidget with the mechanical pieces before my eyes fell to the eldritch markings that glowed with malice around a golden skull.
It was a Dead Bell, I realized. One made into its namesake by virtue of two enchantments primed with unknown magic and the pure essence of death imbued into something as magically conductive as mithral.
I hurriedly purged the foul thoughts of its effects from my mind with the aid of Amun putting the blasted thing away; and after a deep breath, I congratulated them profusely for the candy they showed these aged eyes of mine and remembered to tell them of the Artificer’s Market before I saw myself out.
I needed a drink stiff enough to turn a dwarven face sour.