Should’ve just eaten in my bunk.
Zaric had been kind enough, he’d asked how she was feeling and then complimented her on her working, before worrying about her obvious manaburn. Much like how Talia imagined an older brother would. Osra, on the other hand, was just being Osra.
The mage apprentice kept her eyes firmly stuck on her sandwich, tearing into the hard bread like it had said cruel things about her family. She hadn’t said a word beyond a lukewarm, monosyllabic greeting.
“Ahem,” Zaric cleared his throat, “did Calisto talk to you about…the thing?”
Talia nodded.
“Yes,” she curtly replied.
“And?”
She shot the mage-commandrum a dirty look that melted away into a wince.
“If you were worried, you could’ve just told me, you know?” she groused.
Zaric rolled his eyes at her, plucking a second sandwich from the box.
“Would you have listened?”
Talia’s face puckered and her eyes narrowed.
“Yeeess—”
The bald man gave her a look.
“Maybe,” she amended.
The look remained.
“Ok, probably not,” she admitted.
Zaric pointed his sandwich at her, mouth full and head bobbing.
“Exshactly. Calishto,” he swallowed before continuing, “Calisto is scary and also all of our bosses. Plus, she’s the one that asked you to in the first place. Had to be her.”
Talia blew a raspberry.
“Pfft. Calisto? Scary? She’s just…”
The young woman noticed that the look had returned. She thought back to the chronicler’s stern demeanour and ice-blue eyes.
“Alright, yea maybe I see what you mean. She’s not scary though, she’s just—”
“She’s Calisto,” Zaric finished for her.
The trio fell into a silence that would’ve been companionable if it weren’t for the glaringly awkward Osra, who hadn’t raised her eyes from her sandwich since Talia had walked in. The young arcanist felt a pang of disappointment that she thought she’d gotten over in first haven. Her sandwich hadn’t done anything to her, but she tore at it like it owed her money nonetheless.
Zaric glanced between his two students, at a loss.
At least he’s realized that something’s up. Damned if I know what it is though.
For a moment, Talia thought the mage-commandrum would force the two to interact. The calculating look in the man’s eyes told her that what he had in mind was probably more devious. Talia winced as her new instinct to dig into his emotions flared along with her manaburn.
The collared mage’s eyes softened.
“That bad?”
Talia bobbed her head, washing down rock-hard bread with a swig of water.
“Dropped my entire Core into one spell all at once,” she grunted.
Zaric cringed sympathetically.
“Classic potency burn. Should take you a few days to recover. As long as you can still feel all your abilities, you’ll be fine.”
The young woman ran a hand through her bloody-ink-coloured hair, turning her focus to her channels.
Yup, all still there.
The sub-channels she associated with her kinetics throbbed mildly, while the thick pseudo-organ at the base of her neck—the source of her psionics—practically screamed at her. Neither appeared…damaged, for lack of a better word. Though the young woman was unsure what a damaged ability would even look like.
Talia grimaced at the unpleasant sensations.
“On the bright side, I’ll finally get to do some reading. Been planning on working on some artefact ideas I’ve had floating around as well, since I clearly can’t rely on magic to do everything for me in a fight. Kinetics are nice, but I need more flexibility and more options.”
The devious look on Zaric’s face widened a smidge.
“Sounds like a wonderful idea! Never hurts to be prepared,” he said, “actually, why don’t you borrow Osra? She needs practice with her metal shaping, not to mention recharging artefacts. It’d be perfect.”
Talia almost groaned but held herself back when the apprentice in question raised her head with a look of betrayal on her face, eyes wide and jaw ajar. The immediate and obvious rejection hurt more than the young woman wanted to admit. She pushed down an old sadness that she’d never quite gotten rid of. The one that had accompanied her through school and childhood.
If the girl doesn’t want to be friends, that’s fine, but there’s no need to act like she’s just been sentenced to death. Drama much?
If Osra didn’t want to help, then Talia wouldn’t be the one to force her to. She wasn’t that petty, nor that desperate.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to im—”
Zaric interrupted her, turning his look on his apprentice.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Nonsense! The experience with arcanics will help her avoid the mines, if she ever decides to petition for a contract sale out of the guild,” he said with a widening smile that implied more than what his words alone said.
The two women fell silent—well, Osra remained silent— both uncomfortable at being forced together, but neither being given a way out.
Talia had all but admitted having nothing else to do, and from what the arcanist understood, Osra was beholden to Zaric until her apprenticeship was over—a not uncommon arrangement even with other trades.
Nothing to it, I guess. There goes my relaxing day of arcanistry.
“Alright. Sounds good, I guess,” she finally said, turning to address the girl directly, “Meet in wagon seven? I have to go grab my tools and some materials from Copperpike.”
The apprentice mage nodded slowly without saying anything, shooting Zaric a gratuitous glare. As if her displeasure wasn’t already etched across her face. If even someone as socially graceless as Talia could tell that someone was upset, then the point had been made. Reinforcing it was just cruel at that point.
Whatever.
Talia stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth and headed for the door.
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After an unnecessarily aggravating discussion with the quartermaster over why exactly she needed a few ingots of mithril and silverite, what she’d be doing with them, and how she’d be reimbursing the expedition for their use, an out-of-breath and irritated Talia stomped into the specialist wagon. The thorny ropes of manaburn snaking their way through her chest and down her arms did nothing for her patience.
Lazarus looked up at her from a corner where he seemed to be in the middle of lecturing his apprentices and gave her a nod before glancing meaningfully at a conspicuously bare shelf that had once held all manner of glasswork.
Talia rolled her eyes and shot the elf a confident wink, brandishing her arcanist’s tools and the bound stack of ingots by way of explanation.
The healer didn’t seem reassured, but turned back to his pupils, the resigned look on his face switching back to what Talia mentally dubbed his ‘teacher face’.
Claiming a workbench for herself, Talia opened her journal and flipped through diagrams and rune dictionaries, wondering where she should start. She’d have to improvise somewhat. Apprentice arcanists weren’t trusted with much in the way of offensive knowledge, for obvious reasons. Luckily, Reggie had many opinions about the council of masters and their strictures, most of them bad, which meant that while Talia didn’t have full diagrams of offensive weaponry, she did have the components to recreate a few.
It'd just take a little more work.
Pulling out her trinket pen, the young arcanist turned to a blank page and began sketching out a diagram for a battle wand. A real one this time.
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Time blurred, as it usually did when Talia got absorbed in her craft. Cycling and magecraft were one thing, but arcanistry was where she excelled. The wand she had in mind was longer than most, about as long as her forearm and thick as two fingers. None of the tapered, elaborately shaped nonsense that most arcanists favoured. Talia’s first weapon would be a simple and direct cylinder, with a section wrapped in leather to serve as a ‘hilt’.
She stuffed as many rune arrays as she possibly could into the artefact, without bothering for capacitors. The capacitors were the largest and most time-consuming part of any arcanic design.
The simplest way to describe a capacitor was a looped figure eight with as many thin curls within the circles as the arcanist could manage. The larger the figure eight, the thinner line of the spirals, the more efficient the rune, and the more it could store. Common practice was to create the most efficient capacitor rune you could, and then chain them in series if the enchantment would demand more power than it could hold.
The relation between power draw and runic array was a complex formula that depended on a huge variety of factors: size of the array, the runes, size of the channels, placement, density and much, much more. In short, capacitor design was some of the most tedious work of an arcanist.
And because Talia was a mage, she could skip it entirely.
So many compromises became unnecessary, so many unviable designs became not only efficient, but optimal.
Granted, none but her, Zaric and maybe Osra would be able to actually use the battle wand, but that was a minor concern compared to sheer breadth of flexibility that removing the capacitor steps gave her. Not to mention the amount of time she saved.
Math sucked, even when you were good at it.
Talia was convinced that mathematicians were not wholly sapient. Liking math to the extent of making a career out of it was…
The young arcanist shuddered at the thought.
With a final correction, Talia sat up, massaging her sore hand and looking over at the timekeeper trinket.
Yikes. Didn’t feel like an hour.
Looking down at the half dozen pages she’d filled with extensive schema of flowing runic script, Talia begrudgingly acknowledged that yes, the time sunk did match the work output.
If anything, she’d been faster than usual.
“Done?”
Talia jumped out of her skin as Osra’s soft voice sounded out from behind her.
“Ishmaelssaggytitsyouscaredme!” she yelped, flipping around, one hand on her sword hilt.
The mage apprentice had set a pillow on the floor and set her back against the far wall, probably to cycle while she waited, despite the abundance of chairs, not to mention an actual bed. The girl looked like she was fighting an amused giggle, projecting an air of apathy and irritation.
Talia had never wished more for her psionics. Osra was a whole nest of contradictions. Before she’d found out that Talia was a mage, she’d seemed friendly enough, if a little shy. Now, she seemed to be trying to hate her, and the arcanist had no idea why, except for a cryptic comment about her soul.
A polite cough pulled the mage from her thoughts.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I’m done the drafting phase. Don’t know how much charging of artefacts you’ll be able to do, but Zaric said you could do some metal shaping? It’ll save me the hassle of lighting up the crucible,” Talia said, waving at the small forge setup opposite the healer’s section.
Osra nodded, channelling what must have been her best Calisto impression, her face scrunched up into a caricature of the stern chronicler’s impassive gaze.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked, approaching the workbench with barely repressed curiosity.
Talia showed her the diagram.
“A thin rod of mithril, to start. About this big,” Talia said, pointing at the schema, “If you have enough control I might have you do the silverite overlay, or the mithril covering, but I’ll do the etching if that’s alright with you.”
Osra’s façade of impassivity faded quickly. She looked from Talia to the designs and then to the small stack of precious metals.
“Mighty Ancients,” she cursed, “That must be worth a fortune!”
Talia shrugged but couldn’t help a quirk of her lips.
“Silverite conducts and mithril obstructs, iron shatters, steel blathers and melted coppers,” she sang.
Osra only looked more confused.
Talia sighed, flipping to one of the first pages of her journal and pointing to the explanation as she spoke.
“Silverite and mithril are the primary metals—the only metals really— of arcanics, though I guess gold and silver might work, come to think of it. Silverite conducts mana, while mithril obstructs it. Same with silver and gold, to a lesser extent.”
Osra nodded along, eyes flicking across Talia’s writing.
“If you try to enchant iron, it will shatter. Explosively. Steel erodes and hisses. It’s technically fine, but the enchantment will decay much faster and you’re at higher risk of channels snapping and the like. Which is Bad, with a capital B. Copper melts into a red-hot puddle, despite being harder than gold. Hence why we use silverite and mithril. Though I’ve heard some good things about brass, but it’s still in the experimental phase,” Talia rambled.
Osra’s nodding stopped, and she gave Talia a perplexed look.
“But I have no issues shaping any of those. I’ve never tried copper or brass, but I’ve shaped all of the rest with no issues except for mithril, which was much harder than normal,” Osra said.
Talia frowned.
“Huh. That’s— weird as hells. I’d never thought—” she cut herself off, flipping through pages of old notes and finding no evidence of what Osra had implied.
She quickly realized that no mention had been made of the oddity. Unsurprising, if you thought about it. Mages in arcanists’ workshops were generally just told what to do. Reggie hadn’t had one, but she couldn’t imagine they were being educated on the difference between enchanting materials. Arcanists, as a rule, were not exceptionally social individuals.
Thinking of a few questions, Talia began shooting off a series of scenarios at the earth and metal shaper, trying to find where arcanic metallurgy met magic.
As they debated, the tension between them melted away, both mages becoming sucked into the mystery.