“It makes no sense. If we think about it, you shouldn’t even be able to shape mithril, yet here we are,” Talia said, waving a hand at the blank cylinder of the precious metal.

It had taken Osra much longer than any of the other metals, which seemed to indicate that the arcanic properties did overlap with the magical aspect somewhat, but when they’d tested silverite, the reverse hadn’t been true.

The mana-accelerating metal had been no different from steel or any other alloy the metal mage had shifted previously.

Osra shrugged.

“Master Zaric says that some things aren’t meant to be understood, just mastered,” she said.

Her curiosity had waned as it became increasingly apparent that the solution to Talia’s conundrum was unforthcoming.

Talia sighed.

“I’ll make a few notes here, Reggie might know more when we get back to Karzgorad. Who knows, maybe it’s a known phenomenon and we just don’t have the tools for proper experimentation,” the arcanist sulked.

Osra looked distinctly uncomfortable at the mention of their home.

“What?” Talia asked, putting her pen down and leaning her back against the workbench.

The apprentice mage didn’t answer, returning to her usual mute self, now that common ground had been lost. Talia repressed a frustrated sigh.

It was going so well, too.

Talia stared at the girl, allowing the silence to stretch out uncomfortably, and considered how she should approach Osra’s obvious dislike of her. As the moment dragged on, the other mage’s eyes fell to the floor, examining her feet with great interest.

“You don’t like me,” Talia blurted out.

Nice. Well done, Tals.

Osra’s reaction was immediate.

“I—no, that’s not it! I just—I’m not— I don’t know how to act around you. I-I-I-just… I don’t know,” the apprentice stammered.

Talia’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m going to assume that there’s some religious stuff going on that I don’t understand in all that… Am I right?”

Osra shut her mouth, eyes still riveted to her boots.

“Sort of…? I’ve never met someone so—openly defiant, that’s all,” she muttered.

It was Talia’s turn to be shocked.

“Defiant? Who in the hells am I defying?”

The girl finally met Talia’s gaze, brown eyes full of confusion.

“You don’t know?” Osra asked with genuine surprise.

Talia spread her hands in exasperation.

“I mean, obviously I’m defying the Magisterium. Forgive me if I don’t want to become a slave to a bunch of old politicians up on a hill.”

Osra turned to the side and muttered something under her breath. Talia leaned forward, not quite catching what she’d said.

“Say again?”

“I said we aren’t slaves! We’re servants of the gods. We—we have a duty. To serve,” Osra viciously whispered as she whipped her head back to meet the arcanist’s gaze.

Talia’s eyebrows raised into her hair. Quiescent embers stirred hotly in her chest.

“Is that what they preach? Really? What’s the explanation for the murder collars then?”

Osra’s chin jutted out, a stuttering flame of devotion flickering in her eyes.

“The collars are a safeguard. A way to protect the souls of the innocent when the gods’ Gift becomes too much for their servants to bear. A swift death of the mortal coil, to send the immortal soul straight to their master’s side. To refuse one is to risk damnation,” Osra’s tone took on a rhythmic cadence as she spoke, as if chanting.

Talia’s face rippled into an expression caught between a snarl and a scowl.

“Tell that to the dead mages of the Silverite Legion then. How many innocent servants were caught in the crossfires of one man’s prejudice?” she spat, voice dripping with scorn, “Oh that’s right, all of them. Injured, sane, unconscious, still fighting. None spared. All because one man thought he knew best. So forgive me if I have little faith in the so-called ‘safeguards of the gods’ when they lie in the hands of sapients.”

Talia’s heart beat a scattered tattoo against her ribs as old scars that had never healed caught alight. She realized her finger was right up in the girl’s terrified face, her other hand clenched tight into a bloodless fist. The raking pain of manaburn only served as fuel for the fire of her anger.

Osra visibly flinched at the anger in Talia’s tone, shrinking back on herself. Fear aside, the devoted fervour in the girl’s eyes remained.

“The death of the Silverite Legion was a tragedy. Truly. But the mistakes of sapients are not the gods’ responsibility. They are faultless,” Osra retorted softly.

Talia’s blood ran cold. She wrestled her emotions back into their box and took a deep breath, unclenching her fist and letting her hand fall limp. With effort, she straightened her posture, standing ramrod straight. When she spoke, her voice was thin like old vellum, ready to crumble into dust at the slightest provocation, to burst into flame at the slightest spark.

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“Thank you for your help, Apprentice Osra. If that is all, I have work to get to, and I’m sure you do too,” she uttered coldly.

The apprentice was caught off guard by the sudden shift. Talia heard her shuffle uncomfortably behind her.

“Talia…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to strike a nerve. I just think—”

The arcanist cut her off without looking, flicking aimlessly through her journal with shaking hands.

“My parents died in that battle. They shouldn’t have, but they did. All because a coward had the power over their lives. And he decided that it was better to not risk any more mages losing it,” she whispered tonelessly, unsure if the girl was even listening.

Apparently, she was, as the soft answer rang out in the empty room—Lazarus and his apprentices had taken their leave hours ago.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Take comfort in knowing that they stand in the heavens. In the gods’ embrace,” Osra murmured.

It was a platitude Talia had heard many times, too many to count. Like a word repeated into senselessness, it had lost its meaning. Still, she almost tore a page at the mention of the gods. She hadn’t considered herself particularly irreligious before then. She believed in the gods—hard not to when their work lay scattered about the Under. But at that moment, a seed of hate bloomed at the dogma that had perverted her parents’ needless deaths into something noble. A conviction that had stemmed from a visceral need for freedom turned into something more. Talia swore then and there that she would die before she ever made a mage collar or wore one.

More anger would do neither of them any good, however. The girl was clearly misguided. Indoctrinated even. But that didn’t make her a bad person, worthy of bearing the brunt of Talia’s anger.

Come to think of it, didn’t Zaric mention something about her family?

“Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment,” Talia said by way of apology, in a bout of uncharacteristic social clarity.

Then she let the silence stew. If Osra wanted to break it, that was on her.

Talia was surprised when the girl did.

“Would…would you like some help?”

The arcanist turned fractionally and graced the contrite-looking apprentice with a single raised eyebrow.

“Depends. How precise can you get?” Talia asked.

Osra grinned.

“Finer than you can see,” she boasted.

Talia let out a disbelieving chuckle and shoved the weight of old grief fully into its corner.

“I’ll believe it when I see it. Why don’t you show me what you can do on the silverite first, before we try the actual thing. See if you can carve these into the bar, about a half centimetre deep except where I tell you deeper,” the young arcanist said, flipping to the schema she’d drawn before they’d gotten off track.

Osra looked over the design and snagged a slim bar of silverite off the workbench, looking up in question as Talia lay a finger on the ingot in question.

“Whatever you do, don’t put any mana into the charging formation. Scratch that. See this part here…”

----------------------------------------

All told, Osra’s boast was well justified. The girl had shaved off several hours of work from the project and seemed to know it. Talia’s arcanist tools lay untouched.

Gods the things I could do if all I had to worry about was just the design, and nothing else.

The wand was ready in no time, after a few kinks had been worked out in the prototype phase. Talia glanced sheepishly at the now twice brutalized shelf, bare of any glasswork whatsoever.

Lazarus is going to strangle me. Oh well. It was worth it.

The young woman looked in admiration at the sleekest artefact she’d ever designed. All that was missing was some good leather for the handle, and even without it, it fit snuggly in her hand.

“What does it do? Apart from blowing up shelves,” Osra asked with a side-eyed glance at the poor inadvertent target dummy.

Talia’s sheepish scowl was replaced by an excited grin. She was almost vibrating in place.

“It does everything. This part here is a standard radiance beam, hot enough to rip through metal and carapace alike. These arrays shape stone—and only stone, unfortunately— into a level platform. These runes maintain the temperature around the wielder at a set, livable temperature. And this should stop any projectiles in their tracks, be they liquid or solid. This little string here summons water—”

Osra waved her hands in surrender as the young woman rambled and pointed at different parts of the wand.

“Alright, alright, gods almighty, I get it. It does everything! Come to think of it, how come none of the other artefacts I’ve seen do all that?” she asked.

Talia’s grin widened by a fraction.

“No capacitors! Most artefacts are limited by their size, due to how large the capacitor enchantment has to be for it to hold a charge. But because I’m a mage…”

Understanding sparked on Osra’s face.

“It doesn’t need to hold a charge! That’s so smart!” she exclaimed.

Yesss— praise me.

“Exactly!” Talia crooned, caressing the artefact.

For a moment the arcanist lost herself in the possibilities, imagining what the Infiniwand Mk. II would look like, the features she’d include. She hadn’t been as space efficient as she could have been, to start. Osra’s metal shaping changed everything, allowing her to pack in more rune arrays than Talia would have been able to with just her tools.

Though she knew it was unlikely, Talia crossed her fingers that her next manifestation would be an affinity for metal.

“…said about iron shattering…” Osra was saying.

“Huh?”

The girl looked down self-consciously, seeming embarrassed, unaware that Talia had been caught up in her thoughts. Talia waved her hand impatiently.

“No, no I wasn’t listening. Say again?”

Bolstered, Osra started over, leaning back in her chair.

“Well, you said enchanted iron shatters explosively. I guess my question is, how immediate is the reaction? Is it instant?”

Talia frowned, unsure where the girl was going with her train of thought.

“It’s not quite instant. Happens as soon as the capa— Osra you genius. Why didn’t I think of that?!” the arcanist exclaimed, setting her new toy down regretfully before shuffling through the pages of her journal.

As soon as she landed on what she was looking for, Talia realized why she hadn’t thought of it. For all that she was a mage, she was an arcanist first and foremost. As such, she was very much set in Reggie’s training. If that training said that a certain rune was useless, then it was so. If it said that a certain metal was unsuited to arcanics, so be it.

Turning around, she handed the book to Osra, pointing at the crude diagram on the page.

“That, is a caltrop. The Last Legion uses them to fend off and slow swarming beasts. Now hear me out. Generally, enchanting throwaway items like that is a waste. It takes a lot of effort, and you’re essentially throwing out money with every use. An arcanist’s time is better spent improving literally anything else,” Talia explained.

Osra nodded hesitantly.

“For obvious reasons, they can’t be made cheaper, since the base material has to at least be silver, if not silverite. But we can make them out of iron. They don’t need to hold a charge if I can just charge them before I throw them!” Talia cried.

Talia took the book back and flipped to a blank page, scribbling out a crude caltrop with a rune sloppily inscribed on it. She excitedly showed the mage the results.

“All it would take is an acceptance rune and bam, explosives on a few second delay, right at my fingertips. It’s brilliant!”

Unable to contain herself, Talia swept the girl into a hug.

Immediately, she knew she’d made a mistake.

Osra went rigid in her arms, cringing away.

Talia pulled back hastily, shame rising in her cheeks.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I just got excited. Didn’t mean to invade your space like that.”

The apprentice mage remained frozen for a moment, before nodding jerkily.

“No problem,” Osra choked out, “I—uh—I just need some air, is that alright?”

Talia raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Er—sure…Take your time. Again, sorry. Totally inappropriate on my part. Are you sure you want to leave though? The spores…”

Osra was already halfway out the door, gas mask cinched tight on her face. Talia watched her go. The day had been a mine cart ride of emotion, but she’d thought that overall, the two of them had bonded somewhat, after their heated discussion, of course. Not friends—not yet—but friendly, at least.

Note to self, don’t touch Osra.

Talia went back to her work, hoping she hadn’t just drowned her chances at a friendship. Again.