The next morning I awoke to find that everyone except for Bahruk had gone out to get some last minute supplies, as well as to visit Tuleni. It seemed as though mom was finally ready to face her again, and I could only pray that she would come home with good news. Good luck to mom and grandma both, may calmer minds prevail.

I decided that today was going to be a day of preparation of my own for the week ahead, as well as a day of material analysis and note taking. From the cluttered shelves of my belongings and the miscellaneous bins in the hobby room I reclaimed the assorted materials I had purchased for mana experimentation. Uncut gems, precious metals, minerals and liquids of varying consistency: anything I thought could be used to make something mechanical to some extent. My table now looked like a dump, but that was a temporary issue as I had begun to take the items one by one and allow my scanner runes to determine their magic properties.

First we had the metals. Silver was the commonly used mana conductor around here, and for good reason as it had something like a 90% conductivity rating and a remarkable resilience to being overcharged with mana. Gold was less than impressive at around 70% and showing signs of being made brittle by the mana currents. Interestingly, pure Iron acted as a high grade mana insulator, but my sample of steel showed decent conductivity and a generous capacity for being fed too much mana. Was it possible that alloys had unique characteristics of their own? Once I had some brass and bronze of my own to play with, I would definitely be testing that theory.

I still had that lump of zinc from before and was able to deduce it had an unimpressive conductivity, but something else was happening when I attempted to supply it with mana. That blue tinge crept over it from where I held it, and the larger the blue area grew the hotter the piece became. I had more zinc in the workshop and there were no flammable materials around, so I went ahead and pushed on but using the silver ingot as an intermediary surface to pour mana into it. Once the blue tint had fully enveloped the metal it became much more lustrous than before, and after checking to make sure it had cooled down I was able to pick it up and scan it.

This was no longer zinc. It was cool to the touch, much cooler than the room around it, and it felt much denser than it had before. My runes told me that it now boasted an 80% mana conductivity, but also was storing magic energy in itself. I attempted to drain the mana from within the new metal, but it wouldn’t budge. Looking closer, it seemed that the mana I had funneled into it had stabilized within, and was bonded to the metal somehow. I tried to do a few material tests on it to see if it was any different, but after my first tap with a hammer the sample sparked then crumbled like wet chalk before turning back into regular zinc. This would be seeing more experiments in the lab, that was for sure.

Without any more metals to test my eyes settled on the minerals and gems next. Each gem was given a three phase experiment to see if my theory was correct. The first test was on the basic uncut gem with no processing or tampering. The second test was to see if my filter rune could pick out specific substances and filter them, since it could do both single atomic metals and molecules like water. The third test was the same mana test on the now filtered gems to see if they had any change.

The tests began and my hopes were immediately shot when the cracked ruby I had bought shattered before my sensor could have enough time to get any data. I was much safer with the sapphire and slowly scaled the mana up, but there was this humming from the crystal that bothered me. A new sensor was set up to watch how the mana flowed and give me a shape to focus on. As the mana would pass through the surface of the gem, it would bounce around erratically then shoot off in random directions before making its way out. The unregulated flow of mana seemed to be eroding the gem internally, and as such was causing any flaws inherent to the gem to become worse.

I wanted to proceed with the filtering test, but I also wanted someone on standby if the gem cut me or if the refined gem had some unforeseen spell effect. I went into the main den area to find dad sitting comfortably with a book in his hands and a curled up ball of iron isopod in his lap, which in itself was an adorable sight. I crouched down beside him with an explanation of my current situation written out for him. He closed his book, rolled Tim off of his lap, and came with me to the hobby room, only for our delightful pet to come skittering after us.

I showed him my notes on how conductive the metals were and the things I had noticed about gems, which he seemed fascinated by until he read my current plan.

“Using gems for runework is a dangerous thing. Only pure gems can work properly, and even the pure ones have their own special way of letting mana flow. If you’re sure you want to try that filter spell on the gem then I can only support you.”

Thanks dad, that’s good to hear. With nothing else holding me back I took the gem in my hands and made a rune setup identical to the metal refining system. As before there was no perceptible change to the gem until the mana reached a certain point, but there was this sense that the rune wasn’t strong enough to get at the internal impurities. Nothing about the setup felt like it would evolve if I cranked it up a few degrees, so I obliged the power hungry rune with an increase in power. Still not enough, so let’s bring it to the very edge of 20% of one mana line. There was that twisting sensation again as though the rune was about to snap free and take on a new form, but even at the edge of changing into a new rune the setup was unable to pierce the crystal’s surface.

I set the gem down so I could jot down a question for Bahruk.

“I’m giving the runes in my mind as much power as I safely can, but they aren’t strong enough to do the task at hand. Should I allow them to evolve into stronger runes? There comes the risk that they will do something unexpected, but if I can keep the new rune under control then I can probably purify the emerald.”

He scratched his chin as he mulled it over, then nodded with a smile.

“I think you’ll handle it. You don’t give yourself credit, but you have definitely improved. The times I see you just cast magic without even trying is uncountable, but every time you do so flawlessly. Just do whatever it is you do to make your regular spells safe, and go from there as you judge it. Embrace the newness and stay calm, just like always.”

Switching in these low energy runes on the fly for menial tasks isn’t quite the same as letting one of said runes transform into something unexpected, but I can understand what he meant. Keeping a variable limit rune on hand at all times had just become my default state and visualizing a quick wind or cooling rune was easy. This was a whole different animal, one that I had few encounters with before. Flashbacks to the hole in the wall and the sudden greeting my head made with the ceiling came to mind, and I hesitated long enough for Bahruk to offer me another way.

“Why don’t you try making that new rune on something safer first? Get the bigger rune, then try to use it on the gems once it’s known and ready?”

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That sounded a whole lot more doable, and had a lesser chance of breaking something valuable. What could I filter other than the gems though? Everything we had was either rocks or wood, and filtering a specific element out of those would leave more waste than refined material. Maybe if I had an alloy item, something that had a majority of one metal and less of others I could give that a whirl. Oh wait, my bronze shortsword I never carried anymore!

I went back into my room and dug it out from under other crud I had accumulated, then jogged back into the hobby room with it at my side. I held it out while standing in the center of the room and checked with dad to see if he was ready. That’s a thumbs up, so we are ready for action. Here goes nothing.

I started the system at ten percent power, the maximum that my regular variable runes could go to, and saw that the bronze was almost giving up its impurities and returning to copper but was still resisting my power. I doubled up the variable limiter sizes and ran the system again starting at ten and slowly ramped it up. The filter rune began to jitter and thrash, but instead of holding it together I let it bend and twist as it wanted until it was almost in place as a new rune. Eugh, this doesn’t feel right, almost as if this rune isn’t done changing because it still doesn’t have enough power. I restarted the process after scrapping the half formed rune in favor of a fresh one, then switched the limiters to handle up to thirty percent power. I was shaking at this point since I had never intentionally gone that high on the power scale, but I knew that progress was locked behind this evolution.

I started the rune arrays one more time. The filter rune, which looked like a small depiction of a rising sun, began to shatter at the edges and bloat into a three dimensional image of a sphere radiating squiggly lines from every direction, all connected by a finer webbing of power lines running through the center of it all. Damn, this rune was a power hog! I kept feeding it power until it finally stabilized at 30%, at which point I watched in amazement as the non-copper of the sword peeled away like a waxy film into the swirling vortex that was my other matching filter geared for gathering the impurities into one compact ball. There was nothing else coming off of the sword, and the once dull orange had sharpened into a gorgeous copper hue better than any metal that came from the workshop, so I let the runed power down and drain their excess mana back into my source.

My arms felt sore, as if they had been holding tight onto the handle of a lawn mower for the past hour. Not nearly as bad as when the moon-fall happened, but still not pleasant. I presented the refined copper shortsword and ball of silver white metal to Bahruk, who looked at me with unrestrained jubilation.

“See, I told you that you were good! Are you alright though? You look a little tired.”

I handed him the objects so I could roll my shoulders to work away the strained feeling in my muscles. Two thumbs up from me dad, I’m just peachy! In fact, I’m feeling even more motivated now that a proof of concept has been achieved. These new runes will be my ”refine” runes, and with them I should be able to tackle these gems and move my way through the crates of ore in the workshop with ease. I took the copper sword and returned it to the crude sheath before hanging it from the edge of the table. The ball of what I assumed was tin wasn’t really useful to me, but I knew someone who liked his tin: Tim.

I rolled the ball across the floor, which delighted the bug enough that he chased it with a small trill and pounced upon it. Dad and I shared a good laugh as the silly creature attempted to curl into a ball around the orb, only to launch it a few feet behind itself and starting the chase again. I loved this little goober. Dad patted me on the back, and when I looked him in the eyes I could see great joy in his heart.

“I’m proud of you, my daughter. You’ve amazed me once again. Now let’s get on with the main project here, shall we?”

Hell yeah! I sat back in my chair and snatched the emerald from the table so I could go ahead and start the refining. As expected, the gem put up considerable resistance when the setup was at low power, but after the refine rune crossed the 20% power threshold it began to pry that vapor-like dust from the inside of the crystal as well as tear away any of the surface layer imperfections. I felt confident that nothing bad was going to happen if I went for 30%, and for once I was right in my assumption when the dust began to spew from the gem at a rapid rate until there was nothing left to purify. My sensor runes told me that the procedure was no longer making any changes to the object, meaning that the pure green chunk in the palm of my hand was a pure emerald. Even uncut it shone beautifully in the light.

Bahruk held out his hand expectantly, and I complied with letting him see it. To my surprise he began to make those strange hand motions that correlated with his earth magic, and in response the gem began to shift and writhe in his hand. It looked as though the emerald had become a liquid in his hands as the mana from his spell ripped through it like a jagged knife. He grunted as the strain of maintaining the spell set in, though he still managed to keep his voice level as he asked me a question.

“Any shape you want it? Just draw it and it’ll be like that.”

What shape comes to mind when I think emerald? Something long and flat with a rectangular shape, but also no sharp ninety degree angles. I drew a tall octagon on my slate, which Bahruk was able to recreate with ease in the palm of his hand. The mana flowing through it tensed and made harsh strands that ran through the crystal like a web of grid-like structures, resulting in the perfectly smooth emerald to solidify and shine in his palm. He gently laid the impossibly perfect gem atop the table for inspection and testing.

I had to take a moment to take in just how gorgeous this gem was. A perfect emerald with zero impurities or defects that could never occur in nature, reshaped by magic to be an impossible cut that not even the finest of jeweler could manage. This thing was probably a priceless treasure now and would sell for a shit-ton of money, and I was about to use it to learn more about magic. I looked to the box of other uncut gems and chuckled at the potential side business of making incredibly valuable gems for the rich and powerful.

Realistically it would never work due to the fact that a war was slowly encroaching on my homeland. Someday it might work, but for now these shiny rocks were just another part of some machine yet to be built. Realigning my mana lines to be just power supplies and sensors again I tapped a finger to the narrow edge of the emerald and pushed a small trickle of mana inside. The mana flowed in easily and without any change in path, but once it had reached the center it began to swirl around in agitation before coming back my way and reentering my mana lines. I left some residual mana inside of the crystal and moved my hand away, only for the energy to dissipate back from where it had entered.

I tried each side and noticed that it would have the same effect no matter which way it came in from. What if I tried to power it from two different sides at the same time? When I tried doing just that the mana entered the center of them gem and began to flow out towards along a perpendicular path until they exited from the sides not being touched. The same thing happened every time, leading me to understand that this gem was working like some kind of computer logic gate or something. I wrote all of this down and passed the sheet of notes to Bahruk, who seemed confused by my explanation.

“You mean that the magic only leaves the way it came unless it has more coming in from the other way? What if you try feeding it from one of the long sides and a short one?”

Ah, he seems to be just as curious as I am. Doing as he suggested resulted in the mana flowing into the diagonal edge between the unpowered faces. This gem really was acting like a little smart rock! Dad looked at my notes as I wrote them and nodded along in understanding. He was getting ideas, just as I was.

“You could make safe tools, ones that only work if you have two hands on them. Clever machines that only work with one end depending on which sides are fed. A row of rune devices that can spew different magics determined by the one holding it. Is ingenious, but also so strange. Now I wondering what different shapes do and what different gems act like. Oooh, not been exciting in many time!”

Calm down there pops you’re starting to go full on lizard brain! Who am I kidding, I’m about losing it myself here! He had the same idea and plan that I did, and just as much enthusiasm. Oooh, maybe we can work together to piece the broken ruby back together too! This was going to be so much fun for the both of us.