“...Hello.” Tyr observed the man, only to realize it was no man at all. Yet for the sake of simplicity, he had always referred members of the other species by human pronouns.
“Good evening.” The 'man' growled. His voice was rough, with a thick accent, though not so thick as to make understanding him impossible. Hoarse, slow and with great enunciation on every syllable. By human standards, he was a giant, with stony gray skin and bits of blueish fur here and there. A flattish face and a shovel shaped jaw. Even seated at the stool perilously creaking under his massive bulk, he stood at a similar height to Tyr. His smiths apron did nothing to conceal the rippling, veiny muscle in his arms and chest.
“What are you?” Tyr didn't think he was a beastkin, though the man did have a bit of a lion look about him what with his mane of blueish-silver hair. Otherwise, he had a wide lipless mouth, the skin tone and texture of an elephant without the wrinkles, and a pair of long and sharp lower incisors visible when he had opened his mouth to speak.
“Many would consider that a rude question.” The man purred, seemingly not angered by Tyr's uncouth behavior. He chuckled, a rumbling noise like a lion, deep in the throat. “I am Anu.”
“An anu?”
“Not an anu. I am Anu. We are a people, a race, a culture, even a religion. One word in the singular, but as with all humans I won't hold you to this standard. My kin might not be so accepting, but I doubt you'll ever meet them to show any offense.”
“Ah.” Tyr nodded, though he didn't understand at all. He'd heard of 'Anu', but had never seen one before. They were an isolationist race that existed, as far as he knew, only in the highlands of the republic. They did not travel, and did not interact with humans. He'd heard that these creatures were giants made of stone, brutal and fearsome savages who had nearly destroyed Varia in its infancy before losing a long war and being forced to migrate north.
Anu had set their conclaves in the mountains of Lyra even before the modern republic had existed.
“...I'm Tyr.” He extended his hand in the traditional way he greeted people. Fortunately, the Anu took it this time, wrapping his monolithic digits around Tyr's own with a gentleness belying his brutal appearance.
“I know who you are, little prince. I am Valkan Amistad Amzinas Fidinda Harfi Eesaam Leannán Daonna.”
“...”
Valkan smiled widely at Tyr's silent awe, it was always like that with humans. “Just call me Valkan. I am the chief forgemaster here in the runesmithing department. You could say that I am the assistant professor beneath your advisor, though he's not very hands on – so I run the department. I'm not technically a professor, so you can refer to me however you'd like. I would prefer my name, however, I do not care for the titles of men. In my culture our names are our place in the world, they are a title in and of themselves.”
Tyr's hand was returned to him by the giant, watching as he bent over the workbench to pluck a silver ring that had cracked under the force of his latest failure. Despite each of the fingers being the size of a spear haft, Valkan's grip showcased an impossible dexterity. Turning the ring about in calm observation.
Valkan brought a set of brass spectacles to his face, humming at the result. “Too much mana.” He said, keeping it simple.
“Too much mana?” Tyr raised an eyebrow at that. Everything he did, it was too little mana, not the opposite. He'd been following the instructions to the letter and still he failed in a similar way every time. The ring would crack and the energy stored within dissipate.
“Too little mana, and your enchantment would be worthless. Too much, and it breaks. Give me a ring and I will show you.”
Tyr did as he was asked, watching as the Anu took a very different approach to his own. Around the ring, he used ink to draw a series of concentric triangles split by individual runes on the surface of the table. With well practiced hands, in less than a minute the table was painted with these patterns. They were beautiful and clean, a literal work of art. The Anu worked at them with incredible precision, ambidextrous and scrawling with both hands working independently of one another. Tyr noticed that whenever he tried to focus on the runes, they would blur and become illegible, but they definitely weren't 'human'.
“Why are you doing that?” It was impressive, he'd admit, but there were two problems. First, all warding circles were just that... Circles. Tyr had never heard of triangles being used, and certainly not in enchantment. Second, the runes were completely foreign to him. They weren't human, and not dwarven either. Both languages were by far the most predominate runic characters used in enchantment.
“Anu do not use magic as you do. We possess the well, but not the circuits.” Valkan tapped his chest with a finger before continuing. “Naturally, you can ignore this part. These are Anu runes. We need to focus through a medium rather than generate control fields as you humans do. Just watch the mana, how it fills the object, and you'll know.”
Dull colorless light flared into being. Instead of flowing through carved runes and connecting them all to create pathways for mana as one normally would, Valkan's wards ignited the entire ring at once. Red hot, it sizzled for a moment before cooling to reveal a series of concentric runes on its surface, both inside and outside the ring. Far more runes than the silver should've been able to hold.
Valkan hadn't touched the ring itself much, and hadn't etched a single rune on its surface by chisel as Tyr would have expected. Yet when he was done...
All in one process, the ward drawn on the desk disappeared, carving itself into the ring by whatever spell had been used. Tyr observed Valkan's body as well, and found that the latter had been correct. He possessed no mana circuits, the veins of energy that ran from the core to the extremities of men. Instead, he had drawn a focus to pull the mana directly from his core and create an object in far less time than a human would need.
Moreover, it was simply better. Better than any dimensional ring Tyr had seen. Traditionally, a basic dimensional storage ring – his own included, would have an internal dimension of roughly ten to twenty meters cubed, as the dwarves measured things. This was easily double that – and yet the artifact had stabilized perfectly with no issue.
“How did you do that?” Tyr asked, but it wasn't Valkan who would answer.
“There are many kinds of runes.” Came a voice from the reason. Tyr leaped from his position, instinct causing him to reach back for the sword he carried on his person at all times. Only to notice that Abaddon was holding it in his hand, unsheathed, tracing the patterns on it. “For example...” He tapped the black runes that decorated the silver blade. “These are Orik runes. You have human runes, dwarven runes, elven runes, beastkin runes, draconic runes... Well, for the sake of the lesson here – there are a lot of them. Each and every race capable of using magic has their own, though some are lost to time.”
“Mmm...” Valkan nodded in agreement. “Anu runes are old things. Capable of that which human runes are not. Like all things, control and technique begets a better result. Efficiency.”
Tyr listened, recovering from his fright at the sudden introduction of Abaddon who had managed to take him unawares. All races had they own systems of magic, few of which were freely shared. Dwarves, for instance, were explicit runesmiths. They rarely used gems for enchantment, but when they did, the works they would create were easily superior to any family heirloom. However, humans typically had little interest in their artifice. Sometimes they'd purchase trinkets, but there was no great desire for dwarven made product. Not in runesmithing, at least, as far as Tyr knew.
Why? Because a dwarf might spent five years on a single artifact. Humans didn't have that kind of time. Some would spend their entire lifetime, roughly two centuries, perfecting a single artifact worthy of an emperors treasury room. Things they would never sell to anyone. Of all the famed dwarven artifacts known to man, Tyr had only ever seen one. His fathers hammer.
They weren't common among dwarves, so naturally they were beyond rare for humans. They weren't considered 'better' either, not by default. Dwarves were prized craftsmen, but humans had done more in less time. That's what people said, that the mountain dwelling race was too anal retentive to bother commissioning from.
Humans had tried and failed to copy their runes since time immemorial, in an attempt to 'make them better'. They could copy every step in the process of runecrafting and find themselves staring at lines and patterns, and nothing else. These foreign magic languages refused to obey human artifice. So they'd developed their own.
“Can you teach me to do that?” Tyr was busy drooling over the ring. He had no idea if he could use Anu runes, but wished he could.
“No. I do not possess the right to impart our knowledge on you, and our elders would never allow it. Even should I want to.” Valkan replied. “No human has ever been taught the ways of Anu runesmithing. Regardless – it requires a finesse and control that is beyond your kind.”
“I see...” Tyr was disappointed, but he'd never in his wildest dreams expect it to be that easy. However, it provided the understanding he needed to give it a fair shot of his own. Confident that his new knowledge would succeed where his past attempts had failed, he began the process of etching the ring with runes before injecting his own mana. A tendril of blueish energy that the various runes would greedily absorb, connecting themselves via microscopic channels in the metal.
Another failure. Before the capillaries of mana were able to come together, they imploded on themselves. This time, despite using as little mana as possible, it had still failed. Too much. Either he lacked the control, or...
“Intriguing.” Abaddon plucked the ring up as Valkan had, casting a suspicious look to his colleague. It was rare to see someone capable of communing with metal on the natural level, but not unheard of. The problem was that Tyr, for all his 'talent', if one wanted to call it that, was not listening. He was trying to force himself to do as he was taught, not to feel and listen when it told him what it wanted.
“Try again. Again... Again. Again.”
Tyr was becoming frustrated. He couldn't help himself. Failure after failure, and no matter how many times he tried to throttle his mana, it wasn't working. The silver would crumble and crack as soon as the runes were activated.
Valkan and Abaddon exchanged another look, almost conspiratorial. An expected result, though Tyr missed this, engrossed as he was in his work.
Am I really this useless? There was a boy, only twelve years of age in this workshop who'd finished three such artifacts in an hour, whereas Tyr had been at it for four or five... Maybe longer. Not a strong mage, either, just a child with knowledge and an average mana capacity.
“Do you know why you're failing?” Abaddon asked.
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Tyr shook his head, ready to pluck his blade from the professors hand and smash the latest failure to dust until his arms gave out. Failure was something he'd learned to swallow, but repeatedly banging his head against a wall was too much to stomach. His composure had slowly but surely began to crack until he was left red in the face.
Should I even be focusing on this? He had to think that way. If he wanted to live, was this insignificant dimensional ring even a priority?
“Because I'm worthless.” Tyr sighed, breathing deep in the way Varinn had taught him to center himself. It wasn't much, but he didn't feel that nail in the back of his head that made him want to lash out at everything around him. Perhaps he hadn't changed so much after all. He saw the road ahead of him and it stretched on beyond the horizon. All of this running, and it had gotten him nowhere.
Valkan chuckled, and Abaddon's lips twisted like he'd tasted something sour. “Disgusting. Worthless? Yes, maybe. Certainly one of the dullest students I've ever been forced to instruct, but if you want a pity party thrown in your honor – you'll have to look elsewhere.”
“Okay.” Tyr replied. He could see the truth beyond the words. There was no use in feeling pity for himself, and he was doing just that, making excuses instead of thinking of a real solution.
“The problem...” Valkan paused, only continuing after a nod from Abaddon. “Is human magic.”
“Human magic?” Tyr asked. He'd both heard and read of other races and their systems. He didn't see how that could help him, Tyr had tried the well documented 'dwarven magic' and failed at that as well. “Magic is magic. I've heard what you're saying about other races and their runes, but it's all the same at the end of the day. Humans can't use the magic of other races, they've developed a general system usable by all instead. That's why they call both the magic and our language 'common'.”
“That's what the textbooks will tell you.” Abaddon stated evenly. For a moment, he'd been agitated and full of disappointment, before realizing that it was a boy barely a man seated in front of him. One who's sire was a poor example of the word based on what he'd seen. “And it's complete nonsense. Near all races have their own systems, but why is that?”
Tyr couldn't respond. If his previous answer had been incorrect, he didn't know what to say. He'd met humans and beastkin, with the odd dwarf between them. Now an Anu, and whatever Abaddon was. He wasn't worldly enough to possess the knowledge.
“It's science. Human magic is flawed and imperfect. It's a system predicated on making things as fast, efficient, and easy as possible. They aren't necessarily an inferior race, but their magic is a series of half-assed theories and overlapping systems of understanding all tied up in knots. A work of art, to some, but nothing is perfect. Nature is imperfect, and yet its power goes so far beyond the capability and understanding of humans that they still equate half of its phenomena to the divine.”
He cleared his throat.
“It's biological. Internally, if one were to observe things like the mana well, core, reservoir – whatever you want to call it – and the mana pathways in living things, they are all different. It took me a moment to arrive to this conclusion, and I sincerely apologize for that. Beyond that, many of the human clans have developed their own, wholly self sufficient systems. In Oresund, they use the power of nature and elements without need for complex formulae. Raw and wild, capable of summoning, not conjuring, mana from the world around them. In Assyria, they have another system entirely. Through a drive for efficiency, dragged down by dogma and bureaucracy, these have been blended into the current system used most commonly today. You are not using, nor are you compatible with human magic.”
Abaddon finished with a flourish of his hands, plucking another silver ring from the drawer and depositing it on the workbench. Before Tyr could ask the obvious question, he'd responded.
“Shaper magic is what they call it. It's strange, too. The way your mana interacts with the world is not like other humans, but that doesn't make it unique by any means. Humans pull energy from themselves and the world using all manner of ritual to reach beyond what their weak bodies are capable of producing. They manipulate bulk energy and focus on condensing it. Even your so-called sorcerers do the same, through slightly different means. If you ever have the chance to experience the magic of an archmage or one of the many titles humans give themselves, to observe their magic, you'll understand the difference – as subtle a difference as it may be. At the basic level, human magic is like casting a net, collecting as much mana as possible and funneling it through a pseudo-array. That's why they call it a well or reservoir, appropriately so, because their spells are essentially buckets used to ferry the mana into their casting.”
“Shapers?” Tyr asked. “What is a Shaper?”
“Not a 'what', or a 'who'. A shaper is just a shaper. In all my centuries, I've not known a human to wield such magic though.” Abaddon leaned against the table, letting his chin rest in his hand. “You're wondering why this is important, and I'll try to explain in terms you'd understand. You have your typical human mage, who uses science and logic to generate a phenomena. It's not a perfect system, but it works. Your magic on the other hand, comes directly from the self. You are not creating the funnel, you are the funnel.”
“Is this a special talent?” Tyr asked, raising an eyebrow, not willing to allow his expectations to run wild and find himself disappointed. Hoping against hope had never gotten him anywhere in life.
“Very uncommon, but not necessarily 'special'. It's just different. Humans wield raw mana, but you are mixing your mana and world energy via threads to 'weave' a spell rather than cast it.” Valkan added his two cents. He always loved working with Abaddon. He'd seen the differences through his spectacles, but he'd never have guessed at what exactly had happened. “It's a bit of a handicap, truth be told. Human mages benefit from an almost... Modular system, the way in which they manipulate their control arrays. You, on the other hand, cannot do this. No matter how hard you try, you'll have to go through a minimum three step process of condensing mana rather than just one.”
“What does all this mean?” Tyr asked, a bit of fear entering his voice. In all of his classes, he was performing very poorly. His theoretical knowledge could not solve the gap in his control, falling far behind other students in practical lessons. The only thing he could hold onto by performing at the 'average' level, was healing. He'd never fancied himself a doctor, but it was something... “Will I never be capable of runesmithing?”
“On the contrary.” Abaddon shook his head. “This might be your real talent, but you'll never get what you want by trying to force yourself into the system humans have devices. The process to create even the simplest artifact is painstaking and tuned to the most minute detail. As you know, these two forms of energy are not compatible. You can weave, but not mix, one is not a substitute for the other. Human runes are not made to carry world energy.”
“I'm lost.” Tyr shook his head in confusion. He'd learned a great deal about mana, but world energy was – at best – considered a theory only purported by eccentrics who still had no clear idea of how to access, sense, or wield it.
“That's understandable. I will teach you the runes of my people, and we'll start from there.”
In truth, Abaddon was beyond interested in whether or not Tyr could use them at all. If he could... Well, that would be something.
The following days were full of instruction. Unlike Tyr's initial expectation, enchantment had nothing to do with it. Instead of anything involving magic, Abaddon made him do other things. It reminded him of Varinn, all of these ridiculous exercises with no obvious point to them, and his teacher wasn't answering much in the way of any question.
Classes were skipped, recorded at the behest of his advisor so that he could review them on 'his own time'. It was a bizarre exception especially in the beginning of the school year, but Abaddon seemed to have a great deal of clout among the faculty. And if human magic would be of no use to Tyr, it was no real problem for him.
“Is this really necessary?” Tyr was soaked in a layer of sweat, clinging to his skin from the crown of his head to the bits beneath his undergarments. Hunched over a roiling forge with labored breath as he plucked the crucible free of the cherry red interior.
“Yes.” Valkan was a hard man. He'd give no face to complaints or weakness of any kind, laughing as Tyr struggled under the the load, attempting to haul it out of the forge. For a 'human', the boy was strong – but these were muscles he'd never used. The path of the smith required a vigor and endurance beyond that of near any other trade.
As instructed by Valkan, this was half the work. Teaching Tyr to understand metal, observing how it was smelted, cast, and forged. Again and again, hundred of times before he'd be 'ready'. This was the Anu way. Of mastering the materials he was given to work with. To know them as intimately as he did himself.
Hammering, etching, chiseling, grinding. Days in the forge until the prince, even with his enhanced body, was forced to retire into a fitful and feverish slumber. It was hard work, more grueling than what was performed by the lumberjacks. The attention to detail enforced by Valkan was even worse – obsessing over the smallest imperfect and making him start again. His only solace was the fact that he could accelerate his learning via his unique constitution. Many accidents took place, scalding his leg in spilled copper, grabbing a silver ingot before it had the chance to cool. Tyr healed, through splashes of molten metal and acid used for etching falling on his head. He healed, and continued, in an endless process of backbreaking labor.
Next was calligraphy. Tyr was a poor study in that regard. He'd never taken to the arts, and that was an uncommon vocation in Haran. His handwriting had always been poor, able to chisel perfect runes via stencil, but this was different. Pages and pages of sharp, harsh lines. This language was unfamiliar to him, he'd never seen it before. A line, the brush was lifted, another line, and a dot or additional stroke. Apparently even the angle at which they landed dictated whether they worked or not.
The common alphabet had twenty eight characters, but this language had over three hundred! And there he sat, laboring over them and adding it all to his grimoire, slowly improving. Too slowly.
At the rate this is going, I'll be here all year!
There was another disappointment to add to it. Abaddon's 'suggestion'. Tyr had always had it in his mind that he'd become a battlemage. An evoker, only to hear that he was incapable of traditional evocation and attempting to adopt the school would be impossible. Hence, he was unqualified, forced to drop any attempt of pursuing that specialization. It wasn't whether or not he could shoot fire, it was that he literally could not evocate. He couldn't conjure, couldn't do... By human standards, basically anything. If a practical examination was done, he would fail by default. Because it was necessary to generate energy in a specific way, that's how the schools work.
“Don't look so glum. First, you'll take this. Your script is that of a flailing monkey, but it'll do for a test run to make you understand how important it is that your lines be perfect.” Abaddon handed Tyr a mithril plated hammer. A silvery, blueish head, with the dappling of another metal that must have been alloyed within, in layers not unlike the striped patterning the hide of a zebra.
“You're giving me this?” Tyr asked. Regardless of the alloy used, it was obviously not some simple artifact. A hammer like that must have cost several hundred sovereigns or more, and the workmanship was incredible – like something out of a painting. It's head was as flat as one might expect, with the open maw of a serpent forged onto either side of it. Immaculately detailed, appearing more like a work of art than a craftsman's tool. He almost felt bad that such a beautiful artifact had been designed for so blunt as purpose as hammering metal flat.
Abaddon chuckled. “Hardly. You'll return it eventually. It is a hammer that I've made myself. Remember, a focus? Runesmithing rarely requires the skill of a blacksmith, but you'll need it in this case as the runes will need to be made a part of the metal – not etched and shaved from their surface. The whole process needs to end at a purpose. Maybe after that we can figure out how this all works. I've never met a shaper in person before, so it'll at least be worth my time.”
“Good idea, by the way. A focus. I think you're onto something.” Abaddon added, fingertips drumming on his lips.
Tyr reminded himself to thank Iscari, mumbling that it wasn't his idea – but the professor didn't seem to be listening. Continuing to beat the metal alongside his teachers, promising himself that this would be the greatest dimensional ring ever cast in the history of man. And then, he'd make weapons. Lots of them.