Unknown time on an unknown day of Winter

At this point I had completely lost track of what time or day it was. I've slept three times since coming down here and the days and nights just blend together. It's not like it really matters anyway. It's just a little disorienting.

I finally managed to observe what was going on with death magic through my microscope. It was not quite what I expected. But let me back up a bit. It took me another day of practice to get it so that I could reliably engage the microscope while underwater. I ended up tying a rope to a boulder on one of the ledges that overhang the lake so that I could hold onto the rope while fully absorbed in practice. I feel like I could eventually learn to use the microscope while doing other things, it's not like it blocks my vision, but it's so disorienting that it will be a long time before I attempt it.

Try after try I would dive down, engage the microscope, and attempt to use death magic. At first it would throw me out of the space. Using magic requires focus on my body which is how I pull myself out of the space. So, I had to figure out how to move in and out without that crutch. Once I managed that, using death magic simply blanked out all I could see within the microscope. The black sky turned white and everything I could see vanished. I had to use smaller and smaller amounts of magic with narrower and narrower focus before I started to see what was going on.

On applying my magic the nuclei of all the atoms in the affected area started to shrink and get bigger in steps seemingly at random. This continued until a tipping point was reached and then, all at once, the biggest nuclei would come apart. As I was working with water I could see the oxygen atoms, which are made up of eight protons and eight neutrons, shatter right before my 'eyes.' The eight protons would immediately disappear, presumably flying off at high speed in random directions. The eight neutrons stuck around though. They drifted off at lower spreads in random directions passing straight through the surrounding water as if it weren't even there. Every once in a while I would see a neutron collide with another atom and stick. This would then mean that the new atom would become a heavier isotope of itself.

I was back on dry land again, dressed and recording these observations in my notes. Schrodinger was enjoying some cooked rat meat for dinner.

"The particles changing in size is the strangest part." I said to him. "My hypothesis on cold fission was close but it's not just that death magic is breaking atoms apart. Particle size is a result of the strong nuclear force. It's like a rubber band that holds quarks within protons and neutrons and holds atoms together."

I paused to take a drink of water.

"You don't know what a rubber band is do you?" I asked.

Schrodinger had a blank look on his face until he yawned.

"It's an Earth thing." I said. "The point is that it has a set distance over which it acts. Gravity acts on things on the other side of the universe but the strong nuclear force only acts over a distance of about the diameter of a proton."

He lost interest at that point, slinking away to hut or explore or whatever. I continued my explanation anyway. I'm sure he could still hear me.

"Death magic is lengthening and maybe even weakening the strong nuclear force." I said.

That was really weird. I knew magic would be strange but this is completely unexpected. Magic isn't just working on top of the standard model of particle physics, it is modifying one of the fundamental force carrying particles.

"The gluon is the particle that mediates the strong nuclear force." I said.

I heard a meow from somewhere in the dark.

"Yes Schrodinger, you will be tested on this later." I said. "Death magic is somehow coming in and changing how the gluon behaves on a fundamental level."

Of course this only provokes more questions. How else can I change it? And how narrowly can I focus the effect? I needed more data.

***

Unknown time on an unknown day of Winter

Mid way through the next day I had a few more answers. Broadly there were four basic effects that death magic could have on the strong nuclear force. I could make it stronger or weaker, and I could make it act over longer or shorter distances. Simply pouring death magic into the water hits individual protons and neutrons with one of these effects at random. Weakening the force within enough of the protons or neutrons in an atom would cause it to break apart. Statistically that meant that if each atom got hit with three death magic particles, about one in thirty two atoms would get three weakening hits in a row. It took a lot more than that to break an atom apart but I wasn't sure how many.

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Some simple effort produced a surprising degree of control over which effect would be applied. Weakening it over a broad area produces the radiation blasts that death magic is infamous for. Strengthening it doesn't seem to do much as it takes a force that is already very strong and makes it stronger. Increasing its range has an interesting effect. Nothing happened at first, but when the oxygen and hydrogen atoms grew big enough to come within a set distance then all snapped together into one big neon atom. This took thousands of times more magic than it took to split atoms apart. Of course the new atom had too few neutrons to be stable so after a few seconds one of the protons spit out its positive charge in the form of a positron, which I couldn't actually perceive, and it turned into a stable fluorine atom. The bottom line is that I just turned water into fluorine like some sort of mad alchemist.

"I wonder if I could make gold." I asked Schrodinger over lunch.

He wasn't nearly as excited about this discovery as I was. We had eaten through most of the rat's meat and discarded the rest down a random series of tunnels.

"Today I am going to try and make something. Let's start with iron. Good old number twenty six." I said. He just wanted pets so he was rubbing up against me. I obliged him and continued. "I shouldn't start with the water. All those hydrogen atoms would make iron with too few neutrons. But I still need to work in the water so maybe the lake walls or bed? Hummmm. Maybe I should try with dissolved materials first."

I stood getting ready to go. He seemed satisfied for now and just curled up in the still warm bedroll.

"If this works it may even solve the induced radiation problem." I told him. "I could just pull all the unstable isotopes, which generally have too many neutrons, into the iron while mixing in just enough water to balance it out."

It could be a workable plan but I would start small.

By the time I made it to my spot in the lake I was buzzing with excitement. I sucked in a breath and dove about two or three meters under the surface. I looped the rope around one of my feet and under an arm to stay stable. Then I cupped my palms together tightly in the water. I engaged the microscope with my eyes loosely focused on my hands. I had found that my mind's eye was much clearer looking at a space enclosed on all sides with my hands.

Within that space, I looked for anything that wasn't water and quickly found sodium, potassium, and calcium, along with an assortment of other devolved minerals. Then came the tricky part. I cleared my mind and set a picture in my head of only those atoms being affected. Then I gently pushed on my magic to make their gluons lengthen. Sure enough, the nuclei of the minerals started to grow.

It was working but I had a problem. The minerals were too far apart from each other to connect up. I gently massaged my hands, parts would find each other in the chaotic fluid. They didn't stick to the water molecules as they were still small but whenever they brushed past another mineral they would stick. I kept picturing a single grain of iron with each of its atoms having exactly twenty six protons and neutrons. Gradually, all the minerals collapsed into the center of the space. Instead of all lumping together in a super atom, they spread out in a lattice structure. It was getting spooky how much this power responded to mental images and will. With that success I was encouraged to go one step farther. I called to mind everything I knew about elemental iron, not just the number of protons but how it felt, what it smelled like, how it rusted and how it conducted electric current.

What I observed was nothing short of miraculous. Thinking about the finished form hijacked my control over which specific effect the death magic was having. Suddenly, the rough lattice I had built of minerals dissolved all at once into a slurry of particles big and small. Then, just as suddenly, it all reshaped into a nearly perfect sphere of elemental iron. I looked and couldn't find a single atom with more or fewer than twenty six protons and twenty six neutrons.

I pulled on the rope to reach the surface quickly. After regaining my breath I held up the small grain of iron. It was so small I wouldn't even have known it was iron but for the microscope. Success! But a strange success. The level of control I have shouldn't be possible. There are too many variables. Too much uncertainty to have made that work. It makes me think I either have a supercomputer in my head crunching the numbers for me or… I don't know. It is possible that there is some part of magic that doesn't fit with the standard model at all. Or perhaps the tools I have are not sufficient to inspect them.

Regardless of how, the observation is clear. Establishing a clear mental picture of the desired result shortcuts a lot of the complexity of quantum physics. It's like I have a box of blocks and want to build a house. Instead of painstakingly placing each block in turn I just picture the structure I want and dump the box out onto the floor. Rather than making a big mess, it's like I get super lucky in just the right way and the house just happens to assemble itself. What could possibly explain that? I have absolutely no idea.

Well, for now, let's move past how it works and celebrate that it does. I moved my light closer to the grain of iron. This little grain is the first print job on what is basically an atomic scale three dimensional printer. I can basically turn anything I can touch into anything I can imagine clearly. The possibilities are endless.

Further, it needs more testing but I think that enclosing a space within the palms of my hands prevents most or perhaps even all neutron radiation from escaping to irradiate my surroundings. This printing spell might be a way of safely using death magic. I let go of the rope and just floated on my back in the warm water for a while. This whole mess might actually lead to something good.