Hugh’s time in the Gear Barrow was time that he treasured greatly. It was apparent that many of the concepts that Malthus taught him were concepts that he had already worked with, even if he hadn’t been taught any codified version. As he blazed through the concepts of arithmetic and algebra, he learned basic mechanics and physics. It only took a little over two weeks until Hugh was more or less caught up with the contemporary understandings of his tutor’s field. Malthus was astounded, and often doubted the alacrity with which his pupil learned, yet with every test, Hugh either showed a great understanding of every concept they had gone through, or showed exactly why he couldn’t succeed using his current knowledge base.
Hugh simply soaked up everything like a sponge, whether the lesson was mathematical or physical. Sometime in the second week, Hugh started reciprocating his end of the deal, and walked Malthus through the workings of his choker, as best he could. His inability to speak the same language without wearing it strained the process, but they quickly worked out a system where he would explain, remove the items for inspection, then repeat.
Malthus struggled to understand much of what was happening with the artifacts, or why. Unlike Hugh’s introduction to mathematics and physics, this was truly novel to Malthus. The markings on the choker’s front plate didn’t visibly interact with anything, leading to ever more confusion. Hugh’s attempts at interpretation resulted in the earpiece that he wore, but that was largely a process of trial and error. Malthus suggested a different approach.
He suggested a method of breaking the meaning down, an attempt to make a complex system more comprehensible by testing each portion on its own, and seeing if any constituent parts can accomplish anything, or were even meaningful. Additionally, they would make their marks with precise measurements, to ensure consistency in the case they succeeded. Hugh had never attempted such a rigorous approach, and the two set in with fervor.
Going off the two items left them with little point for comparison. The vast majority of the initial attempts of recreating a simple aspect was a resounding failure, leading to a pile of discards. They made these attempts on pieces of slate similar to the writing slates they would use, but much cheaper. In essence, these were cut-rate versions that were typically considered rejected product, and so Malthus was able to purchase a small hill for them to test with.
Without fear of running out of their testing medium, they were able to approach the problem full-bore. This was fortunate, given their success rate was zero percent for a long time. While the first two weeks were teaching Hugh, the third week was filled with failure after failure to recreate even a portion of the magic Hugh wore. It was at the end of the third week they made a breakthrough- the first individual aspect isolated.
Their singular success wasn't earth-shattering. It was merely a slate with the bounding circle drawn, with three smaller circles at equidistant points, curved lines connecting them. This was seemingly similar to many other attempts they had already made, but this one lit up with a flash of blue light, and then… nothing. Despite the lack of noticeable effect, they had something that reacted, and that gave them room to examine why this attempt worked, and the others didn’t.
They pored over their success, measuring and comparing to similar failures, and comparing it to the sigils upon the choker and earpiece. Together they formulated a hypothesis, with two major points. The first was the bounding circle of the diagram; The circle wasn’t the edge, but rather the base of the diagram. It was the “center” of the actual magic, rather than the literal epicenter of the diagram.
Second, the epicenter of the diagram was ‘infinite’, in a sense. The lines of their successful attempt curved in such a way that they did not treat it like a flat plane. They imagined it to be like a spike, where it was flat near the edges, but quickly rose up at the center point. None of the lines crossed the center in any example, and this gave them a basis to try other elements.
The next several attempts were again duds, but this quickly gave way to several successes with these basic guidelines. They took great care to document all attempts from here on out, noting what went right and to what effect, as well as what didn’t work and guesses as to why. They began to paint some of the lines of successful ones, teasing out patterns with the colors that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.
None of the successes were spectacular. They shone in colored light, and would only sometimes have visible effect. Blue light was the most common, and never seemed to do anything. Most other colors also did nothing, with a few exceptions. One glowed crimson briefly before letting out a momentary, ear-piercing shriek. A rune filled with twelve curved lines flowing just around the center glowed spring green and produced a vicious gale for but a moment before coming to an end. Another produced a slick, slimy sheen with its pale yellow light, and another still glowed orange before crumbling into sand. Hugh thought back to his own explosive attempt on his own, and wondered how similar his had been.
The next two days were dizzy with frenzied attempts to learn more. Malthus actually canceled his lectures so the two could focus on their experiments. They had no idea how many base sigils there might be, or what any of the seemingly inert attempts did. It became clear that the only way progress would be made after a certain point was either to continue to try to make new bases by making random marks, or find other points of comparison. It didn’t stop them from trying.
It was the fourth week of their time together, and they finally had figured out the method to combine some of the sigils. While they initially tried to simply layer two images atop one another, all attempts failed. They had tried several iterations of combinations before their only success, a method they were almost ready to give up on. It was a concept Hugh brought up from one of the lectures; The idea of treating these real things as mathematical expression, and that the lines were like graphing formulae. Combining two was more akin to running an operation upon them than laying them on top of each other. They tried several operations, eventually ‘multiplying’ two sigils together, giving a visually dissimilar end result, but a clearly related effect. It was at this point they both praised the previous concept of marking patterns with colors, as this would have been maddening otherwise.
They had been crossing one of the inert bases with the gale sigil, and were given an item that blasted wind not when completed, but when a sufficiently loud noise was made nearby. Unlike the other sigils, this one was not one and done affair. They clapped their hands- gust of air. They let out a shout- gust of air. Hugh made a crass sound with his underarms- no gust of air. He moved close to the tablet and repeated, only to be treated to a faceful of wind. He laughed and Malthus cheered at the revelation.
“About time something worked!” Malthus said as Hugh put the tablet gently down. “It’s too bad our time is almost up.”
“Yes, it is getting rather late,” Hugh agreed as he wiped tears from his face.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Malthus gave Hugh a weak smile.
“It’s almost been a month now, Hugh. Just a few more days,” Malthus elaborated.
Hugh sat up, immediately sober.
“It… has it really?”
“Yes,” Malthus said with a nod, “Not that I’m happy about that one bit. I like you Hugh, quite a lot. Man after my own heart.”
“Then why does this have to be the end?” Hugh said, sounding frantic for the first time since Malthus had met him. “I could stay here, work with you. Be your assistant, or-”
Malthus cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“I wish we could do that, Hugh. I really do.”
Malthus leaned back onto a counter with a deep sigh. His ears and whiskers drooped to match his dour expression.
“I have responsibilities here. I’m a teacher now, and this institution’s still young. I want to see it grow, and I’ve had to make some deals to make it possible to open this school. I want to encourage young minds, like yours, to help make the world a better place. What we’ve discovered today is amazing, and I know there’s incredible potential in it. Unfortunately, we just about exhausted what we can do with your artifacts there. Next step would be randomly trying different patterns and sigils in minute increments, or just outright guessing. We’ve hit a brick wall, that tablet right there was a lucky guess.”
Hugh began to argue, but Malthus headed him off.
“It was the hundredth attempt at that, Hugh! You know that damn well. I’m happy about that, I really am. What you need are more examples to look at, a bigger pool of ideas. Hearth’s a but puddle, but you’re going to need an ocean, Hugh. I can’t offer you that, here,” Malthus said with a shake of his head.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Hugh whispered.
Malthus snorted, then began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Hugh asked.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Malthus responded.
“Why wouldn’t I? You’ve taught me so much.”
“I taught you how to take notes, Hugh!” Malthus exclaimed, exasperated. The tablet blew a gust of air, leading to a tension-breaking laugh before he continued.
“You knew most of the things I taught you, in some capacity or another. You just didn’t know how to take them out of your head and put them onto a slate. Yeah, that helps. Sure, I taught you physics and some of the more advanced mathematics, but it didn’t take much. Then you use me largely as a sounding board and now you credit me for this. Really, this was mostly you, Hugh. You’re smart, ridiculously so. You said you were from a tiny village way south? You’d have been wasted there, Hugh, and you’d be wasted here too.”
“What do you mean?” Hugh asked with a crease of his brow.
“Gods around us, so smart, yet so dense,” Malthus said. “You’d have figured all this out, eventually. I have no doubt about it. I helped you pick up the pace, sure. This is all you, and you’re already outgrowing me. You need more. That lady in your group, Elody? You said she mentioned seeing other sigils. Go with her, find those, and master your craft. Me, I have my craft. I have my students, who I’ve been neglecting for a few days in favor of this. I can’t keep doing that. My future is here, teaching the next generation of minds in Hearth, and your future is there.”
He pointed to the tablet beside Hugh.
“This is goodbye, then?” Hugh asked with a weak voice.
“Not yet you daft boy! We’ve got a few days yet,” Malthus scoffed. “But lectures will have to resume tomorrow, and we need to wrap up our affairs. We’ll spend the next few days consolidating our results into notes and copy them. I would still like a copy of what we’ve found here. Maybe I can teach this to students if you learn more and tell me about how it all fits together.”
Hugh gave a quizzical look in response.
“Gods around- Letters! Letters Hugh, you aren’t just going to fall off the face of the world and never talk to me again, right?” Malthus asked with a growing freneticism.
“Uh,” Hugh said unconvincingly, “No?”
Malthus smacked his forehead with his palm, resulting in yet another blast of air.
“And just perhaps we should wrap that damn thing up.”
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“What’s this?” Sam asked quietly.
“This,” Hugh explained in a hushed tone, “Is a prototype.”
“A what now?” Sam asked again. “Is yer choker on the fritz?”
“Perhaps a demonstration would be better,” Hugh said, lifting the tablet up to face Sam.
Sam eyed the tablet filled with rainbow lines carved into it. He tried to make sense of either the colors or the curves or even the shapes, but to his eyes it all looked like a headache-inducing mess.
“So, now wha-”
Sam was cut off by a blast of air into his mouth, sending Elody nearby into a fit of laughter. Sam was dazed for just a moment, before wiping his face back into composure just in time for indignation to take over.
“What the hell do you think yer pulling?” Sam asked angrily.
Hugh grinned, pulling the tablet far enough away to not be triggered again and wrapped it back up.
“That was something new,” Hugh explained, trying to stay calm as he stifled a laugh, and largely failing.
“So we spend all this time here for you to make some new prank item?” Sam demanded.
“I’d buy it!” Elody jeered from the side.
“Not helping!” Sam hollered back.
“This is the culmination of my time here, yes,” Hugh said, “But this is far from the end. This is the beginning for me, and where my teacher wishes to bow out.”
Hugh was prepared to explain and relay the lengthy conversation he and his teacher had less than an hour prior, but Sam simply nodded.
“So much the better. We’ll be here a few days longer, then we take off for Wella,” Sam said, casting a glance at the now covered tablet. “I hope that was worth the time.”
Hugh nodded, and decided against saying more.
“We’ll take the next few days to prep for our journey. Hugh, I allot you one crate for your materials. Make sure you have what you need from here, because I don’t know when you’ll be back.”
“How come I don’t get an entire crate?” Elody asked with mock affront.
“Cuz you can pick up weeds and turn them into itchy putty or magic hair gel or whatever!” Sam shot back.
Hugh ignored the antics of the other two and instead thought about what was to come. He was both excited and terrified about moving on from here, but he didn’t know how to voice those feelings. The one thing he did know is that it would be a long trip to Wella, and he would miss his friend Malthus. He remembered Malthus's idea of becoming pen pals. He didn't like the idea of only writing when he reached a new town, though sending letters back would have to go in batches. Hugh set off from the bickering pair and went off in search for a supplier of parchment.