Chapter 23 — Compression
“And what makes you think it has a soul?” Professor Yvette asked.
“Because I can feel one when I push my aura towards it,” Rína said, her eyes and soul sight still fixed on the armlet.
“And is a soul the only kind of aether crystal that can exist?”
“I mean, from your phrasing the answer is obviously ‘no’, but if it’s not a soul…” Rína scowled, “Is it an enchantment?”
Yvette smiled, “It is indeed, though even that designation is somewhat of a stretch as it does not actually have any spell structures of its own—it is merely an inert mass of undifferentiated aether crystal.”
“Then how is it actually useful?” Rína asked, “And for that matter: where did you even get it? I thought highlands didn’t play nice with enchantments.”
“You are correct that aether deserts are not ideal for enchantments to operate in,” Yvette said, “but this one specifically is not meant to be used, but broken down.”
“Uh huh,” Rína furrowed her brow, “I think this is the part when you give me the context you’ve been dancing around.”
“I agree,” Yvette smirked, “Enchantments are typically created by crystalizing a soul anchor onto an existing spell structure, attaching the other end of that anchor to a physical object in a similar—though typically much cruder—fashion as a soul anchored to its brain, and then severing the spell structure from the original soul. The result is an object that has a spell structure anchored to it. And if designed properly, the spell structure will be able to operate autonomously or in response to simple interactions with the physical object it is enchanting.”
“Wait, so this really does have a soul attached to it? Or at least part of one?” Rína stared in mild horror, “And someone—I’m guessing you—chopped it off of their own soul?”
“Hmm,” Yvette bobbled her head side to side, “Not exactly. For starters, as enchantments are built from the exterior of the soul, none of them carry consciousness and are thus not considered souls or even parts therein. Secondly, the temporary connection between an enchantment and the soul can be thinned down, and the final separation—while still unpleasant—is less like chopping one’s own arm off and more like plucking a fruit off a tree.”
“And the bit about breaking it down?” Rína asked.
“Without delving too much into how aether is crystalized in the first place, suffice it to say that aether crystal is rather dense, requiring a large amount of liquid aether all at once for crystallization and releasing nearly as much when it is broken back down.” Yvette said, “All of this is merely a crude means by which I can donate a large amount of aether to you so that you can crystallize your own structures.”
“Ok…” Rína slowly nodded, “So it’s like a blood transfusion, except the blood is sort of frozen right now? But how does that actually help? I mean, it’s still your aether isn’t it? Won’t it just fizzle if I try to mess with it?”
“A transfusion is a good analogy, and yes: it would fizzle against your aura in its present state,” Yvette said, “That is why you will need to first change the enchantment’s intent of self to your own. Do you recall the process by which one becomes an elemental?”
“Uh, it’s got something to do with being aether starved, right?”
“Correct. As previously mentioned, a soul requires a steady supply of fresh ambient aether to maintain its own cohesion, but this same principle applies to all aether crystals. Normally, when fresh aether is drawn in, the crystal breaks down any non-self intent—somewhat analogous to digestion—but this process requires energy and thus does not occur when the crystal is starved. Instead, the crystal directly absorbs the new aether, integrating both the energy and intent that it contained.”
“…then the soul’s or enchantment’s or whatever’s intent gets shifted towards the new stuff.”
“Precisely. As a whole, this process of changing a crystal’s intent is called ‘attunement’.”
“So then, what? I need to starve this thing out and then drip feed it some of my own aura until the two get along? And…” Rína slowly looked to Yvette, “People can attune other people, can’t they?”
Yvette grimaced with a nod, “Such is the source of corporeal undead, but that is a rather unpleasant topic that deserves a full lesson of its own. For now, yes, you are correct: you must starve an enchantment then supply it with your own aura to attune to it.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like it’d be super cheery,” Rína frowned before returning her attention to the lesson at hand, “So how do I actually give it aura without my aura just fizzling against the enchantment? Or even starve it, for that matter?”
“Both are rather simple. First, you will need to compress your aura.” Yvette said.
Rína quirked an eyebrow, “What do you mean by ‘compress’?”
“I mean it in the regular sense: to reduce the volume—well, hypervolume in this case—that a material takes up. Though as an aside: some mages instead refer to this as aura hardening.”
“Ok, but aura is a liquid,” Rína said uncertainly, “I thought liquids couldn’t compress, and if they harden they definitely aren’t a liquid anymore.”
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Yvette frowned, “As convenient as it would be if liquid aether behaved in a perfect, one-to-one parallel of physical liquids, that is not the case. It can take some practice, and you will certainly feel some resistance, but aura is most certainly compressible—though, for the record, so are physical liquids, just to a very small degree. As to what this will accomplish? Aura is normally permeable to ambient, gaseous aether. The more it is compressed however, the more it will force out the gaseous aether and reduce its permeability—hence the term ‘harden’. This will be required to prevent the enchantment from simply absorbing new aether from the environment.”
“Huh…” Rína said as she mulled over the information, “Then… Would you be able to compress the gaseous aether around you? Like, project a dome around your soul, compress it—or harden it, or whatever—and then kind of shrink the dome around you? Wouldn’t that compress the gaseous aether and make for a personal bubble of dense aether? And didn’t you say that the denser the aether was around you, the faster you could draw it in? Sure, eventually you’d slurp all the dense stuff up, but then couldn’t you just open up the dome and repeat?”
Yvette gave a broad, proud smile, “Yes, you most certainly could. That particular technique is a mainstay of mages and has various names around the world—personally I am partial to the name ‘Astral Breath’. It has limitations of course: the larger the differential you are trying to create across the dome, the denser you have to make your aura, which in turn requires more concentration and energy. Thus for a given ambient aether density, there will be a ‘breath density’ above which maintaining the hardened aura will cost more energy per second than the breath gives to the mage.”
“Makes sense,” Rína nodded then stopped, “Actually no, that doesn’t make sense. Why would a hardened aura take energy if I’m just moving my aura in a different kind of way?”
Professor Yvette replied with a question, “What are the two things that aether can contain?”
“Uh, intent and energy, right?”
“Correct, with the latter…” Yvette trailed off leadingly.
“With the latter being spent so the former can do its thing,” Rína completed, “Ok, so you’re saying that moving it around, what, adds a ‘move here, please’ intent to my aura which takes basically no energy to do, but compression is more expensive.”
“Precisely,” Yvette said, “Now I believe it is about time you tried it out for yourself.”
“Alright,” Rína said, rolling her shoulders, “let’s see how this goes.”
She projected out a mass of aura and, without any better idea, tried to send its exterior inward. But instead of compression, the surface of her aura just seemed to slide around. Again she tried, this time trying to keep the aura laterally constrained. There was a bit less sliding this time, but the aura was still the same size as it was.
Maybe she just needed to not so much push, but maybe ram the different bits together? She tried it, and for all Yvette said that liquid aether wasn’t a perfect parallel of physical water, her aura certainly seemed to splatter like the stuff as she rammed it into itself.
Rína winced as following the collision, droplets of her aura fell away into the Astral. So collisions were ruled out, what about light inward pressure while she put most of her Astral muscle towards not letting any of shift around?
Rína watched as her mass of aura seemed to shudder for a moment before she felt it ever so slightly descend into itself. Rína was about to claim victory when more aura seemed to appear where the previously exterior aura used to be, the net effect being that her aura didn’t change size. It took her a minute and a few more tries to realize what was happening: she was making a kind of convection current inside the projection, the aura she pushed down caused interior aura to rise and replace it.
Rína scowled, “This might be a while…”
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Rína once again found herself grumbling face first into the wagon’s oversized cushion. It was well into the evening of the same day and a heavy patter of rain could be heard upon the wagon’s roof. Rína could feel sleep beckoning to her, but she would refuse the call so long as her aura continued to be a pain in her ass.
“Please tell me this isn’t another one of those ‘mental block’ kind of things like aura control was,” Rína pleaded, turning to look at Yvette.
The woman tittered mercilessly as she flipped through a book from across the wagon, “That is a matter of semantics, I suppose, but no, I would not regard this as such.”
“Are you sure you won’t just tell me what I’m doing wrong?” Rína begged.
“Consider this a kind of training in its own right,” Yvette lectured, “I am sure as an apothecary you at times found yourself stumped until you changed your perspective on a problem—this is no different.”
Rína grumbled, “What about a hint? Just a tiny one, because I feel like I’ve tried every trick I can think of and my aura still is just refusing to behave.”
“Hm,” Yvette considered, “Perhaps a small one… I would imagine you have been in this manner of situation before: you are trying to accomplish a goal that is new to you and you find yourself stuck on a sub-step you believe is required. You eventually ask a more knowledgeable person about the current sub-step, they answer your questions, but when you return to your task and complete the sub-step, you realize that the sub-step was never actually required at all.”
“Yeah I think that’s happened to me a few times,” Rína furrowed her brow, “But I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”
Yvette shrugged, “You did ask for a ‘tiny’ hint.”
Rína huffed, “Ok… so the mistake in that scenario is asking about the sub-step instead of just asking about the actual problem you’re working on. So… what, the advice is to ignore the little stuff and focus on the end result? But I’m not focusing on little stuff, I’m focusing on, you know, pushing my aura in on itself. That’s not some minor thing, that’s a prerequisite for compression, like, by definition.”
“Just as the sub-step was a prerequisite for the broader goal.” Yvette said.
“Exac—” Rína scowled before she fell to silence, “Don’t ask about the little stuff, just ask about the end result. So, don’t have my aura move itself around, instead just have it compress itself? Is it really that simple?”
Yvette shrugged, “You tell me.”
Rína shook her head before taking a steadying breath. Once again she projected out her aura, but this time instead of some trick or technique to get it to fall in on itself, Rína tried to have it… compress. When she was moving her aura around, the movement didn’t arise from some complicated underlying technique. She just willed it—she imbued intent onto her aura that it should be in a particular location. Of course there were other factors in play that she had to account for, like her aura’s cohesion and weight and so forth that made it kind of difficult to move it where she wanted, but at the end of the day it was still just her willing her aura—no, willing a part of herself—to do a thing.
Rína tried to remove all her failed attempts from mind and simply… do. She focused her soul sight on the small mass of projected aura and—
There was a resistance, unlike any of her previous attempts. It was like… ‘stubbornness’ wasn’t quite to the right word, but it was close. Her aura definitely wasn’t supposed to be compressed, it didn’t ‘want’ to compress. And yet, as Rína maintained her focus and continued to push with her will, the mass of her aura slowly began to shrink.