Chapter 25 — By A Single Thread
Rína’s eyes went wide, “Do you really mean it?”
“Of course,” Yvette said, “assuming you wouldn’t prefer to wait for the morning.”
Half a year she had been living with Yvette and while yes, she had learned more about chemistry and biology than she thought was possible, and while yes, she could move her aura to and fro, she still couldn’t affect the physical world with aether—so long as you didn’t count giving non-mages soul pokes. But now? Now she was on the cusp of actual spell craft.
“Well, yeah, I—” Rína cut herself off with a smirk, “I’ll leave that as an exercise for you to figure out.”
“Will you now?” Yvette raised an eyebrow, “I don’t suppose I would be worthy of receiving a hint?”
Rína tsked dramatically, “Sorry, but I’m afraid you’re on your own for this one.”
Yvette gave an exaggerated shake of her head, “Then indeed I may only conclude that you are of a cruel and vindictive temperament to give one such as I so impossible a task.”
Rína chuckled, “Alright, so what hints, if any, am I going to get before I start bashing my head against the problem?”
“In this case, I do not believe any evasion on my part would be a benefit to you,” Yvette said, “Mostly because I imagine you already have an inkling of the solution.”
“To just kind of will my aura into going from liquid to crystal, right?” Rína asked, “Is that all building spell structures is? Just kind of willing aether to be a certain thing? Could I just will my aura into being a fireball spell, or whatever?”
“You are correct about crystallization, but not the latter points,” Yvette said, “The intents one can freely impose upon their own aura are superficial when compared to the intent of self—they alter where one’s aether is, what it is connected to, and what form it takes, but the nature of the aether is fundamentally unchanged.
“Spells are different.” Yvette continued, “No matter how much you put your mind to it, you will always be you, and not a fireball.”
“Heh, yeah, it seems kind of obvious when you put it like that.” Rína said, “But then where do mages get the intent for their spells?”
“That is a lesson better left…” Yvette smirked, “for immediately after this current one.”
“I look forward to it with bated breath,” Rína said, “Ok, I think I’m ready to give this a try.”
“Not quite, you aren’t,” Yvette said, “There is one detail you must be apprised of before you start: similar to a water droplet’s surface tension or a lake’s frozen surface in winter, the outermost surface of every aether crystal is—structurally speaking—particularly stable and inert. To actually add any structures to your soul, you will need to remove the outer layer of whatever spot you wish to add to.”
“Ok, so then—wait,” Rína narrowed her eyes, “You want me to start taking chunks out of my own soul?”
“‘Chunks’ would be an exaggeration,” Yvette said, “You can think of it more as an exfoliation of dead skin.”
Rína grimaced, “But won’t that still hurt like the hells? I mean, we’re talking about damaging my soul here.”
Yvette shrugged, “So long as you keep to the inert layer, you won’t feel any pain—again, similar to your skin’s outermost layer of dead skin. Though you are right to be wary as straying too deep is… excruciating. I strongly recommend practicing on the enchantment before you try it on your own soul.”
“Recommendation accepted…” Rína shuddered, “Please tell me that sort of thing doesn’t cause permanent damage.”
“Request accepted,” Yvette gave a diminished smirk, still giving the topic the seriousness it was due, “No, it wouldn’t be permanent. Permanent injuries to the soul are possible, but it is effectively impossible for a person to give their own soul more than a small nick before inevitably losing consciousness. And the only lasting consequence would be the prolonged unpleasantness of aether anemia as your soul used every available drop to heal itself.”
Rína nodded as her attention went back to the armlet, “How can I actually tell if I’ve gone too deep into the enchantment?”
“Simple: there won’t be any release of aether.”
“What?” Rína furrowed her brow.
“Hm? Oh. As I said, the outer layer is particularly stable, and—barring specific circumstances—won’t ever break down into liquid aether. That any aura was released from the enchantment means that you were also breaking apart the crystal below the inert layer.”
“Huh,” Rína considered, “So then what happened to that stuff? When I cracked open the enchantment, a lot of things kind of happened all at once, but I don’t remember seeing any crystal dust by the end of it—I just kind of assumed it all turned to aura.”
“Crystal aether has far, far more Astral weight than its liquid form. Where would you suppose it went?”
Rína winced, “Straight through my aura and into the Deep Astral.”
Yvette nodded, “It is for this reason that so much aether is usually needed for the building of soul structures. Yes, the new crystal itself requires a large amount of both aether and energy in its own right, but one must be able to build enough crystal all at once to offset the losses incurred by adding any new crystal at all. And of course, like the surface of a lake in winter, the exterior of this new crystal, whether spell or otherwise, will quickly become structurally inert and will have to be discarded if any further modifications are needed.”
“... which is why you’ve got to break down an enchantment to get that big burst,” Rína nodded along, “Wait, no that doesn’t make sense. If there’s loss when you crack open an enchantment, and there’s loss when you create new crystal—crystal like, say, an enchantment—where does the new stuff come from? Because this sounds like some kind of negative feedback loop.”
“Well, most mages do not have the luxury of cultivating their soul with an enchantment designed specifically for them,” Yvette said, “This pertains to the aforementioned lesson following this one, but the short answer is that typically arcanelles are used as cultivation resources instead—arcanelles being that which makes magical plants and animals as such.”
“Arcanelles?” Rína tested out the word, “So what actually are they, and how do they—”
Yvette raised a hand to forestall Rína, “I promise that your questions will be answered in due time. But for now, try your hand at shaving off some aether crystal, and then perhaps building out your first thread.”
“Right…” Rína shook her head, “Alright, let’s see how this goes…”
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A faint, pained groan came to Rína’s ears. She didn’t know where it was coming from, but she also didn’t exactly know where she was, though she was relatively certain she was lying down. She slowly opened her eyes only for them to be seared by the dim light of the morning sun creeping in through the window. Shutting her eyes, Rína rolled onto her side and buried her face in the pillow her head rested on.
No, it wasn’t a pillow. It had a little bit of give and was covered in cloth, but mostly it felt like warm steel.
“How do you feel?” Yvette’s voice thundered in her ears.
Rína heard another pained groan, this time realizing that she was the one making the noise. She cracked her eyes open to see that her head was resting in Yvette’s lap, the woman giving her a look of abject pity.
“Pretty shit,” Rína croaked.
“That’s good to hear,” Yvette nodded, “It’s better than I expected.”
The previous night had been going relatively well, but not great of course. Rína’s first few tries at shaving off inert crystal had caused repeats of the aura torrent. Each one released a bit less than the last, but that still left Rína with more aura than she could ever hope to hold at once. And with her soul already filled to the brim, there was nothing she could do except watch as streams of aura plummeted into the Astral.
Eventually she was able to keep her… cuts? abrasions? disintegrations?... shallow enough so that there wasn’t an outpour of aura. It was quick progress, but it meant that she got to watch crystal dust falling into the Astral instead. She tried to stop it of course, to hold onto the particulates with her aura, but it was impossible. It didn’t help that the crystal came from the enchantment and therefore was more of a haze than individual grains in her soul sight. But even if that weren’t the case, they were just too damn dense—they fell straight through her aura with practically no resistance. She could affect the particulates’ trajectory a little, but it was like trying to catch the wind with stone hands or vice versa.
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The first attempt with her own soul followed a few hours after sunset. It was nerve wracking to say the least. Her original plan had been to take it in several passes over a single spot, with each pass taking a small amount of crystal off. She had voiced the idea, mostly just talking to herself to calm her nerves, but Yvette immediately vetoed it.
Apparently a slow and steady approach would just mean her soul’s crystal beneath her chosen spot would start to become inert as it got closer and closer to the surface. Yvette said that such a thing wouldn’t be painful per se, but it would still be unpleasant and she’d be left without any aether just as if she had accidentally nicked her inner soul.
So it was an all or nothing, and somewhat to her own surprise the first try went remarkably well.
To dust the spot on the exterior of her soul went. It was an odd feeling and an almost satisfying one, similar to clipping and filing one’s fingernails. But she didn’t waste time as she brought the entirety of her oversized aura down on that single point.
The intent—of, well, it really couldn’t be anything other than ‘crystallization’—was easy enough for Rína to wrangle, it was essentially her willing her aura to be more part of her than it already was. It was more difficult than compression had been, but far easier than dissolution as she didn’t have to split her focus to prevent her aura from getting aerosolized.
The bulk of her aura disappeared as if poured down a drain. She assumed she had done something wrong, but no, there inside the small, thimble sized divot she had made in her soul an even smaller lump was growing. Yvette had said a few times that growing new crystal took a lot of aether and she definitely hadn’t been exaggerating.
Rína had soon run out of aura, well before the small lump even reached halfway to the top of its little divot. So Rína took another metaphorical bite out of the enchantment and funneled the resulting torrent atop the growing nub. And when this second wind of aura was also exhausted, she took yet another bit. She went back and forth like this, with the once smooth enchantment slowly looking more like a piece of fruit that small creatures had nibbled on, and the lump of growing crystal looking more like… Well it didn’t matter what it looked like, it had filled out the divot in which it started and then some, so Rína called it a success.
Even though she was never for want of aether, the constant back and forth began to take its toll on her ability to concentrate. She decided to take a break and catch her breath, but of course in that time all of her progress had ‘frozen over’. Even before that, as she still worked, the base of her might-generously-be-called-a-thread had begun to freeze, with her only just being able to keep ahead of it.
It wasn’t ideal, but not a huge problem. For better and worse, her… thread inspired creation was narrow enough that it was likely frozen all the way through, so actually continuing where she left off wasn’t an option. That was fine though, she would just have to retry from the beginning at a different spot.
She pressed the intent of dissolution onto a new spot on her soul’s surface, but perhaps not with the same amount of care that she had done her first attempt with. Thoughts of how she might improve upon crystallization were foremost in her mind, instead of how she might regress in her dissolution therein. So no, Rína wasn’t quite as careful on her second attempt as she just barely tore into the outermost layer of her soul proper.
Mercifully, consciousness fled from both her and the consequences of her misstep but a single moment later, only returning now as she woke to her present circumstances.
“How bad were you expecting?” Rína asked.
“Well, let us just say that the fact that you are lucid at all is a pleasant surprise,” Yvette said, her tone turning serious, “How much do you remember?”
“I don’t know, it’s kind of hazy. I sort of remember a moment of…” Rína gulped, “Then I think I just blacked out.”
“That is probably for the best,” Yvette considered, “May I inspect the damage for myself?”
“Mh, go for it,” Rína grunted as she pulled her knees into her chest.
Years ago, back before she decided alcohol and the like wasn’t for her, she had gotten properly hungover. What she was currently feeling was similar, but of a caliber all its own. It wasn’t that her headache was ‘splitting’, so much as it was ‘shattered into a thousand pieces’, and her thoughts could only be called ‘sluggish’ if the slug to which they were being analogized had recently been squashed beneath someone’s heel.
Idly, Rína felt Yvette’s aura lightly wash over her soul. With nothing better to do, she joined in the examination, though there wasn’t much to see. Opposite her roots, at the top of her soul, was a misshapen… Well, ‘cylinder’ was about the only word broad enough to fit. It had the appearance of a small column made by repeatedly dripping hot candle wax onto a single spot. It was lumpy and crooked, like a tumor riddled earthworm had burrowed out of her soul. Of all the grace and elegance Rína had assumed a Flesh Weaver’s threads would have, this one had none of either, instead it would be more apt to say that it had the aesthetic appeal of a fossilized turd and the flexibility of a sharpened, disease soaked stick in the mud with a particular hatred of people’s bare feet. No, better yet, it was like the condensation of every…
Maybe she was being too hard on herself. Maybe she was just grumpy for reasons utterly unfathomable, and maybe she should cut herself some slack. Afterall, it was the solemn duty of all first attempts to look like ass. She could and would do better in the future.
Trying to put her first attempt out of her mind, Rína moved her attention to her second. It was just a small, innocent looking divot in her soul, like an oversized skin pore, and yet it had given her so much trouble.
“Is it going to feel like this every time I nick myself?” Rína mumbled into Yvette’s leg, a hint of desperation in her voice.
“Hm, yes and no,” Yvette bobbled her head, “The momentary spike of pain and loss of consciousness will be a throughline, but they will be just that: momentary. What you are experiencing now is extreme aether anemia.”
“What?” Rína cracked an eye open.
Yvette shrugged, “Take a look for yourself.”
Rína returned her attention to her soul sight, but there wasn’t much to see as the ‘sight’ stopped at the surface of her soul. That said, she could still get a general feel for her liquid aether moving around inside—at least she would if there was any there to feel.
She was completely emptied out, there wasn’t a single drop of aether left in her soul. She had gotten pretty low on aether before, but never fully drained.
Wait, no, she still had some. Looking closer, Rína could feel a small amount of aether still in her soul, but what little she had was… maybe ‘deeper’ was the right word, it definitely felt like it was somewhere near the center of her soul.
Every time she projected an aura she had to give her aether a bit of intent, a bit of a push out the door for it to actually leave her soul. It wasn’t much, but she still needed to overcome its natural inclination to stay inside. This… reservoir… of aether was far more difficult to both feel and move around. Rína thought that she could probably project an aura with it if she really put in an effort, but… well for starters, if any more aether left her soul, even if it was just wrapped around as an aura, she doubted she’d be able to stay conscious. And losing consciousness would almost guarantee any aura she had projected would fall away into the Deep Astral. And gods, that would leave her properly empty and opened up to being attuned.
Rína shuddered. Probably best to leave that aether where it was… At least she wouldn’t be in her current state for long, she just had to wait for the barest amount of ambient aether to be drawn in by her roots, then she could use that to project an aura over to the armlet, take a bite out of it, and she’d be right as rain. She just needed a little bit of aether… that would be collecting in her soul… any second now…
Rína frowned; she could definitely feel aether flowing into her soul, quite a lot of it, actually, but then where was it all going? She answered her own question a moment later. Ever so slowly, she could see the divot of her failed second attempt healing itself. It was already about halfway done, presumably from progress made while she was still asleep, but it would still take hours more for it to be fully healed.
It was an odd feeling, having so much aether flowing around her soul without her direct control. She tried to divert some of the stream, or at least stop it pouring into the divot but it was no use. Like the small reservoir of aether, it was difficult to actually get a hold of, especially addled as she was. For the first time, the aether—or perhaps her soul as a whole—was acting less like a muscle under her control and more like her kidneys or liver just blindly doing their jobs. And if this was how her soul was going to act whenever there was just a small piece of its surface missing, Rína would have to be very careful when growing new crystal to fill in any missing bits before they froze over.
Another odd thing was that the new aether wasn’t so much filling in the divot as it was pushing the bottom of the divot upwards. Not being able to properly see into her own soul, Rína couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but it reminded her of a regular bodily wound, with the bottom and sides of the wound hardening into a scab to then be pushed up by the new flesh beneath it.
And, at the very least, with the large amount of aether flowing into her soul, she wouldn’t have to wait as long before it was fully healed, then she could—
Rína turned her attention to her soul roots. Why did she have so much fresh aether flowing in? She certainly wasn’t complaining, but it was definitely weird. As far as she knew, a mage could really only draw in aether faster if they were in a more aether dense region. Weirder still, the increased flow rate wasn’t steady, but rose and fell in a steady rhythm, kind of like a…
Rína looked to Yvette, “You’re taking Astral Breaths, aren’t you?”
“Guilty as charged,” Yvette nodded, “They should reduce your convalescence from a few days down to a few hours.”
“Thanks aunty,” Rína sighed, “You’re a real lifesaver, you know that?”
“You are very welcome,” Yvette smiled, “And yes, I believe others have made similar observations in the past.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Rína chuckled, “But come to think of it, a few Astral lungfuls would’ve been appreciated all those times I was low on aether.”
Yvette tittered, “I am sure they would have. But I am told that letting a limited resource flow freely can engender wastefulness in apprentices.”
“Oh yeah?” Rína quirked an eyebrow challengingly, “Because I don’t see myself ever willingly wasting aether.”
Yvette smirked, “Then it would appear as if I have done my job well.”
Rína snorted, “Well I guess I’ll just have to appreciate the breaths while they’re still on offer.”
“Indeed; just don’t tell my other apprentices,” Yvette whispered conspiratorially, “lest they get jealous.”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me…” Rína trailed off as the two women fell to silence.
It was still early morning, and while the two of them would normally be having breakfast, Rína didn’t have an appetite. Instead she was content to just stay curled up with her head on Yvette’s lap and wait for the soul crushing headache to pass. Yvette for her part was unbothered, simply keeping both her physical and Astral breathing synced to the same steady rhythm. Rína lay there, trying to not think of anything, or really even be conscious at all, but one thought did manage to bubble up to the surface.
“You know,” Rína began, “speaking of apprentices: how many have you had?”
“Hm?” Yvette raised an eyebrow, “Oh, you in fact have the distinction of being the first.”