Caecius is right: obsidian is nothing like anything I’ve worked with before.

After she gets me a few small pieces to work with, I start by Attuning them. They just feel different in my mind. Harder, yet more brittle. When I Shape it, it’s like it would rather be folded and broken than squished and stretched. If my signing glass feels like a liquid in my mind, then my fulgurite would feel like a gas, and the obsidian like a solid.

Okay look I’m not a scientist, that’s as technical as the similes are going to get.

Caecius also tells me that the heating spells we’d been using on glass before won’t work with the obsidian. Instead, we turn to spell circles and runes. I can change the shape with my own spell, since it’s Attuned, but I have to dig deeper if I want to keep it from being more fragile than my own glass. For that, I will need to change its surface structure. I’ll also need to artifice some durability spells into it. For both of those, I’ll need to design my own spell circle.

Some days I help Caecius as an extra pair of hands in her shop, while other days I sit in the back, pouring over books and making notes, asking Caecius questions whenever I get stumped. After a week, I’m willing to test out my first designs.

“Try a sphere first,” she says. “It’s the most stable shape for this. Best to test your durability spells on something simple. Once you have the basics, you can get more creative with the shape.”

I follow her advice, first etching my spell circle design into the surface of an Attuned obsidian sphere, then using a Sculpt to sink the spell circle into the surface of the stone.

I push mana into the spell circle, and to my relief, it lights up.

Somewhat more concerningly, Echo does not report that I’ve cast a spell. Using an Inspect, I’m merely provided with, [A spell circle design.]

Caecius offers me a hammer. I take it. Caecius steps back, slides a pair of goggles on, and moves behind me. This doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.

“Well. Here goes nothing.” I raise the hammer, and right before I bring it down onto the sphere, I’m presented with an ominous, [Arcane Guardian in effect.]

The resulting eruption of obsidian shards was predictable, in retrospect. Pieces ping off my glass and snip through my jacket. The shards are wickedly sharp. Even with my Attunement, I can’t recall all the slivers, as some have embedded themselves in the wood table, which Caecius and I spend an annoying amount of time prying out with tweezers. One thing is clear, though: Attuned obsidian has the possibility to be a terrifying weapon.

When I leave each afternoon, I take my spell circle designs back to discuss with Zyneth. He’s more than happy to weigh in, offering me rune suggestions and spell circle tweaks that Caecius frequently rejects the next morning. Sometimes she rescinds her rejection. Often times she’ll take pieces of Zyneth’s ideas, then tweak them.

I destroy several more pieces of obsidian. Until finally, after Sculpting a spell circle into yet another sphere, Echo pipes up.

[Durability spell activated.]

“Hah!”

Caecius flinches at my sudden yell.

“This one will work,” I tell her.

“Don’t count your nestlings before they hatch,” she says. “Or in this case; hope your egg doesn’t hatch.”

“No, this is different,” I excitedly tell her. “Watch.”

I drop the sphere onto the hard floor of her shop.

It shatters.

“Wow,” Caecius says. “Great spell.”

“I’ll get the tweezers,” I say with a sigh.

----------------------------------------

Finally, it works. I can throw the obsidian sphere at the ground and it doesn’t shatter—while the spell is active, anyway. It’s one pretty big drawback, especially for the final shape I have in mind, but Caecius says there’s no way around it: there’s only so much you can do with obsidian from a physical and chemical standpoint. Beyond that, I’ll need magic.

I start working on the shape, next, stretching the sphere into a cylinder.

But the spell circle I made wasn’t designed for this form, and the next time I test its strength, it just shatters all over again.

“That was a waste of time,” I grumble, summing the pieces back to me. “I shouldn’t have started with the sphere. Should have shaped it into the end-product first, and then worked on making a spell designed to its specific form.”

“That’s a short cut,” Caecius says. “Maybe you could do that, but the end product would be inferior. You need to build a strong foundation, first. Look at your design, see? You’ve figured out the correct runes for achieving durability here. Now you just need to adjust the lines for the specific shape. This one indicates a round target. You’ll need to alter it, then add in additional elements to fully encapsulate the more complex shape.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Ugh.” I don’t have a headache—I can’t have headaches—but I am mentally exhausted from all the reading, research, and tests. I just want to have it all figured out already. “I never knew artificing was so involved.”

Caecius leaves me to my books and returns to some paperwork of her own. “If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

I’d love to talk to Zyneth about the next steps of my spell circle design, but this is the part where I have to start keeping my plans to myself. He’d been assuming I’d been working on a durability spell for my own glass. He was mistaken.

Well, not entirely. I do intend to use this for my own body’s development as well. In fact, I’ve been experimenting with adding spell circles to individual limbs of my body. Like with the obsidian, however, the spells are imperfect if they’re not tailored to the part they’re supposed to protect.

But the obsidian project is for Zyneth. I want to craft him a knife to replace the one I destroyed in Emrox.

It doesn’t have to be obsidian, I suppose. That just felt right. And Caecius did approvingly tell me it would work excellently as a cutting instrument. As a weapon, however, she was less certain; obsidian was notorious for chipping. So that’s what I needed to solve.

It’s made double difficult because, while I’m working with glass, I need to make sure the spell circles can be activated by Zyneth’s affinities, too. Lightning or fire. Caecius said lightning and glass were too far apart for a strong spell circle to be designed to activate by both affinities—even though I know Zyneth managed it somehow with his original dual blades—so she suggests I focus on fire instead. Fire and stone (and therefore glass) all fall within the same Earth type affinity, which tap into The Pith as their arcana source, so it will be easier for me to design. Not to mention, Caecius has a fire affinity herself, so she can test my spell circles to make sure they work for both of the desired elements.

It’s not perfect—it won’t be anywhere close to the complex tool Zyneth lost—but once I finish this thing, it will be pretty damn cool.

“You’re getting close,” Caecius says when I get ready to leave for the day. “Just a few more tweaks, I think, and you’ll get there.”

“Hopefully not much longer,” I say. “We’ll only be staying here another week.”

After that, the month will be up, and Zyneth will no longer be required to answer Vardi’s apparently abandoned job call.

“You going somewhere?” Caecius asks.

“Somewhere,” I agree. Though even I’m not sure where. That gods tournament is coming up in a couple of days. But what’s our destination after that?

“I’m not sure where I’ll end up, if I’m honest.”

Caecius picks up my latest knife design, turning it over in her hands and examining the runes I’ve Sculpted down the flat of its blade. “No destination. But will you be aimless?”

“No,” I say. “I have a goal. Just not sure what path will get me there.”

She nods, satisfied, then sets the blade down on a strip of leather. “When will you be back?”

I watch her wrap the blade and secure it with some twine. “I don’t know that, either.”

“Hm.” She hands the blade to me. “Make sure to come back and visit sometime.”

“What’s this?” I tease, taking the blade. “A show of affection?”

“You are a poor assistant,” Caecius says. “But at least you can’t get burned.”

That might be the highest praise I’ve received from her yet.

When I head back to the inn that evening, Noli and Rezira meet me for dinner, though Zyneth’s not back from his surveillance… or whatever roguish things he does all day.

“How’s the apprenticeship going?” Noli asks as we settle at a table in one of her favorite taverns. This one serves small bread rolls in the shape of bunnies.

“Well,” I say. I’ve already told them about the incident I had with Caecius. Noli, Zyneth, and Rezira had reacted, respectively, horrified, impressed, and amused. “Though I might need to take a break for the tournament. I’ve been thinking about that. Perhaps we should visit the location early and scout out the area a day or so in advance.”

“Scout for what?” Rezira asks. “You think these souls are going to be wearing signs that say ‘I’m from another world?’ If they’re anything like you, they might be stuck in other inanimate objects.”

“I know,” I say. “But I might have a work-around. I was able to use a Locate spell, using my soul as the focus, in order to try to find my body. But I might be able to use it to find other human souls, since they’re the only thing on this planet that would also be from my world. It’s a tenuous connection. I don’t expect the spell to be very strong. But if they’re nearby, it might pick up on something.”

The server sets down a plate of bunny buns before Noli even has a chance to order some, and she takes one in delight.

“I’ve also got Bond Trace,” I say. It’s something I picked up from one of Trenevalt’s homunculus books way back, though I’ve not had much reason to use it as of late. “It lets me see the lines of magic that bond things to one another. I mostly used it for identifying the magic that ties the predator to me—”

“Midnight,” Noli signs. “Charcoal.”

“—but it also shows me the lines of magic that connect me to my body,” I continue, pointedly ignoring the name suggestions. “I could use that to figure out if someone else’s soul is likewise bonded to a vessel.”

In fact, given the spell circle theory I’m starting to dig into, there might even be a way to combine those two spells together.

“Sounds like a lot of trial and error,” Rezira says. “You’d have to be looking right at them when you used the spell to even notice, right?”

“True,” I admit. “But Locate should help with that. And at any rate, I don’t have any better ideas—or a better place to start.”

Rezira leans back with a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Sorry, what’s that?” I lean forward. “I didn’t quite catch you.”

Rezira grins. “That was your yearly quota of me saying you’re right. Don’t expect it to happen again anytime soon.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Are you thinking we should leave the day after tomorrow, then?” Noli asks, now that she’s finished one of the buns. “That would give us two days to look around before the tournament.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” I sign. “Though I’ll have to let Caecius know. My project is pretty much done, but there’s some finishing details I’d still like to work through.” It’s a shame. I’ve come to really enjoy the days I spend working and learning in her shop—even if you did freeze me and nearly got the predator to kill her that one time.

“There you are.”

I turn to look as Zyneth slips into the seat next to me. “I hope you didn’t have to go to very many places to find us.”

“No, this was only the third,” he says. Noli has taken us to a lot of different taverns and food stalls.

Rezira waves a hand toward the barkeep, and Zyneth nods his thanks.

He’s hunched forward in his seat, fingers laced together, forearms pressed against the stable. Zyneth frowns at a spot in front of him, and Noli leans her head over, as if to get in his line of sight, and waves. He looks up with a start.

“Are you alright?” I ask him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“That would be much preferable,” Zyneth says. “I know how to handle ghosts.”

Well that raises a whole bunch of questions I didn’t have before.

The bartender sets a mug of beer down before Zyneth, and he wastes no time taking a deep, long drink. He finally sets it down with a sigh and looks at me.

“Vardi’s back.”