Zyneth hovers over the pile of sand uncertainly. “So I just fire a bolt of lightning into this? You really think that will work?”

Since I’m immune to lightning type arcana, I’m not overly worried about it going wrong. But at Zyneth’s insistence, we relocated the sand pile on top of a wooden pallet so as not to electrocute the whole sub. I figure, worst case scenario we just zap a bunch of sand and nothing happens; then we can play around with his fire magic instead.

“Can’t hurt to try,” I say. “I’ve heard of sand at a beach being turned to glass after getting struck by lightning. So it must be possible, right?”

“I suppose,” Zyneth says, dubious. “Well, alright then. As you said, no harm in trying.”

Yellow light appears in his hands as he holds them over the sand. Sparks of electricity crawl around his fingers. The glow gets brighter, like he’s charging it up. I guess he’s worried about it not being as powerful as real lightning, so he’s giving it some extra juice. More licks of electricity zap around his hands, sparking angrily off into the air around his fingers. The light becomes white.

“Here we go,” he says.

I don’t actually see the bolt of lightning strike the sand. It’s so fast, I only see the resulting effect. Which is sand exploding through the room.

Even my Attuned void can’t act quick enough to shield me. Thousands of tiny grains sand-blast me at point-blank range. It pings off my glass and buries itself in my clothes. I jerk back half a second too late, raising a hand as the predator swirls an alarmed wave of void around me, but by then, the sand has already passed us by.

[1 point of Piercing damage sustained.]

Zyneth’s face is screwed up tight, eyes squeezed shut, mouth pursed in a grimace. His hand is still outstretched over the now-empty pallet. A fine layer of sand covers every inch of him.

I can’t help but laugh as Zyneth cracks an eye open, then blows out a quick breath, sending a scattering of sand from his lips.

“Okay, so maybe a little harm in trying,” I say.

Zyneth turns away to spit more grit from his mouth and rub his hands down his face. I similarly shake my clothes off, sending a snowfall to the ground with every pat. The predator recedes back into my mind now that the apparent danger has passed, still confused as to what had actually happened.

“Well that was idiotically predictable,” Zyneth says, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t expect that from the start.”

“I can be persuasive like that,” I say, still highly amused. “Get you so focused on the goal that you don’t think of the consequences in pursuing it. Actually, that’s rather the story of my life.”

Zyneth continues to pick grit out of his eyes. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“Probably not,” I admit. “But hey, we learned something, right? That’s science!”

“I suspect a bit more theory is involved,” Zyneth says, but as he glances at me, he cracks a smile as well. “You’re filthy.”

I remove my head to examine: it and my hands were the only exposed glass that took a hit from the sand explosion. “Too bad there’s no bathtub in here.”

Zyneth groans, turning his head to the side and flicking at his ear. “Don’t remind me. At least you don’t have to worry about feeling sweaty and disgusting all the time. But we can’t risk wasting our limited resources on something so superficial.”

“Good hygiene is not superficial,” I say. “But point taken.” The surface of my glass is a bit scuffed up now: looking through it makes the world seem slightly foggy and white. Annoying, but easily fixed with a quick Sculpt.

Zyneth glances around the room while I fix my glass, and abruptly breaks out into a laugh.

“What?” I ask.

“What a mess,” Zyneth says. “Gillow would have hated this.”

“Hah.” I look around as well. “They really would have.” I’m not ashamed to admit that brings me immense satisfaction.

Zyneth grins. “I really didn’t like that one. As amusing as it would have been to see their face, I’m glad they’re not here now.”

“Even though that means it’s just you and me trapped in an aimless submarine at the bottom of the ocean?”

Zyneth looks at me, eyes crinkled in amusement. “Especially because of that.”

My soul warms. How can it be that I’ve never felt so at home as I do here? I’m trapped in a glass shell, possibly forever: I died, I lost my body, I lost my sense of identity. Yet a distant sense of dread I hadn’t even been entirely aware of is now gone. I no longer feel like I’m running to or away from anything. I’m just here, in this moment. How can our situation be so dire, and yet I feel so hopeful?

Zyneth finishes dusting himself off and turns back to the pallet, tipping his head curiously.

No, I know why.

“It looks like our efforts weren’t completely in vain,” Zyneth says, gesturing to the spot where the pile of sand had been.

“What do you mean?” I ask, leaning forward. “Oh, hey! You’re right.”

I’d missed it at first, hidden against the zig-zagging black branches the lightning had burned into the wood. But there is something left behind: a branching clump of sand, like a nest of rocky veins. It’s only about two inches long. Still, I give it a Check.

[A piece of fulgurite,] Echo says.

“It doesn’t look like glass,” I say. It’s black and brown, and certainly not transparent. I activate Elemental Dowsing. Sure enough, the clump of sand lights up. “But I guess it is. What do you know?”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“At least we have something to show for this mess,” Zyneth chuckles. “Your theory was correct.”

“See?” I gingerly reach a hand for the piece of glass, but hover my hand just above it. It looks incredibly fragile. I use a tendril of void to lift it instead, not trusting my unyielding glass fingers to be gentle enough. “Science!”

Zyneth holds out a hand, and I give it to him. He turns the strange, stick-like clump of rock over in his palm. “I admit, it is an intriguing idea. We could try different types of sand as we travel and see if that results in a different strength. It’s not as if we have much else to do with our time. Although, we should probably create a more contained volume for me to use my lightning so we don’t end up with a repeat of this endeavor.” He laughs. “The cargo bay would be a beach by the time we’re done with it.”

“I’ll get on that,” I say, already wondering how I can use my Attuned glass to create a box or container in which to keep the sand we experiment with. Might help with collecting it, too.

Zyneth hands the melted sand back to me, and I pocket it for later. I’m excited to play around with it and try sculpting it into different shapes, but I’ll need to spend some time Attuning it first. I can’t wait to get my hands on bigger pieces. In the meantime…

“Alright,” I say, floating some fractured pieces of glass over. I’m not sure if they’d originally been part of my torso or arms or legs, but since I’ve been puzzling my body back together from the Emrox fight, I’ve been storing all the smaller loose bits with my signing glass. “This next.”

Zyneth raises an eyebrow. “You want me to electrocute that? I’m not sure it will have a comparable effect.”

“Especially as I’m immune to lightning damage,” I say. “No, I was thinking we try fire, next. How hot can you get it?”

Zyneth frowns. “I’m not sure. I’m less practiced with my fire magic. I can try to make it as hot as I can, however I’m worried about the rest of our surroundings. One bolt of lightning is a brief expenditure of energy. But if we keep a fire in here for very long, it might start heating up the air—an air supply which I am very much dependent on. Additionally, I’m not sure how hot glass needs to get before it begins to deform. Higher or lower than metal, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Lower?”

Zyneth turns his hands up in a shrug. “Hopefully: as if we try to heat this up on a section of the floor, I wouldn’t want to melt the vessel before we melted the glass.” He sighs. “An artificing book would be extremely useful right now.”

“Maybe we don’t have to go all the way to the melting point,” I say. “We could try a couple things: Heat it and let it cool naturally. Heat it, and then I Sculpt it while it’s still hot. Heat it and rapidly cool it. And so on. Then I can test the strength of each different configuration…”

“You’re starting to sound like a real mage,” Zyneth remarks.

“...by bashing it against the ground.”

Zyneth rubs his forehead.

“No, wait,” I say. “Go back to calling me a real mage.”

“I feel the procedure for testing your hypothesis might need more rigor.”

“Well how about this.” I activate a Sculpt on the test piece of glass, segmenting it into four equal-sized marbles. “If it’s small, it shouldn’t take as much heat or time. I can hold it in the air for you if you can heat it between your hands. Maybe the closer you can get to it, the less wasted heat will disperse into the rest of the room. Then we can compare the strength of each of the four marbles. I’ll keep one back as the control to compare the others to.”

Zyneth stares at me. “How can you sound so clueless one moment and so clever the next?”

“I’m a man of mysteries.” One of my starter roles in film was as a background scientist character whose only function was to look hot and spout technobabble. I might have picked up a thing or two.

Zyneth cups his hands around the bead of glass. “Yes, I think this might work. Are you ready to try now?”

“Go for it,” I say. “I’m just here to watch.”

Zyneth’s hands glow yellow, and then warm firelight flickers to life between his palms. I can feel the warmth wash over the marble.

Wait.

Zyneth presses his hands together tighter and flames flare between his fingers with an intense light. At the same time, the heat hits me.

[1 point of Fire damage sustained.]

“OW! Wait wait wait wait!” I instinctively snatch the marble back to me, pulling it from Zyneth’s fingers.

He looks at me in surprise, letting his fire die. “I’m sorry! I didn’t realize—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I say, the pain already gone. Like a papercut. “I forgot I feel through these too, even if they can’t really hurt me. One moment, let me think.”

I’ve been able to turn other senses on and off in my Attuned pieces of glass. Namely just sight and hearing. But ‘touch’ is the third sense I can use through my Attunements.

Echo, I think. Can the sense of touch be turned off in my Attuned glass?

[Affirmative.]

I’d smack myself in my head if I wasn’t worried about breaking anything. You mean this whole time I’ve been feeling pain every time one of my Attuned pieces of glass broke and I didn’t even need to?!

[Query unrecognized.]

“Ridiculous,” I grumble. Echo, turn off my sense of touch in this piece of glass.

[Affirmative.]

Instantly, the glass marble becomes invisible. Well, not literally, but invisible to my mind. I can’t feel the air against it any more: no temperature, no pressure, no sense of movement. No wonder ‘touch’ is turned on by default. Without it, it’s infinitely more difficult to sense and manipulate. So I guess this isn’t the “turn pain receptors off” quick fix I thought it might be. But it’s at least useful for this experiment.

“Okay,” I say, floating it back over to Zyneth. It’s wobbly in the air, and I almost overshoot him. “It’s a little wonky, but I’ve got it fixed. Shouldn’t feel anything now.”

“That easy?” he asks, raising his hands once more to cup the bead.

“It has some drawbacks,” I say. “Definitely won’t be able to walk around with my sense of touch turned off across my whole body. But a couple pieces should be fine.”

“Alright then,” Zyneth says, hesitating. “You sure you want to try again?”

“Very sure,” I assure him.

Fire blooms into his hands. This time it goes better. I don’t feel a thing, and Zyneth is able to press his hands closed around the glass marble as he manifests a furnace within. Another downside to not being able to feel the glass is that I have no idea how hot it is, or if it’s close at all to melting. After a minute, Zyneth cracks his fingers open, and we both lean over to peer inside.

“Aha!” It’s a red-orange color. “We did it! Well, you did it.”

“Now what?” Zyneth wonders.

I set that marble aside to cool. “We try again with a new one. This time, I’ll activate a Sculpt on it while it’s hot. Ready?”

We spend the morning experimenting with different levels of heat and ways of cooling the glass down. When the glass is room temperature, my Sculpt seems to make it weaker, but when I sculpt the glass while it’s more malleable, it ends up stronger once it’s cooled to room temperature. Zyneth even lets me use a bit of his water for dunking the heated glass beads into some water, which disappointingly results in the bead cracking all over until it shatters. As Zyneth puts it: “That’s an important data point, at least.”

We only break when Zyneth declares it’s time for lunch. I sit back to admire my work: both the successes and the failures.

[Heated glass,] Echo reports as I examine them. [+1 durability. Heated Sculpted glass: +2 durability. Rapidly cooled glass: -1 durability.]

It’s not a lot, but it shows promise. I wonder how the fulgurite will compare to my previously Attuned pieces. And if Zyneth helps me make more, if those will be any different from each other. I might end up with different types of glass designed to serve different functions. The idea excites me.

What a strange thought. Yet I haven’t felt this proud of an accomplishment since I first arrived on this world, when I’d been crafting bits and pieces of my body together from broken tableware. It’s amazing how an act as simple as making something can feel so satisfying.

And I’m just getting started.