The next few days consisted of us starting our training. I was also starting to notice some progress in my mana control. It still felt like trying to will a thick honey to move but everything felt slightly faster. I still lacked awareness of my inscription though. With some people, they would feel a space, a hole inside them they described as where they could funnel their mana into. That was the inscription’s rift.
The realm connection there would widen as swathes of mana poured into it. I felt nothing. Nada. No rift, no gap, not even a fraying. This wasn’t uncommon per se, but it was unlucky. It meant that I would likely need to have something that triggered a more instinctual use of my inscription and then focus on the flow of my mana in order to get a feel for it. Considering what my inscription was… focusing on mana control while it's being triggered wasn’t something I was particularly pleased to have to do. I’d need a relatively controlled environment to put myself in lethal danger, no pressure.
Honestly, in hindsight, Liz making me do mana control was definitely the right call on her part. Again. It’s said people with strong mana control, often mana artists who become scribed did become high-profile ones.
That reminded me, I reflected on Liz’s skills with mana control and they were more impressive than I gave her credit for. I’ve seen her shoot a mana bolt from her stomach as a gag, which in hindsight wasn’t something I’ve ever actually seen in any of the low-level mana contests I’ve seen online.Her mana density was also extremely high. Her bolts often shimmered in the visible light spectrum, something that only happened when mana was in an extremely dense form. It was something in hindsight I should’ve questioned more but I’ve always been more focused on my own shit to really notice oddities with other people.
Regarding the job Liz and I were looking for, I received a text from Martha yesterday night about a test job for me and Liz. She said she found something that “would play to our combined strengths,” which I was not looking forward to. I know I’ve mentioned Liz was good in a fight to Martha before and it appeared that was going to bite me in the ass. Go figure.
I snapped out of my thoughts as I almost drew a wrong line on my diagram. The water gauntlet design was coming along nicely, much better than the previous one. Honestly, the last iteration was rushed, impeded by how distracted I was at the time. I still had plenty on my mind but the resources I bought from Martha made me hesitant to leave them on an unworthy product.
Right now I was planning rune and mana gem placement after finishing the gauntlets' rough sketch. The gem would go into the palm closest to the wards which would be used in order to force water to condense in the palm. This would mean there wouldn't need to be massive alaster mana circuits leading between the two giving me more room for intricate functionality. At the base of the thumb, I was planning on the ward for heat transference to cause the water to rapidly phase change to ice. This wouldn't work well if there was too much water, or say the water was boiling hot already.
This also wasn't a true heat transference ward, those could transfer heat both ways through some mechanism that was far above my capabilities to understand. Sadly runes could exactly adapt with intention in the way inscriptions could, it made warcraft far more difficult. All wards could really process whether they were getting the required amount of mana or not.
I stared at the heat-sucking design a bit irritated. This design sucked the heat via a realm vent. Being able to use the heat would have been nice, though I have no idea how I would have vented it. Oh well.
Near the base of the index finger, I used a shaping rune that would manipulate the water into an orb shape. The orb shaping rune was one of the simplest shaping runes as it just requires packing everything as tight to a point as it will go.
Next was the high-pressure blast. Kineticism runes were relatively rare and those that weren't tended to be really weak. There were plenty online but there are laundry lists of problems usually with wards listed online, mostly with mana inefficiency. Luckily whoever made the ward book the thief gave me was a competent ward researcher, it wasn't the most efficient wards, but many of these bypassed variants I learned from easily accessible sources. The wardbook the thief had given me had a repulsion rune so I decided this was something I wanted to add in this iteration because… honestly, shooting water was impressive looking. It might not be the most efficient thing but I could see uses for it.
The repulsion rune would go on the glove on the inside of the gauntlet as an alaster inlay. This would give the ward extremely high mana conductivity. Wait. This would compromise the water-gathering rune since it'd be able to absorb mana much more efficiently. Unless I do the same on the inside of the metal gauntlet to increase its mana conductivity. That would also allow for a much denser ball of water and for it to gather water faster, especially from things like the atmosphere.
Those were the easy parts of the design. The hard one was the spike. I didn’t have the shaping runes necessary to make one without an extremely complicated design. I was stuck here not going to lie, I lacked the knowledge for this. Time to call Ella.
“Hey Trey,” Ella answered. Her voice was drained and laced with weariness.
“You okay?” I asked wondering why she sounded so tired. I looked at the time, 20:00. It wasn’t that late.
I heard her shuffle a bit, the silence starving my curiosity until Ella decided to satiate it, “I’ve been a bit busy and ran ragged is all. I’m guessing you’re ready to start building the project again?”
“Not yet, I made a couple changes and wanted to fly them by you as well as get your help with something I’m struggling with.”
Ella responded with a quiet hum at first, then she finally responded, “Sure but why didn’t you reuse our previous design? Do you not have the same materials?”
“Well… no? I actually managed to get my hands on some better stuff so I wanted to amp up the strength of some of the runes and experiment with them. I plan on running the rest of it by you when you come.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Understood, alright we can meet later this week?”
“Sure,” I said, “When are you free?”
The line was quiet again as I patiently waited for a response.
“How’s tomorrow? Tomorrow sound good?”
I didn’t expect her to be able to get out here so soon, “Sure, gotchu I’ll send you the address.”
“Actually, can you stop by and swing by and grab me? Only if it isn’t a problem, I don’t want to impose,”
“Oh no no, it's not a problem,” I responded. I knew Ella lived in the slums, the most crime-riddled part of the Blacklight district. Violent crime has likely picked up with the ‘bomb’ as well as the echoes of unrest that have been slowly rising. At least according to theories online.
Now I tended to take online discourse with a grain of salt. But when I went grocery shopping recently, I heard some people discussing some of what I read regarding country's strength and foreign policy. I started watching and reading the news again and noticed there were some articles being posted with concerns for national security and civil unrest.
Many people would often dismiss national security as an issue for us. We tended to be fairly isolationist as Alria was an island nation that was located far from any of the countries to our east, with thousands of miles of sea that are frequented with storms and mana beasts. The only neighboring nation was Spindor, which was a loose confederate of nation-states until around forty years ago. Their recent merging into a singular nation made it so they had to focus on domestic politics. These points left Alria in relative peace, and our discovery of a massive mana gem deposit—which was mostly theorized to have appeared sometime during the missing era—led to us having strong industry and military strength.
But recently people were concerned we were weakening as a nation. Conspiracy theories about government agents being behind the Central Bank attacks as well as concerns regarding how inscribed individuals are not being made to do mandatory military service.
That’s to say I ended up on an internet rabbit hole until my timer went off. It was the end of my artificing period and time to study for classes. There was still a general test I needed to prepare for in order to get into Northridge. I pulled up my flashcards app on my phone and began to grind them out.
I spent the next few hours studying for the general portion of the exam as I waited for Liz to get back. She was getting back randomly from early afternoon to late at night. She ended up coming in the dead of night, as I studied until 2 and she was nowhere to be seen.
_________________________________________________________________
I woke up the next day and went to make breakfast only to see Liz passed out on the couch. Her face was puffy and splotched with inflammation. Bandages clung to her cheek, and her right arm was wrapped in them.
I felt concern flare up, the urge to interrogate her flaring up inside me. I fought the urge down, smothering down the flare as she looked exhausted.
I had texted Ella earlier, she wanted me to pick her up at 11 am. Right now it was 7 and I still needed to keep my exercise regime up. I wanted to do it with Liz, the exercise together was a serene experience. Just time spent with a friend, two things I found myself in short supply. I bit the bullet and did it alone as Liz looked like someone had come for their pound of flesh and she needed the rest. Whenever she woke up I would be asking about what in the hells happened but that wouldn’t be here or now.
I did my morning exercise, consisting of stretching, running, and calisthenics before taking a shower and changing. Ella had sent her address and I recognized the place. It was the same address she gave me on that card earlier—apparently, the place she advertised was also where she lived.
I actually knew the general area too—through Martha as expected. She never actually sent me to the place where Ella stayed, but I recognized the street name. I was kind of curious to see the place, the card she gave me was really well-made. If the rest of the building was that well made it’d definitely stand out among the dilapidated infrastructure.
_____________________________________________________
I arrived and my first thought was maybe the inside was better. The building was tall, especially for this area, It stood at three stories. I sent her a text:
Outside.
She responded a few moments later telling me to go around back. I made my way around the building and found there was a door in the alleyway at the back of the building a few feet away from the dumpster. A few moments later, Ella slinked out the back.
“I’ll get you something on my way back,” Ella whispered turning around, and I saw a small boy standing at the entrance of the door. I waved at him and he waved back.
Ella looked sheepishly between us for a moment, “Alright Trey let’s go.”
“Stay save!” the boy said in a shouted whispering tone.
Ella turned around and told him, “Make sure to lock the door and check on your brother and sister, I’ll be back soon.”
He nodded and closed the door a moment later.
“Sibling?” I guessed, and Ella nodded.
“Yeah my younger brother, he watches over the younger one’s when I’m out or working.”
I grunted in acknowledgement. I wondered idly about her situation as we began the walk back to my apartment building but decided it wasn’t my place to pry. If she wanted to share she would choose to herself.
I glanced over at her. Her eyes scanned the area, a situational awareness that was common for Blacklight kids.
There was something off though. Her body radiated unease, a thick layer of tense paranoia emanating from her like body heat.
“You okay?” I asked, and I saw her body tense, suppressed surprise slipping from her facade of calm.
“Yeah, I’m good, just been a bit on edge lately. I think I’ve been sleep deprived.”
My intuition whispered that was an excuse but I don’t like pressing people for their personal details. I’d let it lie for now.
The two of us eventually arrived at my apartment. As I let us, I saw Liz had woken up. She had changed, wearing a clean new red sleeveless t-shirt and grey joggers. I could see the clothes she had on this morning in our shared laundry bin. Liz glanced over at us
“Taking after your big sis huh?” Liz said, a lecherous, troublemaking grin spreading on her face.
Ella had a confused look, and I just shook my head trying to make sure she didn’t engage in Liz’s antics.
“Fuck off, that’s why you thought you caught something when you had that UTI,” I sniped back as Liz laughed, flipped me off, and focused on watching the TV.
I led me and Ella over to the plastic table in the corner of the dining room that had the design documents for the revised project on them. Next to that were bins full of the materials needed.
Ella’s eyes widened as she looked at the materials. She likely knew how expensive they were and I could see the various questions that were bouncing around in her head at everything. I avoided that conversation entirely.
“Alright,” I said, “ready to get to work?”