The small workshop was rather barren and blatantly abandoned, tacked onto the side of an older Villa probably decades ago. With the advent of firearms and deium tech, such practices and hobbies became obsolete, only held on by those with money to spare and Empyreans in need of unique gear. It was a dying craft to say the least.
Caisus sat at the entrance to the workshop, nowhere near any of the equipment as per Silas’ instructions. The Nightweaver himself prepared to get to work, fueling the furnace, arranging all the tools nearby and prepping a barrel for quenching. The materials themselves didn’t have to be refined at all, they just needed to be alloyed together and made into a chisel.
Luckily for one time use runes like Silas wanted to make, quality didn’t really matter and he could use the same chisel for multiple. The issue was, he’s never touched a chisel before. Actually, he’s never touched anything in this place before. All he had going for him was what the Inscription Art told him to do.
Silas had many materials from ores, bones, herbs and even blood. What he needed to figure out was a recipe for any of these things that would get them to properly solidify and hold together as a single material. The difficulty of that is exactly why he bought so much.
Silas melted down a batch of metals and poured half a vial of blood into the liquid metal mixture, slowly scooping out any slag that formed in the crucible. Once all the slag was out, he poured a generous amount of blood into the mixture straight from his palm, then poured it into the prepared mold next to him. He waited for it to cool by preparing another chisel. Then another. And another.
After ten chisels and about half his materials, The first one finally cooled enough to hold. With a deep breath, Silas picked up the chisel and silently focused on his new tattoo. As it grew bright, he felt no connection to the chisel in his hand. Failure.
The second chisel. Failure. Failure. Failure. The only one that worked was the Seventh Chisel, made from a mix of bone, metal and blood. Yet, it wasn’t the only chisel that had those materials or those types. Was it a ratio?
[A chisel must have three things. Power, malleability, and a relay.]
Power for the rune. Malleability for transmutation. Relay for receiving his Will. The Lotus’ words were like enlightenment, albeit he still had no idea what materials were good for what. That being said, a successful example was luckily right in front of him.
Silas took his materials and separated them into piles based on type; blood, bone, metal, and herb. Then he just made relative guesses. Blood and bone were parts of a living creature, they should be able to act as a relay, right? The latter can even be power.
Blood and herbs can represent malleability, while bone and metal represents power. These weren’t solid divisions, obviously, but they allowed him to paint a better picture of the ‘system’ in his head. The next few chisels were simply experimenting with that thought, until eventually he got some chisels that almost formed a connection but failed at the end.
With only a few batches of materials left, he finally reproduced the Seventh Chisel and followed that formula to a T, ending the experiment with four rune chisels. Silas was covered in sweat, dust and charcoal, thanking himself silently for having taken off his coat and shirt long before he started. Caisus sat over on the side, a thin film of blood energy protecting him as he slept.
Good grief. Silas sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow and pulling a box of bullets from his bag. This was going to be the hard part, actually using the chisels to create something. Not only that, but the Inscription Art mentioned an incredible tax on the person using it, exhaustion coming easily.
As the tattoo shone bright and Silas felt a piece of himself fade away, he placed the chisel against the bullet and lifted the hammer up, bringing it down gently against the chisel’s top. With a clank, the chisel visibly shrunk in his hand albeit only slightly. With another hit, it shrunk even more. Five minutes passed by and when Silas was finished, a dark blue rune lit up the side of the bullet like lightning. World energy was drawn to it, settling down inside the rune until it was full.
With the same chisel, he got to work on the next bullet. This time the rune remained inert when he finished, the design slightly off somewhere he couldn’t quite tell. The next one succeeded, then the next two failed. The chisel turned into ashes after the last failure, devoid of all spirituality.
Two bullets, one chisel. With three more chisels to go, Silas didn’t like his odds. Out of energy, the Nightweaver picked Caisus up and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, carrying him ‘home’.
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He ate dinner with The Director and Glass again, then got to work refining the kids' nightmares. The mutes especially provided lots of high quality fear energy, each one widening the crack just a little bit on the Nightmare Seed.
His routine continued on like this for three days, allowing him to figure out exactly how much Rune carving he can do in a day- one chisel. After one chisel, he was so exhausted he could barely walk himself home. On the bright side, he was steadily improving the amount of bullets he refined.
On that first day he refined two. Two the next day. Three the day after that, and somehow four on the last day, amounting to a total of 11 Rune Bullets. Each one shown with a lustrous blue glow, charging the air around them with electricity. Silas kept them in one of the sealed, metal compartments on his belt.
Silas walked out of the workshop with the Noble Eye in hand, sliding the 11th bullet into the chamber and levelling it with a rather large boulder he picked up from one of the boulevards. It was easily a few feet thick and over a thousand pounds, Silas barely able to lift it even as a Fourth Gate Empyrean. Over thirty feet away from it, he aimed the Noble Eye and took a deep breath.
He pulled the trigger and the bullet pierced the air, striking the boulder dead on. As the bullet struck the stone, the rune shattered and the energy contained within exploded in a flash of wild arcs, lightning searing the surface and shattering several pieces of stone from the rock, sending them flying into the ground beside it.
Trump card against Aberrants, evens the playing field against those like Davids. Silas immediately felt a greater sense of security upon seeing the result, only wishing he could have made even more. Not even a Physique Establishment could take one of these unfazed.
Caisus ran up to him as he holstered the Noble Eye, letting out exclamations along the lines of ‘that was so cool’ and ‘can you teach me, pretty please?’ Silas bribed him with a promise of doing so when he was older, which calmed the boy for now. Maybe they could even make Rune Carving a family business. Not that Sebastian would participate.
Could he carve guns, too? What would it do? He didn’t have anywhere near the know-how, but a magic gun seemed pretty cool..
Silas walked by Lilith’s place as he went home, seeing her sitting on her porch through the fog. She was somewhat hunched over her hand, resting it on the table as the other moved around it. Caisus pointed her out from his shoulder with a small pout. “Can we see the fire lady? My snake is fading.”
“Sure buddy.” Silas smiled, reaching up and ruffling the boy’s hair. He approached Lilith’s porch, seeing she was tattooing herself with a mark not unlike the one he had on his hand right now. Was she trying too? She really seemed like she wanted to learn about the Fire Runes.
Lilith barely acknowledged him with a glance, focused on her work. Silas understood, sitting down across from her in silence, waiting patiently. It seemed she was already half done, so he only waited half an hour, if even. When she finally finished, she looked back up at him with a pale face. “Do you need something, Silvanus?”
“Still with the long name, eh? Caisus here was hoping you could touch up on his snake friend.” Silas grabbed the boy’s arm gently and waved his hand around, showing off the faded marking. The Solari nodded, grabbing a new needle from her bag and a new vial of ink.
Just as she moved, Silas felt his heart stop. His hairs stood on end and his body reacted before his mind did, blood energy pouring over Caisus with incredible speed. The fog grew denser around them, the Corruption within growing in quantity and quality. He could practically see tendrils of fog trying to burrow through the blood energy on Caisus’ skin.
There was a shift around him, like the world itself grew faint. It wasn’t just that the Corruption increased but the world energy decreased, being pushed out of the space like it was an intruder. He felt a disconnect from the world around him.
Silas was being rejected.
Lilith darted into her house while Silas ran off the porch straight home, cursing all about how he can never get a real break. It even felt like the fog now was restraining his movements, making him just a little slower than he really was.
Within moments he caught sight of the Villa and only seconds later he burst through its door, finding The Director standing in the middle of all the kids, grey blood energy coating their skin like armour. Silas heaved a sigh of relief- none of them had turned. It seems anyone with enough strength was able to sense the shift coming this time.
The Director slammed his cane against the ground, his expression dark as he looked at Silas. “We need to head to the Manor, now. We’ll be leaving soon.”
“Wait, leaving? Like, leaving leaving?”
“The deal was we would leave Ironside immediately upon another shift. We cannot guarantee when or if another will happen.” The Director strode out the door, Silas keeping up the best he can and refining all the fear. “If we don’t catch up with them now, they’ll leave without us.”
“But we have no idea what it’s like beyond the Market District-”
“Bishop Archimedes and his Priests are still alive. We’ll fight our way out if we have to.”
“But what about the casualties?!” Silas knew that if they were willing to abandon even The Director for not showing up on time, they’d be abandoning hundreds if not thousands of people who simply were too afraid to come. They had a unique place because of their power, but they didn’t. “People will die-”
The Director stopped, closing his eyes for a deep breath. When he exhaled, his eyes opened with a glint of resolve, leading the kids towards the manor without stopping again. Silas didn’t mention it again, knowing he had made up his mind. The question was, had he?
He had a choice to make. Question after question fired through his mind, answer after answer following suit. It didn’t take long for him to settle on one single answer. People, yes, but not his people. And right now, his responsibility was his people.