Two days of sand slapping taught the earth magi enough about mana to line a road with sandstone bricks. A road that the felinids laid then marched across a few dozen times, nicely compacting it. While Owen and four other paladins added walls until the crystal fortress’ inner sanctum was completed. Twas little more than an elevated dome of foggy quartz. With dozens of multi-hued striations in the monolithic building, evidence of each magi working their mana a bit differently than the next and somehow creating a different kind of quartz. There was yellow citrine, and purple amethyst, rosey reds, and vague blues. It was the same with the lesser paladin’s chants, while the words were the same, minor inflections, phrasing, or stutters varied between the paladins, somehow reflecting in their work. After the first day Liam allowed the paladins to use chants. Sandstone was needed just as much as the quartz, and forcing religious knights to practice impotence wasn’t on Liam’s fortress building timetable. Not when it would delay progress.
“Owen?” Asked Liam.
“Yessir!” Said an older paladin standing behind Liam.
“Why can we see differences in the walls? Look, there is a rose tinted section between citrine and amethyst sections, but your paladins are all equally capable are they not?” Asked Liam.
The oldest paladin under First Captain Thaddeus, frowned, walking to the dome’s wall and eyeballing the structure. His bare hands ran over the smooth quartz, channeling mana into the rock as he examined it. Wherever his mana touched, impurities dripped out of the stone, immediately clarifying the wall and creating something of a window.
“My apologies, but it seems we failed to execute your orders sir, I’ll order the magi back in to fix–”
“--Peace man! There is no need to fix anything. You lot are always so jumpy. Look around you, we have walls!” Said Liam, eyes going wide as the paladin apologized to him. “Owen, your magi have done excellent work! There is no punishment necessary. I’m just curious, The rainbow of colors is kinda pretty, and we don’t want the whole fortress to be clear, otherwise the lavatory will be a wee bit uncomfortable. In fact, we might want to tint that particular room a bit darker.”
Owen’s mustache waggled, “Ha, quite right sir. My apologies, lord.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Owen! Stop calling me lord! You’re older than my grandparents, hearing formalities from you makes me feel gross! My life’s been hectic enough already. I need someone I can just talk to, like a normal human being.”
“Strange turn of phrase for an elf, but very well sir– ah, ha, it almost says itself.” Said Owen, referring to the honorific.
“An elf, hmm… What does being an elf even entail? A human bore me, birthed me, fed me, and raised me. Aside from… These ears? I’m human. I can’t access wind magic, yet. Well, I guess I have greater access to mana, but if that’s from Taloc’s meddling or my elven heritage,” Liam shrugged, “I am, in every practical way, a human.” Said Liam.
“You’ll outlive us all.”
“Then maybe in a hundred years I’ll stop calling myself a human. Or maybe that is when I will fully accept the moniker of elf.” Said Liam. “But first, we have to survive the gorgons. Cmon Owen, the walls can’t be too clear. Or else we’ll end up a bit too hard, and i’m not old enough for that sort of thing!”
That got a snort from Owen, the elder man finally softening. “You’re a strange one, but I have no answers as to why some walls are yellow or purple or red.”
Liam nodded, eager to have a mystery he could apply all of his thought to, anything to distract from his Mayan errors.
“I’m going to need buckets of sand, for each of these striations, only half full mind you, take the buckets from each area where there is a color shift and collect the paladins who created each wall during lunch. I want to test their powers, just small things, nothing fancy. And be sure to thank them for their hard work, at the rate we are going, Khereshetal might just survive.” Said Liam, smiling up at the man.
“Yes sir!” Said Owen, departing quickly to orchestrate the toddler’s demand for a sand box.
Liam sighed, paladins were so rigid in their thoughts and hierarchy. Nothing at all like Eldred or Jenkins or Arlet, and far too similar to Blackwood.
‘Quetz, how many magi have leveled up, it’s been three days of non-stop casting. But I’m not seeing or sensing anyone grow.’
‘Two have leveled up sssirrr.’ Answered Quetzalcoatl.
Liam didn’t rise to the bait. Quetz always came across as an asshole, but he wasn’t sure if the serpent meant to be a great white dick, or if he just, wasn’t human. Or even a mammal.
‘Two? Haven’t there been forty or so? Why only two?’ Asked Liam, receiving the mental head sway version of a shrug.
That baffled Liam, all of the magi were working hard and using their magic, reciting chants and applying themselves fully. Or close enough to fully that it shouldn’t matter. They should have progressed, so why hadn’t they? He’d advanced by using magic constantly, often leveling up when he ran low on mana. The difference was odd, and left Liam pondering what a level really was.
A half hour later Liam was sitting with a dozen buckets and a dozen piles of sand, with the five paladins who were giving him nervous glances.
Owen, why couldn’t you just wait for lunch! Fine, we’ll figure this out live.
Liam began to walk around the circle of sand, carefully spreading out each pile so he could get a good look at it, proving once and for all, that he was looking at sand.
Aw hell, I was trying to go to medical school! Not become a geologist! Ugh, this is like the worst part of every group project, the moment when we’ve received the rubric and ‘equally divvy up’ the work. Which means I do it all. Thought Liam, swatting a pile of the strangely white sand and scattering it.
White particles glistened next to a dark speck, the contrast catching his eye. With one elongated finger he poked the smudge, half of the dark speck broke away, some amalgamation of dirt and ferrous material. While the white particles pricked his finger like the shard of glass it was.
He glanced at the wall, then to the window, then down to the smudge. A lightbulb appeared in his mind’s eye. Inclusions. While he wasn’t a geologist, college had required him to take biochemistry, molecular biology, physics 101, and advanced physics for his associates degree. He understood atoms and molecules, but no one in this world did. Each of the magi visualized the spell differently in their minds, and those small differences resulted in different inclusions in the quartz walls. But that was just a theory, and one he wasn’t sure how to confirm.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Glasswork here was advanced enough for telescopes, but in general it required magic, since sand melted at roughly 3000 degrees Freedom, (Farenheit) it required an extremely high level of magic that wasn’t available to anyone outside of a sage or a college of magi who worked in tandem, lending their mana to a single expert caster. A much more attainable substance was Quartz, which only required 1000 degrees of Freedom units to form. One third the temperature which was exponentially less energy invested. It also seemed to require one third the mana to form, another factor that seemed to laugh at levels and suggest they were more science than magic.
Liam scattered the sand more, then bent over it, jerking away as his breath blew away particles.
“Oops.” He whispered, biting the front of his lips together so he was breathing out the side of his mouth.
Up close, he could see all kinds of differing particles, organic dusts, red tinged ferrous oxides, tiny black specks and many irregular white bits.
[Mana Domination] activated at Liam’s command, a precursor to enable the weaving of magic in ways that normally required a much higher affinity for earth. Then he commanded the metal within the sand to clump together and excise itself, using his lightning affinity as the polarizing core to magnetize any ferrous particles. In the span of a minute, the iron collected into a ball, pulled from the surrounding sand. Next he activated his earth affinity, channeling his mana into the sand and ordering it to seek out anything that was once living and clump it together. This order came without further direction, allowing the mana to work out the details Liam could not. It drained power from him, a far larger amount than he felt was necessary, sweat beaded on his forehead, and his spine tingled from mana flowing rapidly out of him.
He opened his eyes, and found the spell had gone a bit awry, not only had his mana sorted his pile, but it had pulled particles from all of the sand piles and even some of the paladin’s boots! Streaks of sand lay in a sunburst around Liam, marking the passage of metallic and organic particles.
“Huh, not what I wanted…” Liam muttered, contemplating why such a pattern had occurred.
He looked at the different patterns, noticing the ferrous starburst pattern was made up of deeper striations, as if the particles had moved with greater force and rapidity. But that would make sense since it pulled from his lightning affinity, his strongest power.
He aimed one finger at the ferrous blob, encasing it in a shadowshield before setting his fire to work on it, he imagined atmospheric gases being forced out of the shield, and prohibited from re-entry, like a bouncer at a Miami club on saturday night. Only rich oxygen was allowed into this party.
Hungry flames tasted iron, attempting to consume the inconsumable while the shield of darkness pressed into the iron, compressing it. Carbon sweated from the ferric lattice, squeezed out by Liams second and fourth most familiar powers. Abilities he wielded –like he’d once intended on wielding a scalpel– to forge a rod of steel. He maneuvered the metal, squeezing it with an inexorable force until the rod was as thin as a pencil and as long as his forearm, then he set the rod on a bed of white sand, leaving it to cool.
That went surprisingly well! If it works for steel, let's try our hand at quartz.
He turned to a pile of ‘sorted’ sand, sand that lacked any organic or metallic inclusions and activated his earth affinity, as always, [mana manipulation] greased his aetheric engine, allowing greater control than should have been possible for a weak magi. Mana flowed from one sand particle to the next fusing an endless lattice of dust into a brick of sandstone, and in moments he was looking at a standardized brick, identical to the ones the other magi were making. He hefted the brick, finding it more solid and weighty than his frame could handle.
“Oof, uhm… I’m too scrawny.” Said Liam, looking up at the paladins.
Who were all watching him with wide eyes. As if he were a stripper made of gold, and was handing out thousand dollar gift cards.
“Hi there! Break this rock please, I need to know if it’s any good.” Ordered Liam.
Owen took the rock, and snapped it like a week old biscuit. Chuckles burst from the other paladins, realizing his miracle of affinities had resulted in a slightly imperfect final product.
“Guess you’re at least half mortal.” Said Owen, his mustache curling just enough to show a smile. “Tis no shame to not get every spell right on the first step. Time is required to develop our skills, hone them and– Hey! Are you even listening?” Asked Owen.
The answer was a resounding no.
When the brick had crumbled Liam was shocked, then he realized his obvious mistake, the sand was arranged, but tack welded together instead of fully forged into quartz. Sandstone was brittle, and would always be brittle, but quartz was a different beast, one formed more like diamonds with both heat and pressure applied, not formed with simple compaction like sandstone.
Heat and pressure, exactly what he’d done with the iron rod. This time he aimed for the purest white glass sand, filtering it a second time with magic then compressing it and tack welding the dust particles into a vague lattice, but instead of stopping there he engulfed the brick with dark energy, compressing it and adding the fire affinity until the sand melted. A quick second considering the relatively-lower melting point of sand compared to ferrous iron.
When it finally cooled he was left with a perfectly clear crystal, far superior to what the other earth magi had created, though it was equally foreign. Since he had only used his earth affinity as a pair of hands, sorting and scooping particles. A neat trick, but impractical, I can’t scale this process up or use it quickly. cast this slowly, nor can I waste this much magic for such a small output…
“Master, teach us your incantation!” Begged Owen, falling to his knees and crawling so close to the cube of glass Liam began to wonder if he meant to lick it.
“Uhh… Don’t touch that–” Began Liam, only to be set upon by over-eager paladins.
“Yes,. teach us!”
“Teach us so we may teach the others!”
“In Taloc’s name! How did you create something so perfect?”
A chorus of pleading supplicants followed, continually overriding Liam’s small voice until he summoned a hint of thunder.
“SHUT UP!” Boomed throughout the glass fortress, echoing through the streets of Kheresh, all the way up to the Duke’s own ears.
Paladins scattered, covering their ears and trampling Liam’s neat sandbox. He glared at them, with all the wrath a toddler could manage, and coming across as marginally cute. A moment passed before anyone spoke or moved further, giving Liam a second to think.
“Ahem, my creation is garbage, it is not what I wish you to replicate, nor did I use earth affinity. By my own standards, I've failed. Building glass bricks in this manner is a waste of time and mana. This was only a proof of concept. I believe this rainbow is because each of you are picturing something slightly different when you cast your magic, which leads to your individual visions picking up different impurities.” Said Liam, walking to the wall and pointing to a harsh line between the orange yellow of citrine quartz and the purple white of amethyst. “Look, both of these walls are better than mine, It would take me months to forge this much sand into walls like this! But we only have a few days left before the gorgons arrive! And the outer walls will have to be mostly opaque.”
“Oh, I see what you mean my lord, the outer walls must be dark enough to prevent petrification.” Said Owen, twirling the ends of his mustache, but still hunched over Liam’s glass cube.
The church is gonna make that brick into a relic, probably build a fancy shmancy shrine to commemorate it’s ‘perfection’. Ugh… I kinda want to go make it lopsided now.
“Yeah, exactly, It would be neat if you could make them all a much darker version of this yellow, maybe if you mix yellow and purple you’ll get a smokey brown color that’s dark enough to hide behind. I know you’ve all been working hard, but we aren’t done yet. And… I have a confession to make…”
He paused, meeting every pair of eyes staring back at him.
“Once this fortress is completed, I intend to surrender it to Calypso. Let’s make it as vibrant as her scales.”