On Eternium I – Excerpts from The Iron Book of Fire
...when smelting ingots fit for war, thou shalt mix Eight parts True steel, Eight parts Unageing steel, and one part of Gold.
If thou seek instead a body for jewelry and ornaments, mix all the way from one to Eight parts Unageing steel together with a part of Gold. Purer alloys shall hold more Light, while diluted alloys may be used only for channeling and will be harder to work with...
Late winter / Ice 783 ADM – Eternal Empire – Modona’s upper district – Merxau laboratory
“Yes?”
Victoria stared at him as if he had suddenly grown scales all over. He didn’t, he checked. He started fidgeting anxiously as she kept silently looking.
“If. If, I am to help you, there will be some conditions,” Victoria finally spoke,
Ulysse broke into a smile.
“I agree!”
“Without hearing them?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I uh...”
“Rhetoric,” She cut him off, “What is the most important thing for a Merentah to have?”
“...To be linked together,” He quoted in a droning voice.
“Yes, which means loyalty. We trust and help each other.”
This time, Ulysse didn’t say anything.
“First, tell me about this ‘ritual’ of yours – what it is about, are you allowed to practice magic, and did you know I was actually terrible at magic?”
“What!” His mouth hung agape, “How can you be bad, aren’t we all mages?”
Victoria chuckled, “Please, all mages? The main branch is practically devoid of it, we only have one, maybe two with you.” Her hand brushed against her pendant, “Could have gotten three... But you didn’t answer my other two questions.”
Ulysse stayed silent a few moments, processing the information and remembering Vic’s questions before answering, “The Librarian says I ‘may’. As for my ritual, it’s a... scale removal spell?”
“The way you say it... you came up with it yourself, right.” She gave him a knowing look, “You got your first mutation.”
It wasn’t a question.
He frowned, “Did you somehow read through my notes?!”
“Nah, I knew a little girl who also used to play with the words.”
“You mean, you?”
She nodded, “I got Saryn eyes at first.” Her lips curled into a nostalgic smile, “I could see through the dark, and react so quick. But they looked creepy, apparently.”
Ulysse squinted at her eyes, perfectly normal, no trace of yellow or slit pupils. “So, I was right, you can remove the mutations.”
“Lesser ones only. Don’t worry, unless you have done something very stupid, you should be fine.” She shrugged. “However, meddling directly with your manifestation – They are technically not mutations – can cause it to take root.”
“You mean I should keep it?”
She shook her head, “Manifestations will grow anyways when you use any kind of magic. You need to remove them as soon as you can.” She paused, “Technically, you can also neutralize, but keep them,” Her expression turned manic, “Transcending your prison of flesh.”
“No thanks.” Ulysse said, taking a step back.
Victoria took back control of her expression, now back to her cold facade, “I wouldn’t advise you to do it anyways, it’s a dangerous practice, bordering on wild magic. One mistake and you can lose yourself, end up like me, unable to ever wield magic again, or die.”
Ulysse gulped, “But I saw someone with a lot of muta... manifestations, she could still use magic, why not you?”
“Because if I use magic, the manifestations will return... I told you they could become permanent. At some point you can only remove their symptoms so long as you don’t use magic. I had many manifestations, and some completely changed who I was. Even after the Patriarch sealed them off.” She wiggled her Eternium pendant.
So that's why she is kind of crazy, and...
“Is that why Agrios never talks to you?”
“Part of it. My brother wasn’t elected to learn magic, and I lost contact with him for years. When I returned, I just wasn’t interested in humans.”
Ulysse fidgeted a bit, uncomfortable, he turned back to the initial topic. “And all this is supposed to make me want to cast this spell? Because honestly, I'm getting a bit more worried about magic right now.”
She shrugged, “It’s not for everyone. You could just tell Grandpa about it.”
“No,” He shook his head, “I’m tired of being the kid that can’t do anything. I want magic to replace channeling.”
“Well, let’s get your spell going then,” she said with a hint of excitement, “It’s been a long time since I cast anything, but I think I can help you out on the alchemical side of things.”
***
A few hours later – Merxau Laboratory
Victoria’s help had been instrumental to the preparation of his spell components.
So much so that Ulysse wondered if she had been fully truthful with him. Not about the dangers of the mutations – well, manifestations, he supposed – but about her reason for coming here, though she would not admit it, it seemed like she had come only to help him.
Over the last few hours they had gone through his notes and Victoria had walked him through the alchemical steps to create his components. All the while teaching him some of the basics she remembered.
Apparently, while components were a thing in spellcraft, they didn’t have much to do with how censured books described magic. Just like how one could speak the words of power, they could be written down and then read, consuming the ink in the process. As such, all the components had to be mixed into the ink.
Written rituals could apparently bring forth much greater spells by ‘Supplying attuned mana’. Vitoria didn’t want to explain exactly what being ‘attuned’ meant for mana. From context, it seemed to make the spell less dangerous.
Since the ink had to contain every component – blood, scales, skin, and somehow fire – they spent a lot of time working on a recipe that would work. In Ulysse’s eyes, Victoria had now been elevated as both an alchemy genius, and a very-very-very crazy person.
The ink was a deep crimson with a slight blue tinge from the scales, of rather thick consistency from the somehow liquefied pig skin, and would set itself on fire during the ritual.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
As for why he thought Victoria was crazy, she had wanted to switch the pig skin with human skin, going as far as to offer tearing of some of hers when he refused to use his own. He might have convinced himself that using blood was ok, but using human skin was a step too far for him.
He hoped he would never become as callous as she was.
“Good, you are all set,” She said, handing him the vial of ink, “Don’t forget to write on a clean slate, impurities will screw with your spell. I’ll be outside, I don’t want to risk being anywhere near uncontrolled mana.”
“Wait! You barely help me on half of it. You can’t go now.” Ulysse protested, “There is still my choice of words, I was thinking <
Victoria cut him off, “Hold on there, I didn’t understand one bit of what you said. First, I haven’t practiced chosen-tongue in years, Second, I have a ton of sealed manifestations.”
“Don’t you even remember the word for ‘Become’ or ‘Change’?”
“No, neither... Surely you remember learning the word for ‘Scale’ when your manifestation had fully grown?”
Ulysse nodded.
“When you remove a manifestation, you often forget the word linked with it. When you seal them – that is when they are impossible to remove – the word becomes completely elusive. I can’t even learn them back.”
“Ho... Isn’t it very bad then? If I fail this, I won't be able to do magic.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that yet, until you are well into the first circle, I doubt you’d be able to manifest something the Patriarch cannot undo.”
“Circles? And by Patriarch, you mean Grandpa?”
“Two good questions, to which you’ll remain without answer for a while.”
“Fine.”
Ulysse didn’t even try to fight it, Victoria always said exactly what she wanted to, and nothing more. She had almost left the lab when she turned around, a hand against the door and an inquisitive look.
“Good luck little cousin. If you ever become an expert on flesh shaping, I hope you’ll think of me.”
With those cryptic words, she closed the door before Ulysse could answer.
I was right, Vic’ wasn’t helping me selflessly.
If Ulysse was honest with himself, he was glad that Victoria had finally left. Sure, she had pretty much done all the work on his ink, and slipped in a bunch of interesting information, but he just didn’t feel... safe.
‘I just wasn’t interested in humans.’ she had said. Those words, coupled with everything else she had said, didn’t make him comfortable.
If she doesn’t even feel human, would she act against one?
Even if everything had gone fine at the time, he remembered quite well when that witch, or Wild mage apparently, had tried and catastrophically failed to... take his body. They had likely tried to do so in order to escape the Sunsight ritual, and Victoria too had something she would want to escape, a body with too many manifestations to stay herself.
He gulped.
Victoria had also mentioned something about flesh shaping that might help her. Maybe he was wrong and she wasn’t that kind of crazy. He made a note to learn a thing or two about protecting himself from body jacking, just in case.
Pushing those thoughts aside, Ulysse turned back to the workbench where the vial of red ink was sitting alongside his notes.
Ulysse had spent a few hours in there, his stomach was proof of it. He knew well the sensation of skipping a meal, though it had been a while since he last did – pretty much since the Librarian had stopped giving him tests almost every day, when he got the Chosen-tongue book.
He wondered for a moment if he should go back, eat, and come back tomorrow well-rested. In the end, it was his hunger that made his choice. Sure, he was a bit hungry, but he hadn’t gotten so deep into a project as to skip meals from some time now, he was actually excited to cast his spell.
Following Victoria’s reminder, well instruction really, to make his ritual on a clean slate, he started by cleaning the workbench. Made of some kind of smooth stone it was easy, and once done actually made for a nice flat surface.
Next was the door, which he took great care to block.
Then, a quill in hand, about to plunge into the vial a thought struck him.
How big should I write? Or how small? I have a lot of ink but...
‘Smartly’, he settled for medium, book title sized, not page sized, and certainly not in minuscule. After all, too much magic might actually be a bad thing, from what he understood, it was what had actually caused the manifestation on his arm. He didn’t want to sprout a pig snout because he’d used too much ink.
Gently lowering his quill inside the vial, Ulysse traced the symbols over the stone. He tried to make them neat, but his lack of experience at writing the language, and the size of his characters made them quite blurry. Some of the words had such misshapen lines as to be unrecognizable.
Interestingly, the ink, though still wet, didn’t seem to reflect light at all, appearing dull atop the polished stone where it had been drawn.
He cleaned it up, unsatisfied.
On his fifth try, they were a tad better, though he had mostly stopped here because the vial was almost half empty. He had absolutely crushed his record consumption of ink.
He was technically done, and, for now, it all felt a bit underwhelming. There was no strange pull when looking at them. The lighting was very good, it was no shadowy witch hut.
Should I just speak them now?
So... My scales purified – Become – Skin
Or in chosen tongue;
<
Ulysse closed his eyes, expecting his arm to itch like hell... Nothing happened.
He opened an eye. The ink hadn’t budged, certainly not burst into fire as he was promised. Was Victoria just bad at alchemy, or did he do something wrong.
Likely the latter.
He stared at the written phrase. Wondering what he was missing.
So... rituals are written, enchantments are... engraved? There might be a relation.
If there was, it was certainly a need to form a connection, after all he didn’t draw a convenient switch for it to activate itself. He wondered if that might be possible – in that case he could carry around scrolls of premade rituals. That would be cool.
Turning back his thoughts to the ritual, literally. He willed to link with it, not wanting to speak <
There was a sudden burst of sensation coming along with the link, it came in an almost palpable wave of blood that spoke of himself. Subtle yet still noticeable were undercurrents of feelings he could only describe as scaly, and skin-ish. Then, almost as suddenly as it came, the sensation of blood evaporated in a cloud of ash.
Ulysse stumbled back, that had been nothing like linking to even the most powerful enchantments he’d seen. He’d felt the ritual’s magic, Victoria had described it as ‘Attuned’ and it certainly felt like it. In comparison, enchantments were more passive when connected to, and while he often felt their function through the link, it always seemed like some sort of controlled phenomenon.
This one almost felt a bit wild, not nearly as much as when he linked with the witch though. Right in between wild, and controlled, actually.
Does magic come in different types? Wild, Attuned, Controlled? Are there more?
He figured he’d have to somehow take control of the ritual’s attuned mana, then, give it a purpose like in enchantments. Maybe speaking the words would help.
He took a few deep breathes, calming down and repeating the words in his mind. Speaking them now would definitively activate the ritual, and he didn’t want to mess that up.
<
As he began to speak, the first word instantly turned pitch back, as if absorbing all traces of light.
At the same time, he the ritual beginning to release mana. Attuned to focus, it washed over him like an inquisitor, freezing him up under the attention. Ulysse gathered his will, taking control of it.
Focus on the scales dammit. Not me!
He spoke the next word, <<...Sa...>>
The ritual finally focused on the right place as the next word too turned black. However, he could already feel the stream of mana weakening. He didn’t have all day, and he wanted to get rid of his scales with passion.
<<...Xar’>>
Perhaps a more experienced spellcaster would have used a more appropriate, or less dangerous word, but not Ulysse. Purification... by fire.
The patch of scales on his arm burst in a blaze of flames, along with his long-sleeved tunic. And unlike a channeler, this fire didn’t provide protection from itself. Ulysse screamed in pain as his flesh was seared by the inferno, bits of scales liquefied and streamed down his arm. It was agonizing.
In the middle of it all, Ulysse didn’t even think of breaking the link, he didn’t think, he yelled the first thing on his mind, the next word.
<
The flames were suddenly yanked back, compressed, and absorbed deep inside his scales – they became fire. The view was fascinating – smalls interlocked triangles of flames that did not hurt their bearer anymore. Ulysse, though, saw none of it, nor did he feel less pain, the flames had already done their job.
He spoke the last word between gritted teeth, <
All the preceding words, all the intent he had poured into the ritual, merged into the last part. Skin-ish attuned magic flooded his arm, the scales of fire died down into ashes and merged into an isle of rough skin surrounded by a sea of burns.
Before the skin had fully formed, Ulysse was already rushing towards the nearest sink. Turning on the enchanted contraption, it let a stream of blessedly cool water wash over his arm.
His tears soon joined the stream of water, coming in equal part from the pain and joy he felt.
When his arm began to grow numb, he switched of the sink, then collapsed, his back flat with the ground, chuckling.
He wanted more. The sensation of all this magic coursing through him, conjuring something no channeler could ever achieve.
He might have gotten a few burns along the way, but he could just ask his dad for a strong potion. As someone whose every effort at wielding power had been met with literal divine retribution, this was nothing.
He thought back to the spell he’d just cast, <