Murphy ushered Teddy through an old wooden door, the integrity of which threatened to have the thing collapse on them. Behind the old wooden door was a much newer iron one, complete with its own set of defensive wards.
The workshop was located in the same Son-Gonkiruun city as the Silver Tip and the university. It made it easier for him to have everything in the one area, and Callus was all too happy for him to move his experiments elsewhere, given that the particular experiments posed a threat to his tower. Murphy still used the tower for most of his projects, since it was so well stocked with supplies and had countless empty rooms. When it came to the folded space aspect however, his master had some rules. He could grow his plants in one of the tower's many green house rooms, but when it came time to process the plants, he was banned from the tower. He protested at first, but since he started to increase the amount of energy he played with, he had to admit the old man's point had some merit. This was the second workshop he'd had in the city, thanks to lessons learned. This building sat on the outside of the university's walls at the edge of the city. His first one was closer to the silver tip, before it wasn’t. He'd lost the whole structure, for lack of a better phrase. In one of his tests, he'd made a mistake in his boundaries. Traditionally, the boundary circle was enough to hold the spell within the rune system, but things got less predictable when you started to add chaotic aspect. After discovering its uses in the battle against the King of Storms, he was eager to test its limits. There didn't seem to be any limitations so far, and he had made it as far as a fifth degree chaos crystal before it became too unstable. The conjunction of his areas of study resulted in the building imploding while he slept safely at home. Business owners in the area described the event to him as something akin to the end of the world. Apparently after the structure collapsed in on itself, it exploded with an invisible shock wave. All the while it seemed to warp and twist into entirely unnatural shapes. He was lucky enough to escape any blame for the incident however. He was using the space to smith at the same time, since he needed a variety of custom objects to suit his science, so the locals chalked it up to either a strange furnace explosion, or competitive business practices. The nearby smith wasn't too happy to have him situated so close by, and Murphy was happy to let the locals blame an innocent man for a jealous rage.
The door hissed as the wards deactivated, letting the energy within the metal dissipate into the atmosphere. If someone had tried to open it while they were active, they would receive a rather nasty shock. It used a blue crystal as a power source, since he didn't know how to feed the energy back into the power source. That meant the spell was powerful enough to likely kill someone, and the source would last longer before he had to replace it.
Teddy gawked at the dishevelled mess he saw on the other side. There were large beakers set up in every corner of the room with a pipe running to and from each. Some were upside down, slowly feeding the others. They were arranged in some kind of order, with the upside down ones being closest to the ceiling. Liquid ran through the pipe, growing in viscosity with each new beaker it passed through. Some of the foul smelling reservoirs had a flame burning beneath them, while others were simply wrapped with or filled with different plants. The second to last beaker had a strange coloured crystal in the path of the curious fluid. Black goop dripped slowly from a spigot, and passed over the crystal before landing in the beaker. The last beaker had a tube running from the bottom that fed the last part of the contraption in the centre of the room. The entire system finished in a heavy steel drum that threatened to break the legs of its supporting table.
Along with the tangled mess of pipes and hot glass, there was a compact furnace tucked into a wall, a large table filled with the remains of desiccated plants and small animals, and three large chests. Paper littered the floor and walls, all scribbled with a variety of formulas and diagrams. The parchment was doing a poor job to cover the damaged grey bricks and tan tiles. There clearly used to be a window to let light in from the alley, but the Warlock had crudely bricked it up with a mismatched red concrete.
It looked like the den of a mad man, and Teddy was less surprised than he would have liked to be.
"Murphy," he said cautiously. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Never better," Murphy responded casually, rummaging through one of the chests. "Why do you ask?"
Teddy stared blankly at him, then silently gestured to the messy room.
Murphy wasn't the first Warlock Teddy had met, and he was all too familiar with their cognitive conditions. Bardmire had the largest Warlock population that could be found anywhere in the Hollows. They numbered so many in fact, that the Bardmirian College of Magic hosted almost exclusively Warlocks. It was the reason Teddy attended the Son-Gonkiruun University, since admission to The Bardmire College was circumstantial for non Warlocks. His family had spent all they had to book him passage to Son-Gonkiruun on the Rothian Stream, a snaking tunnel of negative pressure that spans across a good portion of the world.
His time in his homeland was more than enough for him to learn about Warlocks. He was constantly on the lookout for signs that Murphy had snapped, even mournfully so. Murphy was the first Warlock that he'd gotten to know, and it worried him to think his friend would suffer the sickness.
Murphy smiled at him, knowing what was on his mind. "I'm fine Teddy. It'll be a good while before I need to worry about any of that. Besides, I have Uundah."
"That only helps so much," Teddy replied with an apologetic look in his eyes. "I don't mean to accuse you of anything, Murphy."
Murphy put his hand on his friend's shoulder in an attempt to ease his worries. "It's alright Teddy, I know you’re just looking out for me. Don't worry, I won't eat your liver about it."
Teddy sniffed, breaking down the tension. "You see, it's the fact that you thought about eating my liver at all that worries me."
"Nonsense," Murphy laughed. "I'm more of a spleen guy anyway."
He put a chunky device into Teddy's hand to change the topic. The young mage turned it over to inspect it, but couldn't make sense of what he was looking at.
"So you've made a heavy paper weight?" He questioned.
"Mostly," the Warlock chuckled.
He took the device back, and set it onto the table. "What I'm about to show you needs to stay between us," he said with seriousness. "There's a lot of people out there that would kill for this. If word gets out, I might just have to eat your spleen."
Teddy studied his friend's face, trying to gauge how honest he was being. When Murphy’s stare didn't falter, he simply nodded.
"My lips are sealed. So go on then."
"Good to know," the Warlock said, setting the iron contraption down with a heavy thud. "I call this the vanishing Murphy."
He turned it on the spot to reveal a circular lens set into the face at the centre. The rest of the device was just a cylinder of iron with a few small holes scattered about. It was about fifteen centimetres tall, and completely unremarkable.
"Does it turn invisible?" Teddy asked curiously, taking a closer look.
"I don't think so. I think it goes… somewhere else," Murphy responded, scratching his chin.
Teddy squinted at him. "Somewhere else?" He asked.
"I don't know where," Murphy offered with a shrug. "I just never find them again."
"How does it work?" Teddy was getting interested.
"Would you like a demonstration?" Murphy asked with a mischievous smile.
Teddy thought about it for a moment. "Is it safe? I don't want to end up maimed from one of your experiments."
Murphy rolled his eyes. "You'll be fine, Teddy. I'll keep you safe."
"You fill me with confidence," Teddy replied with sarcasm. He took a big step back, and gave Murphy a thumbs up. "Let's get it over with then."
"That's the spirit," Murphy chuckled.
He reached into the chest again, and pulled out a spool of copper wire. Teddy watched in silence while the Warlock carefully inserted the end into one of the holes. "I used to terminate it properly with a little clamp, but I nearly lost my fingers one time, so now I let it slip free," he said casually, as if Teddy had any idea what he was up to.
He unravelled the spool a few feet, and stood next to his friend. He held the spook firmly in one hand, making sure his skin had plenty of contact with the metal. Before he empowered it, he glanced at Teddy's charm.
"Would you like the honour?" He asked, offering him the spool.
"I'm not plugging my arm into that thing," Teddy scoffed.
"Very well," Murphy said, gripping it tightly again. "But when you see how amazing this is, don't complain to me that you missed out."
"I'll keep that in mind. Now could you just show me what this is all about already?" Teddy replied with a sigh.
"Okay, no need to be inpatient," the Warlock snickered.
He counted down from three, and empowered the wire. The device shuttered for a moment, and the table beneath squeaked against the tile floor, moving at least three inches from its spot. With a pulse of force strong enough to rattle the glassware and pipes, the device vanished. As it disappeared, the papers on the wall opposite them were kicked into the air, along with some concrete dust from the wall behind. In the silence that followed directly after the test, a thin wisp of purple smoke came into being. It showed a straight line from the table to the wall, hanging peacefully in the now still air of the room.
Teddy remained silent, a look of deep contemplation on his face. Slowly, he rounded the wisp of smoke, passing his hand through it a few times to test its tangibility. Murphy watched on eagerly while his friend tried to figure it out.
"It's position," the perplexed mage eventually decided. "You've found a way to move material behind a barrier with position aspect," he declared. He went to the wall and ran his fingers along the newly formed crack in the bricks, then turned to look seriously at Murphy. "How in the seven cities of sorrow did you manage that?"
What Teddy was suggesting was possible of course, but the amount of energy required to do such a thing was exponential. There was not much chance someone would be able to accomplish it with a device as small as the vanishing Murphy though. All matter had a Daionic force of its own. It was Daionic energy in stable shapes, resistive to its own geometry above all else. This meant that it was possible for magic, which is in an unstable Daionic state, to flow through matter with varying resistance. The resistance of stable Daionic geometry along with atomic forces made for a remarkably expensive energy barrier. All of that is to say, it's difficult to make things go through other things.
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Murphy had found a round about way to pull it off.
He scratched at his chin, considering Teddy's guess. "Not quite, but that could help. I knew showing you this was a good idea."
Teddy looked around the room, taking in the elaborate system of beakers and pipes again.
"Have you made a derivative of the position aspect? Or perhaps you've used location. I don't know what else you could have… unless…" he trailed off, his mind racing faster than his tongue could accommodate. "Murphy, what are you making in here?"
Murphy smiled, and opened the chest again. He pulled out another Vanishing Murphy, only this one was disassembled and in two pieces. He set it down on the table, revealing the internals of his device. Inside, it had a small glass vial with a viscous black ink at the top, a simple rune on a single line in the centre, and sliver of green crystal at the bottom. The rune was etched into an iron plate with the crystal fixed to the bottom side. The top of the plate had a small rod with a tapered point aiming at the glass vial.
He was proud of his design, even if there was no real practical use for it just yet.
"The ink is one fifth magnetic aspect, and four fifths a concoction of my own design," he said, starting to walk Teddy through the device's components. "When you empower any part of the shell, it will empower the ink through this conductor," he pointed out a needle that penetrated the vial's cork and made contact with the ink. "The magnetic force pulls the plate into the vial, and it shatters, letting the ink fill in the runes on the plate. The crystal is there to empower the rune instantly."
"And the lens?" Teddy quickly asked, following along with no issue. He was looking over the front half of the device. The lens seemed to line up with the rune plate, but the Vanishing Murphy moved in a different direction to which its lens was facing.
"I was hoping it would direct it, but I can't seem to make that part work," Murphy offered.
"Maybe I can help. You never said what aspect you used," Teddy said, probing for more information.
Murphy somehow smiled even wider. He'd been waiting so long for this moment. Callus and Uundah knew about his projects, and it wasn't impressive to them since they knew about his special journal. This was the first time he would be able to amaze someone with his self acclaimed genius. He'd spent a lot of time in the tower breeding and cultivating a new species of plant. Without his gift, he wasn't able to play with the purged aspects in the journal the way he wanted to. Instead, he was deepening his understanding of what he'd already learned from it.
Uundah knew the aspect of folded space well. He'd learned it from Murphy, and taken the knowledge into his core. That meant he was able to replicate it. With that, and a few tricks Callus had taught them, they had managed to record the signature of the aspect in a tuned crystal. They had been trying to get a plant of the same signature, and they were getting close. Uundah was confident the last batch of seeds they'd planted would be the ones. Along the way, they had discovered something close to folded space. Murphy had taken to calling the new aspect pinch space, and Uundah went along with it, still insisting it was dumb. Playing with pinch space, he came up with an idea. With a few failed experiments, he came across a second aspect he called slip space. He had to make the ink the hard way in the meantime, since their efforts in botany were focused on a different plant for the moment. The process involved mixing it with other aspects in small amounts until the pinch space was altered enough to become slip space. That was the point of his complicated set-up of beakers and pipes.
He walked Teddy through the system, stopping on the drum in the middle of the room. Inside the drum was a final beaker, this one was treated to withstand massive amounts of heat. The drum was a beaker oven of Murphy’s own design. It worked in a similar way to parts of an alchemy table, in that it heated its subject with all of the energy from a fire, with none of the flames. Teddy listened along patiently, though something in his expression the whole time hinted at annoyance.
"If you don't want to tell me, why did you ask me to come?" He asked, fed up with keeping quiet. "I can't help you if you won't tell me what you're using."
Murphy gave him a perplexed look. "I did tell you though…" he stated with confusion.
"Slip space Murphy, really?" He scoffed. "Spatial aspects have been extinct for ages. Unless you expect me to believe you have a secret source."
"Well it's not a secret now, since I've just told you about it."
Teddy watched him for a smile, or some other sign that the Warlock was having him on, but Murphy’s expression never shifted. He picked up the vial Murphy was showing him and turned it in his hands. He was thinking deeply while he watched the ink slide slowly around its container. Without saying anything, he unstopped the vial and deposited a small drop onto a flat part of his charm. He pressed a button at the back of the thing and his whole charm shuttered subtly. Once it was done doing whatever it was doing, he pulled a slip of glass from its compartment and gasped in surprise when he saw it. The glass was a common practice for enchanters. Depending on the colour of the glass after being exposed to an ink, you could quickly gauge the Daionic potency of a substance. A good rule was, the higher the Daionic potency, the more valuable the aspect within. Some of the most powerful and sought after aspects would tint the glass blue if they were actually what it said on the bottle. Position was one of these aspects, and since the purge the value of the ink was exorbitant, thanks to its versatility being able to fill in the niche that purged aspects left behind.
When Teddy revealed the glass, it came out purple, meaning the potency was to a significantly higher degree than even the finest position ink money could buy. The test couldn't tell him what the aspect itself was, but with the context and his own test, he was confident Murphy was telling the truth, or at least thought he was being honest.
"How is this even possible? Where did you get this recipe?"
Murphy sighed, and looked at the floor. "I can't tell you that much, I'm afraid."
"Am I in danger?" Teddy asked in a panic. The man's brain was always quick to see the worst case scenario. "Did you steal it?"
Murphy laughed, and pat his friend on the shoulder. "It's all a Murphy original, I assure you. I'm not only good looks."
"You’re not even that," Teddy laughed nervously. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, collecting the sweat that compromised his composure. With a deep breath, he put the ink onto the table.
"So what are you trying to do with this then?"
"Transport," Murphy said simply, snatching the vial of ink back up. "I thought it might be a clever way to travel long distances really quickly. But I can't get it to go in the direction I want it to."
Teddy pointed at the rune on the plate. "What does 415 flech do to it?" It didn't take him long to decode the formula, since it was so short.
"It makes a straight line of slip space. I hoped the lens would direct it, but it seems to have a mind of its own."
Teddy sniffed, and shook his head. "It might direct it, depending on the aspect and the flech value, but there's no way your rune is working properly."
"Care to enlighten me, professor," the Warlock quipped sarcastically.
"You’re saturating your conductor," he tapped the rune plate. "Your rune is firing, sure, but you are empowering a mass of ink with no instructions. The plate itself will have a fluctuating flech of its own. That kind of thing can mess up a rune."
"I thought that would just act as a boundary circle," Murphy offered, listening closely to Teddy's lecture.
"Not when it's making contact with the rune letters. You need a barrier of low frequency Daions, like clean air or something else resistive." He looked around until he found a reasonably empty piece of paper, and pulled a pen from his charm. He drew two circles, one inside of the other. "Imagine this centre circle is the power in a rune. It's more complicated than that, but just imagine for a minute. The outer circle, is the range of its unique Daionic field. It's kind of like a magnetic field, but it's range of influence is finite, and it only repels other Daionic fields."
He drew four more circles in the same fashion. The second and third were really close together. "These outer two would be the field of a boundary circle, and these two close together are the fields of the boundary and the rune repelling each other. That's how a boundary circle works. If they aren't separated by a barrier, they share the same unique field, and there's no control of the effects."
Murphy scratched his chin and thought about it. "That makes sense," he said, not understanding any of the description.
"You've missed a lot of classes. I'm not surprised you didn't know," Teddy said earnestly.
"I don't have a schedule. I just kind of go to classes," Murphy defended.
"You miss a lot though," Teddy chuckled. "Sometimes I think you've just left the place and not told anyone."
"That's a bit drastic. I only miss a few days," Murphy was sure of himself.
"Sure thing," Teddy said with a dumb smile. "Back to the issue at hand though," he said, waving at the deconstructed Vanishing Murphy on the table. "What do you want my help with exactly?"
"All of it," Murphy said. "I don't know runes like you do. I'm not bad at them, but you're really good. I'm thinking, I can make you some helpful inks, and you can make some fancy trinkets, and we can sell them and get you your years."
Teddy squinted at him again. That was a really good offer, especially if Murphy had a way of obtaining valuable inks. "What's the catch?" He asked suspiciously.
Murphy laughed. "No catch, friend. Unless you count having to work a little to be a catch."
"It wouldn't be a little work. This would need research and experimentation. Do either of us have time to do all of that?" Teddy was starting to panic again.
"I certainly do," Murphy offered. "As for you, probably not," he said with a shrug.
Teddy blinked at him. "Do you want my help or not?"
"I'm joking with you, Teddy," Murphy laughed again. "I was thinking I could pay you."
"Don't be ridiculous," Teddy scoffed. "How would you manage that and yourself at the same time?"
Murphy smiled a mischievous smile, and pulled his ledger box out of his satchel. "I do better than you might think," he said, patting the box. "Just don't tell Uundah I'm paying you."
He opened the box, and pulled out a small pouch. It had a crudely stitched on tag that said 'bribe for Teddy', and it clinked with the sound of crystal coin. He tossed it to his friend, and the mage nearly fumbled. When he opened it his face turned white. There was twenty-five gold in the bag, a big income for someone in his position.
"That's for you, and if you need anything for your research, I'll pay for that. How does one bag like that a week sound?"
Teddy gaped at him. "Murphy, that is way too much."
"Not compared to what we will make for what you make," Murphy said. "You’re the one for the job, I'm sure of it."
Teddy nodded slowly. "Just to be sure, are you hiring me?"
"I guess I am," Murphy laughed. "So will you take the job?"
"What if I can't work with this stuff?" Teddy questioned, gesturing at the ink.
"It's just like anything else," Murphy offered. "You’re the best enchanter I know. You even have your own glyphs. If you can't work with this stuff, nobody can."
He was trying to convince him, but he still believed his own opinion.
"Well I'm going to need something a bit safer than this," Teddy said, looking around the room again. "But I'll give it a go."
Murphy clapped Teddy's shoulder a little too hard, and smiled wide. "You won't regret this."
He pulled another coin pouch from the box, and tossed it to Teddy. "That should get you what you need. We're going into business together."
Teddy nodded, an unsure look on his face.
They stayed for some time and went over what Murphy already knew. He showed Teddy how to use the wards at the door, and they parted ways for the evening. Teddy left in a suspicious manner, nervous about carrying a big secret. Murphy laughed at him for acting like he was leaving a whore house, and the mage pretended to be indignant. Their friendship was growing more, so he was getting better at taking Murphy’s humour.
He was late to get back to the tower. He and Uundah were planning to explore the pigeon doors, so he cut through downtown to try and get back faster. The capital was a rough place in the best areas. Son-Gonkiruun thrived on power in all classes. The downtown area was actually at the top of the hill, the only land higher was Fort Son-Gonkiruun, which floated above on a small island of its own. The university was up against downtown, since that's where the wealthy in the city lived. The streets were clean and free of crowds, and everything you did was watched. The residents didn't like strangers skulking around, given that they had so much of value to be taken. So their security was ruthless. It was the most dangerous part of town if you didn't look the part, and no matter where Murphy went, he never looked the part. He'd heard that the reason they called it downtown was because the security liked to drop their victims off the edge of the continent. Downtown backed right onto a cliff at the edge, so it was easy to believe.
He was thinking about what Teddy might come up with when he was nearly out of the downtown area when he heard a scuff on the cobble behind him.
He spun to see who was behind him, but he never got the chance. As soon as he turned his vision went black, the flash of a fist being the last thing he saw. He felt a burning sting in his surely broken nose as he fell back. He was happy when his head hit the cobble, and he drifted into blissful unconsciousness.