Not following his master's instructions, he made his way to his own small library. The grimoire had him excited, and his plan was to start working on a rune for it right away. His motivation was snuffed however, when he saw the wreckage of his workshop again.
There wasn’t a single ink cabinet left standing. In their places were large scorched marks. The only thing left of the ink itself was the granular black dust that came from the waste of spent ink. The floor itself had warped downwards, leaving an obnoxious crater in the centre of the room. He slumped his shoulders and looked at the O'jin standing next to him.
"It took me years to make those inks" he complained.
Uundah grunted.
"I did so make them, I only took a few from the old man."
Uundah rolled his orbish eyes, then pointed at the sitting area upstairs.
"You’re worse than him" Murphy groaned. He resigned, and trudged upstairs to read.
He organised some books onto a table. He was looking for "the Skirmish of Jundal-Ful", but paused his search when another title caught his eye. "Hollow Ages; The Purge of Aspect". He remembered what Callus had said that morning about the purge, and his curiosity was piqued.
The first portion of the book was filled with the usual pretentious faff of academic pandering, but once he made it through the declaration of sources and the sappy thank you to the author's wife, he found his eyes glued to the pages.
One passage in particular stood out to him.
"The end of the Golden Age was defined clearly by the decree of The Purge by the God King. The age of The Purge spanned fifty eight red skies, making it the shortest recorded age. Yet the significance of the events portrayed within these pages, is what defined the God Kings world war as an era of its own. The fact of the rapid reduction of the world's sources of queer aspect alone, could also be the defining characteristic of the era."
He read on for a while, until the pages started to list some of the things the world no longer had. He learned that an estimated ninety seven percent of the world's queer aspect had been rendered extinct. He always wondered why the stories of the wizards of old were so much more fantastic than the modern tales, now he had an answer. Working out the math on his fingers, he surmised that The Purge spanned for over twenty thousand human years, which made him wonder about his master's own age. He wanted to know more about the God King. Malnir never had exposure to any gods, the closest they got was his Demai grandfather, and the occasional Demai traveller. They were gods among men surely, but he was yet to meet an actual god. Still, he knew they were out there in the world, few and far between as they may be.
He decided he would have to go looking for a book on the underworld before he left for Creeden. In the meantime, he begrudgingly focused on his reading.
He read through "Practical Casting of Rune Structures", and realised that was how Callus was putting his runes in the air and on the ground when he did something complex. He tried out the example rune structure in the book. It was the aspect he'd seen glowing on the tome. There was a rune etched into a skin page. When he touched and activated it, a glowing ring of visible light floated in front of him. The book told him how to make a rune able to fit into a structure, so he took a mental note. He thought to himself that it could be a good idea to write things down somewhere, but figured he would just get to it later.
By the time he was finished reading, Uundah was snoring on the chair next to him. He scratched him on the head, and added five books to his shelf. It was the most he had ever read in a day, and he was proud of himself. Along with Practical Casting, and the book on The Purge, he finished off "Principles of Linear Symbology, Boundaries in Runecraft and Systematic Resonation of Symbology". He knew enough terminology to understand how important those particular titles were. Without the proper symbols, and the knowledge of what order to write them in, it was nearly impossible to scribe a more complex rune. His accident with the folded space the day before had him feeling lucky, but he decided against his more comfortable judgement not to push that luck.
There were things he wanted to make, and it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he would in fact have to learn runic symbology.
~~
He woke up in his chair with his head on the table. Pulling himself from the sticky puddle of drool, he rubbed his bleary eyes and stretched away the slumber. It was hard to tell the time from inside his own library. The room had no windows and he was still yet to find a clock to hang. Still, he was confident it was morning, so he woke Uundah and they set to doing their chores. He started by cleaning the rest of his workshop. The effort consisted of gathering up all the splintered wood, and dumping it in the fireplace. He swept the dust into a pile. He was no stranger to the Melt dust. The stuff came about from inefficient magic and excessive use of magic. Callus told him it was a waste product, but it still had a lot of use. When he saw a significant enough amount of the dust in one place, he could see the qualities at work. When an aspect encountered Melt, it was rendered inert. To him it seemed as if that aspect just disappeared into the Melt, and he couldn’t help but wonder where it was going.
He made his way to a livestock room. The three doors that lead into or out of the place stood on their own in the centre of a field. There was a fence around a paddock, keeping a number of cows and sheep in. He assumed the various chickens he had seen wandering the tower had their start here too. The hay shed was outside of the paddock. He could walk to the shed in a straight line, retrieve the hay, then keep walking in the same direction to end up back at the paddock fence. The first time he was in this room he thought he was outside. The blue sky and clouds overhead were just as real as any outside the tower, but the confusing trick of the finite land showed him otherwise. He had trouble wrapping his mind around how the space worked, though forays into similar rooms in the past had made him comfortable with the firm three dimensions this room still facilitated.
After that, he made his way to a greenhouse room for a harvest. The old mad had him tending to various crops around the tower. At first, Callus had referred to him as the butcher of botany, but his skill with a set of secateurs had since blossomed into a passable ability. He was harvesting Fiirell-Lailir, a flower used to acquire fire aspect. The breed was a Callus original, which meant it was so potent in its aspect, that there were dangers to the harvest. He had to wear thick fireproof gloves, and seal the room from any outside pressure. He took care to move slowly, as not to disturb the unclipped plants. Free from their roots, they were much less volatile, but it only took a gentle agitation of one of the pedals to catalyse a blazing inferno.
He was carefully placing a clipped flower into his basket when the door opened with abrupt force.
"There you are" Callus said immediately. As he spoke, a gust of air blasted inwards to equalise the pressure. Murphy and Uunda launched themselves backwards and away from the garden bed just in time to avoid the worst of the explosion. He stood, and shot the old man a dirty look while he snuffed a flame on the sleeve of his favourite black cloak.
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"Dammit boy, you ruined my crop" the old man huffed.
"You could have killed me" Murphy scoffed.
"Don't be so witless" he groaned back. "Since you're done here, you can come with me". He promptly turned on his heel, and left the room.
Murphy looked at Uundah to see the little guy nursing his burned tail. The formerly fluffy appendage had had half of its hair burned away completely, leaving a thick and scabby rat-like tail behind.
"I didn't think you could get any uglier" he said, picking his sulking friend up. "But you’re just full of surprises."
He found Callus shortly after. He didn’t see where the old man went, but he had learned to listen for the tone of his master in the same way he found his way around the tower.
He was in a small and dingy looking room, stood in front after a massive cauldron sitting atop an elaborate rune. The room smelled sour and poisonous, and there was a broad variety of dried plants strewn about the walls.
"If you're planning to cook something in that, I'm not hungry" he said, poking at the cauldron.
"I'll be serving imbecile stew if you don't shut up and pay attention."
"Did you wake up on the wrong side of your cheese pile again old man?"
"Shut up" he snapped. "I hate you. Now pay attention". He touched a symbol on the rune under the cauldron, it glowed, then the blackened vessel started to fill with water. With the activation of another symbol, the water slowly started to boil. Murphy watched on intently while the old man worked it. "Since you like your wild magic so much, I thought I might show you a real use for it."
"What kind of Runecraft involves cooking?" The young man asked with wonder.
"None, you mentally deficient bore. This is alchemy, it's entirely different."
"Are you going to show me how to make a healing potion?" He asked, excited.
The old man looked at him seriously for a moment, then erupted into a glorious belly laugh that lasted a few moments too long. "Not a chance" he said, catching his breath. "Those are hard to come by, thousands of gold slabs a bottle."
"You gave me one just this week" Murphy stated, perplexed.
"And I intend for you to work it off" the old man responded simply. "For now though". He pulled a few plants from the wall. Each of the plants had the primary aspect of water, though he could see other aspects tracing the leaves and roots. "What aspect do these consist of?" He asked his apprentice.
"I can see the colour of water, and three more, but I don't know what they are."
Callus looked at him curiously. "Correct enough" he sighed. "I will never understand why such a gift was wasted on you, but it really is something". That was as close to a compliment that the Merlin could muster, so Murphy took it proudly.
Callus learned of his apprentice's ability to see aspects almost immediately after the boy had come into his service. The boy wasted no time in pointing at everything he saw, asking what the colours were called. Callus had an equal level of anxiety about it to Miata, so Murphy made sure not to bring it up too often.
He laid the plants out on a chopping board, and grabbed a long thin knife from the wall. "Seperate the primary aspects" he said, handing the knife to his apprentice.
Carefully, Murphy cut the colours free from the plants. When he was done, Callus looked the product over and grunted.
"And you're sure?" He asked curiously.
Murphy nodded confidently.
He held up the ovary of one of the flowers. It glowed with one of the aspects Murphy didn’t recognise. "This part contains the aspect of sustenance. It's in a lot of things, so it's pretty easy to come by".
Murphy nodded again. He figured the colour had something to do with food, since he had seen it laced throughout things for most of his life. Callus separated the flower parts, telling his apprentice what the aspect component was in each piece.
"We don't need photosynthesis for this" he said, discarding most of the leaves. Murphy nodded along still, pretending he knew what that word meant. He put the cores of the stems into their own pile, aside from everything else. "This is division. We add this last to make the potion go further".
By now the pot was boiling vigorously. Callus pulled a mortar and pestle from a recess in the wall, and had his apprentice pulp the plant matter one aspect at a time, stopping to wash it out with Melt infused alcohol between rounds.
When he was done, they had three small goopy mounds of aspect riddled cellulose. So far, it was a lot like making ink, just with several kilograms less product. He would usually start rendering it down into its syrupy components, but this process was different.
"We will start with the base" Callus said, scooping the sustenance pile into his hands. He threw it into the cauldron, then produced a copper chip from thin air. "You can use crystal powder in alchemy to empower the brew, but that takes measurements and mathematics". He placed the coin into a small circle on the rune, then activated it. The coin drained to its dead state, and Murphy could see the raw power of it surging around the rune. It was like looking at all of the colours of aspect at once, but to him still seemed devoid of colour entirely. The old man grabbed a thick stirring stick from next to the cauldron. It sizzled as he plunged it into the bubbling water, the concentrated aspect inside facilitating a small amount of charring. With the activation of another sectioned symbol, part of the coin's raw power filtered into the pot. "This is why we use a rune table in alchemy. It will make a mage's life a lot easier". He said, continuing his lecture.
"That's not on a table" Murphy replied, pointing at the rune.
"Don't be facetious" Callus snapped. "It serves the same purpose". He gestured for Murphy to throw in the pile of water aspect, while he stirred. The pot hissed and spewed thick grey smoke into the air. It smelled like cut grass and sulphur, an unpleasant mix to be sure. "Activate that symbol" he said, pointing at a part of the rune. It was actually a set of symbols, drawn around their own circle that connected to the rune. With his limited knowledge, he could still tell that they were a set of systematic symbols. The first in the line would not be able to activate without prior informative resonance, so it needed other counterpart symbols to resonate within the rune system before it could take any magic itself. The rest were Dolmic letters describing the facet of the rune, as well as introducing different levels of resistance against the power flowing through. The last was a symbol used to direct energy in a particular direction. The last symbol met a rune line, connecting it to the greater system. It was labelled as stage three. He activated it, then watched the coin's power pass through the symbols, and shoot a portion of itself into the cauldron.
The old man continued stirring for some minutes, having his rag-wielding apprentice mop up anything that spilled over. Eventually, he threw the last pile of aspect into the pot. Murphy was about to activate the stage four symbols when his master stopped him. "Not that one" he said with a panic. He pointed at another small circle. It had more symbols than the others, and Murphy didn't recognise most of them.
"What does it do?" He asked, placing his hand on it to activate it anyway.
"It fuses the finished product into a potion. Anything we put in there that hasn't been empowered will be applied to the fusion process."
Murphy blinked dumbly at his master, trying to understand what he meant.
Callus sighed and rolled his eyes. "Magic button make potion work".
"No need to be nasty" Murphy responded, empowering the symbols.
"The division aspect will modify it at the final stage. It's a handy trick and you'd have to be a Murphy not to use it" Callus replied, ignoring the Warlock's scorn.
"Did you just use my name as a noun for moron?" He scoffed.
"If the shoe fits" the old man responded coldly.
There was another hissing sound from the cauldron. Looking inside, he could see a whole new colour forming from the mixing aspect. They had the quality of their origins, but made something unique when the coin's power surged into the pot. The new aspect started to grow in concentration, until it glowed twice as bright.
The bubbling calmed to a simmer, then settled Until the potion inside was calm and still.
"What does it do?" He asked impatiently.
"It's a rehydration potion. Drink one of these and you won't need water for days". Callus pulled a box from the corner of the cluttered room, it rattled with the sound of glass bottles as it slid across the floor. He started to dip the bottle into the mix, and sealed each with corks he also pulled from the box.
"That sounds useful."
"It is. And it's easy to make a lot of them". He rifled through the clutter until he found a small wicker basket. Putting five of the bottles into the basket, he handed it to Murphy. "Next is the same for food."
They spent some time emptying the cauldrons contents into the bottles. Murphy cleaned the stinky vessel out with the same Melt and alcohol solution before they got to work again.
By the end of the day they had made a variety of sustenance potions. One of which was intended to reduce the amount of oxygen he needed to survive for a short time. Callus warned against being in a situation that would call for such a beverage, declaring that it's still a miserable experience to not be able to breathe.
By the end of his lessons, Murphy had acquired a comfortable understanding of the basics of alchemy.