“Herein lies the great irony, of course. For possessions are ultimately fleeting and temporal in comparison to the self. Yet still we look to enchantments and their longevity as the immortality of the mage.”
— Mageobolgus: Elvish Philosophy Primer, Komlaeth Havenspring
Tragically, the item Anak had thrown was a boot, which Sylvas had discovered he didn’t need, since his were still on his feet. They had taken them off to get to his pants, then put them back on again because, well, Sylvas didn’t know why.
It’s not like I can understand their logic when they’re sober, let alone when they’re drunk. He thought as he scrambled to find his belongings.
With an ongoing chorus of complaints from the hungover recruits surrounding them, Sylvas clothes were retrieved, and he had to suffer through the indignity of putting them back on amidst the half-slumbering crowd. The jokes were already starting before he’d even made it to the door. About his love life, about eggs, socializing was going to be a nightmare from this point forward. He let out a sigh. It had been nice while it lasted, but it was inevitable that eventually something would happen to tarnish his reputation and make him the laughing-stock of the recruits for a day. They had all been through it at one point or another, and the only way out was to give a good-natured laugh at their jibes until they got bored.
He pushed the whole situation out of his mind, even as he tried to wipe the slimy remains of a pickled egg off his back before pulling his vest on. There were worse things in this universe than being accused of fathering a clutch of pickled eggs, and he had been called considerably worse by those who had hated him back home. What mattered was that he had escaped Kaya’s clutches once more and the day belonged to him. Even if the hangover was continuing to dog him all the way.
The idea of a workshop or forge made the pounding in his head threaten to pop his skull like an overfilled water balloon, so he decided to dedicate the morning to purchasing the materials that he needed for his projects. Because of the rarity of gravity affinity, he would have thought that those materials that responded best to its influence would have been equally rare, and expensive, but as it turned out the opposite was the case. They were moderately easy to acquire, but as nobody had much use for them they sold for very little indeed. What he’d thought might have eaten up a solid quarter of his remaining funds cost pocket change. As for the gemstones that stored mana, that was a different matter. A type of quartz that formed near to natural growths of Etherium could naturally store neutral mana, but when you got into specific affinities of mana the price rapidly climbed, as the number of places awash with the mana of a singular affinity that were also in close proximity to an Etherium deposit were extremely few and far between.
Yet, when he went looking for this quartz, he was surprised at just how much of it could be acquired. Large pieces capable of storing vast amounts of mana were obviously in high demand for industrial purposes, but the tiny chips that were left over or dislodged from the main blocks during excavation found their way everywhere around the galaxy, they got used in little gadgets like fire starters and kids toys if they were small enough, and if they were too big for that, they just ended up left lying around at marketplaces for a pretty reasonable price. Sylvas stocked up on the ones he thought he’d need, bought the other miscellaneous scraps he was after and set off to the inquiries desk on the main deck to try and find out where he could rent some workshop space.
As it turned out, the deal on workshop space was much the same up here as it had been down on Strife, so long as he kept to himself then the local craftsmen who shared the area were happy to leave him to it. Most of them had no real interest in what he was doing, he certainly had no interest in what they were doing, and they all got along just fine.
Without Instructor Sagran to provide him with blueprints, Sylvas had to come up with his own, inscribed not on his slate or on any illusion to be shared, but within his own perfect memory. The headache that had been threatening to split his skull down the middle all day had, by the time he got to the workshop, mostly calmed down, but he felt certain that at the first sound he made, it was going to start up again. So be it. He could filter out pain easily enough, and he knew that this pain was just his body complaining, rather than a warning that he was doing himself harm.
The new bracer was more of a gauntlet, covering the whole back side of his left hand. Over the middle knuckle rested the original clear quartz that would store chaotic mana, and then further down on the back of the palm came all of the rest of them.
In the original design, there was no engine. The gem would slowly absorb ambient mana as it passed through it, but that was all. It was the least efficient way of gathering mana imaginable, unless you were travelling at impossible speeds. His plans for the new design were more ambitious. So long as he wasn’t casting, the black hole at the heart of his core was drawing mana in towards him, and while only mana with a gravity affinity could pass through his circles and enter his core, that did not mean it was the only kind being drawn to him. He had looked around him with his second sight when he was drawing in fresh mana. He knew that every kind was pulled towards him and simply bounced off. The trick now, was to make it so that all of the mana being drawn to him entered via the filter of the gauntlet. It would all be drawn in through the original crystal, all colors and flavors of mana could pass through it freely, and from there it would divide itself. The gravity affinity mana would be drawn through the underside of the gauntlet where the quartz touched his skin, and all the remaining mana would be drawn by a similar process into the other crystals arrayed across the back of his gauntlet. Each one of them could only hold a tiny amount of mana, and conceptually the whole thing was pointless if you were just trying to accrue more power to work with, but that was not Syvlas’ interest at all. If he managed to pull this off, then he would have access to a dozen different elemental affinities of mana. He would be able to cast spells from outside his own specialty. They would never be as big or powerful as those cast be real mages of that affinity, but they would give him a wider range of tools than anyone else had at their disposal. He would be able to fight fire with fire, so to speak.
He laid out the basic shape of the gauntlet, positioned the gems where he wanted them, and set about casting the spells that would connect the various gems to each other, and to the mana channels beneath his skin. It took considerable time, with a great deal of trial and error to get mana flowing through the gems as it was meant to, longer still to make it settle in place where he wanted it. The trick, as it turned out, was narrowing down where he drew his mana into his system from, and then ensuring that some part of it was still flowing to him through the various colored gems set further back. They served as a secondary filter before the mana reached his circles, purging the chaotic mix of mana he was drawing in of much of its chaos. Defining each thread of mana being drawn to a single type. He went back and forth, time and again, tweaking a line of spell-script here, adjusting the connections there, until finally he was contented with the work, and slipped the gauntlet on. It was uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to gloves, and the rocks attached to this one made it particularly unwieldy to wear, however, there could be no denying its effectiveness.
As he closed his eyes and drew in mana, it came, not just the mana meant for him, but all of it. Every speck drawn in by his core, dragged kicking and screaming to it via the gauntlet. His hand began to ache, and it was only on closer examination that he realised some part of the affinitied mana was being drawn through and into him. The pain was his body rejecting it. It wasn’t ideal, and gave him unpleasant flashbacks to when he had tried to cast with neutral mana that had some portion of the affinities stolen from it.
It was going to be a nuisance introducing another filter into the design to stop any overflow from coming into his system. He supposed it was to do with the fact that he was using his own body and mind as the engine to draw the power in, that when he was deliberately drawing mana, it made the solid wall of his circles more permeable. He flopped the gauntlet back onto the bench and was just starting to set to work on adding another layer of cloth with specific mana filters woven through it when he noticed that he was not alone.
Technically speaking, he had never been alone. As Kalisdrothan had said, you were never really alone for long on a space station, and workers for the Ardent and the merchants came and went more or less constantly as he worked, but this latest visitor was another story. Eyes bored into him. He could feel the weight of will and attention being placed on him.
He spared a glance from his work, expecting Hammerheart to have reappeared, but it wasn’t the dwarf. It was a man. Malachai.
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“Oh good, you’re here.” Sylvas didn’t normally feel inclined to fill an awkward silence, but the tension was palpable.
Malachai’s expression was hard to read, but there was a manic edge to his voice. “Is it such a surprise?”
“Plenty of room for both of us.” Sylvas answered, noticing the bundled crafting supplies tucked under the other mage’s arm.
“There is only enough room for one,” Malachai replied, moving to another empty station. “At the top.”
The man had chosen a station directly opposite where Sylvas had situated himself, as far from sight as he could possibly get, so that the whole time they were working, they would have their backs to one another. It was either a display of contempt or confidence, and Sylvas didn’t have the time to decipher which. The important thing was that it kept what he was working on secret from Malachai, and what Malachai was working on hidden from him. Both blocking out sight of their workspaces with their bodies.
He did what he had always done, focusing on the work at hand, letting the problem that he had no means of fixing wait until later. He didn’t filter out his awareness of Malachai, because doing so still felt like it might be a danger, but he kept his mind on his work. With the new layer of spell-work woven over the interior of the gauntlet, he slipped it on again and began to cycle mana. It was as easy as breathing, with the minute adjustment that he was only pulling it in on one side of his body instead of from every direction. He had thought that might make the process slower, but his core filled at the same pace as usual, the vacuum at his center applying more force through the limited channels it had to work with. After a few minutes of cycling, and no sign of any additional overflow into his system of the wrong affinity of mana, he was convinced that the gauntlet was going to do what he wanted it to do. He flexed his fingers inside it, making sure that the physical construction would hold up just as well as the spells, and he was pleased to discover that in another life, he could have been an apprentice glove-maker. It wasn’t a beautiful piece of art like so many artifacts were, but it would work. Changing his cycling technique would have been a large effort previously, but with having so recently changed it anyway, all this felt like was a minor adjustment.
The only real concern that he had was the slight redness spreading up his arm from the gauntlet, as if he had some topical skin infection, or his hand was embarrassed about something. Opening up his second sight, he examined not the gauntlet, but himself. The channel that he had been drawing all the mana through was damaged. Not badly, like when he’d tried to stop a summoning in progress, or even as badly as they got worn with a regular day of casting, but enough to be cause for concern. There was too much power being pushed through it in too short a time. Of all his embodiments, the second that he had chosen at Fahred’s suggestion had never come in particularly useful so far, except for providing him a minor resistance to the magical attacks of others. Now he could see its value. He suffused some of the mana that he had drawn out of the channel and into the surrounding flesh deliberately, pouring it into the Arcane Bulwark embodiment that he had been essentially neglecting all this time. It would be one more thing that he needed to remember when cycling, to go against his instincts and let some small portion of the captured mana dissipate into his body to reinforce it, but once he knew that it needed to be introduced into the sequence, he could make it routine.
With the first of his two projects complete, Sylvas let his concentration waver a little, glancing over to where Malachai was working at his table with a degree of ferocity Sylvas had never seen matched except by Instructor Sagran in her fugue state of smithing. He allowed his second sight to open and tried to catch a peek at what the other man was actually making.
He was almost blinded in the first moment by all of the death mana swirling around Malachai. The sheer amount that he had, not only contained in his core but just gathered around him was remarkable. It was as if, like gravity mana called to other mana, death called to more death. The man wasn’t even cycling, but all of the death mana in the whole station had gathered around him, following him like a cloud. The only downside of this revelation was of course that Sylvas couldn’t see through that cloud to work out what the man was working on.
What luck that he had other options to call on. Closing his eyes, Sylvas reached out with his gravity sense. Filtering out the artificial gravity that enchantments beneath the floor were generating was easy enough, but so far from a real source, the lines trailing down from solid objects were so light as to be barely discernible. Creating a Gravity Spike would have given him a clear vision of everything, but it lacked a certain degree of subtlety. Whatever Paradigm he chose next, he hoped that it would help him to process all the information that he was gathering with his myriad senses and perfect memory.
There was a blade, that much he could make out, single edged and curved, unique enough in shape amongst the other detritus confusing his senses that he could be sure of it. But there seemed to be a staff too, and other pieces as well, pieces he couldn’t so readily identify, less dense than metal but still solid. He had no clue what he was looking at, and the shapes of the pieces he was able to make out were odd, curved and rounded in a way that raw materials never would be. Some project that this Malachai had been working on for some time, building the pieces of before they could be combined? Or something entirely new and already part made for him by the artisan craftsmen of the station. The more he tried to focus on those pieces, the more the clarity of his vision slipped. It was as if they weren’t solid at all, honeycombed with hollow pockets. None of it made any sense to Sylvas.
Closing off his gravity sense, he turned his attention back to what lay before him. His new gauntlet was complete, and he stowed it carefully away in Cold Storage where prying eyes couldn’t get to it. No spell cast from it would ever be powerful enough to contend with what any one of his peers could fling around, so its only advantage lay in surprise.
Which left him with the orbitals, exchanging the metallic cores of them for the dense gravity responsive matter that he had accrued on his shopping trip. Rewriting the enchantments inscribed on their curved inner surfaces to interact with his own mana instead of that of whatever magnetic mage had abandoned them so long ago. It was a tedious process of repetition, making each one of them into an exact duplicate of itself, and of all the others in the set. But where the old enchantments had been bloated and sluggish, he was able to cut them down, abbreviating words of Aion until they were just barely enough to use, cutting everything as fine as he could, because his intentions for these orbitals did not end with simply making them his. True, only another gravity mage would have any chance of effecting them now that the cores had been exchanged, but more importantly, there was space enough inside of each one now for two other scripts of enchantment that would previously have interfered with what was there before.
Before coming to the station, before his second brutalization at the hands of Vaelith, he had been studying what she had done to him the first time around, the fracturing of his psyche so that he could use its fragments to cast. There was, as she’d said, a whole school of magic built around the manipulation of the mind, and it was from the spells of that discipline that he began writing the first new line of enchantment into his orbitals, painstakingly working back and forth, pressing his mind against each new enchantment to ensure that what he wanted them to do would work. It was all very well moving them in a swarm, or letting them follow their natural inclination to orbit, but it had taken entirely too much concentration to move each individual sphere. If he could divide himself to control more than one spell, then surely, he could divide his concentration to control more than one sphere at a time.
By the time that he looked up from the work, Malachai was gone. Left without any further comment. Probably better than more death threats. Much of the day had also departed after his morning of shopping and his afternoon of work, and hunger was starting to trouble him again. It was a funny thing, back in the orphanage he had always been hungry, and in the tower he’d had every meal provided on the Herald’s schedule without ever having to think about it. This was probably the first time in his life that he actually got to decide what to eat and when.
The orbitals were back in one piece, but he hadn’t entirely finished his work with them. They would do everything that he needed them to do for now, and further research would be required before he could make the rest of the adjustments that he wanted. For now, he’d just have to leave them on his to-do list. That was a strange experience too, having something that he wanted to do in his future. Usually his decisions were made on the basis of immediate survival, the idea that he might have a tomorrow to pick up what he’d started today was an alien one.
Clambering up the ladder to the top floor of the station, he almost immediately ran into Harvan. The man looked a little worse for wear. “Are you alright?”
“I… think I’m out of money.” Harvan looked suitably embarrassed. They all received the same pay, and to have made his way through all of it on only their second day off world was frankly kind of impressive.
“How did you…” The smell of alcohol wafted off the mage, strong enough to make Sylvas choke. He must have been halfway to pickled. “Did you drink it all?”
“Bought a round or two last night… trying to get on with the other campus recruits…”
A white shield manifested beside them, making both of them jump. Sylvas had been under the impression that he wouldn’t be receiving any orders from the Ardent while they were off-world and it was difficult not to feel a little annoyed that the first free time he’d ever had in his life was being interrupted. He reached out to touch the shield and was startled when his hand passed right through it. Huh. “I guess its for you.”
A cold voice spoke from the shield when Harvan touched it, loud enough to make the less than sober man flinch. “Report to the administration deck for Introduction to Remedial Wealth Management.”
Harvan groaned as if he wished he could just sink into the floor and vanish, which, of course, he could, but probably shouldn’t given that they were on a space station and he might end up outside of it if he wasn’t careful. Not that being exposed to the void of space was going to be more pleasant than being dressed down for wasting every penny of his money on booze.
Sylvas let him pass, lumbering awkwardly down the ladder. Then turned to find some other friends, only to instead come face to face with Malachai once more. The death mage’s eyes narrowed. “You.”