Jace had an expectation of what Baysil’s chores were. He did not expect it to be so… mind numbingly boring. There were a few things. One was going around the keep, recharging the crystal lights. Another was refuelling the hearth. For the things Jace couldn’t contribute to. Baysil would cast the spells as required. Unlike the others, every time Baysil went to cast a spell, a silvery collection of runes would form in her hands, and once it was done. A silvery wave of mana would spill across the affected area.
Jace could feel the intention in the magicks that were cast. But only a small amount. To restore. Purify. Nurture.
Then came Baysil’s last chore.
“Here, boil these sheets of glue for me.” The young vixen handed Jace a large stack of dark amber coloured gelatin like sheets. He almost fell forward from the weight of it.
He regained his balance. “Jeez… All of it?” He questioned.
“All of it.” She pointed her thumb to the cauldron behind her. “I’ll get the other supplies. That pot better be boiling.”
Jace went along, he dumped the pile of smokey, rotten meat smelling jelly-like sheets into the cauldron. He got to the floor and started feeding the orange fiery purposed crystals with a trickle of mana to get them going. Baysil came back, holding a palette with a bag and two large pots.
“What are we making, Baysil?” Jace leaned back on his hands. Watching the sheets dissolve into sticky bubbling liquid.
“We’re making ink blocks.” She replied as she sat on the floor beside Jace. Her legs crossed and her tail curled over toward him.
“Do we do this every week?” Jace didn’t think he could get used to the pungent glue.
“No, this is more adding to our stockpiles and selling the rest off.” She explained, rolling one of the pots around with her hand. She pulled up a stirring spoon that was topped with a small green crystal and threw the spoon end into the pot. “These Ink blocks take years to cure.” The vixen fed some mana into the spoon’s crystal and it began stirring the glue.
“But Evaliena taught you a spell to speed up the process?” Jace speculated. He sat up, a powerful fragrant scent was invading his nose, he almost sneezed. “Is that perfume?” It had a sweet and fruity scent with a hint of spice.
“Uh-huh. Hold your nose.” The vixen warned as she poured one pot into the cauldron. Intensifying the pungent smell. “I hope your bread kneading skills are up to snuff. Because we’re going to be working on this for the next few hours.” She untied the bag on the palette and poured its sooty contents into the swirling cauldron. The mixture turned a pure black.
His hands hurt along with being stained in black silver impregnated ink. It blued his fur!
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Weeks to months pass. Evaliena left for days at a time. Jace didn’t bother to ask why, as today he was sitting on the cold stone platform out in the keep’s courtyard. Cedar paced around him. Others were chopping wood or tending to the garden. The old fox avoided the usual practice of sparring for today.
Instead, Cedar put him through a series of tests involving a pole of wood that was decorated with rune carvings, inlaid with silver like paint. In his vision, the runes glowed a very faint grey and felt as if their intention was to float and position the stick.
Prior lessons involved expressing Jace’s mana as lines in the air and making it hold in place. In which he had significant trouble doing so. Apparently, this was training for when Evaliena finally teaches him spellcraft. He was excited. He managed the feat of keeping a solid line of silvery mana in the air permanently, eventually. Manipulating that mana into different shapes once it was outside of the body was a learned skill that took decades and has very little use…
But now he had to focus on this piece of decorated wood. Keeping it charged and in the air in front of him. Which was tiring Jace’s abused well of mana. He gently let the inscribed pole settle to the ground with a clack.
Cedar looked to Jace. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”
“Cedar.” Jace eyed the old silver morph wearily. “I’m out of mana.”
“Then take a drink.” Cedar said dismissively. There was a filled bottle of small beer beside him. Jace didn’t like the taste of it.
“I’m also tired.” Jace added as he fell back, laying on the cold stone surface.
Cedar signed and sat down next to the younger Reynard. “At least you’re recognising when you’re getting tired.” The old fox commentated. “Eventually you’ll be able to get rid of that bracelet.” Jace raised his arm and looked at the bracelet. The corded hemp holding the crystal in place frayed from constant wear.
“Is this test with the stick related to your old sword?” Jace earnestly asked.
Cedar tilted his head and reminisced a little. “In a way. Making Winddancer fly about wasn’t just a showy party trick. It was a masterful piece of art, that sword.”
One thing Jace wondered from Cedar’s stories about his travels and his proclaimed flying sword was how he kept track of the blade without hurting himself. “How did you keep track of where the blade was?”
“The same way any mage keeps track of any enchanted object… Or the individuals around them.”
Jace sat up. “That being how?”
“It’s a skill you gain with age, Ashwood.” Cedar spoke dryly. “If that young girl Baysil can’t do it yet, then you won’t be able to, either.” Jace looked at the floor. The old fox raised his hand. “Now, are you rested enough?”
Jace shook his head.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“On a related subject, then. Since you’re starting to feel out your limit. Something I should warn you about. It is possible to injure your Feina.”
“Its possible to injure a Feina?” Jace sat up with mild concern, looking at the old fox. “How?”
“It’s like straining a muscle. Using too much mana at once without preparation or conditioning can strain your Feina. The head hurts like the hells after.” Cedar explained as he pulled out his pipe. Jace spent the rest of the session asking Cedar about this particular issue.
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The time dragged on. A rhythm settled in place as the lessons continued. More writing tasks, more mathematics related to how reactions went in chemistry, or what was called alchemy in this world. New words, words he’s never heard of before but could grasp the concepts of.
“Too long.” “Too curved.” “That one was squiggled.” Evaliena droned on, sat in an armchair, watching as Jace traced his finger through the air.
Jace dismissed and drew the first basal rune in the air again.
“Now you’ve drawn Athl instead of Lethf.”
The rune hung in the air with a silvery glow. The rune begged for something to join with it. Jace looked at the Rune and walked around it. With a simple change in perspective, now it looked like the first rune. “Now it’s Lethf.”
Evaliena pulled her hand to her face and snickered softly. “Aaah. I’ll give you that one. But no.” She turned her hand and leant on its palm.
Jace tilted his head toward Evaliena with a miffed expression. They had been practising the first rune all morning. “Why?”
“All spellcraft is drawn from the perspective of the caster.” Evaliena dryly explained. “The spell construct itself will naturally come together as a ball as you connect up the runes.”
“So no matter what? I have to draw it correctly from my current perspective?” Jace reiterated. The vixen nodded softly. “This is so… so… annoying.” Jace dismissed the rune and started over.
“Practice makes perfect, Jace. You will stick through it.” Evaliena drove the point home. “On the flip-side. The more runes you successively complete. The easier the next one becomes.”
“Well, isn’t that a silvery lining.” Jace drew the first rune again.
“Close. Again.” Evaliena commented. “And once you’ve drawn it correctly. You’ll be doing it until I think you’re ready for the first one.”
“This is hell.” He started over again.
“Hell is hell. This is practice.” The vixen shifted her tail over to the other side as kept watching closely. Jace drew the first rune once more. “Now you got it correct.” She smiled. “You can relax now and dismiss it.”
Jace loosened up and observed his handiwork. A proper rune, which also begged for another rune to join it. Then he dismissed it and dropped onto the rug on the floor. “Good, I was getting tired…”
Evaliena let out a chuckle. “Oh. My dear apprentice. We’re not done. You’ll be repeating that feat after we’ve had lunch.” Jace rolled his eyes and fell back against the soft rug. He wondered what was for lunch. A pot had been brewing next to the hearth, smelt like a meal he hadn’t had since he came to this world. The fragrance was pungent but inviting. The lid bubbled occasionally with a yellow, orange colour. He might really enjoy this one.
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Alchemy was a different beast to spellcraft. Jace had to learn how to calculate reactions between various ingredients and essences. Collectively known as stoichiometry. Lucky for Jace, his experience with cooking from the past two years had prepared with how to crush and chop as well as know weights just through feeling.
And he learned why the alchemy gear, let alone the other tools in the workshop, looked so expensive. Evaliena apparently bought these from the dwarves.
“Now. you’ve managed to distil spirits, extract essential oils and in one instance; Vis of water, light and fire.” Evaliena counted off Jace’s alchemical achievements. Jace was just happy he got to use the essentia tubes and the alchemical furnace for those last three. He still didn’t quite know what ‘Vis’ could be even used for. It was the crystallised form of essences, however.
“Now, my apprentice. Today you are going to make batches of copper-based enchantment ink and simple mana potions.” Evaliena instructed. Jace nodded along as he was excited. Both were relatively simple creations involving no reactions. Just weights.
The ink needed blue copper, and a viscous solution made with glue.
The mana potion, however, required more effort. Evaliena had handed him all he could need. He had to concentrate down the pile of greens into a syrupy liquid that held a disturbingly blue hue. It took his mana to activate the strange crystal that radiated several feelings, and his patience to watch as the liquid distilled over from the alembic. If it wasn’t a specific effect, alchemy was simple. But it stank to the heavens and clung to his fur.
The end result. Five bottles of blue ink that easily conducted mana. And Five bottles of blue syrupy mana potion. The mana potion smelt intoxicatingly sweet. Evaliena inspected the bottles.
“The ink… is usable.” She stated. “For simple rune glyphs, it would be enough, but for anything else, it would burn out.”
Jace shrugged. “Well, what else could I have added to it? I followed the recipe you gave.”
“I’m not saying you did anything wrong.” Evaliena smiled softly. “It was a simple recipe. More complex recipes use more blue copper, fragrances and some Vis to reinforce its properties.”
Jace thought for a moment. “So if I had Vis that could conduct mana, I would add that?”
Evaliena’s smile grew wider in acknowledgement. “Now do you know why your mana potions are blue?” She gestured to the set of five blue crystal bottles.
“It’s because we used common plants. If I had better components, it would be purple, right?” Jace hazarded a guess. The book said the weakest mana potions were blue, and the best were the colour of god’s own blood, a bright full red. It was vague on the ingredients, however.
“Correct. Purple is usually the sign of high quality potions. Now what do you think you would need to make a red mana potion?” Evaliena posed the question to Jace.
“This sounds like I won’t like the answer.” He really didn’t, as the richest sources of mana Jace had observed were all bodily fluids of some kind, including blood.
“I guess as a demonstration.” Evaliena picked up one of the crystal bottles and nicked the tip of her finger with a claw. A single glowing dot of blood fell from her finger into the bottle. The reaction was almost instant. The syrupy liquid swirled from blue to purple and then a dull red. “It’s all about the concentration of mana.”
“A single drop of Therian blood does that?” Jace wondered as he stared at the now red crystal bottle.
“Specifically, a drop of my blood did that.” Evaliena corrected, swirling the liquid around. “Honestly, if the people at large understood what it takes to make the best potions… They’d probably be disgusted.” Jace would be too, but he couldn’t complain. His own world had its fair share of disgusting processes. “However, there are a few rare fruits of fungi and plants that can easily be turned into multiple red mana potions. But it would be better to just distil those into their Vis for other uses.”
“That’s good to know.”
The vixen capped the bottle. “Mana potions, like most potions, do degrade and go off if not kept in ‘crystal’ bottles. But again, they do eventually go stale, anyway. Remember that.” She gave Jace a pat on the back. “You did good. Let’s clean up and go eat.”