When Jeb awoke, it was morning again. He hoped that he had just slept through the rest of the day and night, not for multiple days. Sitting up and looking around, he saw that there was nobody in the grove with him.
He picked up his lute, noting that it did not seem any worse the wear for its exposure to the elements and started walking back. As he did, Jeb felt the grove slowly fade out of his senses, as though it was no more real than any of the hallways he walked through. It was a strange feeling, to say the least, and Jeb hardly noticed the transition from grove to cafeteria.
Inside the cafeteria, Dean Aquam and Professor Quicksilver were sitting next to each other, holding an intense if whispered conversation. Both looked up at the sound of the door opening and smiled when they saw Jeb.
“Ah!” Professor Quicksilver exclaimed, “we were just discussing you!”
Dean Aquam rolled his eyes. “Jeb, please tell me that you did not knowingly expose yourself to an Essence Stone,” he said, tone already resigned to the answer he knew he would hear.
“Technically Professor Quicksilver exposed me,” Jeb replied.
Dean Aquam’s frown deepened. “I am aware. We were just discussing that.”
Professor Quicksilver shrugged in Jeb’s direction.
Dean Aquam looked Jeb up and down. “Did you just wake up from your new Class?”
Jeb nodded. His stomach let out a loud gurgle, which seemed to stop the Dean from asking any other questions. He gestured for Jeb to go and get breakfast. Jeb did not need to be told twice, practically bolting to make himself a plate of food.
When he had sated his hunger, gone through ablutions, and changed into a clean uniform, Jeb considered what he could do with the rest of his break. He looked around, hoping that he had left a list to himself. Unsurprisingly, he had not.
Let’s see, Jeb thought, “next term I’m taking Alchemy again. Given Dean Aquam’s mood this morning, it’s probably not a great idea to start with that immediately. I could check on the Fireleaf, but I doubt it needs anything.” Jeb started heading in the direction of the field as he continued to go through the possibilities for how he could spend the rest of his break.
Looking through his Notifications, Jeb was reminded that he had unlocked the Weaving Skill. He remembered the meeting with Dean Aquam where he had implied that there was a Magic he could learn once he had the Weaving Skill. The desire to learn it resonated so strongly with his Class that Jeb found the hallway in front of him suddenly swerve, as though it was now leading him to the Workshop. Frowning, Jeb continued walking forward, trusting that the hallway would reform in the direction that he actually wanted to go.
When he ran into the semi-permeable membrane, he debated pushing against it. He had nearly succeeded in going through the wall before he had raised Tier again. Now that he was Third Tier, Jeb was positive that he could get through the wall if he really needed or wanted to. Thankfully, the Academy did not push him to do so now.
Moving like nothing so much as a petulant child, the hallway one more started to point in the direction of Jeb’s field. Nodding in satisfaction, Jeb began to walk down the path, fixing his desire to see the Fireleaf in his mind. To his relief, the hallway did not play any tricks on him, and in a few minutes he started to smell the growing life.
The Fireleaf, as he had expected, had continued to grow just fine in his absence. Now that Alchemy had been absorbed by his Magic Skill, Jeb found that it was no struggle at all to see the Essences and Attunements at the same time. Most of the time, as Professor Quicksilver had told him, the two did overlap almost entirely. Every so often, though, the two diverged significantly. When that happened, it was like looking at something that was somehow a striking blue and orange at the same time: clearly impossible, for all that his eyes were telling him that was what they saw.
Jeb hoped that the sight would become less distracting in time. If not, he was worried about his ability to continue doing Alchemy. After confirming that there was nothing he needed to do with the crops, Jeb let the Academy lead him to the Workshop.
He found the Weaving door almost as soon as he entered the constantly rotating set of doors, as though even the Workshop was excited for Jeb to begin this next project. Jeb opened the door, more than a little surprised to see that the Weaver was standing, waiting for him.
“I see that you are finally ready to begin Magical Weaving,” he said simply, turning towards a door that had not been in the Weaving Workshop before. Jeb followed him, hoping that it was the right choice.
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They entered a dark hallway. Unlike the halls of the Academy, these seemed almost too real. A part of Jeb felt as though he was going to start fading away if he stayed in them too long.
Looking at the walls, Jeb realized that the area was not quite as dark as he had thought. Intricate woven murals were attached to each wall, like they had been in the Workshop. These, however, seemed to be made of something completely different than any thread Jeb had worked with before.
The Weaver paid them no mind, continuing forward. Jeb realized that he was falling behind and hurried to catch up. A voice in his head assured him that it would go poorly for him if he lost sight of the Weaver here.
After what felt like an eternity or a split second, the Weaver stopped. Jeb stopped as well, noticing that they stood in front of a door.
“It is not too late for you to choose not to see this,” the Weaver cautioned. His tone was different than anything Jeb had heard before. It sounded almost afraid.
“See what?” Jeb asked.
The Weaver nodded, almost sadly, and opened the door.
Light spilled out, warm and comforting. As it did, the tapestries on the wall seemed to suck in the light, glowing brighter and brighter. Jeb was reminded of the way that embers glowed when breathed on.
Stepping inside, Jeb saw what he knew had to be a spinning machine and loom, for all that they were completely unlike any he had seen before. A roaring fire floated where rough fibers might normally go on a standard spinning machine, burning without any apparent need for fuel.
“What is this?” Jeb asked, looking around. He hardly noticed that the door to the hallway had closed, sealing the room away.
“If Weaving were capable only of producing mundane fabrics, you, an Academy student, would never be permitted to learn the Skill.”
“Right,” Jeb replied, still staring in awe at the fire. To his Magical senses, it was just as much fire as it was to his vision. “Manaweave isn’t a mundane fabric, though.”
The Weaver scoffed. “Is it not? Fibers are grown from the earth, before being cleaned and spun. The thread is woven no differently than any wool or other natural material. A material being Magical does not make the fabric any less mundane. This,” he gestured to the setup, “is thread that cannot be made through mundane means. Fire itself is spun into the form of thread, and fire itself is woven.”
He handed Jeb a small scrap of spark. It shimmered in his hands, blues and greens occasionally surfacing amidst waves of yellow and red. Looking at it was even worse than looking at the places where Essence and Attunement differed.
To all of his standard senses, the material was simply fabric, albeit a fanciful one. To all of his Magical senses, though, the material was simply fire. His Magical senses didn’t even register the fire as having been woven, simply that it was, for whatever reason, more or less planar.
Jeb blinked rapidly, trying to process what he was seeing. The Weaver tutted and took the scrap out of Jeb’s hands.
Jeb’s mind cleared, and he looked up at the Weaver in amazement.
“Do better,” the Weaver said simply. “You are a Weaver now. See that this is a woven material.”
Jeb frowned at the instruction. Shrugging, he tried to activate his Weaving Skill as he looked at the piece of fabric. To his surprise, Jeb’s vision was overlaid, like when he tried to use his Magical vision. Unlike with his Magical vision, though, Jeb did not see Attunement or Essence. Instead, the world seemed to be reduced to four kinds of objects: things which could be woven, things which could weave, things which could not be woven, and things which were woven.
When he looked at the Weaver, Jeb amended that list. Weaver was also a category to his Weaving sense.
“If you have ever heard of a cloak of shadows or a cape of moonlight, it was made by a Weaver,” the Weaver continued, grabbing a fistful of the fire. He began to work it into thread as Jeb watched.
“If you were to dedicate yourself to the craft, in time you would need nothing save your will to create cloth out of anything.” The thread seemed to weave itself, and another scrap of fire was suddenly in the Weaver’s hand. He crushed it, tossing it back into the ball of fire that he had taken it to. Somehow, the fabric dissolved back into the fire it had been woven from.
“For now, however, I expect that you will need to use the setup here.”
With that, the Weaver left.
Jeb looked at the apparatus in front of him. Try as he might to start the spinning machine, it would not take hold of the ball of fire. He found himself wondering how, exactly, the Weaver had managed to trap and stabilize a flame for so long.
Shaking himself out of the thought, Jeb focused on his Skill again and looked at the ball of flame. It looked completely inert to his Weaving sense.
“I watched the Weaver weave this not even a minute ago,” Jeb said, arguing with the Skill.
He was not surprised that the Skill did not suddenly accept fire as weavable. Truthfully, Jeb wasn’t entirely sure if he believed it either. He could accept that the Weaver had managed to weave fabric out of flame, but that did not mean that Jeb would be able to.
Rather than focus on his failure, Jeb started to investigate the spinning machine. The more he looked at it, the less that it felt like a spinning machine in any meaningful sense. For one, it was not hand held.
It resembled a spinning wheel, but there was no part which would grab raw fibers, and when Jeb used it, it did not seem to do anything to actually spin thread. Jeb reached into the fire, trying to tell himself that it would be solid when he grabbed it. He did not really believe it, and his hand passed straight through the fire.
It felt hot. Jeb was grateful for the extra durability that Statistics and Tier granted him. He could tell that he would have been burned just from this short contact a few months ago.
Jeb continued to try and fail to grasp the flames for hours. When he took a break, he realized that he was far more tired than he would have expected. Whether it was something residual from his recent Class Advancement or something else, he was not sure. Looking around, he saw what resembled a sleeping mat. Lying down on it, Jeb fell asleep.