Jeb woke up. He felt around, feeling a little disconnected from himself. As he blinked away the last vestiges of sleep, Jeb tried to figure out why the feeling felt so familiar.
Working backwards through his time in the Academy, he tried to place the feeling. After a few minutes of thought, he remembered the way that he had felt when Instructor Thistle had pulled the class into another dimension. It was a similar feeling, but not entirely the same.
Having satisfied the curiosity, Jeb focused on the ball of fire in front of him. He wasn’t entirely sure how the Weaver would know when he succeeded, but Jeb trusted that he had not been abandoned forever.
At worst, he thought wryly, I am sure that my Glyph Professor would notice if he stopped getting a supply of Manaweave.
Looking at the setup again, Jeb tried his hardest to put aside his preconceived notions. There was every possibility that he was, in fact, in another dimension. If he was, he tried to convince himself, there was no reason that someone with the Weaving Skill shouldn’t be able to touch fire.
When Jeb tried to activate Weaving, he found that he was able to slip into the visualization much more easily than before he had slept. Whether something had changed while he slept, or if it was just the benefit of repetition showing, Jeb wasn’t sure. Shaking his head to knock away the question, Jeb looked at the fire again.
As he looked, a strand of it suddenly seemed weavable. Reaching out, Jeb realized that it was just a strand of his hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. Sighing, he pushed his hair back and stared at the fire, willing it to respond to his will and come out as a strand.
When that didn’t work, he tried to call his Attune Fire Mana Glyph, hoping that an increase in the Mana concentration might help him sense the fire better. To his surprise, his Glyphs seemed to be sealed away from him. The same was true when he reached for Lute Enforcement or any Enchantment he had memorized. That did confirm his suspicions that he was in a slightly different dimension, for all that it was more than a little annoying.
Refocusing, Jeb looked at the spinning machine. It did not have a single part that appeared to twist the thread, which Jeb struggled to understand at first. For some reason, his Smithing Skill seemed to be trying to tell Jeb something. He gave into the feeling, trusting the System.
Jeb suddenly remembered his time in his grandfather’s workshop, where he pulled thinner and thinner wire through draw plates. The spinning machine resembled a very specialized draw plate more than any of the other pieces the Weaver had introduced him to. As Jeb thought about why that might be, something clicked in his understanding.
The fire no longer appeared completely unweavable to his vision. Rushing forward, Jeb grasped for it. His fingers pushed through the fire with minimal resistance.
The sudden inspiration he had fled him, and Jeb pulled his hand back when it started to overheat. Frowning, he tried to return to the mental state he had been in. As he did, he realized something.
Minimal resistance was not no resistance. Jeb had made progress in grasping Fire, even if it was only slight. Something seemed to slip in front of his vision as he reached out to the flame again.
This time, it was as though Jeb had stuck his hand into a pot of some hot liquid. He could feel the fire pulsing around him, but it slid between his fingers when he tried to grip it. His hand seemed to heat up more quickly this time, and he pulled it out, blowing on his fingers.
Jeb blinked, and his vision returned to normal. He looked down at his hand, noting that it was slightly red. Looking around, he tried to find anything he could use to prevent his hand from becoming more burnt. A quick trek through the room he was trying increasingly hard not to think of as a prison cell did not appear to have any bandages. It also did not have any food or water.
I guess I have a time limit, Jeb said, grateful that raising his Class another Tier made it so that he did not need to eat as often, especially since he was not doing anything too physically strenuous. Thinking about his Class, Jeb remembered the way that the description had changed. His Wizard Class was about finding the connection between Magic and the System. There was nothing that weaving fire could be except for Magic.
Jeb reached down into himself, searching for the Magic Skill. For all that he had used it while working on Glyphs or Enchantments, Jeb had never really thought of the Skill as a singular entity. He had always treated it as a wrapper over Skills, rather than a Skill in itself.
Closing his eyes, Jeb focused on his soul. His Weaving and Smithing Skills were the first he found, already half primed to be called up again. He passed by Brewing and Distilling, noting that they seemed a little raw, as though they were trying to heal. Try as he might, though, Jeb could not see Magic.
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He willed himself to look unfocus his vision. As he did, his Skills appeared to grow smaller and more defined. Suddenly, Jeb realized that what he had taken for the backdrop of his soul was not, in fact, a blank canvas.
Continuing to pull his vision back more and more, Jeb saw a Skill start to take shape. His Magic Skill was far larger than any of his other Skills. Jeb wasn’t certain if that was because it had consumed so many Skills, or if it was a consequence of being his singular Class Skill. Both reasons seemed to resonate with him at least somewhat, so he mentally shrugged and focused on the Skill, tuning out the rest of his System.
The Skill looked somewhat sickly. Even though Jeb knew that he was not in a three dimensional space, he had begun to visualize his Skills as spheres. The rest of them had appeared perfectly smooth, growing steadily denser towards their core. Magic, by contrast, seemed to have points of density scattered around it. The center of the Skill seemed almost hollow.
As Jeb continued to stare at the reflection of his dearest Skill, he noticed that one of the denser regions seemed tied to Brewing and Distilling. Probing the connection, he saw that the denser region was his Alchemy Skill, which was still being absorbed into its parent. Even knowing that most people learning to weave fire would not have such a broad skill, Jeb couldn’t help but feel like the Skill’s ill health was the biggest barrier to his current success.
Pulling himself back into his body, Jeb started to focus on his Magic Skill. He questioned the part of him that still thought of his ability to produce Glyphs and Enchantments as separate. It was hard to break out of the mental ruts that had served him so well up to this point.
Lying back down onto the pile of bedding, Jeb breathed deeply and started trying to unify his use of Magic. He kept returning to his dreams of Magic. The fact that it seemed to exemplify all the different College’s preferred Magics perfectly was something that resonated with every part of Jeb’s Class. At some point, he fell asleep, still thinking about how to unify his Skill.
When Jeb woke up, he felt like Magic had become stabler, even if he did not want to delve into exactly why. He focused on Magic, forcing himself not to see either the Essence or the Attunement, but simply the presence of Magic. The room was blinding. Every piece of the room blazed with its own distinct touch of Magic. Countless Weavers had practiced their art here. Each had a different connection to Magic, to the System, and to Weaving.
If Jeb focused harder, he was certain that he would be able to trace exactly which thread of every piece on the walls came from which set of hands. He shook himself out of the thought, focusing again on the fire and the spinning machine. The fire somehow seemed the dimmest of anything in the room to his newly unified Magical sight. Jeb wasn’t certain if that was a consequence of how he was still failing to see Magic as a single concept, but pushed the thought aside. Forcing himself to ignore all the other sparkling lights in the room, which seemed to dance around him, Jeb focused on Weaving.
His vision changed again. The spinning machine suddenly blazed with the desire, the need to form thread. The fire seemed almost hesitant, as though it wasn’t sure what it was meant to be any longer.
Jeb reached out, knowing beyond confidence that his hand would be able to grasp fire. The fire would slot into the spinning machine, where he would be able to make a spool of thread. Reaching out, the fire felt gelatinous.
The first handful he grasped separated from the rest of the ball of fire, though the ball did not seem in any way diminished. Shaking his head, Jeb grasped a new handful more gently, pulling without tearing the fire away. It pulled away, still connected to the larger ball. Feeding it into the spinning machine, Jeb was relieved to see that it began to run on its own. As the flames stretched and thinned, a spool of thread began to form.
When Jeb had enough to make a small piece of cloth, he broke the connection between the thread and the large ball of yarn. The fire, which had stretched out to remain connected to the machine, suddenly snapped back to a ball form. Jeb felt his connection to his Skills suddenly break as his consciousness started to fade.
Waking, Jeb winced. His head pounded with the pulsing of his heart, letting him know that he had pushed too hard the day before. When he tried to activate his Magical sight, the pain flared all the brighter, and Jeb nodded. Looking through the lens of Weaving did not seem to make the pain much worse, so Jeb grit his teeth and picked up the spool of thread he had made.
A part of him had been worried that the thread would have dissipated back into tongues of flame. To his relief, it seemed as though the material was stable, at least in the short term. Ideas began to play through Jeb’s mind about weaving different materials together, but he pushed the thought to the side.
Taking the thread over to the loom, Jeb was relieved to see that, despite the Magic emanating from the machine, it did not appear to operate any differently. Jeb carefully threaded the machine and began working with the material. The stability he had noticed started to fade as he worked the thread, and the warp and weft threads tried to melt together.
The first time it happened, Jeb let them, curious what would happen. The heat that the flame released before dissipating into the surrounding air let him know that he had to force the thread to remain thread as he wove. Groaning slightly, he rethreaded the machine and started to work it again. When he was running out of thread, he finished off the piece of fabric and stepped back, wiping a hand across his sweating brow.
Weaving had become almost meditative to Jeb as he had worked over the term. There was no part of him that could tune out while working with fire, however. He had to remain totally focused on the project, reminding the flames that they were, in fact, thread. Once the project was finished, however, Jeb felt the weight pull off his shoulders.
He had done it. Picking up the small piece of material, Jeb marveled at the way that it felt. It was softer than any other fabric he had handled, and seemed to keep his hand at a perfect temperature.