Before Jeb grew too panicked, he remembered leaving it beside his bed. After a brief search, Jeb found his lute in its case, exactly where he’d left it. With that problem resolved, he rolled back over and let sleep take him.
In the morning, Jeb tried to think of a way to keep track of the passing time. The room was lit from some artificial source. It was nice, because it meant that there were no dark spots in the room, but it meant that Jeb couldn’t rely on the position of the sun to keep track of time. After a brief scan, he saw a clock on the wall.
Jeb resolved to check the clock often. His aunt showed him how to prepare the planks for curing, though she did not have Jeb cure them. When asked why, she simply responded, “there’s no point in you waiting for something I can do in an instant.”
He started making his first project: a wooden square. His aunt had told him that he would be making a square with a variety of different binding techniques. First was glue.
Thankfully, Jeb’s aunt wasn’t so harsh as to require him to make his own glue. She pointed him to a sealed container. Jeb tried making the squares two different ways.
In his first attempt, Jeb carefully cut each piece of wood to the same length and then glued them all together. As it turned out, between the gluing and the compressing, the piece ended up slightly wider than it was long. Jeb was able to cut it down, sure, but it felt like he’d wasted some time.
So, his second time making one, Jeb roughly cut the boards to be slightly longer than he expected to need. It was far faster to cut, and it didn’t take any longer at the end.
The days faded by in a blur. Sure, Jeb made sure to take a break every few hours, but those short breaks were filled with reviewing what he'd learned. His aunt demonstrated each piece of Woodworking once, since, in her words “anything more is just wasting good lumber.” Jeb did his best to replicate her work, but every piece he made had some fundamental flaw, which his aunt was not afraid to point out.
She never did so with malice, but it seemed as though she didn’t understand why he would make each mistake he made. After all, she gave him a perfect piece to replicate. The disappointment she showed each time he made a major error was an effective teaching aid, and Jeb never made the same mistake twice. When she’d finished explaining the final piece of wood in the room, Jeb began making what he assumed would be his final project: a walking stick.
He deftly worked around the grain, knots, and bends of the wood, carefully making sure that every surface was perfect. When he’d finished smoothing out the wood, Jeb began carving it. His aunt had suggested carving a Glyph into the staff if he could, so Jeb tried to work the Glyph for Attune Water Mana into it, if only because he’d been thinking about it lately.
Water was the only Element he’d learned that used Conjure instead of Create for its First Tier Glyph. Jeb wanted to try making Least Conjure Earth or Least Create Water, but he hadn’t had the time yet.
His Attune Mana Glyphs were also the only Glyphs he’d learned so far that didn’t say “Least” in front of them, which made Jeb think he’d be relying on them for far longer. Now that Jeb had thought of two reasons to put Attune Water Mana into the staff, he just had to figure out how.
The project was far more difficult than Scribing a shovel had been. The shovel was mostly square-shaped, so he was able to understand how the Glyph would fit on it. The staff was not. It was thin and roughly cylindrical, so Jeb had to think about how to connect the points.
Thankfully, Jeb had a lot of scrap wood that he could practice on before committing to the staff. First, he tried just imagining that the Glyph were on a sheet of paper, then tracing that onto a nearby plank. He didn’t think that it would work, but it would certainly be the easiest answer. To his complete lack of surprise, the carving didn’t take even the slightest bit of Mana, no matter how hard Jeb tried to push.
Jeb took a moment to consider what he was doing, making sure to be methodical and intentional. He sat with his back against the wall, feeling the smooth wood beneath and behind him. The feeling quickly faded from his mind as he brought the Glyph to mind.
He’d always thought of the Glyphs as lying more or less in a square. Part of that was obviously because of the medium he was learning them. After all, images on books could only really be two-dimensional. Still, was that an actual requirement in the Glyph, or simply a convention?
Jeb imagined the Glyph rotating in his mind, this time rotating so that he saw it edge on. To his surprise, the Glyph wasn’t totally flat. The Water Attuning portion of the Glyph lay slightly in and out of the overall plane of the Glyph.
Even without adjusting them, Jeb knew that the non-planar portions were there for a reason, even if he didn’t know why just yet. Exploring what would happen if he made the entire Glyph lie on a plane went on the list of experiments to try later. For now, he would figure out how to make the Glyph fit on a rough cylinder.
Out of curiosity, Jeb mentally wrapped the Glyph like he had over the plank of wood. The light immediately guttered out in his mind. Well, that was promising. Maybe he wouldn’t need to test the carving over and over on different pieces of wood. His aunt would certainly be happy to not have so much wood wasted.
He tried making the Glyph wrap not around square corners, but in a smooth curve. Somehow Jeb had the image of the Glyph both lit up and not lit up at the same time. Apparently his Skill wasn’t yet able to predict completely new configurations of the Glyph. For now, at least, he would need to try carving things into the wood.
Before he did, though, Jeb wanted to see what would happen if he adjusted the shape. Though the Glyph remained both lit and not, Jeb could see how some changes made the light feel more or less likely. It was barely more than a hunch, but it felt like the best path forward.
Jeb decided that he would imagine the Glyph and rearrange it until his Skills and experience told him he had found the best likelihood of success. At that point, he would try carving the Glyph into the wood. He figured that each attempt would either work or help train his mental models more effectively.
His next attempt required a cylindrical piece of wood. Thankfully, his attempts at learning how to spin a lathe had left him with plenty of wood to use for that purpose. Once more, the Glyph failed to activate.
Acting on instinct, though, Jeb tried looking at it while watching the Mana around it. He’d only ever done that while using a Glyph or the Song, so it took a few moments to separate the two feelings. When he did, he saw what points in the Glyph were blocking the flow of Mana. It was really helpful, he was sure. It just didn’t mean anything to his conscious mind.
Realizing that this might help him train his mental models faster, he grabbed his first failed experiment and looked at the places Mana was stuck through it. That was less than useful, because it failed on the first point in the Glyph. Still, it was good to know.
The rest of the day passed without touching the beautiful piece of wood his aunt had given him. When she came in after dinner, as had become the norm, she seemed confused.
“Jeb, not that I think you should rush into carving wood, but why haven’t you started yet?” Her tone let Jeb know that this question had wrong answers.
Jeb took a moment before answering, breaking out of the model he was currently working on. A part of him wished that he had a way to save each previous attempt in his mind. “I still haven’t figured out how to engrave a Glyph onto a cylinder,” he replied. “And each attempt is getting me closer.” He gestured to the pile of dowels he’d carved into throughout the day.
“I’m glad that your woodworking skill is continuing to develop,” his aunt said, nodding approvingly.
Jeb cocked his head, then looked at the different dowels. The Glyphs became closer to functional as he looked down the line. That clearly wasn’t what his aunt was referring to, though, so he ignored that.
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He looked at the physical lines and points that he had carved into the wood. Each one looked smoother and cleaner. Jeb was even gladder that he’d waited now, since the lines still weren’t totally clean.
Though, that did add another complication. Was the Glyph not working because the design was bad, or because Jeb’s implementation of the design was bad? He decided to figure out the answer to that the following day.
In the morning, Jeb started on his next dowel. As night fell again, he felt so close to the right arrangement. He was certain that the next dowel he carved would Attune Mana that was passed through it.
Jeb felt the same way the following night. After his fifth day working on to adapt the Glyph, his aunt suggest that he might want to just carve the staff without a Glyph. It was a fair idea. He’d stopped making notable improvements in his actual carving, for all that the Mana flow through the dowels continued to get better and better.
Even if he wasn’t making incredible progress on the specific task of engraving Attune Water Mana onto a staff, Jeb could feel his Skills growing from the experimentation. He’d practiced modifying Spell Glyphs more in the past few days than he had up to that point. It wasn’t modifying the way that his Quest asked him to, that much he was sure of, but it was the same skill being developed.
His aunt came in after the eighth day to the sounds of cheering. It was immediately clear why. Jeb was holding a dowel that glowed with wet blue light.
“I see that you’ve finally figured out the Glyph,” she commented.
“Almost!” Jeb exclaimed. “Now I just need to clean it up a little. The Glyph shouldn’t light up when it’s activated. That means that there’s a mistake somewhere in the path.”
“As a counterpoint,” his aunt offered, “it looked very impressive when I came in to see you holding a staff that was emitting a glowing trail of light.”
Jeb considered that, “but this is a really nice piece of wood and-”
His aunt interrupted him, “it’s nicer than most of what I had you work with, sure, but it’s nothing horribly expensive. In a few years when you actually know what you want out of a staff, you can remake it. For now, though,” she gave him a pointed look, “finish the project.”
They chatted a little longer before his aunt left. Jeb had an urge to start carving right away, but he knew that he should wait for the morning. It was only as he looked for the Quest Notification that he realized he wouldn’t be receiving a reward for all his work adapting Attune Water Mana. After all, his Quests were for First and Second Tier Glyphs.
Jeb spent a few minutes bemoaning his own shortsightedness before he went back through his logic for using Attune Water Mana. He still thought it would be more useful than any of his First Tier Glyphs, and it wasn’t like he was hurting for Experience. Having more Mana was always nice, but he didn’t strictly need the extra five.
Feeling better, Jeb let sleep take him, ready to finish the staff in the morning.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 4203/100
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Total Statistic Load: 278 Physical Load: 124 Strength: 28 Dexterity: 21 Endurance: 30 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 154 Intelligence: 25 Willpower: 25 Magic Affinity: 51 Mana Depth: 25 Charisma: 28
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Mana: 585
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Glyph Attunement: 22 Least Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Water Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Air Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Fire Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell
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Bard Songs Known: 1 Lute Enforcement
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination Brewing Distilling Bardic Magic Smithing
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)