For whatever reason, the dim parts of the Spell Glyph were not entirely within the Elemental Attuning portion of the Glyph. Sure, all four of the first four points were dimmer than they should be, but Jeb had expected that.
He considered his goal. Jeb had just started the project a few minutes before, but he already saw two potential options. First, he could try to slowly refine the Glyph for Least Create Earth until it became Least Create Soil, but he was unsure if that would work. After all, soil needed a balance of clay, sand, and silt, along with water, air, and other trace metals and salts. That seemed like a lot to make into a First Tier Glyph.
His second idea was to shift Least Create Earth until it became Least Create Sand. That might not be quite as useful in the long term, but it could at least give him a starting point for making soil. At the very least, if he was able to combine Glyphs for Creating Sand, Silt, and Clay, he would be most of the way to soil that he could treat with fertilizer.
After a few minutes of pondering, Jeb decided to work on making Least Create Sand first. That way, if Soil ended up being a higher Tier Element, he would already be closer to it.
He called the Glyph for Least Create Earth to mind and once more split his focus. This time, rather than trying to make Earth with Sand in it, Jeb focused his Intellect and Will on making the Glyph produce only Sand.
The latest handful of soil was the sandiest by far, but he could feel the soul ache from the morning’s exercise with Waterweave coming back. Pushing through and ignoring the pain, he looked at the points of the Glyph that seemed the dimmest.
The second point was the first incredibly dim point, which made sense. Try as he might, though, Jeb was unable to make it glow brighter by forcing the point up, down, left or right. He was confused and decided to take a break.
As Jeb rested and tried to make his soul less strained, he focused on enjoying the feeling of the soft field beneath his back. He felt a soft touch on his forehead and opened his eyes, curious who was trying to get his attention. To his surprise, it was the queen of his hive.
“Good morning,” he said, giving a slight bob of his head.
The queen danced back a greeting in return and flew off, hive following behind her. As Jeb watched the hive, an idea came to him.
Jeb called the Glyph for Least Create Earth to mind, carefully shifting each point until it was as bright as he could make it while visualizing sand. Then, he tried pushing the second point inwards.
To his surprise, the Glyph allowed the change. While it didn’t look any different to his mind’s eye, he knew intellectually that the Glyph had to be three dimensional now. Out of curiosity more than any real belief that it could help, he tried rotating the Glyph so that he was looking along the plane that it sat in.
He was unsurprised to see that the point he had pushed lay out of plane, but he was shocked to see that many of the points seemed out of plane. Once more, he was at a crossroads. Jeb could try to make the Glyph for Least Create Sand, or he could see what a perfectly planar Least Create Earth would turn into.
He wasn’t sure how to decide, so he plucked a flower from next to where he was sitting. He knew a popular children’s chant for divining one’s future with the petals of a roselet.
“Many a petal a roselet is born with,
And many a petal I’ll tear.
For better or worse, I’ll find out the answer
Remembering life isn’t fair.”
The song kept going as Jeb slowly plucked the petals off of the roselet. The longer that he sang, the more bees came by to see what he was doing, buzzing confusedly. It seemed like they had trouble understanding what was driving him to tear up a poor defenseless flower.
When he finished tearing the flower, he had an answer. The flower had had an odd number of petals, so he would work to make Least Create Sand.
The Glyph looked brighter with the second point pushed in, it was true, but Jeb was curious what difference it would make in the Earth it created. He focused on making Sand and formed a handful another handful. As it appeared, the Skills in his head felt like they were screaming.
Jeb wasn’t totally sure what the issue was, but he had a feeling it was about the intent he was pushing through the Spell Glyph. That made some amount of sense to him. After all, he was able to cause vastly different shapes with Least Shape Water, especially now that his Willpower had grown so much. It only made sense that he would also be able to effect some fair amount of change on the effects of Least Create Earth.
So, Jeb focused on the Glyph again and tried his hardest to just push a small amount of Mana through the Spell, letting it shift how the Glyph forced it to. He was a little disappointed. If anything, the changes he’d made seemed to make the Earth in front of him less sandy.
As he stared at the handful of Earth he had just created, Jeb decided to make Least Create Sand in as rigorous a method as possible. He dismissed the modified Glyph he had created and called the base form of Least Create Earth to mind. He conjured a handful of Earth, making every effort not to affect the way the Glyph wanted to turn his Mana into Earth.
Setting it down, he moved the first point in the Glyph up slightly and Created another handful. Soil Savvy told him that the soil had slightly less sand than before. He moved the Glyph back to its starting position, then slightly lower. The Earth was almost imperceptibly sandier.
Once he had optimized the height of the first point, he shifted it left and right, and then in and out of plane. Once he’d gotten it in what should have been the right position, he checked its height again. It needed to be adjusted slightly, so he moved it ever so slightly lower. After three loops through the directions, Jeb was unable to move the point finely enough to improve it at all.
Handful after handful, he slowly worked his way through the other twenty four points in the Glyph. When he had finished going through the Glyph as a first pass, the Earth was significantly sandier than it had been. But, it was also horribly inefficient.
Jeb estimated that making the final handful of Earth had taken him nearly double the Mana that the unmodified handful had taken. He looked up from his work to see some of the bees clustering around him. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
They buzzed a yes, and Jeb cocked his head. “What’s wrong?”
As they danced, he got the impression that they were worried about him.
“I’m fine!” he responded, “why are you worried about me?”
The dance was a little harder to understand. It was something about pollen and honey. As Jeb watched them repeat the message, he understood.
“Oh! I don’t need anything to eat right now, it’s only been-” he trailed off, looking at the sun. He quickly amended that thought to looking for the sun. It was well past dark, and he had apparently been working all day without a break.
“Never mind, I should probably go inside and go to sleep,” he said. The bees buzzed their agreement and flew off. As Jeb watched them go, he had the strange feeling that they were ever so slightly larger than he was used to. Then again, he had only really started paying attention to bees when he’d established his hive. Maybe they were just growing.
Back inside, Jeb found some food and quickly went to bed. It was harder than normal for him to fall asleep. While his body and soul felt exhausted, his mind hadn’t been particularly taxed by shifting Least Create Earth. He had tried his absolute hardest to approach the Glyph systematically, rather than relying on his System. He knew that it would be slower, but he hoped that it would make him more efficient at creating new Glyphs over the long term.
When he eventually fell asleep, he dreamed of Magic. It wasn’t the Magic of Glyphs, ordered and controlled. Try as Jeb might, Least Create Earth would never be able to replicate Least Destroy Air.
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Neither was the Magic he saw in his dreams the Magic of a Song. Jeb knew that the Songs were freer. After all, he was almost certain that his bees were dancing some variation on Lute Enforcement to Enforce their hive. But, he still couldn’t think of a way to make Lute Enforcement change a river in its course.
As Jeb watched the Magic in front of him, he saw glimpses of both Glyphs and Songs within it. It was hard to watch. He knew that somehow both Glyphs and Songs were someone’s crude attempts at replicating this Magic.
“Why have you come, child of man?” Jeb heard the voice from all around him.
He looked around, making sure that it was him the voice was speaking to.
“Where am I?” he asked.
Somehow he got the impression of confusion from the Magic in front of him. “Did you not follow the three hundred steps on the road from Fallharbor? Or did you not climb the highest peaks you could find, stopping only to watch the mourning sun rise?”
“No?”
Something changed in the Magic. What had been potential was becoming manifest. A figure emerged from the cloud of Magic.
“What are you called, child of man?” the figure asked. No longer was the sound coming from around Jeb.
In fact, as he looked around, there was no longer a cloud of Magic surrounding him. All of the many ways that the Magic could have expressed itself were gone. Instead, there was only the being in front of him, which seemed as though it could never have been anything else.
Jeb stared at it, before remembering that it had asked him a question. “I’m Jeb, what are you called?” he asked, mirroring the being’s phrasing.
Its look of confusion turned to one of mirth. “Oh, this is wonderful! I haven’t spoken to a child of man who still is a child in longer than you could understand. Do you not know who I am?”
Jeb considered that for a moment. He went through everyone he’d ever known, and none of them matched a being made from the collapsed possibilities of pure and unrestrained Magic. “I don’t think I’ve met you before?” he hazarded.
“You have not,” the being nodded in agreement, “and yet you know who I am, do you not?”
“My only guess is that you are Magic,” Jeb said nervously. Before the being could respond, he went on, “I’m really sorry if I’ve done something wrong by using Glyphs or Songs or modifying them or trying to use them together or-”
The being interrupted him, “did you truly come here without knowing the way?”
“I think so?” Jeb said, “I fell asleep and then woke up here.”
The being smiled for a moment, and then it disappeared. As Jeb thought that, though, he realized it wasn’t that the being had disappeared. Instead, what had been an absence of potential realities had returned to being solely potential.
He felt an urge to reach out to the Magic. He knew without a doubt that any contact with it would change his life forever. Jeb stretched out his hand.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 5488/100
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Total Statistic Load: 313 Physical Load: 124 Strength: 28 Dexterity: 21 Endurance: 30 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 189 Intelligence: 45 Willpower: 38 Magic Affinity: 51 Mana Depth: 25 Charisma: 30
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Mana: 860
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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 Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water 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 Wood Identification Woodworking Soil Improvement
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)