The piece of Blysht in front of Isyd was barely bigger than his palm. It was crudely cut and presented sharp edges where it had been broken off. From a quick look in the stash, Isyd had found that most crystals were small, some even too insignificant to be of any use. Since the Blysht was mostly regarded as junk, it hadn’t been handled with care but rather smashed into pieces and thrown around. Isyd had carefully fished inside the bag to find a decent piece that could serve as testing material.

“Come on, Isyd!” Naeht said impatiently. “Make it glow!”

“It is not so easy, Naeht. Blysht is in its natural state an inert crystal. I don’t even really know where to begin.”

“Well, just use it! I saw you do it thousands of times before! Store your Grace in the Blysht.”

Isyd sighed. It was easier said than done.

Everything was naturally imbued with Grace – it was a direct consequence of the First Law of the Arts. Grace could not be created nor destroyed but only altered. The Blysht, however, was special in its ability to store Grace far more than any other object could. If the Grace was water, the First Law stated that everything had inherently a certain level of moisture while the Blysht was able to act like a barrel.

As far as Isyd knew, the Blysht was the only material able of such a feat. In the wild, this process happened only on a few occasions and under specific conditions, otherwise, the Blysht remained an inert, useless piece of crystal. The real challenge was to make this rare event happen on will.

Isyd explained this to Naeht. “The Blysht does not store Grace willy-nilly. It has to be prompted by a powerful [Hex] first. It is a complex one and it took several years before Artysta cracked it back in Old Ziemia.”

Naeht turned her head one way. “You don’t know it?”

“Not exactly… I mean, it never occurred to me to study it, you know… I wasn’t an Arcanysta after all.”

“Damn… So how are you gonna do it, then? It’s not like we can find the [Hex] written in a book somewhere, right?”

“Unlikely. We’re alone in this. I must try to reverse engineer it.”

Grace circled Isyd who closed his eyes and listened to its Song.

“Oh! It feels weird!” Naeht giggled.

Isyd moved a finger to his lips for her to remain silent. He opened his body and his mind and he revealed in the ever presence of Holy Grace. He could faintly perceive a humming coming from the Blysht. It was so weak, it faded into the background noise of all the other objects also naturally imbued with Grace. Somehow, he had to find a way to force the Grace to flow into the Blysht.

His fingers began painting the Commands without him realizing. The [Hex] he was crafting collapsed five times as he was casting it; twice from faulty Balance, twice from unclear Visualization and once from lack of Concentration. At his sixth trial, Isyd was showing visible signs of exhaustion. His right arm was numb, his brow was covered by a film of sweat and his breath had slowed down to a weak whistle. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours and Isyd was still Meshing the hundreds of Commands and [Spells] into a powerful [Hex] like one meshed different teethed gears of a clock mechanism. At last, he was done. He applied the [Storing Hex] onto the Blysht and finally opened his eyes.

The white crystal presented the engravings on its surface. Naeht was watching him expectantly.

“Did you succeed?” she asked with bated breath.

“One way to find out,” Isyd said.

If everything worked accordingly, the Blysht should capture any [Spell] launched at it and capture the Grace inside, nullifying the [Spell] simultaneously.

Isyd pointed at the Blysht. “[Water Jet]!”

A weak spray of water spurted from his finger and landed on the white crystal. Upon contact, the water evaporated at once as it would have upon touching an incandescent stone and the Blysht suddenly shattered as if it had been crushed by a hammer.

Isyd stared at the fine powder left from the crystal, unblinking.

“It’s not supposed to do that, is it?” Naeht asked timidly.

“No.”

He had failed. The [Storing Hex] he’d crafted had been wrong. This… would be difficult. And yet, Isyd knew he couldn’t give up now. Not while knowing what laid ahead. They needed the Blysht technology and what it guaranteed. And he was possibly the only one who could crack the code because he’d seen what the Blysht was capable of.

He had to succeed.

So, Isyd threw back his shoulders, took a deep breath and got back to work.

Humbled from his first try, he focused his attention only on smaller cuts of the Blysht, preserving the larger ones for when he succeeded. Again, he called upon all his knowledge of the Grace and formed a new [Storing Hex] in hope that this time, it would work.

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Again, it failed.

And again. And again.

Every attempt resulted in the same way: the Blysht shattered into a thousand pieces upon the smallest touch. Struggling through exhaustion, hours after hours, Isyd bent the Commands to his will and Meshed them incessantly to form more and more complex [Spells]. Everything else faded in the background. There was only Isyd, the Grace and Blysht.

He did not realize it himself, but as he tried again and again, Isyd gained a deeper understanding of the Grace and the Blysht. Each new [Storing Hex] was more refined that the last, the Balance sounder, the Concentration more potent and the Visualization sharper. Slowly, he stopped seeing himself as trying to pour an evasive liquid into a leaking container but rather as the rivers that aimed for the lake, forcing their way through woods and dirt and stone. It was methodical and it was harmonious.

By the sixth attempt, the Blysht did not explode immediately. By the ninth, the Blysht only shattered in five parts. By the eleventh, the crystal simply presented a long crack in the middle.

At his fourteenth trial, Isyd had entered a kind of trance state he’d rarely experienced before. He applied the finished [Storing Hex] and followed by wordlessly pointing the finger at the Blysht. A feeble jet of water spurted toward the crystal and once again, the water disappeared at once.

Then nothing happened.

One second passed, then two and at the third, the Blysht seemed to come alive with a light of its own. The surface shimmered with an iridescent light, a bright display of all the colours of the rainbow.

Isyd stared at the junk of crystal unblinking, not entirely realizing what he was seeing. Coming from far away, he heard Naeht’s voice.

“You did it! It works at last!”

He had done it. The Blysht had not shattered. It shone with an iridescent light — the light of the Holy Grace stored in it.

Isyd extended a trembling hand toward the crystal and the moment he touched it, he heard the soft Song of the Grace. There, he knew it better than when he’d seen it. He could hear it in his ears, he could feel it in his bones. The Grace had entered the Blysht and remained inside.

Isyd let out a long shout of victory and collapsed on the stone floor of the cavern, exhausted.

He had done it.

In his hand, Isyd held Holy Grace made solid. Most likely the most important discovery of mankind since the advent of writing.

Eyes closed and breathless, a wide smile crept on his face. He remained laying there for several minutes, savouring the victory. Naeht sat on his chest, happy to see him happy.

“Any idea how much time has passed?” Isyd finally asked her.

Naeht turned her head to one side, pensive. “I don’t know exactly. Something like a day...”

“Probably something closer to two since I’m feeling quite hungry.”

The War had taught him to go several days without food, so he wasn’t about to faint from hunger anytime soon. Thirst on the other hand...

He got back up and gathered his belongings. “Time to go back, Naeht.”

Instead of immediately heading for the exit, Isyd took on the opposite direction and let himself be guided by the sound of running water he heard echoing far deeper in the mine. Eventually, he emerged on a larger grotto where the underground river had dug its course. Isyd approached the bank and drank his fill. The water was salty but drinkable and fresh. He could almost feel strength flowing in him and revivifying him; Isyd felt as if he was coming back to life. He drank enough for three men in preparation for his journey back to Vilriver. Isyd could do fine without food, but he would have a much harder time without water and he didn't have anything to store it in.

After that, he went about collecting as much Blysht as he could. This alone took several more hours. It was laborious work since the Blysht grew alongside the salt crystals and most salt crystals that had yet to be collected were usually difficult to access. Isyd put what he could get in the hessian bags he found lying around. He also made a makeshift bag from the bedlinen he snatched from the Dorms before he left the Academy. He didn’t plan to bring all of his bounties up and out of the cave; he had nowhere to keep that much Blysht. Instead, he stashed all the Blysht in a smaller cavern from the lowest level of the mine. It was so out of the way that it was unlikely for anyone to stumble upon it. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. This was but a temporary solution; Isyd planned to come and fetch all of it in due time. For now, he went back up the stairs of the mine with only a handful of the precious crystals hidden in the folds of his darkveil. In it was of course the iridescent piece of Blysht, proof of his success.

Isyd arrived in front of the collapsed stairs that connected the third floor to the second floor. This way was obviously now unusable so he instead entered the detour in the cave. There also the cavern had collapsed. Naeht gave him a side glance.

“Well, you managed to keep those guys out, but you kind of trapped yourself, didn’t you?”

Isyd only gave her a confident smile. He approached the rubble and put his gloved hand on a rock.

“You forget that I am the one who provoked the collapse...”

Isyd quickly drew a new [Spell] on the stone. Suddenly, the rocks began to tremble as if another collapse was about to happen. Instead, the stones rolled out of the way enough to form an arch for one person to fit thr ough.

“... and I had planned for a way out.”

He had woven that particular [Spell] within the [Hex] that triggered the collapse at distance, and he just needed to activate it. The moment he was through, the rocks rolled back into place in a menacing rumble and the way was blocked once more.

Naeht let out an impressed whistle and they resumed their climb. When they finally walked out, Isyd had to shield his eyes from the blinding light of the dawn. After those couple of days spent underground, it felt good to feel the warmth of the sun on his cheeks.

He took a full breath of fresh air and readjusted the weight of the Blysht in his cloak.

“Let’s go, Naeht. Time for us to go back to Vilriver.”