Natasha was bored. She was missing Tommen, his unlimited curiosity had made the three months she spent with him fun, even though they spent most of their time together going over things she had learned years ago. It was as the first snows were starting to fall that she received his letter. It wasn’t a magical letter, before she left he had been having difficulties when it came to specifying targets, and apparently that hadn’t changed. It informed her that due to Master Cole having acquired some extremely unusual Soulsteel, he was going to be coming to the capital.
She had already known they were coming, as Master Archibald had informed her ahead of time. He had made her oversee their rooms being prepared. Still, it was nice to receive a letter from her junior, and it struck her that he seemed to be getting along well with the living metal. The stories he told in the letter seemed to imply it was as hungry for knowledge as she remembered him being. Based on what master Archibald had told her, they would arrive within the next couple of days.
However, the diagram that came with the letter was what really got her excited for their upcoming visit, as the design was ingenious, the main pendulum body could swing in every direction, the limitation being its single dimension of travel having been sidestepped. The top hook was a half circle, set inside a cup with a hole in the bottom. Natasha had no idea how Tommen had designed such a detailed piece, as not even Master Archibald was likely to manage creating something this complex on his first try.
She saw diagrams for how the pieces fit together, and then the different paths the mana took to express the pendulum's relative angle, and she simply couldn’t believe something like this could have been hiding from her in that library. She’d scoured every book in there that was on purely magical structures, and nothing remotely like this came up. This wasn’t just applicable to her current project, but to many more ideas she had discarded as unrealistic.
The pendulum would output one light and one dark mana thread, each’s length dependent on the position of the semicircle relative to the cup. It was initially heartbreaking when she realized that was the entirety of the designs, as there was nothing that could actively keep something stable, just tell you which way it was tipping.
“I suppose I can’t let that kid do all the work for me”
The last sketch was of a dog. Tommen had already given her some pictures of his favorite breed and the hunting dogs the Baron used, but this one was a labrador, and it looked strange somehow. It didn’t click for her until reading the writing on its back, ‘Soulsteel’s favorite form’.
~~~
When the living metal started walking straight without the cane, Tommen went and grabbed a pair of golden colored mana glasses that were two sizes too big for him. Now that the helmet was within his arms reach, he flipped up the visor. He initially balked at the shadowy void inside, but looking at the hanging silver weave and the glowing golden eyes made him come back. The living metal was keeping mana structures whole without needing to create physical bodies for them to inhabit.
After putting the visor back down, he turned around and headed in the direction of the library. It was in an adjacent room.The door out into the hallway was kept locked, as Master Cole kept a strict no food near books policy, but the door into it from the lab was left open. Beckoning for the living metal to follow, he entered into the musty and dark room.
He touched the Light Plate anchored by the door, and all the manalights in the room slowly started coming to life. It would be another few minutes before he could read by them, so he focused on getting the living metal situated at one of the reading desks, and finding a ladder to reach the higher shelves.
He was searching for a book that Natasha had often sent him to read when his questions about her work got too troublesome. It contained a number of simple magical structures, and he recognised the new, silver pendulum from the project she had been working on when she left.
It was near the back of the book, but as far as he knew, it only swung in two directions, not freely. He was also tempted to find the four thousand series encyclopedia, but Master Cole would hopefully know where it was when he got back. The Pendulum of Balance was described in the rear of the book, and was used to prevent topheavy ships from capsizing in storms. He tried showing the book to the Soulsteel to take a look at the pages, but the text-heavy pages only earned him a shrug for his efforts.
~~~
“Did you get a chance to test its companion metals?”
“No, It was already active by the time I returned from debriefing the party. I can tell you it’s mostly electrum, silver and gold though.”
“Did you come just to catch me up on what’s happening, check you hadn’t gone mad, or did you want a new scry from me?”
“Mostly to get my thoughts in order, but I’d appreciate to know I’m not stepping into someone’s trap.”
“I can do that for you, but I should go see it first.”
“Why is your tea so much better than mine?”
“Because I give romance advice to all the maids, and you just complain when they clean up behind you.”
Cole was too tired to really get into a proper argument. He’d already thought he was having a rough day before the adventurers had brought him a superpowered problem child. The upcoming winter was putting a strain on the treasury, he had only just returned from burning out a blight in Hedrik’s Crossing, and the Baron was trying to get him to teach his youngest daughter magic, despite the fact she had only just turned ten.
“While you’re looking at the Soulsteel, I’m going to start writing Archibald a letter. I’ll at least need his help in determining one of the metals it came with, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to fulfill its mana needs alone.”
“I could contribute a little, and surely Tommen would too?”
“You don’t understand. The form it last took must expend more mana than we could spare. We’ll need some kind of advanced artificial mana generation to keep it happy, especially if we still want to be able to function as mages.”
“Is that what Archibald was working on?”
“Yes. You must remember that’s the entire reason why I sent Natasha off to work for him.”
“I do remember the conversation now. Most of what I heard was cursing, though.”
“Just go already. I’ll start writing.”
Despite the fact that Tommen had brought the armor into Master Cole’s library, everything else he had been told about it was correct. Elder Soulsteel, seemingly content while having almost no mana, burning through what it did have at a truly frightful rate. Tommen had been sketching something when he came in, and when the Soulsteel pointed him out, Tommen rushed over to show Poetrak what he’d gotten so excited about.
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“Look at this. It managed this after I explained how a Stabilizing Cane works to it. It’s crazy complex, right?”
“Yes, I would say so. Did it seem to work?”
“Yeah, It can walk in perfectly straight lines, but it still over-corrects during turns.”
“Did you get an estimation for how much mana it’s consuming?”
“I wasn’t planning to wait for Master Cole, but I forgot about it when it started asking me questions.”
“Cole asked me to Scry Potential Threat on it, so while you get ready, I'm gonna take a turn babysitting it.”
“It doesn’t seem to be able to hear without its ears anymore, and-”
The conversation died as the armor turned back into the dog it had been before. It’s eyes were still imbued with light and dark mana, but Tommen’s managlasses told him it had drastically reduced it’s mana consumption by changing back into this form.
“- I don’t know how long it will stay this way.”
“Cole was afraid it was going to exhaust all its mana and get stuck, but he still seems to be underestimating its intelligence.”
~~~
Fall was nearing an end, and Tom was eager to get back into the capital to settle in for the winter. There were carriage barns he and a number of other peddlers would rent together and pack their wagons and their horses into, as while Trish and Parn could take the cold, the roads were often so covered in snow that any wagon laden with sufficient trade goods would get stuck at some point on the winding dirt roads that still connected most of his route. He knew another peddler had bought sled dogs from a trip past the northern border of Ridgewern, but that idea had fallen through when the leather straps had proven too complicated for the local leather workers to repair. They didn’t have the same pulling power as a real cart horse, but in the year Harold had been running winter trade, he claimed the dogs never got tired.
Regardless, he felt conflicted about making one last stop so he didn’t have to sit on so much inventory over the winter, but he was leaning against doing so. The rain had started early last night, and the neglected roads would be treacherous with all this mud. He might change his mind if some adventurers wanted to head in the same direction, but he figured there was little chance of that. When Tarrik stopped by to ask if they could tag along for the ride to Drake's Redoubt, he made up his mind. An early stop in the capital might let him undercut some of the merchant caravans before they got back to bed themselves down for the winter.
~~~
I don’t know how long the kid spent drawing my new creation, but it was a good while before a plump looking man came inside. When I focused, he was glowing about as brightly as the wizard had been. He seemed to be unsurprised with my presence here, and moreover seemed content to stand there and watch as the apprentice kept sketching.
I had to snap my visor back down and point before he took a look at the newcomer, and when he did he ran over and started talking to him. This form was more human, but I was also finding it quite draining, even trying to sit still. I had achieved a human-like stature by making myself almost entirely hollow, except for my joints. My eyes required more mana upkeep without physical ones, and my new pendulum wasn’t exactly cheap either. I was getting close to a critical mana shortage, and while I still had some control when not using mana when I was a rock, I didn’t want to find out what happened if I got stuck in a form with no muscles.
The kid talked with the new guy for a while, and if he was going to stick around I needed a name for him. The wizard had worn a dark blue robe, but this guy was wearing white with silver embroidery. I wondered if it was some kind of seniority. The silver thread was apparently functional somehow, as after the apprentice left, the old man started casting what must be a spell. The embroidery was filling primarily with gray mana, but as I looked closer there seemed to be other colors I hadn’t discovered yet.
After the spell or whatever was released, he started laughing. I put my head down, as I was no longer worried about it being targeted at me. I had stopped watching him, but I felt the couch dip when he sat down. I think I’ll call him something witty, like wiz-lard. Wiz-large?
~~~
Tommen returned to Master Poetrak having started petting the Soulsteel. He was still wearing his master’s managlasses, so he could clearly make out that the Soulsteel was still keeping Poetrak’s mana out, and the grimace it was making made it quite clear it wasn’t enjoying itself.
“It doesn’t like that.”
“I wanted to check if it would resist mana for myself. It's something I’ve absolutely never heard of.”
“I think it wants you to stop now.”
“Okay, fine.”
He was disappointed, he had brought their Gloves of Resist Cold so he could pet the Soulsteel, but master Poetrak had beaten him to it. He took out one of his apprentice level mana beads, and filled it completely with Balance mana. Placing the box with the rest of them on one of the reading desks, he put it on the palm of his right glove, and offered it to the Soulsteel.
“I do hope it takes mana this way, or we’re going to have to light a fire for it every night.”
“We are gonna do that anyways now that winter is almost here.”
“Yes, but I don’t think we have a fireplace big enough to keep him topped up.”
“How did he feel?”
“Like normal silverware, but warm.”
Tommen resisted the urge to pout, and the Soulsteel finally took the manabead from his hand, but it spit it back out still full of mana. It seemed to think they were doing a mana control test again. Tommen mimed swallowing the manabead, and offered it to the Soulsteel again.
“Come on, go ahead.”
“It is remarkable. I’ve never seen any Living Metal not desperate for as much mana as it can get.”
“It sounds like it had a bad experience with gaining mana before it got here, right?”
“You mean when Leona touched it? Apparently it also liked manafires just fine.”
“I haven’t given it a manafire yet.”
“We can try that after we get a baseline for its mana consumption.”