The wizard and his apprentice talked for a while before we set off back to the lab. When we got there, the wizard headed deeper into the back, an area I hadn’t been before, and the kid brought me to the chalkboard we had used yesterday. Wiping it clean, he started sketching on it.
He started by drawing a pair of eyes, and then crossing one out. Then he drew the same symbols he had used for mana mixing, but then drew lines from them to a third eye. He finished with an arrow pointing from the third eye back to the crossed out eye. I think I could see where he was going with this, but I don’t know if my new eyes would work for other people. Even if I could, I wouldn’t just leave part of myself behind so battle grandpa can have his depth perception back.
It wasn’t until the wizard came back and placed a solid golden bar in front of us that I realized they wanted my help making it, not for me to become it.
~~~
The standard process started with casting an artificial eye into the correct shape. The second step was to carve mana pathways while ensuring it would still rotate comfortably within the socket. The final step was to seed the mana pathways with pure mana, as the intricate traces could allow other mana in and ruin the functionality if it was not dyed thoroughly ahead of time.
“Its artificial sight has no physical structure, right?”
“It seems like it only loosely follows the directions the physical eye turns, and there are no visible pathways on the surface.”
“It must have constructed the mana structure first, and then let it set into the physical eye.”
“Kind of like casting?”
“Something like that. Maybe. Go get the furnace lit, I will try and walk it through the design we have, and hopefully it will point out any improvements it's made.”
~~~
Mage Cole and Tommen had asked to take their lunch in the lab. After getting permission to enter, Penny came in with sandwiches and tea. What greeted her was the sight of them both pouring over a pile of papers.
“Your lunch is here.”
“Thank you Penny. Leave it anywhere.”
“You appear to be making good progress, can I get you anything else?”
“Yeah. Good progress.”
Tommen got off his stool and came over to the side table Penny had placed the lunch on. He and Master Cole had been optimistic about getting the Soulsteel’s help with the Artificial Eye, but things had moved far too rapidly for even their most wild expectations.
“We weren't the ones making progress, really. We are just trying to mark down what we’ve learned at this point.”
“You won’t have the eye ready for him today?”
“No, it’s already done.”
Penny didn’t know much about how mages created something as complex as a new eye, but from what she could remember it was supposed to take them far longer to manage far simpler devices.
“The Living Metal really helped that much?”
“It did all the work itself. Master Cole sent me to get the forge warmed up, and by the time I came back he was holding a finished product.”
“When are you presenting it to the Baron?”
“We’re still trying to figure out just what it changed, and if it would still be usable without an unbearable mana drain on the user.”
On the other side of the room, Mage Cole brought his hand to his forehead with a loud slap. His facepalm caught both Penny’s and Tommen's attention, and as they gazed in his direction, he met both their gazes.
“It’s not just different, It’s better. How could I be so blind as to why it was using fire, ice and air mana.”
“What do you mean better? You just got done saying you couldn’t find a reason for the increased mana cost the extra mana types require.”
“It must be to let it discern colors.”
~~~
There wasn’t much to it, really. I took the design I was already using for my eyes, scaled it up to the size of the eye in their drawings, and then bound it all to part of the gold bar in front of me. When I focused the fiery mana in my teeth, it cut like butter.
Light mana really let me feel what I was doing as I manipulated the lump of golden metal to accept the design. I had some difficulty getting the mana structure to stick properly to the golden eye, as I had to bind it with silver mana I hadn’t needed to use for my own eyes.
~~~
Colored Artificial Sight was not well understood. Some magical life or constructs had apparently possessed it in the distant past, but modern mana costs and the size necessary to achieve colored artificial vision was prohibitive. Cole once observed a prototype Archibald had created to capture and then project a colored illusion, and it had gone through mana too fast for even multiple mages to keep up.
The golden eye the Soulsteel had spat out was deceptively simple. He had been sure it would allowed mana to bleed across traces with how close it had grouped them, or that the functionality was compromised by adding the extra mana types. He was wrong though. The traces were superior to those of the most proficient mana smiths and artificers he’d seen, and the extra mana types were colored such that it would mimic the human eye.
“So can we give it to the Baron already? Master Archibald and Natasha are waiting for us.”
“I don’t think there is much more to learn from this other than why it’s using air mana. Perhaps because of its low complexity, it doesn’t cause interference like the more traditional yellow mixtures?”
“If it’s using wind mana, doesn’t that make the eye less sensitive to yellow?”
“It seems to have a plan for that too, but we won’t know for sure until the Baron tries it.”
~~~
Natasha had been working feverishly on a self balancing cane that used the new pendulum in its design. It was going to be her proof of concept. While it didn't seem to improve over the traditional umbrella design, it scaled far more efficiently. Her mind was running wild with plans of what she could do with it. Just adding it to a targeted spell could increase its accuracy tremendously, even if it came at a steep manacost.
What she wanted to test was how it interacted with other mana constructs. Flight required almost complete focus to prevent disorientation, and was impossible if you couldn’t keep your eyes on the ground. But with this pendulum, it didn’t matter how high you flew. The design was only one or two steps away from also telling you the direction it was turning. She had just finished her last revision, and was on track to finish it before Master Cole and Tommen arrived.
“Master Archibald, are you there? I finished the changes you asked for.”
“Come in, I can review it right away.”
“What made you think of adding earth mana to the end of the pendulum to increase its accuracy?”
“I have seen many Pendulums of Balance that had been tuned so they wouldn’t aggressively counter light rolling while on the ocean. They generally sensed from lower down the neck, or would just shorten the neck.”
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“Does that mean I could invert the output by bringing it past the hinge point?”
“That is correct, and you’ll likely find doing so useful for your plans.”
“Thank you Master. Is the design good enough now?”
“Yes, now go and take it to Keith to have him make one.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I want to try it for myself.”
~~~
When presenting a gift to the nobility, there are certain customs that help guide the interaction, such that even if a gift is paltry, the deference and humility with which you conduct yourself guarantees the receiver will express gratefulness. Cole didn’t take the time for any of that as he entered the Grand Hall while the Baron was still in the middle of lunch.
“My lord, It is ready.”
“Already? We must have agreed to it not more than two hours ago.”
“The Soulsteel simply imprinted the same method it uses to see into pure electrum.”
“Let’s see it then.”
The Baron often took his meals with not just his family, but also his sworn knights. He had started inviting them to lunch when the loss of his left eye prevented him from going out for his regular sparring sessions. His missing leg had also made it more difficult, but he had acclimated to it’s replacement quickly, only to promptly lose his eye to a boar on his first hunting excursion after recovering. News that the Baron was getting a new eye had left all present at the table speechless.
“Where is my physician? I told one of you I'd be needing him today.”
“He was also taking his lunch, my lord. He will arrive shortly.”
“Good. Now, show it to me. You said it wouldn’t show me color, right?”
“That was what I expected, but I believe I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“The eye’s design is significantly more complex than the one I was familiar with. I think it is very likely that the improvements it possesses will let you see color as if it was the one you were born with.”
~~~
While Master Cole was delivering the Artificial Eye, Tommen was getting everything they needed ready to go. He was planning on asking for a traveling stove for the stagecoach ride, but he’d had an idea when he saw the Soulsteel breaking down the still glowing coals.
“Hey, You can turn into animals and that armor, but could you turn into, like, a stove?”
“...”
“Come on, I'll draw it for you.”
“...”
“If you absorb mana from the fire around you, isn’t there a bunch of mana that’s escaping around the exterior of the fire?”
“...”
“If you could contain the fire, you could recover all that lost mana.”
~~~
The kid seemed to have a pretty good idea, but I was actually pretty full on the cloudy red mana. I had stopped myself last night after I started getting overexcited. I needed to top back up after making that golden eye, but I didn’t see a reason why I needed to do it when there was plenty of firewood around.
It wasn’t until he drew the cart and put us all in the back of it that I realized we were going somewhere. I could try turning to a furnace if he really wanted me to, but I got restless when I couldn’t move, and I wanted to gather more base blue for my mana mixing experiments.
After I didn't immediately react, he went back to packing. I felt sorry to disappoint him, but I’d already let him pet me first thing in the morning. I couldn’t help it though, as his idea did make me start to think of how I might go about doing it. If I did use the armor as a base, I could just shove a furnace in its breastplate. That would smoke out my helmet though, so I kept shifting things around to try and make something that worked and didn’t look like some sort of hell knight. It was in my childhood memories that I found an answer.
~~~
Keith Kalvas had begun his employment in the human lands with Duke Drake’s predecessor. His intention had been to find a patron that would challenge his skill level with their ambition, and he had really found one. The Duke’s Court Mage was a man of many eccentricities. He spent almost all of his budget on bringing some kind of prototype to life, and it was those prototypes that had forced Keith to push his understanding of both metal and mana to the absolute limit.
After twenty years, he was starting to get sick of never making a functional prototype. They were all simple proof of concepts, that the mage would promptly toss into storage and move on from. He had tried to convince the old man to refine them into something more practical, but he never managed to pull him away from whatever new lead he’d get caught up in while Keith had been building the latest prototype.
It was an absolute breath of fresh air when Natasha had come. She had her head in the clouds, but she still seemed to keep her feet on the ground. Upon her arrival today, she seemed of particularly high spirits.
“What has got you so giddy?”
“Master Archibald gave me the go ahead for this project.”
“The new walking cane, right?”
“Yes. And I’ll tell you what my plan is for my next proposal if you promise to finish this one before Tommen and Master Cole get here.”
“Let me take a look at it first.”
The cane appeared outwardly normal, but it replaced the lattice of stability with a Pendulum of Balance. Natasha had shown him her original design, and it had only taken a few minor adjustments to make it feasible for him to craft. Mage Archibald had then suggested some improvements.
“You just need me to weave in earth mana to the actual weight and arm, but leave it out of the cup, right?”
“Yeah. It was an easy upgrade.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t push you for more features.”
“Technically he did, as in order to make it act like a normal Stabilizing Cane, I had to set it up to stop balancing when this button was pressed.”
“Ooooh, I see. It’s quite a subtle change. I can certainly get it done in two days. Now tell me about this next step.”
“Well, we already know the original worked on boats, right?”
“Aye.”
“But this new version can control the pitch as well as the roll, so why not apply it to flight?”
“If you incorporate it into a spell, the cost of keeping it manifest is gonna shoot right through the roof.”
“I never said it was for a spell. Master Archibald gave up on his flying constructs because they couldn’t stay upright.”