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Darabella said, “So! I need to move some things around and then we can get down to carving.”

With a tap of her wooden knife upon the white stone table, runes lit up around the metallic edge. The stone pulled away from the adamantium sword and solidified under the black metal. Darabella grabbed the weapon with her free hand and tossed it on a nearby stone counter, where it chipped the counter and clattered against the wall, but Darabella didn’t seem to care. It was an adamantium sword, so the toss wouldn’t damage it, and the counter was easily [Mend]able.

Then she grabbed a metal cube out of one cabinet and a short sword out of another, and brought both to the white table. The cube was about ten centimeters to a side and grey-silver; some sort of high quality steel. Darabella struck the cube with her knife and the cube transformed into a short sword; a match for the other short sword.

“We got two swords here. This real one is great. This fake one is bad.” Darabella said, “It has no forging lines or— Do you know how to forge metal? Why [Metalshape] is bad?”

“I’ve not heard any real reason why [Metalshape] is bad for making finished products, though I certainly know it is.” Erick said, “I just got through with a lesson from Tharagi about proper tempering and annealing and casting and all of that, but his lessons were primarily around gears and making metal work with other metal. I don’t know much about forging a weapon, and while I can guess at much of it, weapon smithing isn’t something I am focused on, either.”

Darabella listened, and then announced, “You need to learn how to forge a proper weapon, but that doesn’t truly matter for runes— It matters, for sure, but let’s work on painting inside the lines before we care about composition and flow.” She gestured back to the fake sword, saying, “This one is worthless, but the shape is close enough to a sword to make it take [Conjure Weapon], which is the runework that we’re going to carve into it.” She gestured to the real sword. “This one gets the same treatment—” She turned to Erick. “You have a mana sense? An aura? Aura control?”

“Yes. Yes. Not yet.”

“… What aura?”

“[Greater Lightwalk] and a Domain of Light. Though I have many other types of spell auras if you think one of them would be better.”

Darabella narrowed her eyes at him. Then she decided, “The ones you mention; those are good. Domains are good for this. You can fix a lack of skill with enough power, and a Domain paired with an Elemental Body certainly qualifies for that.” She turned to her short swords, saying, “Now watch me inscribe these two, and tell me what you see. Use whatever senses you have.” She tapped the stone table with her knife, causing the white stone to grab onto the knives and hold them still. “Tell me if you get uncomfortable. A lot of people tell me they don’t like my Domain.”

Erick kept himself calm, for he had his own Domain sitting at his back that was ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Still, someone else using a Domain around him did temporarily send his paranoia spiking, setting him on edge.

… It was very possible that having his own Domain active all the time is what set a lot of other people on edge around him.

As soon as Erick had that thought, he decided that if his Domain was a problem, then other people were just going to have to suffer his presence; he wasn’t turning his [Lodestar] off unless he absolutely had to, and probably not even then if he had any say in the matter.

Darabella took on an edge, herself, but hers was more literal. Light bent around her skin, fracturing into tiny rainbows that melded back into the manasphere in odd, disconnected ways. Her fingers seemed longer, but they weren’t. Her eyes seemed sharper, but they weren’t. Her hair was a hundred thousand individual knives, slicing through the air as she moved, but that wasn’t what was happening at all.

Erick took a half step back as he gazed upon the wooden knife in Darabella’s hand. A simple wooden weapon had become the edge of the world, like she had grabbed the horizon and held it like a simple tool.

The Rune Smith took her edge, and rapidly cut the fake sword with it, like she was dragging a knife through butter. Except the ‘butter’ wasn’t displaced. It was severed. As her hand-held horizon passed by, grains of steel flaked away from steel grooves like sand billowing away, revealing writing beneath. ‘[Conjure Weapon]’; that was all she had written. It was an indelible mark upon the steel, and yet…

It was a poor imitation of the Ancient Script carved here and there upon the walls and metal plates out there in the city. Though the tool Darabella had used was magnificent, the effect was not that at all. This rune seemed lesser, somehow. Probably because it was.

Then Darabella moved to the real sword, and that made a world of difference.

Something inside the forged weapon broke and was remade as Darabella’s hand-held horizon carved away everything that wasn’t a weapon, and yet Darabella did not touch the edge, or the shape, or any structural part of the weapon itself. She carved upon the solid nature of the item, straight down the center of the blade, carving divots that made the whole thing both less, and more, than what it was before. All the while, broken steel flexed away from the weapon like so much displaced trash.

Darabella lifted her knife; the work was done. Her horizon faded, revealing her wooden knife. Erick was struck by the dichotomy between her horizon and the simple, blocky wooden thing in her hands. It was completely unremarkable, and impractical; if you used it to cut a cake, you’d end up with a smushed cake rather than a nice slice of dessert.

She turned to Erick. “Did you see?”

Erick took a moment to respond. “I saw some sort of conceptual carving that refined a definition out of the short sword.” Erick said, “In the first case, with the Shaped sword, the definition was barely there, so it was harder to carve away the excess, and even though you managed it, the end result is weak. But with the forged weapon the definition was already there, so it was easier to carve away the excess; to uncover the Truth of the weapon out of the raw material.”

Darabella’s eyes went wide. Then she dropped her wooden knife as she turned around and rushed to her desk, saying, “I need to write that down! That’s so much simpler than how I say it.” She grabbed a pen and her pad, saying, “Repeat that.”

Erick smirked as he did as she requested.

When Darabella was finished writing his words down, she brought the notepad with her to the stone table, saying, “So yeah. You got it. Form is not enough to allow you to carve a good rune. You need items that already have form and function imbued into them through the act of the creation of those items.” She tapped the table with a finger— She stopped. She began looking around—

Erick picked up her wooden dagger from the ground and handed it to her, hilt first.

“Oh!” Darabella took the dagger. “Thank you—” She winced and looked at Erick’s hand, worry in her eyes. “Oh! Uh.” Puzzlement, then recognition. “Oh? You’re… not bleeding? Huh.”

Erick glanced at his perfectly fine fingers. Nothing wrong there. He held up his hand. “Was I supposed to be bleeding?” His [Personal Ward] hadn’t even flickered white.

“I mean… No. Ha ha! What? No. I don’t know—” Darabella waved him off as she nervously laughed again, saying, “Nothing wrong here! So. Uh.” She tapped the table with her knife and released the swords from the white-stone taffy. They clattered a bit. “How about these swords! Uh. Want to try carving into something else? Inspect the swords more? Uh? Something else?”

“How about we start at what it means to conceptually carve something.” Erick said, “I managed to put what I saw into words, but I don’t know what those words actually mean.”

“… Oh? Ah. Okay.” Darabella thought for a moment, then she said, “Let’s start even more basic. Language. What does it mean to you?”

“Definitions emplaced by people onto concepts in order to facilitate communication.”

Darabella smiled. “Okay! Yes. That’s a good one. Just let me… Write…” She grabbed her pad and wrote a bit. “Okay! There. Now: What does Ancient Script mean to you?”

“Not much.”

All the books Erick had ever read on enchanting were about using Ancient Script and various methodologies to create enchantments because that was how enchantments were done. None of them ever went into depth about that reasoning. Some of those books spoke about language as magic, but the only people Erick had ever heard talk about language as magic were Fallopolis, Tenebrae, and now Darabella.

Erick suspected this was due to shenanigans by the Headmaster, and the Arcanaeum Consortium which was the largest supplier of magical books the world over. [Duplicate] allowed the Book Binders to effectively drown out all other methods of publishing books, after all.

This was yet another thing to bring up with Kirginatharp the next time Erick saw him.

Erick added, “Ancient Script is not something I think in, or use often, and it was never something I used to converse with the mana, anyway.”

“Hmm. I suppose you did sing your songs to make Particle Magic…” Darabella nodded to herself, saying, “Yup. Your communication channel is messed up, for sure. But that’s okay. You can retrain yourself.”

Erick was skeptical.

“Anyway.” Darabella continued, “Ancient Script is a language of power specifically because everyone uses it as a language of power in order to speak the same language as mana. You didn’t do this, which brings you problems, I’m guessing. But that’s okay, for make no mistake: mana does not speak Ancient Script. Mana speaks in possibilities. Mana speaks in every language that has ever existed, or ever will exist. The Script, and the Ancient Script upon which it is based, is merely a forced, shared language, that every single Matriculated person is imbued with when they Matriculate.

“I will let you in on a secret. If you—” She paused. She asked, “Did you try to buy a weapon or something at Black Blade? Did they tell you about how we could imbue any spell into any item? And that we could work with you to make the runework, if you didn’t have the Ancient Script for your spell?”

Erick wasn’t sure where Darabella was going with this, but he was interested. He said, “I did go there and they did say something to that effect.”

Darabella nodded. “So here’s a secret: We can carve the runes for practically any spell because—” She paused. She asked, “You know that you can generally only work in magic that you have yourself?”

“Of course.”

“Yes. So. With runes, we can ignore that requirement of ‘having magic to make a magic’. We can make runes that the end user can use themselves, without having access to that magic ourselves.”

Erick stared a little. “Overcoming that tenet is overcoming one of the cornerstones of Script magic itself.”

And probably key to making [Gate], since [Gate] certainly qualified as ‘a spell Erick did not have’.

Erick tamped down his expectations.

“Correct.” Darabella said, “But we’re not actually making magical items here. We’re making anchors. Most of the time, all a person needs to do is to give us the blue box for the desired spell. Sometimes, we need to see the spell in action, but that’s not a big deal. That blue box makes its way to one of us Rune Smiths and we carve the words that match the Ancient Script of the text into the weapon or armor or whatever. That, along with a few Class Abilities, is all it takes to make an anchor for a spell we cannot use ourselves. The Script does the heavy lifting, because of its shared language.

“This shared language enables a lot.

“Primarily, this is the reason that adamantium weapons and otherwise grow more powerful with continued use. When you first start using them, that communication connection is weak. It’s just words on a weapon that can accept your [Conjured Weapon]s spellwork. But with continued use, provided that the runework isn’t damaged and as long as the runes were made properly, that communication connection improves over time.” Darabella smiled as she stared off into the distance. “Like lovers learning how to love each other.” She shrugged, and looked to Erick, “Or whatever metaphor you like.

“And so, to bring it all together:

“Before the Script, you have your mana, and mana is possibility.

“People also have mana, but the possibilities of people are a lot larger than the possibilities of ambient mana.

“Individual possibilities rarely interact well with each other.

“But the Script enables communication on a level that is impossible otherwise.

“So by carving a message with your own mana, into a language that is readable by everyone, the recipient can still imbue their own meaning into the message given to them, eventually making that message their own.

“But if that were all it took, then any language could be made runic, and that’s not how it works.

“Because you’re missing the most important step. You have to carve the runes with a bent of love and good faith behind it all, for the mana sees this good faith, and it helps to bridge the gap that even the Script cannot bridge.” Darabella got a happy look in her eyes, as she said, “Imagine speaking to someone you love, and who loves you. Someone who seeks the best for you. Who wishes you to succeed. Someone who never takes your words out of context, or…” Her voice trailed off. Then she said, “The mana already loves you. But it doesn’t know what you want. So you must make your message heard, felt, and realized, and if you’ve done it right, then mana will see your message and understand your ideas, making an anchor for subsequent love in the shapes of spellwork. If you’ve done your carving well, then anyone can see that love; everyone can leave their own mark upon your marks, reinforcing what you’ve already laid down, and making it their own.”

Darabella spoke with warmth in her voice and hope in her eyes. She spoke her Truth to the world, and the mana seemed receptive all around her, like it vibrated in sync, except not at all.

Erick felt the phantom joy radiate from Darabella, and his own chest swelled with a resonant warmth.

And then Darabella came down from her high, as she shrugged, adding, “I can’t make it any simpler than that. This is all rather magical stuff. If you get it then you get it. If you don’t then you don’t.”

“I think I do. I think I understand.” Erick asked, “Got an extra sword? I’d like to try.”

“Oh! Yes.” Darabella gestured to the cabinets, saying, “Go ahead and grab one— Oh! Uh. You don’t know where they are. I’ll get you one.”

Erick couldn’t help but smile.

Darabella rapidly moved to the cabinet labeled ‘training swords’ in small print, saying, “Everything is labeled in here, so you’ll figure it out eventually. But for now—!” She pulled a short sword out of the drawer, then came back to the table and began setting up the fresh sword. “—I can do this for you.”

Erick chuckled.

In a matter of moments, the carved swords were removed from the table and tossed in a bin labeled ‘for reclamation’, while the fresh one was stuck into the white stone of the table.

Darabella stepped to the side, asking, “So take your dagger and— Ah. You have no dagger yet? Ah. You need to practice your carving, first, don’t you. This is your first time doing runework! Of course it is; you said that already.”

“All correct.”

“Okay. I can work with this.” Darabella went to the cabinets, speaking to herself, “I know I have an extra dagger here somewhere.” She dropped her wooden knife as she searched, and she didn’t seem to care that she dropped it. Drawers opened, then slammed. Cabinets flung open, then slammed. She went to the other side of the room, to a different set of cabinets, and did some more searching.

Erick pointed to her desk, saying, “I see a label for extra student daggers in your top left desk drawer.”

“Oh?” Darabella turned around, frowning a little, as though Erick had said words that were impossible to be true. Then she hummed as she went to her desk. “Oh!” She yanked open the drawer and went, “Oh? Oh! Yes!” She grabbed a student knife, saying, “I swear I’m not usually this confused, but it’s not every day that a Savior of Light comes asking for lessons.”

Erick said, “And I appreciate these lessons; thank you.”

Darabella grinned; she had dimples in her cheeks. She handed Erick the knife, handle first.

Erick took the knife. It was adamantium and blocky, with a curved back and a straight edge. Aside from the full metal construction, it didn’t look special at all.

“Oh! I’ll get you some sheet metal, too.” Darabella tossed her hands up as she scuttled off to another side of the room where thin, meter square sheets of steel laid against the wall, saying, “You know: I heard about your attempts at making some sort of [Renew] spell, but we already got something like that here.”

Erick was suddenly all ears.

Darabella brought the metal sheet to Erick and put it on the table, saying, “All the buildings have [Lightward] on them, and any citizen can cast a lightward of any type into the runes we got set up out there, and that spell will then be forced into the proper shape and shared across the entirety of Enduring Forge. Everyone is required to spend 5000 mana on upkeep of the city’s defenses, or 10 gold to the defense effort. Most people pay others to cast the spell for them, and that requires some paperwork, but it works out in the end.”

Erick stared, his mind whirring with possibilities.

And then he hit a snag.

What she outlined didn’t sound like [Renew] at all. Maybe superficially, it did; she was talking about communal efforts which created a massive area of light all around the city, which drove back the more deadly shadow monsters. But this was not [Renew]. Perhaps Darabella had heard a mangled version of what Erick was trying to do with [Renew] and she attributed it to what they already had going on here at Enduring Forge.

Or maybe Erick was the one misunderstanding.

Erick gave her the benefit of the doubt, and explained, “My goal with [Renew] was to allow anyone to input mana into a powerful magical construct, effectively allowing anyone to contribute to an archmage’s permanent defensive spells. Is that what’s is going on here?”

“Well yeah.” Darabella said, “Not exactly like that, but close enough. People gotta use specific low-tier spells; not just a simple ‘[Renew]’ and as much mana as they want to use.”

“… Are there any drawbacks?”

“Lots and lots!” Darabella said, “The varied lightwards cast by individuals are easy to forge into a cohesive, uniform effect, but sometimes people make their lights so wrong that they can’t contribute like everyone else. Those people are slagged, so they pay the fine or pay someone else half as much to cast the spells. The runic web we got can do a lot more than lightward, though. We have a seldom-used option to grant a city-wide [Absorption Ward], but in practice, that system is rarely used because an area attack can wipe out the imbued magic of the entire system. A much better option is the [Envelop Item] runework. Those work very well for general building defense. Most people who can’t or won’t fight are required to spend as much of their mana as they can imbuing [Envelop Item] or other spellwork into the platforms. A protected house is a great deal of defense during a wide-scale attack, anyway.” She added, “We also have [Healing Beacon] runework to use against low-power gas attacks and other aura magics. That works really well, because we have healers that can fill the whole system with False Health [Healing Beacon]s, effectively doubling the Health of every single lower-level person in the city. Not that there are much of those; most people here are at least level 50.”

“Yeah. That’s… Not exactly what I had in mind when I started talking about [Renew] to everyone. But that’s…” Erick said, “That’s pretty darn impressive. That’s… I don’t know what to do with this information yet, but I am thoroughly impressed.”

Darabella smiled. “How about we get back to making runes, then?” She touched the metal plate, saying, “Let’s see you channel your [Greater Lightwalk] and Domain into your dagger, and try to carve something. Try [Envelop Item]. All that spell does is a layer of dull, protective Force upon the steel, and it should work well with these metal plates. Simple and effective— Oh! No. Let’s try [Light Ward], first, since you’re already Light-based. Yes. Then we’ll do [Envelop Item] when you get good with [Light Ward].”

“Okay. Sounds good.” Erick held up the knife, and…

He wasn’t sure what to do here, exactly, so he started at the beginning: He tried a simple channeling of mana—

Erick blinked. A white glow came out of his hand, like normal, but that glow soaked into the blade, like water swirling into a drain. The black dagger took on solidness in the manasphere that was the encroachment of Reality upon reality. It was also wildly unfocused for Erick barely understood what was happening as his mana joined with the dagger’s existence; Sparks of light burst from the edges of the blade.

Darabella just watched, silent.

Erick tried shifting around his mana, causing flares and valleys in the light around the dagger. After several shifts and movements, he began to understand what was happening. He controlled his output of mana, smoothing out the release and allowing the dagger to take in what it could take. His Domain and Light soaked into the weapon, and stayed there upon the edge, like a force waiting to inflict its Reality upon the world. He held it like that for half a minute, gaining an understanding of how the imbuing worked, and what he was doing.

Darabella nodded, saying, “Good control. Very good control. Try carving. Try imbuing your idea of [Light Ward] into the metal. It’s okay to mess up. We got plenty of spare metal sheets.”

Erick took the weapon and… applied it to the steel. The metal resisted him, as metal was wont to do, so Erick applied more pressure—

“Pressure isn’t good.” Darabella said, “Carve the Truth of your message into the steel. Don’t actually carve the steel. Do the work with your magic, not your muscles.”

‘Carve the steel without carving the steel. Sure. Makes sense.’

Erick focused again, because his dagger was sparking again. Soon, a controlled glow suffused the tool.

And Erick laid the dagger’s tip against the steel—

He paused.

‘Oh. Actually. This does make sense. It’s how I normally talk to the mana, but different.’

In a moment of clarity, Erick focused on the Truth of Light, imbuing his ideas of photons and wavelengths and energy into a compact message that would fill the world with Light. The tip of the dagger remained on the surface of the steel, but the illuminated edge of his power dipped into the metal, then all the way through.

Erick moved his hand, his whole arm, carving out ‘Light’ and ‘Ward’ in Ancient Script upon the center of the metal plate.

When he was done, he stepped away. His [Greater Lightwalk] and Domain retreated to the small of his back. The work had been done. To Erick’s mana sense, the metal plate was now carved; its path through existence was now parallel to the idea of wardlights. To his actual sight, the metal had yet to accept its new Truth; the carved cavities retained their dusted steel, like metal filings packed into holes.

“Hmm,” Erick hummed.

Darabella tapped the steel plate with her finger, and the metal dust of the carvings fell out of the holes in the metal, leaving behind… Well.

Darabella hummed, then she said, “It’s… legible. I suppose.”

Erick admitted, “It’s chicken scratch. And I should’ve accounted for the holes that would come from certain loops of Ancient Script. I need to work on my penmanship.”

“No no no.” Darabella gave a little white lie, “It’s… It’s fine!” And then she couldn’t lie that much anymore, saying, “You’ll get better. This is why we have practice plates.” She tapped the remaining empty space of the meter-square plate, saying, “Plenty of space left to carve! So get carving!”

Erick asked, “Don’t you want to test this one for quality?”

“… Oh. Uh. Sure?” Darabella said, “I can already tell it’s of good quality, even with the accidental holes, but if you wanna… You probably should actually confirm the quality. Go ahead!” She walked back to the pile of plates, saying, “I’ll get you another one and cut it up smaller, though, for other tests.”

Erick smiled, then he cast a lightward onto the metal he had cut. The spell soaked into the plate and the entire plate poured light into the room, acting more like a fluorescent bulb than a lightward imbued onto steel.

Darabella paused, looking at the metal plate.

Erick asked, “Is it supposed to look like that?”

Darabella broke out of her trance and grabbed another metal plate, saying, “Sure! Why not? Looks great!” Darabella returned and set the new metal plate on the table. Then she squinted at the brightly-glowing metal sheet. “Is that a normal lightward? 50 mana? Lasts a day?”

“50 base, yes.” Erick had only spent 4 mana, though. “Lasts a day, too.”

“It’s rather bright… But that’s fine. That—” Darabella tried pointing with a knife she did not have, so she broke off her words and started to look around for the knife.

Erick handed her the wooden tool.

Darabella happily took the knife, continuing, “That should last for two days, then, instead of one!” She began cutting up the meter-wide steel plate into pieces, saying, “Maybe more, since you used a Light-aspect Domain to do it. Errr… Depending on the modifiers, it might last a really long time.” In a few flicks of her hand, the metal sheet had been turned into nine square pieces.

Erick smirked, saying, “We’ll see.” He took the luminescent plate and set it down on the ground, out of the way. “But anyway: how do you make plugging in a lightward at one end of town light up the other end of town? And what about malicious actors purposefully marking up parts of the system wrongly, to mess up the lights? Like erasing the ‘anti’ parts of the ‘anti-Shadow’ runes I’ve seen out there.”

“… Hmm. That’s an odd way to put it, but I take your meaning and I am very glad that I specifically cleared runic web talk with Grosgrena.” Darabella held up her wooden knife and began forming a lightward in the air, as she explained, “This part gets complicated, but breaking it down into pieces and ignoring the difficulty of making it all work… Upon each platform, there is a many-wired system of solid bar-stock metal spanning through the platform like a giant spider web. It’s a part of the sewer system. The metal we use down there is not adamantium but it doesn’t have to be. It needs maintenance, but not too much.

“The original system was adamantium, but that got stolen long, long ago. Long before most people here were alive. Probably better that it was stolen before our time. When that first runic web was stolen, Enduring Forge almost collapsed because we couldn’t replicate that magic and the normal threats from the Underworld never stopped. We had to rebuild the system from schematics and old books while fighting off monsters from every side. These days we keep people trained in that sort of thing, and the system needs constant maintenance anyway, ensuring that people remain with the knowledge to fix or wholly replace the system, if needed.

“Anyway.

“Every house has a runebox that the resident can both imbue with power, and, with the help of a Rune Smith— Or anyone, really. You don’t need to be a Rune Smith to make runes— They string metal wires through their house, usually behind the walls, into prepared metal plates. Those metal plates, when properly runed, will begin to transmit light and other functions to nearby structures.

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“It’s not really that simple, because most runework won’t work properly unless the runic system is whole and uncompromised.

“But it’s not that hard, either, because the spells imbued into the metal do flow, and they flow quite well. For instance, [Envelop Item] will be able to protect three stories of apartment building as long as the runework on the middle story is done properly. Explaining all of that is a very complicated thing that you don’t need to know about yet, at this stage of the process. But this is one of the reasons that only every other floor of a building is runed, or that only the floors and ceilings are runed.

“Because, backing up a bit, as you have already guessed, this is the point where we have to talk about security. In a truly connected system someone could inscribe bad spells like [Fireball] inside the network, and hurt everyone.

“Solving for the flow of magical power solves the majority of these issues.

“The runed web of each individual platform is actually split up here and there by nodes that only allow certain magics to flow past them, and alert when any non-standard spell enters the network. They are both connective bridges to make the piece-wise system act as a whole, and [Alarm Ward]s. These spherical nodes are the ‘secret’ to making the entire system work.” She shrugged. “It’s not that big of a secret, though. I’m sure if you walked around with a mana sense on you could see it— Oh! And the adamantium chains used to be part of the system inside the platforms, but that changed when the original web was stolen. No one has ever been able to steal the chains, for they’re much more secured against everything than the runic web was secured… And that’s a big topic that I don’t need to talk about either.

“Anyway. Now we have 3 separate systems with lots of redundancies built in. The chains, the platforms, and… Uh. We only have 2 systems. Yes. Only two.” Darabella said, “And that’s that!”

Darabella stood there, gently smiling as though she hadn’t shattered Erick’s worldview of the top-end defensive capabilities of the people of Veird.

He felt a profoundness.

And then he felt a contraction; a harsh question burbling to the surface.

He asked, “Why not tell everyone how to make a system like this?”

Darabella rapidly answered, “Because it’s baby-slime easy to break. A concerted effort of a hundred people could bring down the whole thing in a matter of half an hour and it’ll take between ten minutes to repair it, or a whole day, or even longer.” She said, “We have a lot of backup orbs and runners to replace what gets broken, but we’ve faced threats that have broken the whole system wide open multiple times. That’s why we have the evacuation centers.” She ended with, “Aside from a few niche utility uses, this system is more of a supplement to our people defending themselves from the dark than an actual protective measure itself. The runic web is not unbreakable. Mostly, people protect themselves, and the runic web protects their homes and mitigates encroachment.”

Ah.

Well then.

Erick tamped down his expectations. “That is a lot more reasonable.”

“Yup.” Darabella said, “And most people don’t like using runes, anyway, so it’s been really hard to get Surface cities to adopt runework. Even most Underworld cities don’t like the stuff.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Ohh… Could be any of a hundred reasons.” Darabella waved her knife around, pointing at imaginary forces as she named, “A lack of powerful people mandating and supporting runework infrastructure, which is its own ball of spiders, but even at the bottom of the stack, most people don’t have enough mana to support city-sized runework. Almost everyone in Enduring Forge is level 50 and with Scion of Balance, so we got that covered; other people are stuck in the shit. Add to that, anyone can carve runes if they know how, but maintaining a system like this is a communal effort. And then you got the lack of Rune Smiths out in the world, and you do have to be a Rune Smith if you want to actually create good systems—” She hummed. She said, “We’ll have to talk on that point a lot, later, because while anyone can do runework, only Rune Smiths can do the best rune work. That’s a big conversation; the expectations of working outside your Class. You probably won’t like that conversation.” She went back to the main topic, saying, “Anyway. Then there’s the problem that most people don’t know dirt about how to properly work metal, and that’s major. Then, back to the first point, you got leaders not wanting the people under them to be able to fight, like over in the Sovereign Cities what with their civil war, or with the wrought cities, what with their caste system, or Songli, or the Greensoil Republic, or practically every single Underworld city, and… A lot of places, actually. Most of the Surface is like that.

“But then you got the big, overarching problem: Everyone’s got their own methods of defense, and no one wants to try new things, because trying new things means mobile knowledge, and that means everyone will know how to tap the rocks under your foundation to knock down your house.”

“All good points.” Erick said, “I suppose a lack of metals is a problem, too.”

“Oh yeah! That’s probably a problem for other people, for sure.” Darabella said, “Not one of our problems, though.” She picked up a piece of steel, saying, “Oh! I forgot to tell you— Now for smaller runework it doesn’t matter, but for the larger stuff, you need to spend near the same amount of base mana to carve the runes as it would take for you to cast the spell yourself. Anything over 25 mana qualifies for this adjustment.” She set the metal in front of Erick, saying, “Okay then! I think I hit all the rudimentary lessons. Try carving some— Oh. Uh. There’s a few more lessons, for sure. We’re sort of skipping around. Uh. Back to carving?”

Erick laughed a little. The lessons were coming fast and disjointed, but he wasn’t having any trouble keeping up. Darabella’s teaching methodology seemed to be piecing together random puzzle pieces, then filling in holes before Erick fell into them.

“Back to carving then,” Erick said as he grabbed the metal and held it in his light—

“No no.” Darabella said, “Runework requires stability. Uh. You have to do your carving on a stable, unmoving surface. Or at least ‘unmoving’ with regard to the largest, nearest landmass. If you can accomplish this sort of stability with your light —Possibly with hard light structures— then that’s great! But stability is what the table is for.” She tapped the table, and began explaining, “This thing is imbued with a specific [Stoneshape] that all the Rune Smiths in the building pay into; all the rune beds in this building are on the same system, and you work it like this…”

Erick placed the metal on the white stone table, and tapped a [Stoneshape] into the working, exactly as Darabella told him to. White stone lifted from the table and grabbed the metal to hold it in place. Soon, he was carving [Envelop Item] into that metal, while Darabella instructed him from the side.

Soon, a rune of [Envelop Item] appeared out of the metal sheet, created with all the intent of layering Force over the structure. To ensure it worked, Erick cast the spell onto the metal, and a thin layer of Force held onto the working like a layer of varnish that was magically tough. The original spell would last for 10 hours, baseline, while inside this rune, it should last for 15; Darabella pronounced that carving adequate, but not that good. Erick could do better.

And then he did better, not three carvings later.

Darabella held up the latest carving and declared it good, saying it would last for at least 20 hours; double duration. Erick laughed, for this was kinda fun.