167, 1/2

The young princess of Songli had made a lot of great food for breakfast. Fluffy omelettes, cinnamon rolls, coffee in abundance, mounds of potatoes and onions, and thick-sliced piles of bacon were all on the menu. Nirzir had been rather delightfully happy to make it all, too; for the last hour, she had been humming to herself in the kitchen, singing minor starter songs that might soon become Songs of the Harmonic Void, as she tentatively named her new magic.

Everyone seemed to be having a decent morning, or evening, since some people were headed to bed after this.

But Erick threw a wrench into the mood, asking everyone, “Any problems happening around here? Anything strange going on in your lives or in what’s been happening around us that I should be aware of?”

Nirzir paused as she shoveled a minor hill of pan-fried potatoes and onions onto a plate for Teressa. “Uh.” Nirzir’s good humor soured, as she worriedly asked, “Why?”

Jane pointed a fork at her father, saying, “You want to get a war started around here? Because that’s how you get wars started.”

“Doesn’t take much to tip the Path one side or the other,” Teressa agreed. “But for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen or heard of anything, either when I’m with you, or when I’m out with the girls.”

Poi, who was having dinner to everyone else’s breakfast, sipped his bubbly berry tea, and said, “I have heard of nothing untoward, either. I feel your fears might be unfounded, but this is the Worldly Path, and events do seem to spiral with remarkable regularity.”

Jane eyed the drink in Poi’s hand, saying, “Do you like that blend, Poi?”

“I do.” Poi said, “I mostly like the carbonation, though. Anything with sugar and flavor would do similarly well.”

Erick brought the conversation back, asking, “No one has seen anything? Nirzir? Nothing?”

Nirzir shrugged. “Enduring Forge is one of the safest places I have ever been.” She dished out some more breakfast, saying, “You hear stories that some places are safer than others, and I expected to encounter some sort of problem down here, but there’s been nothing. The light even seems brighter around here, if you can believe that. The people in town remind me of when the people of Eralis started to hear that you had ended Terror Peaks; there were minor and major celebrations everywhere.”

Erick had seen those few celebrations, and he had tried to focus on the good, but the horrors of war and the aftermath of all that destruction had dominated his mind back then… Only two months ago. Had it really been that long? It seemed like yesterday.

His trip to the grasslands had turned out well, in the end. Was this that, again?

Erick guessed, “Could I have killed the problems coming at Enduring Forge by Resetting their lands?”

Teressa smiled wide, happy to say, “Look at that! You solved the problem before it was a problem!”

“The tournament you talked about is still over 13 days away.” Jane asked, “So unless you want to stay for that, then we’re gone? My sword is coming in today and that’s the only thing I’m waiting on.”

“My armor is a necessity as well,” Poi said. “Luckily, the Armorsmith has [Perfect Fit], so we won’t have to wait around for refitting, not that they could do much with adamantium resizing, anyway. We could be gone tomorrow.”

“Would have come in yesterday, but I heard Darabella was delayed.” Jane looked at her father, and teased, “Is it going to get delayed again?”

Erick felt a brief flicker of embarrassment. He had delayed the master Adamantium Rune Smith for a full day, hadn’t he? Erick decided to discard that useless emotion, and said, “I think my meeting with Darabella was extremely productive, so I’m probably going to have another visit with her today, if she’s available. Expect delays.”

“Hmm.” Jane looked to her father, and concern passed across her face. “I guess so.”

Teressa had a similar look to her. She glanced to Erick, seeming to confirm what she was seeing, then she looked to Poi. Poi said nothing, as he sipped his berry soda. Nirzir almost missed the chair as she tried to sit in her seat. She managed, but it was an almost-thing.

It seemed all of them had figured out that Erick was interested in Darabella at the same time, though Poi knew long before now, for sure.

So! Might as well pull off the bandaid.

Erick said, “Darabella is nice, but nothing is going on there—”

Poi frowned at the obvious lie. Everyone else seemed to take personal offense at the lie, too.

“Okay. Fine. She’s nice. I like her.” Erick said, “I’ll leave it at that.”

Jane frowned a little, but she pulled back her judgment, and asked, “Is Enduring Forge going to get a Yggdrasil, too?”

Erick had too many ways to go with that denial, so he named off the first few. “Firstly, me liking someone does not mean that their town gets a Yggdrasil sapling. Also, Yggdrasil hasn’t made any mention of needing to be in any more places than he already is. And I would never make world-altering decisions based on my likes or dislikes of someone I see in some other part of the world. Nothing has even happened yet.”

Jane dropped the conversation like it was poison, her entire demeanor shifting away from confrontation, toward vindication and relief, as she said, “Good.”

Erick didn’t feel like pursuing that topic, either, so he dropped it, too. Instead, he asked, “So what’s everyone else’s plans for the day?”

Nirzir looked to Jane, then ignored whatever had happened, and said to Erick, “I’m going to try making some spellwork soon. Maybe tonight. Could I ask for your assistance, then? It’ll be on the surface sometime after sundown.”

“Sure!” Erick happily asked, “What sort of assistance?”

“Just general backup.” Nirzir spoke as though quoting someone, “One should not attempt arcane designs on one’s own.”

“Of course,” Erick said.

Teressa said, “I’m doing whatever you’re doing, since Poi’s off to bed.”

“And I hope to be there for at least 8 hours, or until the deliveries show.”

The conversation moved on.

Erick casually interrogated everyone over their recent lives, looking for trouble that anyone might have spotted, but apparently no one thought the lack of problems was a problem. Erick hoped they were right. He hoped that Enduring Forge would be a quick and painless stop, with nothing much happening at all besides meeting nice people and learning about new-to-him magics.

– – – –

Erick arrived at the Rune Smithing tower with little fanfare except for the rapid evacuation of almost everyone else in the building, except Darabella and the guy at the front desk. After seeing that rapid exit, Erick promised himself that he wouldn’t stay too long today, but he was still going to get his lesson in, and perhaps maybe ask Darabella out on a date. Maybe she’d like to go to the banquet? That was coming up in a few days.

He met with Darabella on the third floor and rapidly got through pleasantries, the entire first few minutes passing like he was a teenager seeing a pretty girl for the first time, this time, though, he didn’t flub his words. But then, somewhere between a blink and a smile, Darabella got concerned and quiet.

Erick’s paranoia shot through the roof. Had he read the signs wrong? Had he misinterpreted what he was seeing? Maybe he wa—

“They’re talking of moving the tournament to this week, instead of next week; 5 days from now instead of 15.” Darabella said, “It’s because they want you to be here for that and they asked me to ask you to stay, if you were willing.” She rapidly added, “But you do not have to stay if you don’t want to; it’s completely up to you.”

… Ah.

Apparently Darabella had been charged with a task, to ask him to stay for a specific event, and she was worried that he would take it badly. But why would he take it badly? If a surprise tournament was the ‘big thing’ to happen in this part of the Worldly Path, then that was fine! More than fine, really. Erick was thrilled.

Erick said, “Nothing wrong in a tournament; yeah. I can stay.” He smiled, feeling lighter with every passing moment. Maybe Darabella would like to go to the tournament with him? Or… Maybe the banquet is better. Erick put off asking that question, though, as he said, “Jane wanted to go to the tournament, anyway. So what’s it all about? The tournament? Will there be a problem with people who planned to come already?”

“Oh?” Darabella stood stunned. Then she registered his words, saying, “Oh! You will? Great!” Then she heard his question. She added, “Uh. There shouldn’t be any planning issues. We have standing invitations to select groups of people all across Nelboor and the Near Underworld —anyone who can pay the entrance fee, anyway— so it’s not like this is some massive tournament that we can’t change dates on. But I don’t really pay attention to all that. I rune the weapons, and occasionally they turn into artifacts; that is the extent of my involvement in all that.”

Erick’s mind skipped a track.

“… ‘Occasionally they turn into artifacts’?” He laughed. “What?”

“Oh yeah.” Darabella waved her wooden knife, saying, “I’ve made four of them this past year, while five others have produced six, and that means we have 10 to give away as prizes.”

Erick remained perplexed, and it looked like Darabella was headed off on a tangent, so Erick pulled her back, “What do you consider an artifact?”

Darabella blinked a bit. Then she said, “The standard definition? Magical items that don’t decay due to use? Or overuse, either? Same as I heard about your rings.” She added, “The ones we make aren’t that great, though. Not as nice as another 25 points to All Stats. But they’re still good.”

“Ah? What kind of artifact, though? I thought you could only make magic last longer inside an item— Oh. That’s it, isn’t it. The magic never fades if you make the runes perfectly.”

Darabella smiled. “Yup! That’s it! Flying swords that never stop flying. Various other trinkets, sometimes— Well. It’s more like times-ten duration. Not forever. Making an artifact out of runes is a rare event that happens sometimes, but when you rune 20 pieces a day for a full year? It happens more often than you’d think.”

“What sort of weapons will be available?”

“Let’s see… I think there’s four flying swords. Those are extremely popular weapons so they get made all the time. Three of them are adamantium, but one of them is bloodsteel. That one was a special order, but since we ended up with an artifact, we had to make a second bloodsteel sword for the customer since he wasn’t willing to pay the artifact price. Second one was not an artifact; the customer was still happy.” Darabella said, “And then we have four flying shields; rather common defensive items there, too. Then we got a mage staff and a flying pair of ingots.” She said, “Those ingots were more of a joke item, but don’t underestimate the power of blunt adamantium [Strike]ing with the force of a 100 Strength warrior behind them. I think one bar is 10 kilos and the other is only three, so someone would have to make use of that discrepancy, too, which is a whole other problem.”

Erick had questions. First, he asked, “Ingots? As in ‘an ingot of steel’ that you melt down and turn into a weapon?”

“Exactly, yes.” Darabella said, “Once adamantium cools to a solid it’s near-impossible to change back into a usable form, so we plan our pours to the gram, but stuff goes wrong sometimes. Twice, in the case of these ingots. One of our crafters decided to try and make something out of the remnants. They apparently threw a whole bunch of odd runes onto the ingots —[Flying Heavy Striker], [Flying Speed Striker], [Flying Heavy Shield], [Flying Speed Shield]; those are the main ones— along with some connecting runes. More of an experiment than a real diagram. And it worked!” She smirked. “It worked really well.” She lost her smile. “They’re terribly hard to use, but some warrior will be able to use them, for sure. Someone always is. The tournament is first place through tenth, with winners taking their prizes from the lot in the order they’re won. If someone doesn’t want the weapons that are left, then they get their entry fee back… I think that’s how we’re still doing it?”

“That sounds rather interesting— The runic weapons, I mean. I want to know more about the connecting runes, but you mentioned a staff, and I see the blank staffs over there, but I haven’t actually seen a real runic staff before.” Erick asked, “What sort of spells go into a staff? How does that work?”

Darabella scrunched her lips, saying, “Making weapons for mages is always a difficult thing because they’re always unique items. The artifact staff for the tournament is no exception; I made it, so I would know. It’s based on [Flying Scorchball]. Do you know that spell?”

Erick rattled off, “[Conjure Force Elemental], base, then [Force Bomb] with Mana Altering for Fire for the Burn effect, along with the addition of any of the more permanent Force spells, so that the Bomb doesn’t explode; more that it just flies around at your command. It’s almost a mobile Rift-type spell, but aspected for damage, instead of buffing. The perfect resulting spellwork is tier 2 or 3.”

Darabella nodded, then said, “Making mage weapons is complicated, because you have to take all of that and put it in a weapon that acts as an anchor for the spell, and not as a destination of the spell, which is what happens with normal runic inscriptions. If you make a mage weapon wrong, by, say, sticking a simple [Fireball] in a staff, then you’ve handed over a self-exploding weapon to a person. More of a trap than a usable tool. You have to do like what I showed you with the [Floating Platform] to hold the [Light Ward] in the air away from the steel plate.

“But I’ve done this many times before, so I made the weapon to the man’s specifications, and it ended up an artifact. The first [Flying Scorchball] cast with the staff will remain under the control of the user for an indefinite amount of time. You can still have up to 5 Scorchballs flying around alongside the main one, but every Scorchball past the first only lasts 10 minutes.

“The customer didn’t like the artifact price, so he learned the hard way that runes should be implanted into weapons by a master.” Darabella said. “He blew himself up and we ended up with a weapon that not many can use.”

“Oh.” Erick frowned. “Poor guy.”

Darabella nodded. “About 36,000 gold poor, yes—”

Erick stifled a sudden laugh.

“—so now his weapon goes to the tournament, instead.” Darabella said, “The guy was a competent caster, too! He could have paid the artifact price money rather easily by hunting down some grand cores. It’s not like these weapons go bad.”

Erick nodded. “So how do you make a good mage weapon, then?”

“Hmm… You want to make one?”

“Yes.”

Darabella nodded, then said, “Let’s start with the theory and implementation of joining runes together, first, and then we’ll go from there to making a mage weapon.”

Erick nodded.

Darabella trailed her knife through the air, conjuring lightwards to explain herself, as she said, “There are two ways to join runes together. The first, and the easiest, is to place the desired runes on two ends of a system. A ‘system’ can be any single metallic object.

“There’s some complicated math involved here based on the magic saturation rates of metal and the outflow of spell effect and the distance between runes and a whole bunch of smaller stuff, like the type of metal you’re using, with magical metals of all kinds generally being better for all runework than mundane metals. But we’re going to ignore all of that, for now, and I’ll give you a few good rules to follow, and there is some math involved in this.

“For every letter of a completed rune, the magical effect imbued into that rune will effortlessly transmit a decimeter through the material in a spherical area, not a linear area, with the runework at the anchored center.

“This means, if you have a ten meter long stretch of steel that is a meter in diameter, and you put [Conjure Weapon], which is 8 runes, onto the caps of both ends of the system, you have made a system that will fail. The runes simply will not link that far.” She drew out some math, saying, “The volume of the area that [Conjure Weapon] can imbue is .27 cubic meters, while the volume of the 10 meter long cylinder is 7.85 cubic meters, meaning that to make a 10 meter cylinder of steel into a weapon, would require at least 30 joined carvings of [Conjure Weapon]. And the appropriate amount of spellwork imbued, of course.

“Also, ‘spherical area affected’ means that if you have a cylinder of steel only 10 centimeters in diameter, and ten meters long, which is a volume of .08 cubic meters, then a single [Conjure Weapon] rune will affect the entire system. Wires are very good for conducting runes. Generally, though, when you put down runes, the system to which you have attached them will generally be able to sustain the power of those runes, unless you’re doing thick construction work.

“Large scale runework is very complicated, though, and much more complicated than simply ‘carving more runes’, or ‘making the system thinner’, but that’s as far as we’re going with that, right now. Because you also have to take into account the area affected by the original spellwork which exists outside of the affected metal, which is also attached to the runework you imbue.” Darabella said, “For instance, [Flying Weapon] naturally allows for the user to use the conjured sword in a close-range area, which varies by specific person.

“But ignoring those variations, now we get into multi-imbues, which temporarily throws everything I already said out the window, because multi-imbuing changes everything.

“For every spell imbued into those runes, you double the distance that the runes affect, multiplying the volume affected by around 8. The average runework is more than enough to cover most every person-sized effect you would ever need to consider, from pixies to orcols, because, notice I said ‘spherical area’, and a sword is much, much, much less than a sphere.

“Now: there’s two parts to most spellwork. For [Conjure Weapon], there’s the actual effect, which is a sword in hand, but there’s also the connection it has to you, which is a lot more ephemeral. It is through the usage of this secondary aspect of spells that we are able to make mage-rune items; that we’re able to project the spellwork away from the staff.

“But unless you make this secondary aspect of your mage runes well, then you’ll only ever end up with staffs of [Fireball]s that explode in your face. Normal enchanting doesn’t have this problem, because the core dust takes care of all of these problems for you. But runework very much has this problem. The artifact [Flying Scorchball] staff I made had a range of Large, because it was very, very well made, with lots and lots of runes.

“[Flying Weapon] swords are limited by this spherical restriction, too, but you always use those close to your body except on rare occasions, so this is fine.” Darabella stopped her lecture, to see if Erick was understanding.

Erick summed it all up, “Expansive runework systems are needed to make a large item function properly, while specific runeworks are needed to ensure that you get range for your imbued spells.”

“Exactly.” Darabella said, “[Conjure Weapon] is 8 letters, so with a single set of runes you can fully rune swords of all but the most impractical sizes, since you’re still holding onto the weapon yourself.” She added, “Another way to increase range is to increase the number of spells you imbue into the item. Simply casting the same spell into an item twice will double the range, more than octupling the area affected. A third cast will only increase the area affected by half of the number of runework letters… And I think I’ve gotten into the math too much. But we can do a bit, here, to illustrate the progression.

“8 letters means .8 meters, which means about .27 cubic meters of volume. Let’s overcharge the [Conjure Weapon] with another cast, for 1.6 meters, or about 2.14 cubic meters of affected space. A third cast brings us to 2.4 meters, though, or about 7.24 cubic meters. The second imbue octuples the volume, but the third imbue only increases it by a factor of 3.4.

“Diminishing returns on volume and distance start to hit even harder than that, once you get up to four imbues. And while overcharging runes provides a brief boost of distance, that distance settles down to more duration rapidly enough, at a rate that goes down about as fast as the original spell’s duration decays, based upon how much overcharging you’ve done.

“Now, when it comes to very large systems, with many, many people putting in more and more power, you’re practically always on the lowest end of a downswing.” Darabella said, “Your range is more or less at the original size. But your duration is very, very large.” She looked to Erick for confirmation of understanding.

Erick said, “More power is useful temporarily, when the system has nothing in it, but more than anything, the number of runes in a system is what determines the distance the runes work at.”

“Correct.” Darabell said, “But we don’t write novels in weapons, for the mana prefers simple to complex, and too many directions will confuse the final product, just as it would for any actual tierwork done in the creation of higher spells.

“And this is where we get complicated. As in ‘creating spells’ complicated. Because that’s what we’re doing when we create mage-rune items. The user of the [Flying Scorchball] staff will essentially be creating a new spell every time they use that weapon, for non-standard, self-centered effects are difficult to make the mana understand what magic you want out of it.

“[Flying Striker]? Perfectly understandable; it’s a weapon that’s controlled with your mind, which is what you’re already doing when you put a sword in your hand and swing it with your real muscles. [Flying Striker] uses an effect tethered to you, using your own physical capacity, except done magically, with as much skill as you possess yourself. Simple stuff. Using a Flying Weapon is about as hard as swinging a sword with an arm you didn’t know you had.

“[Flying Scorchball]? That secondary aspect of spells comes up again, because what have you made? Is it a [Fireball] centered on you? No. Is it a randomly moving conjured elemental? No. Is it a summon under your control? Yes. How does that work? Telepathically? Not really; it’s more of a general guidance which some people do with verbal commands, and some do with other means. Pointing and intent can fill a lot of blanks, but that’s not good enough for a spell effect you want to use strategically, and allow it to work under its own auspices.” Darabella said, “And this is why mage-runecraft is harder than warrior-runecraft.

“But there are solutions.

“For mage-rune items, you center your runes around the end-effect; simple, just like carving [Conjure Weapon] into a sword. But this will usually blow up in your face, so you have to add side-runes in an order-of-operations-like methodology. This is fine for base auras, though. A staff of auras is easy to make, and easy to power, too. But other spells are harder.

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“For [Flying Scorchball], you actually add in a bunch of stuff that isn’t part of the spellwork itself so that the mana understands what you’re asking of it. For the staff I made, I added [Force Bolt], for the homing aspect and control aspect, along with [Force Platform] for the stability and more control. The guy who ordered the weapon was very skilled at controlling his spheres of power, but a weapon cannot do this without considerable intelligence, so several chained runes went into the staff to replicate his own honed capability and to allow the conjured elemental some of its own ‘fill in the blank’ power.

“Because putting a spell into a staff is essentially handing over most of the spell to the staff, itself.” Darabella said, “It’s complicated.” She smiled. “So let’s work out some of those complications! Now for this lesson, we’re going to be creating runes which will allow an imbued lightward to create a ball of light that hovers outside of the metal plate which contains your runework. So to do that, we will…”

Soon, Erick was carving.

Light and [Ward] were the first two runes, joined with a simple line, since that’s how you joined runes together. This prompted a small discussion about naming conventions because Erick had not written [Light Ward], which was Darabella’s preferred incarnation of that particular rune set; he had written them with the bracket spell designators only around [Ward], while Light was left on its own. Erick’s design worked, though had a different meaning than Darabella’s and was probably what caused the steel plate of the previous day’s wardlight experiment to light with a fluorescent bulb-like effect.

Then came [Force Platform], written smaller than the main runes, along with a single line branching off from the thicker line which had joined Light and [Ward] together. [Force Platform] was a subordinate spell to the main effect, after all. In this way, you would end up with a lightward floating in the direction the runes faced.

If, however, you did a trio of lines that joined every single word to each other, or a branching line that joined the three runes together, then you’d end up with the steel plate becoming the centerpiece of a solid light effect, instead of having a floating ball of light hover a meter away from the spellwork.

Usually.

“You can end up with really odd effects with seemingly insignificant changes in operational structure.” Darabella said, “But even more than that, if you imbued runework with spellwork that isn’t the main focus of the runes, then you’ll switch everything around, and you’d end up with the steel plate becoming a very weak [Force Platform] that glowed a bit. This is due to a loss of effect because you put the wrong magic in. This small bit of loss isn’t anything special, but when you run magic through a hundred different runes, then those inefficiencies add up exponentially. But go ahead and try imbuing [Force Platform] instead of a [Light Ward]; it should still function, somewhat.”

Erick did so.

The small steel plate acted exactly as Darabella expected it to act; a gently glowing [Force Platform] that looked both small, and weak. The steel plate itself hovered next to him and moved around tethered to Erick, as Erick moved, testing the spell. It behaved exactly as a [Force Platform] should, but then Erick pressed his hand onto the metal plate and the spell broke. The steel plate clattered to the ground.

He picked it back up and imbued it with a lightward.

A ball of light sprung out of the plate’s surface, to hover a meter away from the steel. Erick shook the steel plate, and the ball of light lazily tried to remain a meter away from the runed surface. Then Erick rapidly moved the plate through the air, from one side to the other, and the ball of light tracked its anchor, always attempting to remain a meter away from the front surface of the metal plate. Erick spun the metal plate, and the lightward tracked that spinning, too.

… There was a lot of potential here, but for exactly what, Erick could not say.