B3 – Chapter 32: The Heavenly Realm

Finding a human student was easy – Tristan just had to look around the various reading nooks and he found several. He gently rapped his knuckles on the table of one who was buried in a book, taking notes on a small pad of parchment. “Excuse me,” he said softly.

The young woman looked up. She had curly, brown hair and dark, hazel eyes. Her lips were drawn into a flat expression. “Hmm?” she made an inquiring noise.

“I need someone to do a spell,” Tristan said. “And put it into an artificed item. I’m Tristan.”

She set the book down, “I am no artificer,” she replied. “I mainly focus on imbuement. And I am Hailey.”

Felicity flew over and landed on Tristan’s head, and handing him the book. “Found it!” she said with pride.

The young woman smiled slightly, “Cute animal companion. And you ensorcelled it to talk.”

Tristan chuckled and shook his head, “No. She’s not an animal companion, or ensorcelled. Felicity? Show her your pocket dimension.” Felicity waved her paw, and the small, black space appeared in the air next to her.

The human looked mildly impressed, “Okay, you have my interest.”

Tristan tapped the book and slid it over to her, “I can artifice. And I have items of high enough quality to store the spell. What I propose is this; we work together, we each get an item that can make these extradimensional storage spaces. How’s that sound?”

The mage smiled a slight smile, “I could use something like that. On-demand storage that follows me around?” she snatched the book and began flipping, “I can only do Second Order…and…it looks like that would give two cubic feet of storage?”

Felicity grinned, “I can store a lot more than that!” She flicked her tail back and forth, “Praise me for my amazing-ness!”

“You are amazing,” Tristan said as he reached a hand up to scratch her head. “Mind grabbing a few of those bits of jewelry I saw you swipe in the market?”

Felicity gasped, “You saw me do that? I thought I was s-n-e-a-k-y.”

The mage frowned and looked over the book at Tristan, “You stole from the inter-Realm market?”

“No,” Tristan replied quickly. “I run a market. In fact, it will be hosting a field trip on the first week of each Season. You should come and see.”

“Interesting. Perhaps. Regardless of where you got it from,” She pointed into Felicity’s storage dimension, “I would like one of those ruby amulets for my item.”

Felicity snagged the object and set it on the table, “What do you want, Tristan?”

“Emerald amulet is fine,” Tristan replied. Felicity snagged it and set it down on the table. “Okay, Second Order; give me a second.” He set the two objects far apart from each other, took off his gauntlets and gloves, and pulled out his Omnitome to quickly reference the proper spell and gesture.

The mage frowned, “A few items to note. First, the pocket dimension created will follow the user in a fixed place in space. Second, others can access it if they know the exact fixed point in relation to you – in our case, I imagine it will be on our artificed items instead of just following us around. Third, it is not temperature or climate controlled at this lower Order.” She set the book down.

Tristan nodded, “Ready?”

“Give me a few minutes to practice the gesture.”

Artificing the two items took relatively little time, minus a few failed spell attempts from the female mage struggling over some of the words written in Orcish. Good thing she knows that language, Tristan thought. Otherwise we’d have to find someone else to translate.

In the end, they had joined their essence-weaving efforts together to create two amulets with Pocket Dimension II stored on them. Tristan put the metal chain around his neck and tucked the amulet under the armor to join his family crest. Spinning his partially depleted crucible, he activated the spell.

A small box appeared directly in front of him. An empty, black space with little specks of silver along the sides, top, and bottom. He placed the Omnitome, the clearcool elixirs, all but one of the supreme healing and essence elixirs. Wish I had something similar for my weapons, he thought. Sure, he could move around just fine with the greatbow unstrung, the maul, and the Queen’s Wood Staff hanging from loops along the top of his armor’s back-left shoulder. But he would have preferred to have them in a pocket dimension for rapid access.

Then again, he thought, as he pulled the elixirs back out, if I am too weak to use the amulet’s stored spell, then I am screwing myself over. So I guess I’m only going to use it for stuff I won’t need on the fly.

The mage who had helped him, for her part, was ecstatic. “This is awesome! Normally artificed items are really expensive. Hey, would you by chance want to join my study group?”

“I don’t really study like tha-”

Hailey shook her head, “No, you misunderstand me. Sorry. I’m not great with people. I have friends who can probably do spells you can’t do. If you have more items you can artifice, I’m sure we could get a whole bunch of stored spells for each other!”

“Enticing,” Tristan replied. “Perhaps.”

“Perfect!” she scribbled a note and handed it to him. “We meet in my quarters on the middle-day of each week.”

Tristan nodded, “The eighth, then?”

“Yeah. Think you can make it?”

“I intend to,” Tristan replied. “And I’ll make sure to bring a lot of artifice-able jewelry.”

The next few days passed rapidly, with Tristan dipping between the Fey Realm and the Mortal Realm. Stocking up on various pieces of jewelry and other items that could be artificed and wouldn’t be out-of-place; mainly skipping weapons and armor.

The day of Hailey and her classmate’s study group came around, and both Tristan and Felicity attended. After some discussion, Tristan had made deals and performed artifice for several offensive spells he knew – primarily fire and lightning elementalism. That was of the most interest for each student was some means of self-defense. As Hailey put it, “Few essence-weavers here focus on combat spells.”

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Why is that?” Tristan asked. “Surely it could make you a good living.”

Another student named Mark, a Beastkin who took after a rabbit, replied. “Why take the risk? There are so many different spell types out there. Fighting carries risks.”

The reasoning was sound enough to Tristan, and he supposed that if he was not a warrior and trained to fight dragons from a young age, he would probably have gone down a route of scholarly pursuits and avoided fighting. “Fair enough,” he said.

By the end of the few-hour session, Tristan had drained almost all of his essence – leaving just enough for his Citadel Pin to go back to his and Felicity’s room. Sadly, the different students were primarily studying spell types that he did not think would be very useful in his day-to-day life. The exception was a spell called Minor Barrier, which could make a buckler-sized barrier of Essence that was opaque and would be colored after his essence.

The ability to summon something like that nearly at-will to use in his offhand was handy enough, but he was informed that it was best used to protect one’s hands, as it would hover just above the person’s forearm or hand, and could masque the spell gestures they may perform behind it.