by Andrew Rowe
I spent the most time in that old university shop, the “Climber’s Court”. The title came from the place’s function as a meeting place for Climbers, as well as serving as a general store for supplies needed for tower expeditions. Almost everything there was outside of my price range, but I spent four silver sigils on a lesser mental mana crystal in exchange for permission to copy down the runes on the magical items that were being sold there.
The shopkeeper, a retired climber named Lars Mantrake, was happy to regale me with the stories he’d heard from the adventurers who sold him the items — or, in some cases, the ones he’d picked up personally as a younger man.
He had a lot of inventory. That meant a lot of runes to copy.
I could have found most of the same runes in the books in the library, but there was a big advantage to studying them on actual items. By looking at the items with my attunement active, I could see the exact proportions of mana that were used in each individual rune. That made it much easier to conceptualize than just looking at “22.7 units of gray mana” in a stuffy tome.
By the end of that week, I’d managed to recharge my shield sigil by transferring mana out of the lesser mental mana crystal I’d purchased. It was a huge victory for me, the first time I’d successfully moved mana from something other than myself into an item.
Somehow Jin, being the creepy and amazing guy that he was, seemed to know about it immediately. He confronted me after classes at the end of the week.
“Corin. You have been studying creating magical items.”
I nodded. I was an Enchanter; it was a safe admission.
“I’d like you to make some for me.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. Commissions? I hadn’t even made an item on my own yet. “What sorts of items?”
He handed me a list.
There were nearly thirty items on it.
“Uh... I know I owe you a couple significant favors, but this may be a little bit beyond my abilities.”
“Why is that?” he asked, brow furrowing. He didn’t look angry, just some combination of confused and frustrated.
I wasn’t exactly going to admit I hadn’t managed to make an item completely by myself yet. That, while perfectly reasonable at this point in the year, sounded embarrassing in my head.
“I don’t have anywhere near enough materials, nor the means to afford them,” I said instead. That was just as true.
“I can secure materials. What do you need?”
That warranted raising both eyebrows, but quickly turned my attention back to the list.
Item that allows for creation of aura of shadows.
Item that allows for invisibility at will.
Item that removes sound from movements.
...
It wasn’t exactly how I would have would have listed things, but I understood the goals, at least.
These were not exactly simple things to build.
I read a little further, beginning to sense patterns.
Item that allows for the projection of an illusory self.
Item that allows for the detection of invisible targets.
Item that enables the wearer to see through walls.
Item that allows the wearer to see in the dark.
Most of the items were themed toward subterfuge and detection, but some of them were awfully specific. Specific like the kinds of things you’d be expected to demonstrate in a class for a certain attunement.
I folded the list. “You want to be able to fake having other attunements.”
“Yes.”
I was surprised by the confirmation. “...Why?”
“I’m taking the classes for three different attunements,” he admitted. “I must successfully meet the requirements for each of them.”
Well, that certainly helps support my “Jin is obviously in Spider Division” hypothesis.
It was tempting to ask him about Spider Division more directly, but I decided that it was probably more polite to be more discrete, at least for the moment. He would have volunteered that information if he’d wanted to.
I raised a hand to my chin, considering. “This is so you can keep it secret which attunement you actually have?”
“Good,” he said, voice wry. “You understand.” His lips twitched upward, but only for a moment before he looked away.
Well, I understood what he was going for, but I still didn’t understand why he needed to do that.
Something about his searching for Spider Division, maybe? I’d almost forgotten about that in the face of the much more serious problems at hand.
I tried looking at his aura with my attunement; I couldn’t resist. All it took was a blink.
Nothing. No aura.
Was it possible they’d let him into the school without an attunement?
I doubted that very seriously.
That meant he was either already wearing an item that blocked my vision — very possible — or he had an attunement that did the same. The Shadow Attunement, maybe.
“Okay. You said you could get materials, but this is going to require a lot of them. Some of these enchantments are not going to be trivial, and I may not be able to complete them all immediately. I don’t even know if they’re all possible at my level of expertise; some of them might be Carnelian-level or higher.”
“I understand,” he replied. He looked me in the eye, and his expression held something like relief as he said, “I trust you will complete this to the best of your ability.”
I... still hadn’t accepted, but sure. He was so earnest with the request that I couldn’t really refuse. “If I write down the materials that I need for each of these, you can get them somehow?”
“Yes,” he replied simply.
“How?”
He folded his hands in front of him. “My family is Dalen.”
I’d figured he was from another kingdom from his appearance, but that didn’t explain the resources in itself. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re from Dalenos. ...Why does that matter?”
He shook his head once. “No. House Dalen.”
Oh, goddess. The royal family of Dalenos. “You’re... oh. Like a prince or something?”
He twisted his lips, looking uncomfortable. “No. Not precisely. I would rather not explain. Suffice to say that I can provide what you need for the items.”
That put things into a very different perspective. “...I don’t suppose you might be able to get any extra resources for my own projects, since I’m going to be making you so many things.”
He frowned. “You mean more materials?”
“Yes. To practice, and to make myself some items for my own classes.”
Jin looked away for a moment, his face considering. He turned his gaze back to me. “So long as you do not sell them. If you are making things for your own use, this would be acceptable.”
Huh. “That’s what I planned, but can I ask why you’d make that requirement?”
Jin nodded, looking serious. “The people here... you see the souls of monsters as currency. To us, they are the spoils of victory and sacrifice within the tower. To enchant is to bind the soul of an enemy for your benefit.” He paused, then his eyes widened and he hurried to continue, “This is an honorable task if done for one’s self, or for an ally.”
His expression hardened, “But to sell the spoils of bloodshed for coin? That’s an insult.”
He thinks monster cores are souls?
...actually, that makes an awful lot of sense.
If monsters are essentially mana constructs, and the core is the mana that remains when it dies... it sort of is analogous to a soul, isn’t it?
But the cores aren’t alive or intelligent — at least as far as I know. The core is more like a corpse than a soul.
Probably.
It was a little bit of a disturbing idea, but something I could investigate later.
I extended my hand and he clasped it on the wrist. A very traditional gesture. “I believe we have a deal.”
***
It took me another week just to look up the enchantments that Jin wanted, look up the necessary component runes, and then look up the materials necessary for said runes.
I couldn’t make more than two thirds of them, even if I had the materials. The enchantments were just far too far outside of my skill range.
When possible, I suggested alternatives for these. Instead of invisibility, a weak blur effect. Instead of entirely cancelling sound, a simple dampening enchantment, like the one Professor Orden had used outside my room.
It wasn’t satisfying to tell Jin that I couldn’t do most of them, but when I marked down that several of his requirements were Carnelian or even Sunstone level, he understood.
We worked out a new list from the alternates, resulting in a total of eight items I’d have to make.
It was during that process that I learned another important limitation: magical items had a tendency to interfere with other items in close proximity to them. It was something that made a lot of sense, since they’d have overlapping auras, but I hadn’t thought about it a great deal until I started considering the practical implications of trying to fake three different attunements at once.
It didn’t help that Jin wasn’t willing to tell me which attunement he actually had. That would have saved me a lot of work. But it made sense; anyone knowing was a vulnerability in his plan. I suspected the teachers had to know what he was up to, but they were a lot less likely to tell than a student.
By the middle of the fifth week of classes, Jin had delivered the materials for the first set of items he’d requested, as well as a handful of small crystals for me to use for my own experiments.
That handful of crystals would have cost, by my estimates, about eight times more than my meager stipend up to that point in the year. I was pretty pleased.
The enchanting itself, however, was a lot of work.
Having an attunement on a part of my body that I wasn’t willing to use made everything inefficient. Channeling the mana from a single small crystal into a rune only took me a few minutes, but it also drained some of the mana in my own hand, which was used to facilitate the transfer. That meant I needed to wait hours between each enchantment, just to recuperate the mana I was using.
Since my attunement was linked to my mind, that mana would have regenerated much faster — about four to five times faster, according to my books. But the more I thought about the possible side effects, the more I worried the harm I could cause if I did anything wrong.
It was the end of my fifth week when I finished my first enchantment, a copy of the standard university shield sigil, etched into the inside of my room’s door. I’d need to recharge it periodically, but it felt amazing to power a rune myself for the first time and see it flicker to life.
I was working magic. For the first time, I felt like my attunement was real, something to be proud of. I basked in that for a little while, even as my hand throbbed from the effort of moving the last bit of mana into the runes.
It was great finally having that simple defense in place, but it also made me think about how many other defenses were missing.
I had a lot of work to do.
***
Patrick and I were on our way to dueling class when I noticed something unusual. I stared at the machine blankly for a moment, not quite processing what I was seeing.
“Is that... an automobile?” I pointed at it as I spoke, and Patrick turned his head.
“Oh, wow. I’ve never seen one!”
We both walked a little closer to the horseless carriage, which was a simple open-roofed design. It was parked at the moment, and there was already a growing crowd of other students standing around it. It would have been easy to mistake for a normal carriage that simply didn’t have horses attached if it wasn’t for the metallic pipe jutting upward from a box on the rear.
We approached in spite of being dangerously close to being late to class. It was just too interesting to miss.
“...and this one’s engine is powered by a combination of three types of mana, primarily motion. Unfortunately, the operating drain is too fast for it to refill itself, so we have to periodically refill the mana chamber. We use liquid mana for this model, but they have a few crystal-run models in Caelford.”
The speaker was a tall, black-skinned gentleman with an attractive suit and wide-brimmed hat. He was leaning back against the vehicle, near the wheel. From his accent and skin, I assumed he was a Caelford native, which also helped to explain how he had the wondrous vehicle.
The Caelish were famous for their mechanical achievements, including inventing trains nearly a century ago, and more recently these automobiles. I’d heard stories that they even had ships that could sail through the skies... I was interested in seeing one someday.
How’d he get the automobile all the way here? Did he drive across the continent?
I’d never heard of anyone making the trek all the way from Caelford in a small vehicle like this. The broken lands between Caelford and Valia were inhospitable at best, and rarely traversed before the advent of the railway. Maybe he was an inventor and constructed one here?
I tried to get close enough to the engine area to inspect the runes, but there were too many other students in the way.
The speaker laughed. “I wasn’t expecting this much attention. You kids have good eyes. If you like what you see, I’d start saving up now. I’ll be bringing the first ones to market around the time you graduate. And if you want a slice of the profits, I am looking to hire a few extra hands...”
I blinked. He was going to be selling automobiles? That seemed like a positively decadent product. A vehicle that ran on liquid mana had to cost an exorbitant amount to both build and maintain. Still, I had to acknowledge that it sounded like a smart strategy if he could build them himself. The wealthy would probably bid extraordinary sums to be among the first few Valian citizens to own one. It would be a symbol of success, and my fellow nobles loved those.
He started handing out trade cards to some of the students. Those were yet another rarity, here in Valia. I’d seen a handful of them in my life, but printing them was too expensive to be worthwhile for most small scale merchants.
I took one and glanced at it. Most of the card was text, but it was accompanied by a colored image — another sign of great expense — of the gentleman himself holding a stylized key.
Aloras Corrington
Corrington Carriages
All models and varieties available
Early orders for our unique mana-carriages available — inquire at our office!
Offices at 12 Edinger Lane in Beaufort
I didn’t recognize the address, but Beaufort was the name of the city right outside of the academy. That helped explain why he was marketing his business right here. A number of the students and professors would be wealthy. If he was the first person producing automobiles in Valia, he stood to make a tremendous profit.
Corrington? That name sounds familiar somehow...
I marked his name down on a list of people I’d consider working for if I needed to make some money during my second year. A “mana engine” undoubtedly would require Enchanters to work on it, so I’d probably be a good candidate for one of the assistants he was looking for. He’d probably need alchemists to make fuel, too... Learning how to do that would be useful.
I was still daydreaming about how I’d go about making an engine from scratch when we arrived at dueling class. Fortunately, Lord Teft arrived even later than we did.
Unfortunately, he was also carrying a large unlabeled box. Teft had toned down his antics from directly assaulting students down to merely pairing us up for progressively stranger forms of practice, but from his smirk, I could tell this was probably going to be worse than usual.
Teft lowered the box, dropping it the last few inches for a heavy ‘thud’.
“Today’s lesson is one of the most critical things you will ever learn.”
Right, just like every oth
er lesson. Got it.
Teft sat on top of the box, folding one leg over the other. “By now, unless you’re particularly daft, you’ve picked up on the fact that the world has a large number of different types of mana, and each attunement only has access to a few. In a duel, you need to understand how to properly counter any type of magic you encounter.” He thrummed his fingers on the box, scanning the class as he spoke.
“In most cases, your best solution when a spell is hurtling at you is to get out of the way. This is not always practical, however, especially in enclosed spaces or for particularly quick spells. Thus, it is important to know how to counter them. There is a simple rule that I expect you to commit to memory: ‘Like deflects like, opposites nullify.’”
That actually was interesting information, if it was true.
After a moment of silence, he waved a hand expectively. “Repeat the phrase, class. Like deflects like...”
“Like deflects like...,” we droned, out of sync. At least it wasn’t as bad as when we tried to sing the Valian anthem. I shuddered every time I remembered that cacophonic dirge.
“Horrible, but good enough, I suppose. Now, what does that actually mean? A sufficiently powerful spell constructed of the same type of mana as an attack will deflect the offending spell onto a different trajectory. A spell is weakened from the impact and may lose cohesion, dispersing entirely. This is why you rarely see simple bolts from dueling canes bouncing off of shields. If you want to guarantee that you’re going to nullify a spell entirely, however, you don’t use the same type of mana — you use the opposite.”
That was interesting. I’d always assumed some opposing mana types trumped others. I would have guessed that fire would evaporate water, but when I thought about it, I supposed that water was equally good at dousing fire. It probably came down to the magnitude of the effects themselves.
Teft stood up. “For countering spells of varying types to be practical, you will need to learn each type of mana and its opposite. I’m not going to teach you here. You can read a book. In the meantime, we’ll do something more practical—”