by Eric Vall
I sent out one last burst of magic, and both rings came to a simultaneous stop. I lifted my other hand and plucked the smaller ring from my palm. The metal still felt warm to the touch.
“How’s that?” I asked Abrus. I locked eyes with the Lux Mage as I slid the simple iron ring onto my upraised middle finger. It fit perfectly like I knew it would, and I also had the added satisfaction of flipping the elder mage off, even if he didn’t understand the gesture.
Abrus’ jaw worked silently for a moment like he was chewing on his words. He looked from the ring on my finger to the bangle in my hand.
“Adequate,” he finally said at length. “Now do that exact same thing with the rest of these metals. Perhaps by then, you will be proficient.”
The Lux Mage stepped to the side and gestured to a row of ingots on the workshop table. There had to be over ten of them, and the bars ranged from gold to gray to the palest white.
“All of them?” I glanced back at the elder mage, and some of my frustration must have shown on my face because he smirked and tapped at the closest ingot.
“I need to test how effective your powers are across a spectrum of materials, from iron to precious metals,” Abrus explained. “Unless, of course, you think the personal instruction and guidance of the head of the Order is beneath you.”
I gritted my teeth to keep myself from frowning. I realized the Lux Mage was a little bitter about my victory during our duel and was now doing his best to fray at my last nerve.
But I wasn’t about to lose to him now.
“Of course not, Mage Abrus,” I replied with an overly bright smile. “I’m grateful for your tutelage.”
The Lux Mage narrowed his eyes at my enthusiastic tone, but I kept up my facade as I reached for another ingot.
I’d show him how “proficient” I really was.
The next hour passed very monotonously. Abrus had me complete the exact same task for each of the ingots, and then he compared the rings I made. Like I had thought, I could manipulate metals of all kinds, but iron came easiest for some reason, probably because it seemed to hold its shape quicker after I melted it. Gold turned out to be the most difficult but only because it had a really low melting point and the metal itself was so soft. Then again, that might have been because it took a much more delicate touch, and I was still getting used to my powers. Eventually, two gold rings joined their siblings, all of them perfect and gleaming.
The Lux Mage liked to hover over my shoulder as I worked, and his acrid breath almost curled the hairs at the base of my neck.
“Could you maybe take a step back?” I asked through gritted teeth. “It’s a little hard to concentrate with you pressed up against me.”
Abrus snorted but he did move away. “Better?”
I glanced over my shoulder to throw another sarcastic quip, but then something on the old man’s chest caught my eye.
Abrus wore a strange amulet around his neck. I had never seen it before, but it looked like it might have just slipped out of a fold in Abrus’ robe so perhaps he had always worn it. It was a crimson gem about the size of a chicken egg, and on its surface, a strange looking mark was carved in black. The lines were so faint I could barely make them out, but they looked almost like tree roots or some kind of runic writing.
“What’s that?” I asked as I completely forgot about the metal in my hand.
“What are you referring to?” Abrus asked with a furrowed brow.
I jutted my chin toward his chest. “That jewel you’re wearing. It looks really cool. What is that mark on the surface? It almost looks like my mage’s mark.”
The Lux Mage’s face went curiously flat. “It’s nothing. Just an old heirloom.” He then wrapped his fist around the large gem and tucked it deftly back into his robes.
“But--” I started to ask.
“Are we going to waste time gossiping or are you actually going to focus on your task?” Abrus demanded as he nodded to the cooled puddle of metal in my palms.
I scowled and turned back to my work. “Just trying to make conversation. Don’t have to be a dick about it.”
Abrus didn’t respond, and we lapsed back into silence for the next few minutes.
Just as I was finishing the last lead ingot, a knock sounded at the workshop door, and Abrus and I looked up to see a young mage standing in the doorway. By the silver thread on the hem of his white robe, I could tell he was an Aer Mage.
“Mage Abrus,” the young man said as he bowed his head. “I apologize for the intrusion, but King Temin has summoned you to the castle.”
I blinked in surprise and looked between the two other mages.
“Has something happened?” I asked. “Another attack?”
The Aer Mage glanced at me in shock, like he couldn’t believe I had spoken without explicit permission from Abrus. Then, his gaze jumped to the half-melted ingot in my hand and then to the rings on the table, and his eyes grew wide.
Abrus noticed the Aer Mage’s awe and cleared his throat sharply. “Thank you, Novice Dain. That will be all.”
The young mage jumped at Abrus’ voice and swiftly bowed his head again. “Of course, Mage Abrus. My apologies.” His curious eyes flicked back to me for a moment, but then he turned on his heel and ducked back out of the workshop as quickly as he had come.
“Perfect,” Abrus grunted when we were alone again. “As if the gossip mill needed any more fodder.”
A thrill of pride raced down my spine, and I puffed out my chest a little.
“Well, I think tales of my powers make for better idle chat over dinner than villagers getting killed by drakes,” I said with a grin. “At the very least, it’s more appetizing.”
Abrus gave me a deadpan look. Then, he sighed and rubbed tiredly at his face.
“I must go meet with the king,” the Lux Mage intoned, “but I promised Odger you would be supervised while in his workshop.”
“I vow to be incredibly careful,” I replied. “I won’t even touch a single one of his tools.”
“You will touch nothing else besides what you have already laid hands on,” Abrus instructed with a stern frown, and then he pointed to the rings on the table. “Refashion those back into ingots and then start again. Do not touch or do anything else until I return. Odger will have your hands if you break anything. Understood?”
“Understood,” I echoed with a nod, and my stomach fluttered with excitement when I realized that I was about to be left alone in the workshop. “I break it, I buy it. I promise not to destroy the workshop, Mage Abrus. I’ll be fine.”
“We shall see,” the Lux Mage sniffed, and then he swept out the door.
I made a face at the empty threshold when I was sure he was gone.
“Hell yeah, we shall see,” I grumbled as I turned back to the table.
No matter what the Lux Mage had said, I wasn’t about to spend the next few hours melting and remelting the same pieces of metal. That wasn’t progress. Abrus might want to bite my head off, but I’d simply make something so awesome that he couldn’t complain about technicalities.
“Now,” I said to the empty room as I rubbed my hands together, “let’s really get started.”
I reached for the iron rings first since they responded best to my magic. The metal was heavy and cool to the touch, and I bounced the pieces in my palm with a grin.
“What to make first?” I mused. I let my eyes rove around the workshop as I searched for inspiration. Then, my gaze fell on a half-finished project the blacksmith had left on the cooling rack. I couldn’t tell what exactly the completed project would be, but it was some kind of blade, and it looked sharp as hell.
Excitement raced down my spine, and my heartbeat picked up until it was a gallop.
“Time to have some fun,” I said as I called up my magic again.
It surged through me, and the iron rings in my palm began to melt once more. I closed my eyes and flipped through my memories of various renaissance festivals until I found one I liked. It was a ra
ther simple design, but I had to start somewhere.
With my eyes still closed, I concentrated on the picture in my head and willed my magic to copy it. Slowly, the iron took form in my hand, and the shifting metal tickled at my palm. A minute later, the movement in my hand stopped, and my magic receded back into me again. There was a small dip of fatigue, but it mostly just felt like I had stood up too fast. My head swam for an instant but then righted itself, and then I opened my eyes.
There, in the center of my palm, lay a dull, gray, double-edged dagger. It was about as long as my forearm and three fingers wide at the unadorned hilt, but the blade tapered to a wicked thin point at the end. It lay horizontally across my hand, and I tilted my palm back and forth to test the balance. The dagger rocked back and forth but did not fall.
“Perfect balance,” I muttered with a broad grin. “But is it sharp?”
I reached out with my other hand and prodded gently at the dagger’s tip. There was a pinprick of pain, and when I looked down, a bright crimson bead of blood welled to the surface of my fingertip.
Pride and exhilaration roared through my blood and made my pulse stampede. I stuck my finger in my mouth, but I couldn’t stop smiling as I carefully set the dagger down on the workshop table and reached for another pair of metallic rings.
This was about to be the best day ever.
Once I started, it was like I couldn’t stop. I made a handful of daggers next, some double-edged, some single, each one sharper than the last. After the daggers, I made caltrops and ninja stars and arrow tips, basically, any little pocket-sized weapon I could remember from my time on the renaissance festival circuits or Earth in general.
But those things quickly became too easy, and soon I found myself searching for my next challenge.
Of course, the first and only thing I could think of was a badass longsword. Something big and silver and sharp. A monster-killer.
“Piece of cake,” I said to the empty workshop even though my shoulders had started to grow heavy with fatigue. My stomach gurgled, and I wondered if lunch had passed already. Abrus still had not returned so maybe it was still morning. There were no windows or clocks in the workshop for me to be sure.
“Better finish this up before he gets back,” I muttered to myself. I had used all the material that the grouchy old man had left out on the table, so I glanced along the far wall of the room and saw stacks of iron ingots the size of bricks on the shelves there.
I thought back to Abrus’ warning about not touching anything and paused, but then I shrugged.
He’d get over it when he saw the finished longsword, and he’d be too awestruck to be pissed.
So, even though my stomach still rumbled and my arms felt heavier than they had a little while ago, I strode across the workshop toward the iron and began to envision what I wanted the sword to look like.
But I very quickly ran into a problem.
The idea seemed simple enough: do what I did with the daggers, only bigger.
Therein lies my problem though. Bigger.
When I raised my hands over the three iron bricks and summoned my magic, I expected the now familiar dip in my energy, but instead, it felt like someone punched me in the solar plexus.
I gasped for breath and cut my connection to my magic. My power receded back inside me like the tide going out, and my knees actually buckled. I caught myself on the edge of the workshop table, and when my vision cleared of black spots, I looked to what was meant to be my longsword.
All I found were three chunks of slightly melted iron. I had barely even made a dent in them. If this is how I felt after only trying to melt the amount of metal I needed, then shaping seemed out of the question.
“Shit,” I cursed as I collapsed back onto a work stool. My hair was soaked with sweat, and my muscles were rubbery, like I had run on a treadmill nonstop for hours.
“Guess something like that takes too much energy,” I rasped to myself.
My head pounded in agreement.
As I rubbed at my tired face, I glanced at the forges at the back of the room, but I quickly nixed the idea of using them. They took too long to heat and were difficult to maintain since I wasn’t a blacksmith and didn’t know how to work them properly.
Even though my fingers were grimy with soot and sweat, I ran them through my hair to pull it back from my face. I looked at the workshop table beside me, and a half a dozen daggers glinted back amid the various caltrops and stars.
“Well, at least I got these babies made,” I sighed as I poked at the largest dagger. I envisioned placing a ruby in its empty pommel and maybe some gold embellishments along the hilt and cross guard.
“Have you been here all day?”
I looked up to find Aurora in the doorway. The half-elf seemed shocked to see me.
“Hey,” I replied as a grin spread across my face. No matter how I felt physically, I was always glad to see the beautiful, blue-haired maiden.
Wait. Did she just say all day?
“I’m sorry, I think I misheard you,” I added with a frown. “Did you say all day?”
Aurora nodded slowly as she looked me up and down. “It is well past dinner. You were not in your room or the infirmary, so I came to look for you.”
“Past dinner?” I echoed as my eyes widened. No wonder I was so damn hungry. “I-I didn’t realize.” I looked back toward the workshop table. “I guess I just got caught up in my experiments.”
Aurora clicked her tongue in reproach and strode across the floor toward me. Her hips swung as she walked, and my eyes were so mesmerized by the movement, I almost missed it when the half-elf extended her arm out.
“Drink,” she instructed as she jostled the canteen of water in front of my nose again.
I wanted to argue, but suddenly I realized my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my throat was parched as a desert. I coughed into my fist and took the canteen with a muttered thanks. In a matter of moments, I had drained the entire thing dry.
“You need to be more careful,” she cautioned me with a frown as I handed her back the empty container. “Mages have perished in the past from overtaxing themselves. Magic is a gift, but it takes its toll on the body like anything else, perhaps even more so.”
“I know,” I replied as I rubbed tiredly at my cheek. “I’m simply… eager to master these new powers already.”
The blue-haired maiden chuckled again. “One does not become a master mage overnight,” she teased. “Give it time.”
“No, but I think I came pretty close,” I said with a rakish grin as I motioned to the daggers and small weapons on the table.
Aurora’s emerald green eyes went wide. “Y-you made all these?” She reached out tentatively as if to touch one of the shiny metal pieces, but she stopped short. “With your powers alone?”
“Yup,” I replied smugly. “The blacksmith had some ingots lying around. Abrus had me making rings at first, but that was too simple, so I decided to move on to more complicated ideas.”
“Where is Mage Abrus?” the half-elf frowned and glanced around the workshop as if he were skulking in the corner.
“A messenger came and said he had been summoned to the castle by the king,” I replied, “but that had to have been this morning. I guess he must have forgotten about me.”
“Abrus wouldn’t forget about you,” Aurora replied with a shake of her head. “Perhaps he got caught up with the king and trusted you to keep out of trouble for one day.”
“Or maybe he thought I’d break something and Odger would take my hands,” I grumbled.
“That is also probable.” Aurora nodded, but I could tell she was at least partially joking by the way her mouth twitched. Her bottle-glass green eyes went back to the table of weapons, and she leaned a little closer.
I inhaled deeply as she brought the scent of pine trees with her.
“These look well made, Mason,” the half-elf complimented.
I preened at the approval in her voice. “Thank you, Defender Sola
na.”
“But what’s this?” she asked as her eyes fell on my failed attempt at a longsword.
“It was supposed to be a longsword,” I replied with a wince, “but I didn’t realize I was at this all day. The dramatic energy drain surprised me.”
“Rest is what you need,” Aurora said with a frown. “That is the only treatment for a hard day’s work.”
I gasped as her words jarred an idea loose from the back of my tired brain. “That’s it!”
“What?” Aurora blinked in surprise.
I slid off my stool and grinned excitedly at the half-elf. “I need to treat my fatigue, and I could do that by going to sleep for twelve hours, orrrrrr you could give me some more of those Tiorlin berries.”
Aurora pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “No.”
My face fell at her response. “No? Come on, just a few.”
The half-elf mutely shook her head.
“Please,” I begged the merciless Ignis Mage again with my best puppy-dog eyes.
“No,” Aurora said pointedly as she narrowed her eyes, “what you need is to build up your strength and stamina on your own. It is like a muscle. If you rely too much on the Tiorlin now, when you need it most, your magic will fail you.”
“Then I’ll simply make sure I always carry a few berries with me,” I replied with a cajoling smile. Logically, I knew she was right, but I was so close to completing that longsword, and I just needed a little extra boost of energy to see me through to the end.
“Despite these points to my ears,” the half-elf said as she tucked her hair behind them dramatically, “the Nalnorans would not take kindly to me sneaking over the border and stealing their fruit.”
I frowned. “Then how did you get any in the first place?”
“Because there was an elven trader in the market one day selling them,” she explained slowly with a sigh. “It was a small supply, and I gave you most of it the other day! So no, I will not supply you with any more. You will have to rest, eat, and sleep like the rest of us mere mortals.”
I cocked my head to the side, my curiosity momentarily outweighing my disappointment. “Are elves not immortal?”
Aurora looked at me incredulously for a moment and then burst out laughing. If the sound of her laughter wasn’t enticing enough, the long pale column of her throat as she threw her head back made my mouth go dry.