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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’s what 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 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.

“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 simple, 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.

He said, “I’ve never been good at enchanting, so this was quite a nice change.”

“It’s not surprising that you’re good with this.” Darabella said, “But enchanting is almost as easy, so it is curious that you’re not good at normal enchanting.”

Erick almost grunted out in annoyance, but he held that back and said, “Normal enchanting is not that simple.”

“Ehhhhhh… It kinda is. Maybe your Particle Magic creation soured how you communicate with the mana? Or changed it, anyway.” Darabella said, “But besides that: You don’t have a crafting Class so of course you’re experiencing problems with crafting-focused endeavors, like enchanting. Which reminds me: We need to talk about how far you hope to actually go with rune crafting.”

Erick would have continued down that conversation, but he had to focus on one part of Darabella’s comment. “What do you mean, crafting Class? No one needs a magic Class to learn magic, or a warrior Class to hit with a sword, or an enchanting Class to learn enchanting. They’re bonuses, but not necessities.”

Darabella scrunched her face as she smiled a little, unsure how to proceed. She acted like she was trying to be let in on the joke, saying, “Yes you do.”

“No you don’t,” Erick said, not joking. “My Juggernaut guard is the most skilled mana senser of us all, and she’s even awakened her aura and learned to Remake several spells. With gridwork, my daughter, who had trouble with combining even the most basic spells like [Fireball] is now making tier 4 spells. I don’t have any Farmer Skills or Class Abilities, but I bet I can out-farm any single Farmer out there.”

Darabella pulled back, nodding in recognition, but not in defeat. She said, “But, as for rune crafting, you won’t ever have the Class Ability, Greater Enduring Runes, which makes any runes I craft resist all forms of degradation for at least a day from the carving. This lets me craft runes in literal mud. And here’s the big one: I have an Ability called Greater Shifting Runes, which lets the runes I craft shift to better suit the spells imbued into them. The normal Ability that most other Rune Smiths have only lasts for 12 hours, or less. My Greater version remains in the runes I craft for one whole week. During that time, the runes will shift with time and use, uncovering the Ancient Script words and strengthening the Script meaning behind any of my runework, producing a product that is literally perfect for anyone with any odd spellwork.

“This is in addition to the normal way in which runes will shift with time and use.

“I could craft you a runic anything, for any of your odd spells, and it would eventually work perfectly for you. You want that [Undertow Star] in a pillar? I can make that, even though I have no idea how you managed to make that spell.” She added, “You’ll be able to do some of this, because runes do get better with time, but I can write ‘[Undertow Star]’ in Ecks, making an absolutely terrible rune, and those words will eventually shift to Ancient Script.”

Erick could only say, “… Oh.”

Erick would have to check his Class Ability options when he got somewhere private, but even if he did get a rune crafting option, it probably wouldn’t be something as nice as Shifting Runes!

… And. Wait. Even if he did get that Ability, he probably wouldn’t take it. Opportunity cost, and all; he’d have to get rid of something else and there was nothing he wanted to drop.

Darabella nodded, saying, “Classed Enchanters have similar Abilities that help them make enchantments. So if you were comparing yourself to them, then… While, yes, everyone can make enchantments or potions or whatever, if you don’t have the Class Abilities to guide your hands, then someone else who is actually a Classed crafter will always make a better product than you.”

Erick thought for a second, debating with himself what he actually needed out of runecrafting. He landed on an answer, rather soon, so he asked, “Without the Class, can I still craft runes that link with other runes, enabling a runic web?”

“Oh? Sure. No problem there.” Darabella said, “Runes do two or three… or maybe five or six things really well. Two, for sure. One: they allow for longer duration and provide physicality to some spellwork. And two: they can be chained together over separate systems of similar metal.

“But without the Class, you have to be good at rune carving and precise at your connections and have a lot of power in your system to make it work, but physicality and chaining are very much attainable.

“We even have a few non-Rune Smiths working on the rune web of the main city. My father was even one of those people; he was a Stone Mage. He’s retired now.” Darabella digressed, “Anyone with enough skill can make and install the infrastructure of a rune web, but most people can’t achieve the level of skill needed to do this outside of the Class. So let’s run through more basic spells, and get some of that understanding!” She asked, “Yes?”

“Yes,” Erick agreed. “Thanks for teaching me, by the way.”

“Oh yeah yeah. Sure sure.” Darabella said, “You can have that knife, by the way. I got lots.”

“Thank you, Darabella.”

“No problem, Archmage.”

“You can call me Erick.”

Darabella smiled a bit, saying, “Then I shall!”

And it was a genuine smile, this time, her dimples on full display. Darabella lost all of her fear in that moment, making her seem like an even brighter individual. Her hair, wavy and reddish brown, like a much darker shade of her skin, bounced around her shoulders as she moved, while her eyes were reddish gold that almost shone like bright, brushed copper.

Erick smiled too.

And then he got down to carving.

- - - -

An hour later, Erick had produced the runework for the full suite of Arcanaeum-required spellwork. [Husbandry], [Alter Friction], [Alter Size], [Force Platform], etcetera. Everything. Many of his inscriptions were a poor fit to the small squares of metal he runed, but he still managed to rune the metal properly.

Erick was rather amazed with himself. He even looked over to Poi, and Poi just nodded; he knew what it meant that Erick had finally managed to do some proper ‘enchanting’, even if it wasn’t actually enchanting at all.

It wasn’t long before Darabella announced that Erick was skilled enough to move on to weaponry.

[Conjure Weapon] went into a forged dagger, and made the weapon stronger for it. The original duration on [Conjure Weapon] was only 10 minutes, so it was easy to check if Erick had done it right. And he had! As Erick was working on something else, at the 13 minute mark, the spell finally faded from the steel.

From there, Darabella decided that they could move on to lessons about flowing magic through runic systems, allowing for multiple inputs and drastically increased areas of effect. This led to Erick speaking of Earth technologies, and of the similarities between runes and their systems, and wires and electricity.

Darabella gained a real interest in listening, and in understanding how, exactly, electricity worked, and how it changed the world. For a little while, Erick became a teacher, and Darabella giggled as she jokingly spoke of ‘a world run on runes!’.

The lesson eventually went back to Erick learning how to string together runes and how to carve them properly, but this time, Darabella’s nervous energy had been replaced with eager calm. Erick suspected that they could have continued like that for a few more hours, at least. Or days, perhaps. But bodies demanded food and drink and it was already midnight, by then.

The day had vanished.

And downstairs, a problem had been piling up; boxes with weapons were stacked up by the front desk, awaiting inscription, while the occasional person came in wanting to talk to Darabella, or something along those lines. The guy at the front desk had been constantly turning people away, all day long. One guy in particular had come in three times already, and this third time he would not be denied.

It was that guy’s insistence that finally ended Erick’s lesson with Darabella.

Darabella laughed in mirth at Erick’s mention of ‘Wind-powered runes’, saying, “I wish ambient mana worked that way!”

Erick smiled, and said, “Just need to find some way to—”

The man’s voice carried upstairs, “I’m going up there, and don’t try to stop me!”

The front desk guy whisper-shouted, “She’s with the archmage!”

“And I’m going up there anyway!”

Erick sighed. He still smiled, but it was fainter than it had been. “I have kept you from your duties for too long.”

“Ah…” Darabella glanced toward the staircase. She had heard the voice, too. And now she heard the footsteps, too. “Yeah— Oh. Damn.” She glanced toward the clock on the wall. “Is it one in the morning already?” For a brief moment she panicked, and then she relaxed with resignation, whispering, “Oh well.”

The barging man came up the stairs. He wore a cream and green colored suit, but aside from his clothes, the rest of him was rather unimpressive. He locked eyes with Darabella, then he quickly looked to Erick. And then he really looked at Erick, and realized he hadn’t been lied to at the front desk.

In one swift motion, the intruder turned around and went back down the stairs, calling out behind him, “Sorry for the disturbance!”

Erick chuckled a bit, and then he turned to Darabella, saying, “This has been wonderful for me. Thank you very much. But it’s time to stop for now.”

Darabella touched him on the arm, briefly, saying, “A pleasure to have you here, Erick.” She pulled back, happily adding, “Come back anytime. Maybe after you've learned how to properly forge, then we can get into some really interesting runic structures.”

“I’ll probably be doing that.” Erick bowed just a fraction, then raised, saying, “See you around.”

Darabella twirled her wooden knife in her hand in a casual display of competency, smiling as she said, “See you around.”

Erick took his leave.

- - - -

“I’m so sorry, Poi,” Erick said, on the way to the gates of the Smithy. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Poi laughed a little, saying, “You’re already getting me a million-gold armor.”

“Yes, but that’s like… Baseline of being a good boss. How about some good fish for dinner?”

“I will take that offer. There’s a place on the south side of the main platform that I want to try. They’re open at this hour.”

“Then that is what we shall have! And then it’s back to the room, I suppose.”

“Teressa could come back here with you. She’s probably up, though my communication is blocked when we’re in here so I don’t know for sure. If she’s not, then she can wake quickly enough.”

“Ah... Maybe I’ll do that.”

- - - -

After a nice meal of seared fish and rice and Erick trying to pay but the restaurant absolutely not accepting any of his money, while simultaneously trying to give him much more food than he ordered, Erick brought Poi back to the room. Teressa got to eat some nice leftovers, for she was awake.

Over their midnight lunch, Erick spoke of what Darabella had told him about runes and their flowing nature, both to get Poi’s opinion of what he had heard and to let Teressa know to keep a lookout on the ground beneath them, to see if she could understand what she was seeing down there. The runic web was an interesting structure, for sure, but Erick needed a second and third opinion (and probably a lot more than that) before he thought about implementing this system in other parts of the world.

So it was a good thing that not ten minutes after opening the paper boxes filled with hot, delicious food, that Nirzir and Jane woke up. They joined Erick and Poi and Teressa at the table, and Erick explained what had happened with Darabella and her runes again, running through the highlights of a runic web.

Teressa repeated a bit of what she had already said for the benefit of Nirzir and Jane, “The [Envelop Item] ability is massive. That and the lights are possibly the best use of a runic web. Even just a weak [Envelop Item] stretched over a house will prevent [Stoneshape]s and other spells from directly affecting the structure.”

“Seems ripe for abuse,” Nirzir said. “Scattered systems like that? Too easy to break.”

Jane nodded, then asked, “How would a [Force Breaker] work against the [Envelop Item] runes?”

Erick’s smile dropped. “Ah. I’m not sure.”

Poi finally revealed his judgment of the whole thing, saying, “The system is too easy to corrupt.”

“Oh yeah. For sure.” Teressa said, “Anyone with enough knowledge could destroy a normal runic web, or worse, stick [Fireball]s in the system.”

Erick frowned a little. “I’m sure they have safeguards against that. And against [Force Breaker] and [Dispel]s, too.”

“They have to; yes.” Teressa said, “But any safeguards can be ripped apart with sufficient force, knowledge, or power. Never trust a defensive structure to protect against the more devious monsters or people. Only trust yourself, and the power you can wield in that particular moment.”

Jane nodded. “Yup.”

“The Void Song works well because it comes from a central source which is easy to monitor and maintain.” Nirzir said, “Not that our system doesn’t have problems, too. But a scattered system? That seems foolish.”

Erick hummed in thought.

They talked for a little while longer, with Nirzir poking ever larger holes in a scattered ‘runic web’ and Jane wondering at how easy it would be for a well-made [Chaining Dispel] to take the whole thing down. Purely as a matter of security, after all. And then Teressa postulated that all they had in the runic web were utility spells, so perhaps their actual defense was something else much stronger.

Most everyone in the city was level 50-ish, after all.

They decided that the people were the main line of defense, so the conversation trailed off.

With a lot more questions on hand, and very few answers, Erick went back to the Smithy with Teressa in tow while Jane was on watch and Poi and Nirzir went to sleep.

The city seemed no less active at night than it was during the day, and Erick found that he really liked that. It reminded him of the times he visited New York City, or Chicago, but better, for Enduring Forge was truly a city that never slept. Half of the stores around the main city were actually primarily awake at night, and it wasn’t just restaurants and bars, either. Book stores, schoolhouses, places like that. Many places never shut down, and foot traffic never truly died down, either, but it was hard to call ‘night’, ‘night’, because the lights in this land never went out.

- - - -

Back at the Smithy, Erick wandered down the pathway toward the head office, where Grosgrena usually was. The Old Smith was asleep and elsewhere, but the ladies behind the counters were eager to point Erick in the proper direction to learn basic forging techniques. So Erick went to the forge, and found his target, who turned out to be the man who Grosgrena pointed out yesterday; Mordog, the human man with as much muscle as an orcol.

Mordog handed Erick off to a different teacher, though, once the gruff man heard that Erick wanted remedial lessons to ensure that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Erick was pretty sure he knew the basics, but he had never really forged before, so he wanted lessons, from the bottom up. Mordog seemed to take particular issue with this idea that Erick was ‘doing it mostly correct’.

“Yer damned definitely doing it wrong. Everyone always is! And no offense meant, archmage, but I got orders to fill and no time to teach if all you want is basic shit.” Mordog said, “My guy here will learn ya, then you come back to me and I’ll get you hammering an iron sword strong enough to carve turtles in twain.”

“Fair enough. Thank you.”

So Erick went with a man by the name of Obrik to a different part of the forge.

In a private forge, Erick learned the grain structure of metal and of forging temperatures by color as it related to type of iron or specialty metals. Of deformation stresses both good and bad, and of pouring and folding. Tempering and quenching. Different ways of annealing. How to temper different parts of the metal in different ways to achieve flexibility in one area and strength in another. He hit a lot of metal with lots of hammers of various sizes, and also his own hard light. He squeezed metals in giant presses. He had a much easier and faster time squeezing metal with his own hard light. He made a dagger that broke as he slammed it into a boulder, sending shrapnel flying across the workshop. And then he watched as Obrik took a dagger Obrik had made and shoved it into the stone, like he was simply placing the dagger back where it belonged.

Erick joked that he weakened the stone for Obrik, and Obrik laughed, and joked back, saying that weakening a foe is only worth 25% Participation, and that he had gained all the rest. Erick just smiled at that, while Obrik [Stoneshape]d the rock back into its normal boulder-self.

12 hours and a few breaks later, Erick knew he could have spent another month with Obrik, and he still wouldn’t know as much about steel as this man did, and they had only gone over basic steel. There was still rustless steel, and iron, and all sorts of magical metals that went into weapons, or otherwise.

Erick wasn’t going to be making any weapons, but swordcraft (or spearcraft or daggercraft) was the starting point for many Smiths, though few people ever mastered any of the various disciplines. As far as Obrik and the Smiths of Enduring Forge were concerned, even though they were some of the best in the world, most of them still felt inadequate compared to some of the masterpieces hanging in the ancestral homes of the nobility, or in the forges of their neighbors, or even the casual work made by people like Mordog, the Adamantium Sword Smith, or Idalial, the Adamantium Armor Smith.

At the end of it all, Obrik said, “You learned rather fast, but you’ve got a long way to go.”

Erick joked, knowing the man’s answer already, “Would you buy a sword from me?”

“Nope.” Obrik said, “I might buy a spoon, if you give me a discount.”

Erick laughed, and then he said, “So this was all truly helpful, and I know I took you away from your work. Do you want a thousand gold for the day? Or you got a going rate I could pay you? I probably should do the same for the other teachers I learned under, but… Well I’m here, and offering— Actually. I’m not offering. How does 2000 gold sound for the day?”

Erick knew it was a good offer, for he had heard the various figures passed around the forge by neighbors, or by people walking through, talking shop. Obrik had predictably started to sputter out a denial of Erick’s offer, but when Erick had escalated to 2000 the man couldn’t rightly refuse.

Or. Well.

Obrik tried to refuse.

Erick didn’t let him refuse, saying, “I’ll just hand the money over at the front office. I know I’m taking up your time. So I’m paying you for your time. Thanks, Obrik.”

Obrik frowned, saying, “Well. Slag. I can’t refuse that, now can I! Sure. Thank you, Archmage.”

Erick nodded.

Obrik bowed.

The lesson was over. Erick moved on to the next…

But first! A detour back to the room to switch out Teressa for Poi.

- - - -

On the way back to the room, Erick asked Teressa, “That wasn’t too boring, was it?”

Teressa had been rather attentive and interested the whole time, but she proved that Erick wasn’t seeing interest that wasn’t there, as she said, “Metalworking is amazing. I still can’t see the grain structure that he talked about, though I could certainly tell it exists.”

“Same.” Erick said, “It’s a Smith-only thing to see the grains, and it affords them rather perfect control over the outcome, but they still gotta learn how to forge the hard way. They just get a hand up toward true mastery.”

Teressa smiled.

Erick asked, “Would you want to learn some metalworking, too?”

Teressa instantly shook her head, waving a hand, saying, “No no no.”

“Well. Maybe not here, if that’s what makes you nervous.” Erick said, “But eventually?”

Teressa thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. I could see myself hitting steel with a hammer.”

Erick smiled.

They stopped for a proper… lunch, yes. It was lunch time now? Maybe. Sure. They stopped to get lunch at one of the places on the north side of the main town platform. Erick had forgotten what time it was, briefly, but if the various clocks here and there weren’t enough to inform him of the time, looking up at the crack in the roof of the cavern was enough to reorient him. Mostly. The sun was somewhere high above, though even the crevice up there was so far deep in the mountains that the sun never really appeared. The shadows up there were certainly less than normal, though.

With extra lunches retrieved, Erick and Teressa went back to the room.

Erick talked a bit with Jane, who had gone exploring in the city alongside Nirzir and Poi, briefly, and mostly just for an errand for Nirzir. Jane hadn’t gone back to Hothalls, though, as Erick had expected her to.

Jane confessed, “Oh gods, dad. My stomach… I was not prepared for what ran through it. You weren’t here, but I was on the toilet for a good three unfun hours.”

Erick laughed loud and happy. “You could have [Cleanse]ed it out!”

Jane touched her still slightly red hair, smiling as she said, “I like the red, though.”

“Red is a good color on you,” Nirzir said to Jane.

Jane smiled wide and tousled her hair, saying, “I think I might color it with [Polymorph]— Here. See?” She shook her head, and her hair returned to vibrant red as she laughed. “Ha! How’s this look?”

“Looks great, Jane,” Erick said, sharing in his daughter’s happiness. He asked, “So what’d you all go into the city for?”

“Well.” Nirzir began, “I got that knife, and I want to use it, so...”

Nirzir needed metal plates to make a formation. She wasn’t carving runes, though, but rather she was carving Thunder Song Formations, which was apparently a Singer thing, and which might help her to recreate Erick’s Undertow effect. Erick was interested, but Jane was not too interested because none of the traditional magic making methods had ever worked for her.

But traditional methods and Singing had worked quite well for Nirzir, even if she was having a bit of trouble with her current project. Nirzir showed Erick three discarded formation plates and her current fourth, which might turn out better than the other ones. They looked like vibration-table designs, but with a lot more traditional magical diagrams stuck into them here and there. Erick wanted to know more about Nirzir’s designs, but there wasn’t much to say besides the purpose of the formation, and all the rather obvious magical diagrams sketched out in charcoal, waiting to be carved away by Nirzir’s new adamantium dagger.

“The goal,” Nirzir said, “If I get it right, is that my Void Song will produce its own solidified harmonies, which is what we call it when a Song is constructive. You usually need two Singers to make a constructive song, but I’m trying to do it on my own. In turn, this solidification will produce a stabilized song that will live as long as there are people to Drain.”

Jane was off in another room, and Erick was alone with Nirzir. It was not nearly as awkward as he feared it would have been, which he was thankful for, but he was about to make it more awkward, because now he wanted to talk about sound.

After a small deliberation with himself, Erick offered, “Want to talk about sound? How it works? The physics behind it all?”

Nirzir looked to Erick with a gleam in her eye, but also suspicion. “Uh. Sure. What do you know about sound?”

Erick ignored the barely concealed skepticism in Nirzir’s voice, for he had never shown off what his [Physical Domain] could actually do, had he? Erick smiled, as he asked, “Want to see which one of us can blow up a mountain with sound?”

A good four, maybe seven emotions passed across Nirzir’s face. Disbelief, first and foremost, but then came skepticism and intrigue. She grinned, unsure, saying, “Okay?” Then, more strongly, “Yeah. Sure. I mean… Maybe not a mountain, but—”

Poi’s voice carried over from the other room, “No, no!” He rushed into the room with Erick and Nirzir, saying, “Let’s not do that!”

“Bah! Why not!” Erick said, “I could put back any mountain I blew up… Maybe?” Less sure, he said, “I would need to make a mountain-building spell, but I could probably do that, too.”

“No no.” Poi said, “You’re delirious. You’ve been awake for too—”

Jane came up behind Poi, happily teasing, “I want to see him try.”

Poi instantly turned, glaring disapproval. “No.” He turned back to Erick, “No.”

Erick delightedly pushed Poi’s button, saying, “I might need to blow up a mountain some day. It’d be good to know if I could do it before I had to try.”

Nirzir spoke up, raising a hand as she did, “I’d like to try blowing up a mountain top.”

“Please no.” Poi said, “Erick. Go to bed, and if you still want to in the morning, then…” He tried a new tactic. “Destruction for the sake of destruction is just destruction. Don’t be that type of archmage.”

Ah.

The moment died.

Erick lost his joy. Jane lost her enthusiasm.

And then Erick started to think, and his emotions crashed even further down.

All of them were in friendly-yet-scared territory, and that territory was full of unknowns. If Erick started blowing up shit, then the people might become even more worried than they already were. Relations could deteriorate rather fast from there. Erick wouldn’t be the aggressor, but… if he went out and blew up a mountain, then he might be seen as an aggressor by anyone who might be watching. And besides that, blowing up a mountain for shits and giggles would give away some of his secrets. All of those outcomes would be bad. And for what? To learn that he was capable of blowing up a mountain if he wished? He didn’t need to know that.

A memory of Last Shadow’s Feast came to him.

Of standing in the sky, watching as the Aerie exploded, destroying a vast swath of the northern part of the Jungle, reshaping the face of Ar’Kendrithyst, killing many nearby survivors and sending shockwaves bouncing across all of the Dead City, setting it to ring like a drum. Erick’s skin went cold as a small trill of fear and hatred thrummed up and down his spine, then settled across his shoulders and neck.

There was no need to purposefully blow up a mountain; especially not ‘just for fun’. No one needed to have that kind of power, and even if they did, no one needed to exercise that power just to see if they could.

“Ah. Yeah,” Erick sighed. “You’re right, Poi. I don’t know what I was thinking. I am tired. I’m going to take a nap.”

Poi sighed in relief. “Thank you, Erick.”

Jane eyed her father carefully, noticing his shift. She kept her own emotions guarded, too.

Nirzir frowned a little, saying, “Restraint is important, I suppose.”

“Yup.” Erick said, “It is.”

He went to bed.

- - - -

Five hours of sleep were more than enough.

Soon, Erick and Poi were back out on the town. After a pass by the bank to get some numbers, the two of them went to the Smithy. Erick worked a bit with the people in the Smithy’s head office to put down some payments to the people who had taught him about Smithing, and then it was back to learning how to work metal. It seemed none of the head Smiths were willing to devote time to Erick, though, which made sense, since the head Smiths had work that needed to be done. They weren’t really teachers, anyway.

And so, through Idalial this time, the head Adamantium Armorsmith, Erick was able to meet with another Smith able to teach him, named Origotha. Both Mordog and Obrik were not there; they were probably sleeping.

Through Origotha, Erick learned a bit more about everything that a Smith needed to know. The Smithy apparently provided a standard, introductory education to most people who wanted to pay for it, and though Erick’s education was not standard at all, he fit enough of the molds that fitting him into the established structure wasn’t too difficult. Origotha apparently had students most of the time, but today had been her day off, for her own work.

Origotha seemed fine with this, though.

She went on to explain how, according to what she heard from Obrik, Erick was ripping through the normal five year apprenticeship in much less time than expected. The ‘five year’ time limit was more of a suggestion than a reality, though; some people took longer while some only required a year. The actual graduation requirement was more of a ‘can you make a perfect sword/shield/armor’ than anything numerical.

It turned out that Origotha was a rather good teacher, too, but she was about as scared of Erick as most other people.

She had a way of hedging her words with him that she never had with actual apprentices, as evident by the few times they were interrupted by actual apprentices, and her voice turned harder, and more authoritative. Origotha seemed to be incapable of using that tone with Erick, though. She had a really hard time telling him what he was doing wrong until he finally told her to relax and treat him like he was a first year apprentice. At that point, she seemed to open up, and her words came easier.

Still rather stilted, though.

Eventually, when Erick was in the middle of making yet another dagger, Origotha finally spoke up.

With eyes full of concern, and a voice half-full of the same, she said, “You know you’ll never be a Smith without the actual Class, right. You can only guess at the phase changes that you’re causing in the steel, and at the strength you’re moving around inside the metal.” With finality creeping into her words, she said, “You will never know how to forge like a Smith.”

Erick smiled softly, saying, “I’m okay with that, Origotha. I need functional and strong. Not perfect. If I can do 90% of what a Smith can do, then that’s fine by me.”

“… Okay. But your cap might only be 75%. Maybe 90% on a really, really good day.”

Erick laughed. “That’s fine, too.”

Origotha watched him for a lie, and finding none, she said, “Then you can throw that dagger back into the melting pot and start again. You’ve got stress fractures all over the place; it’s ruined.”

“… Eh?”

Erick frowned as he held up the dagger. He had finished the tempering and the annealing and he was almost ready to start sharpening it, and it looked fine. He stared at the metal with his mana sense, and saw nothing amiss. The blade truly did look fine.

He handed the dagger to her, asking, “Where are the fractures?”

Origotha took out a piece of chalk and drew on the unworked blade. “Here in the hilt, there's a tiny one on the back of the blade, and this one by the tip will ruin the point, all the way down to here.” She handed the knife back to him. “Take it and slam it into that stone tester, and watch it break right where I lined.”

Erick was briefly skeptical, but then he got over that emotion because Origotha knew a lot more about metal than he did. So, he took the unfinished knife in his hand and slammed it into the stone tester.

The metal snapped at the point. The hilt broke in half in his palm, causing his [Personal Ward] to flicker white at the damage. The tiny break in the middle turned into something much larger and proved to be the true breaking point of the dagger, ruining the knife as the metal tool broke nearly in half.

With a frown, Erick gathered the broken bits with a flick of light, to join the piece still held in his right hand. He looked down at them, and at the chalk markings that perfectly lined the breaks.

He asked Origotha, “Is your Metal Sense more of a future sense?”

“Uhh…” Origotha was caught off-guard by the question. She frowned a bit, confused, saying, “It lets me know the problems the metal has? Not sure what it does beyond that.”

“I’ve heard of what Metal Sense allows, but would you mind telling me what it is you actually see? What Metal Sense does for you? Start at the beginning.”

“Sure.” Origotha said, “No self-respecting Smith goes without Metal Sense, and they’d all tell you the same about what it does. It… Actually. Try crafting another knife, and then we can pick up this topic again. [Mend] is not useful here; start from the beginning.”

Erick saw no reason not to comply, and so he did. Not half an hour later, he had taken another block of forge steel and turned it into another unfinished knife of comparable quality to the previous one. It had no edge, and it still needed to be ground and polished using all the other tools in Origotha’s arsenal, but it was unmistakably a knife. He had gotten a bit faster at the creation of it, too.

“This is a rather decent knife. Only one stress line in this one; here.” Origotha took the blade in hand and marked a chalk line across a three centimeter stretch of the blade, near the center of what would eventually become the blade’s edge. “You might be able to grind that problem away during the edging and polishing process. But the problem would still be there. If you struck the knife in that spot with as much Strength as some people have, then the whole thing could crack right there, for sure. This is good enough for a kitchen knife, though.”

“So what do you see with Metal Sense?”

Origotha nodded a little, but she didn’t speak right away. “I’ve been thinking how to tell you that, so you’ll have to forgive me but I’m not good with lightwards. But I guess I have to make a lightward.” Origotha held up a hand, and paused. “Yeah. This isn’t going to be pretty.” And then she cast.

An exact lightward copy of the knife sprung into being, about five times larger than the actual thing.

Erick instantly said, “That’s a great lightward!”

Origotha had a small smile. “Thanks, but if I’m not coddling you, then I expect you to not coddle me; that lightward is shit.”

They obviously had different teaching methods.

“I can see what you’re trying to tell me, and that’s what’s important.” Erick looked over the lightward, comparing it to the actual knife, and said, “So. I can already tell you that I can not mana sense the metal inside the knife like you Metal Sense. What you see is… rather different.”

The lightward image was chock full of tiny, irregular honeycomb-bubble-like grains, with each of those grains jumbled up, but with a flow to them that matched the forge lines that Erick had created in the forging of the dagger. The wardlight showed more than a microscopic picture of the material, though. Unseen flows of some sort of unknown power circled through the weapon, moving like water, or air, but frozen in time. The only place where Erick saw a disruption to this flow was exactly where Origotha had marked with the chalk.

In that fractured point, some of the grain structure was… aligned, for lack of a better word. A lot of the grains were very random, but for some reason, the grains in that area were about half lined up in a weird, broken sort of way. It was sort of like if Erick had thrown down a bunch of bricks on the ground, but in a random way some of those bricks decided to line up next to each other, creating a fault that was only half there. If any stress was applied, that fault would surely widen, sending cracks through the whole piece, or at least chipping the steel right there.

Erick went silent in contemplation, his gaze switching between the lightward and the actual dagger, looking for the truth of Origotha’s markings.

He found nothing of what Origotha had found.

Erick asked, “Explain?”

Origotha explained, “So you’ve got a lot of parts right. The grains are well made and not too irregular, and they flow in the directions they’re generally supposed to flow. The weapon won’t break under normal stresses, but anyone with a Strength over 20 will easily break the weapon if they hit it in this disrupted spot, here.” She offered, “Try to [Metalshape] a dagger and I’ll show you the difference?”

“Very well.” Erick grabbed his broken, failed dagger, and Shaped it into a proper dagger. While the result was a perfectly pretty weapon, he knew it was only good as a utensil, and nothing more. He handed the ‘weapon’ to Origotha.

Origotha took the weapon, and concentrated upon it for a long moment.

Then she cast another lightward into the air, saying, “There are too many problems for me to show you all of them, but I got the largest ones.”

“I... see that.”

And Erick did. For the first time, he actually saw the problem of [Metalshape].

The Shaped dagger was a mess of scrambled grain sizes, some large, some small, many looking like amoebas stretched all over the place, while some that were perfectly spherical. Those tiny spherical dots —almost ball bearings, actually— of metal were terrible for the ‘flow’ of the dagger; they acted like boulders in a stream, or mountains in a jet stream, sending the flow wildly off course, and even dragging bits of the honeycomb along for the ride. Some of the grains were jagged and fractured, too, which was equally as bad as the ball bearings, but bad in a different way.

This was all well and good. But. Erick saw none of that with his own mana sense. Well. Almost none of that.

Erick said, “I can only see one of the tiny spheres. But you’ve got several up there in the lightward.”

“Ah. There are hundreds in that dagger. My lightward is off.” Origotha said, “But, to explain: [Metalshape] introduces those spheres into the metal, but they’re not hard to get rid of with proper forging. Heat and a hammer will get rid of most of them, though that’s a pretty poor way to make a weapon. Don’t want to ever start with [Metalshape]; you wanna keep that spell far away from your tools.”

Erick said, “Maybe I’ll look into the [Future Sight] angle, but from what I am seeing, your Metal Sense does not appear to be a [Future Sight], or at least not fully—” Erick glanced toward the door, adding, “But I’ll have to do that later, it seems.”

Origotha looked to the open door, her face full of confusion—

Grosgrena walked through the door and locked eyes upon Erick and Origotha.

“Hello, Grosgrena.” Erick said, “Something the matter?”

“Yes!” Grosgrena said, “We’re not taking your money! You’re taking our lessons and you’ll take them for free, and you’ll appreciate it, and that’s that. Appreciation. If any of my Smiths accept money from you, then they’re no Smiths of mine!”

Origotha reeled back, her eyes going wide.

Erick stood stunned for a brief moment, then he said, “Okay? Uh. Sure?”

Behind him, Origotha froze, and then she let out a tiny, disappointed sigh.

Grosgrena nodded. She had solved a problem, and that was that. She added, “Aside from all that nonsense: Barir is asking after you. Wants to know if you have time to kill some monsters. They’re ready for you, if you do.”

“I can do that.” Erick set down his borrowed tools, telling Origotha, “Thank you for all your instruction, but duty calls.”

Origotha bowed, saying, “Anytime, Archmage. Thank you for gracing my forge with your presence.”

Erick whispered to her, “I’ll find a way to get that money to you, anyway.”

Grosgrena narrowed her eyes—

Origotha briefly lit up like the happiest woman in the world, but then she crushed that wayward emotion down, and said, “No thank you. Old Smith Grosgrena is right. I cannot accept your gold. It would be dishonorable. It would taint the good works you have done for us already.”

“Ah…” Erick asked, “If you’re sure?”

“I am.” Origotha nodded. “Thank you for the thought; it is enough.”

Grosgrena smirked a tiny bit at that, but she said nothing.

As Origotha returned to her regular work and Grosgrena saw that everything would go as she wanted it to go, Erick left the forge and walked with the Old Smith down the way, back toward the gate. They spoke of small things, and of how a Smith could see the faults in metal, while a normal mana sense could not. Was Metal Sense based on [Future Sight]? Or some other variation of that magic?

Grosgrena said, “A Smith’s Metal Sense is possibly [Future Sight] related, but I don’t know about that; that’s esoteric magic. Not sure who would know...” She glanced off to the left, then turned back to Erick, asking, “You ever heard of the Orrery of Rozeta?”

Erick blinked, then he said, “Yes. I have.”

Grosgrena eyed Erick’s weird look for a moment, then continued, “I heard that people make pilgrimages there all the time, looking for answers. Sometimes people even find what they’re looking for, but mostly they find answers from other pilgrims. The priests of Rozeta don’t give up any answers to anything.” She shrugged. “But I’ve never been. Have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Now I ain’t know much about Metal Sense aside from what it shows me as compared to a normal mana sense.” Grosgrena asked, “I can ask around for specifics, if you want? Someone around here has to know something. Lotta that esoteric shit is buried in books in libraries, too. Might take me a while to get you an answer.”

Erick smiled. “I would take that offer. Thank you.”

“Nothing to it.”

- - - -

The Bastion Down Below looked as though someone had taken a series of double-ended black castle towers of different sizes, bunched them all together, wrapped them in curtain walls, and then plunged straight through the lowest platform of Enduring Forge. A third of the structure was exposed on both the top and the bottom of the platform, while the central third was fully encased in the platform itself. The interior of the lowest platform was riddled with passageways and checkpoints and a whole lot of oversight, in the form of hundreds of people casting varied and odd detection spells over all the ore and people who passed through this place. The infrastructure in the platform probably accounted for another four or five Bastion-sized areas of usable space.

It was a sight to see, for sure, and Erick saw a lot of it as he stood upon a Teleport Square a hundred meters from the main entrance to the upper Bastion. Ophiel flitted about, with one on his shoulder and nine scattered around, both on this side and the other side of the platform, investigating as surreptitiously as they could. The people on watch —and there were a lot of those types— didn’t seem to mind. Some waved. Ophiel even waved back.

Erick stepped off of the Teleport Square with Poi at his side.

Not too far ahead stood a checkpoint for entrance into the Bastion, with a few people already in line.

Erick did not need to wait for the line, though, for Jalrock, their guide from the other day, stood near the checkpoint wearing what appeared to be grey army fatigues. He waved, and came right on over.

“Archmage! Welcome to the Bastion Down Below.”

Erick smirked. “I didn’t expect to see you down here?”

“Oh? Well. I get around.” Jalrock shrugged, saying, “Everyone is required to be a part of the army if they want to get anywhere in Enduring Forge, and I’m no different.” He gestured back to the massive black structure, asking, “General Barir Adama awaits, along with a few Team Leaders and Scouts. Allow me to escort you?”

“Sure.”

Erick and Poi skipped the checkpoint line, but they did pass through more than a few detection spells on their way to the half-meter thick main door of the Bastion. A few of those detection spells even went off, including one large blue flash that sent streamers of blue light in every direction, but Jalrock waved off the lightshow and the nearby guards made no fuss. More than a few of the nearby guards even smiled at the blue light, as though they had seen exactly what they thought they would see, but it was still nice to get confirmation.

Jalrock explained, “That blue one is for major artifacts or any other items that pass through here containing a large amount of mana. The smaller red and green ones are for smaller, still notable items, which is expected of an archmage and entourage.”

Erick and Poi followed right along, and they entered the main hallway of the Bastion. Beyond that door they took a left, down a hallway with a blue line of paint down the center. Erick checked out some nearby signs, and saw that the blue line was for army personnel only. Green was for miners. Red was for guests. Every hallway also had a white line with arrows in it, pointing the way toward the nearest exit. This main entrance was pretty solidly blue, with only a single red line that went off in a direction opposite of Erick’s apparent destination.

This place had a rather expansive runic web, too, but it was different from the one on the middle platform, or city hall’s platform. Erick saw anti-[Teleport] runework on this one.

And there were a lot of people here. They weren’t ten meters in the front door and they had already passed a good dozen people already. Some of those people even bowed to Erick.

They went up a winding staircase and down another small hallway, passing another four checkpoints as they went, which Jalrock explained were mostly detectors for biological threats, and which didn’t go off. Eventually they reached what might have been a main command station, or at least one of the well-used ones; a place like this probably had a dozen command stations.

The room was large and multi-leveled, with the center of the room slightly lower than the rest of the room. There was a ring-like table in that center space, with a very intricate lightward hovering in the air in the center of that ring. It appeared to be a map of the surrounding three hundred kilometers. To the sides of the room were workstations, filled with people with [Viewing Screen]s attached to the runic web. Overseers oversaw operations, each of them with ten telepathic tendrils coming off of their heads, as they coordinated whatever was happening further down below the Down Below, in the lands beyond the cavern which held Enduring Forge.

General Barir and several other important-looking people stood in the center of the room, near the lightward, some inside the ring-table near the lightward, others outside and sitting; all of them waiting for Erick’s arrival.

At Erick’s entrance, the people in the room turned to him, some faster than others. And then they stood, and bowed. Three seconds passed, and then most everyone returned to work.

Erick stepped forward—

As General Barir stepped closer to meet him, saying, “Welcome to Greater Command.”

“Thanks for having me.” Erick asked, “So how do you want this spellwork to go out?”

Barir nodded quickly, then turned back to the giant map, saying, “This is a map of the Underworld for 350 kilometers in every direction. My people here—” He gestured to his people, saying, “Will be coming behind your cleanup with various seeds of various anti-monster plants and fungi, as well as eggs and pregnant beasts from a few monster species that are easily controlled and deterred by those anti-monster plants. It’s mostly different types of rats for the terrestrial biomes, and some crab species for the aquatic biomes. It’s a system we’ve worked out well with our Beastmasters, but it’s a system that breaks down when you’re not looking at it, and reestablishing the broken system is easier said than done.” He turned to Erick fully, saying, “So what we want out of you, is to flood the land with your [Withering]s or whatever spells you want to use, and we’ll take care of the rest.” He added, “[Withering]s should be enough, though.”

Erick looked over the map. He counted a hundred and thirteen tunnel systems stretching out from the cavern of Enduring Forge. Those tunnels wound and joined and split as they were wont. Most formed cramped tunnels, maybe only four meters wide but a few hundred meters long, and winding. Some wound down, or up, into massive caverns multiple dozens of kilometers across. And the problem got even more complex after that. Multiple paths opened up everywhere. Erick imagined being down there, in the deeper parts. He imagined it would be easy to get lost, especially when gravity started to pull in odd directions, like the books all said it did.

But this close to the surface, getting lost was not possible.

Ophiel would do fine out there.

Erick said, “Beastmaster monsters would still be subject to [Withering]. They’re not out there right now, right?”

“As soon as you agree to this action, and as soon as we understand a timetable of what you’re able to do, then the Beastmasters will get recalled.” Barir said, “All of them already know the dangers your sort of spell represents to their charges and we’re ready to pull out as soon as you say you will begin.”

Erick nodded. “Next question: Are there shadelings out there? I would prefer not to kill people unless I have to.”

“There are not.” The question didn’t even phase Barir. “But even if there are, I understand your spell kills by drawing water out of the body. A threatened shadeling would retreat to the shadows, providing you with no egress to harm them.”

“That’s a good point,” Erick said, “But sometimes shadelings aren’t under their own control. If I stop the killing early, it will probably be because I encountered one in my Kill Notifications and I would need to investigate.”

Erick had no reason to suspect that there was something sketchy going on here, but he wanted to be upfront about what would happen if the worst should happen. At the very least, Erick would stop [Withering], and he didn’t want Barir to be upset when he called the whole project off for a while. Barir seemed to understand this.

“Acceptable.” Barir turned to his people, and began, “Let me introduce you to some of the Farmers and Beastmasters who will be following your [Withering], or whatever other spells you might be using. This is Madriag, Beastmaster, and Sarigal, Farmer, and…”

Introductions went out.

And then an odd thing happened.

Erick found himself delighted at the informality of it all. Barir treated these people not as his soldiers, but like his family. He spoke of Beastmasters raising special lineages of rats that could trace their heritage back to the founding of Enduring Forge, and of the mushrooms that his people had cultivated to fight back the Shadows, no matter how deep they got.

It reminded Erick a lot of Spur, actually.

As Erick asked questions about protocol and planting, and he got answers, Erick was delighted again at how well these people knew their land. They knew all of the monsters and resistance that Erick should expect to run up against, as they pointed out problematic points here and there in the lands beyond Enduring Forge. They had been protecting this land for a very long time, and everyone here was a pro, while every new soldier was taken under the wings of the old soldiers until they, too, were strong enough to lead their own forays out into the Underworld. After today, after Erick took back the nearby Underworld for Enduring Forge, and after Enduring Forge installed flora and fauna which would ensure the land remained under their power, Enduring Forge’s soldiers would have a much easier time of it all. And that was good.

Not half an hour after arriving at the Bastion Down Below, Ophiels launched from dark towers, flying into the cavern of Enduring Forge. The air around them began to glow a ghostly white. They might have resembled moons, brought down to the Underworld, each trailing an individualized tsunami of thick air that poured downward, into the tunnels and the darkness beyond.

The Kill Notifications started rolling in immediately.

- - - -

Ten hours later, with most of that time spent talking to the people around him and with a few breaks here and there, the cleanup was over. There had been no tricks from Enduring Forge. There had been no unexpected kills; no shadelings, no cannibals living outside the city walls, no overly-deadly monsters. The ‘reset’, which is what some of the guys on the ground had taken to calling the take-back of the lands around Enduring Forge, went about four times faster than the army of Enduring Forge had expected it to go, and mostly because Erick was extremely proactive in putting Ophiel in danger over risking the lives of the men and women on the ground.

Erick did not clean out every single monster infestation. He did not kill every single threat. Such a project would have taken months, if not years, due to the fact that if you killed a monster in one location, the rest of the monsters of the Underworld just moved into that newly opened real estate. No; Erick simply killed 75% of the monsters living around Enduring Forge, and only the most obvious ones at that.

Which was more than good enough according to Barir and everyone else in the army.

There had been no surprises that Erick and Ophiel could not handle, for though there were some giant leeches and hidden spider colonies and ravenous oozes here and there, which sent everyone else running for cover, Erick simply solved those problems with sweeps of starlight, or mandalas of lightning. One thing Erick did not expect, though, was that he never encountered a single animal larger than his thumb.

“So animals have a tough time down here, don’t they,” Erick said, when he and Barir and only a few other people were left in the command room.

Those other people were mostly at the monitoring stations, but they weren’t seeing anything unexpected on the monitors. Just a bunch of now-empty tunnels, some inquisitive rats exploring their new, freshly [Grow]n Underworld fungi forests and otherwise, and many, many crab eggs hatching in the cleaned-out Underworld lakes, next to gently growing Underworld underwater grasses. There were people in all of those Screens, but the Screen watchers weren’t monitoring the people themselves; they were looking for threats to the people. All of the team leaders and other high ranking people were out there right now, solidifying the Reset, alongside the rank and file.

Barir said, “There are lizards and fish and a few other things of that size out there that will evolve into monsters and become a problem for our rats and crabs, but our Beastmasters will be handling them as they become problems. It’s a never-ending cycle of destruction and rebirth down here, but we can keep it in order with enough well-applied pressures.” He said, “Taking back the Underworld is the hardest part, but keeping it? This we can do very well.”

“I didn’t see any mines out there, though. Where do you guys mine?”

Barir smiled. “So you didn’t notice the pathways?”

Barir had gotten comfortable enough with Erick to lose a lot of his stiffness, but he still played most of his cards close to his chest. He had revealed a bit, though.

Erick guessed, “The mines are far away, and [Teleport] links them with Enduring Forge? And the miners bring their hauls with them? Or. No. [Teleport] doesn’t work that well if you go down even a hundred kilometers deeper— When does [Teleport] stop functioning altogether?”

“Around here, [Teleport]’s distance capability drops down to the single-kilometer range at 535 kilometers deep, but even at this hundred kilometer depth, you can only get a hundred kilometers on a horizontal [Teleport].” Barir said, “Other places are different.”

Erick nodded, then continued, “So you either have many people [Teleport]ing closer to the surface on multi-blip trips, or they’re— Ah. It’s [Stone Body]. And hidden areas inside the stone which serve as safe Teleport Squares.” He added, “Or else you’re fucking with me and there are no pathways and all you have is [Gate].”

Barir laughed loud. “Ah! [Gate]. A wondrous spell. Not one we have access to, as far as I know.” He said, “Your guess with [Stone Body] was correct, but only for transportation to here. We don’t allow people to come into the city from the Underworld without a lot of decontamination, or them having [Stone Body], or something else which will guarantee that they don’t bring a contaminant with them. As far as the actual mines? Those locations are secrets known only to the noble houses which have one.”

All of that fit neatly with what Erick had seen, except…

He asked, “No noble house has [Gate]? Not a single one? You guys have a Wayfarer’s Guildhouse in town, though; I saw it.”

Barir’s smile remained upon his face. He was truly happy that the day had gone so well, and he was happy to assuage all of Erick’s fears, too. “I’m a noble, and I know all of the rest of us, too. If anyone has [Gate], then they’re keeping that under deep secrecy, which is not something we do around here.” He added, “Not with fellow clansmen, anyway.”

Barir was a noble? He didn’t act like it, at all.

In fact, Erick hadn’t really seen many people who he would consider ‘nobles of Enduring Forge’, either. It had been a few days since Erick had arrived. He had expected to see at least a few nobles before now, unless they were all truly abiding by their decision not to approach Erick for help with Imaging, or anything like that.

Erick asked, “How many nobles are in Clan Adamantium?”

“A lot of people. Practically everyone in a position of authority is a member of the Clan in one way or another.” Barir thumbed over to a guy at a large viewing screen. “That’s my nephew, working that Screen, and he’s a noble, too.” The nephew waved. Barir continued, “Jalrock, your guide, is the patriarch of his house of Slate, one of the oldest and most prestigious noble branches of Clan Adamantium. Arakag is my niece. Grosgrena is my great aunt. I heard you and Darabella got along fantastically, and she married into the Clan… Her husband was killed a decade ago. He was a fine man.” Barir continued, “Clan Adamantium has a controlling interest in all of Enduring Forge, and we keep it that way either by adoption or marriage, but almost none of us act like the nobles you might be used to. Even the noble district is mostly empty because we prefer to be here, among everyone else.”

“No one lives up there?” Erick asked, eyeing the man. “That’s weird.”

“Well—” Barir digressed, “Some people do. Mostly it’s storage. There’s nothing special about that district anyway, except that we do, technically, have houses up there. It’s nothing special. It’s not even the original noble district of Enduring Forge.” He said, “City hall is the true ancestral home of Clan Adamantium. Your room right now used to be the Grand Mage’s Tower. There’s some history there about that move, but in the end, we find that using the ancestral home as a city hall is a much more useful option.”

“That’s all a bit unexpected.” Erick said, “You guys certainly run a nice city, though. So it seems to be working for you.”

“Aye. Glad you like it. The only problem is that it does get cramped, for we only got so much land, after all. And we’re in the Underworld with a mostly-itinerant population, so that carries its own set of problems.” Barir said, “So people can come and go however they want, as long as they submit to normal Underworld protocols.”

“It doesn’t seem that bad to me.” Erick had noticed the screenings at the public Teleport Squares here and there across the city, and even at the Teleport Square on the surface, above the chasm above Enduring Forge. “A lot more than I’m used to, but all of it looked reasonable.”

“Personally, I know we’re a bit lax with how stringent we should be, and we pay for that sometimes with oddities making their way into the city. But certain people can be trusted not to bring in problems, like you, for instance, with your Mind Mage man at your side.” Barir said, “You were vetted long before you stepped foot into this city. For normal people, though… Enduring Forge is their first stop in the Underworld, and they simply don’t know the danger that the dark truly represents, or how easy it is to bring that danger back home. Foolish; a lot of ‘em.” He said, “I bet you get a lot of people like that over in Spur, too.”

“Adventurers trying for Ar’Kendrithyst but knowing fuck-all about the dangers? Aye.” Erick said, “People have to pass some written exams before we approve them for entrance to the Dead City. They can bypass all of those and enter the place directly if they want to, though. Some people do. Those people usually die— Well. I don’t know how it is these days. I’m sure it’s all changing, too.”

Barir nodded solemnly, saying, “It’s always dangerous, even if the danger has changed. We never got the normal monster surges we expected to come after Shadow’s Feast…” He asked, “Those monsters have to still be out there, don’t they?”

“Well. No.” Erick frowned, saying, “Someone could have killed them all.” He looked to the map floating in front of them, saying, “One of the Blessed Shades could have gone to ground and cleaned out a whole bunch of problems that they knew were coming. Maybe not directly, but they could have told people about them—”

Or maybe...

Maybe Fallopolis came here and cleared out the threats that Enduring Forge had been expecting? Erick hadn’t actually Blessed her. Fallopolis could certainly go around murdering pockets of monsters readying themselves to surge up from the Underworld… If she wanted to. But then again, simply informing someone of pockets of monsters that are getting ready to surge is usually enough to get a trained assault squad into those pockets to kill those surges before they start.

Yeah. That seemed more reasonable.

Goldie could have passed around a few notes and solved a lot of problems. She probably had, too.

Barir noticed none of Erick’s inner turmoil, or at least he did a good job at pretending to ignore it, for Barir went right along, saying, “I tend not to trust anything coming out of the shadows, so it’ll take me a good twenty years to believe what you accomplished in Ar’Kendrithyst.”

And then the man realized who he had said that to, and what his words had been. He sweated under his clothes. His eyes dilated in a fear response. Had he spoken too freely? Had he relaxed too much? Had he fucked himself over, big time?

Oh. That was disappointing to see.

Erick had thought they were past that.

So Erick chuckled, sighed, and tried to put the man back at ease, saying, “The only truth I know of Last Shadow’s Feast, is that I saw what I saw, and I did what I did, and that Melemizargo abandoned his clergy to their own devices. Of all of the events of Last Shadow’s Feast, the last point is the only thing I truly believe to have happened.”

Barir relaxed, fractionally. He said, “That’s good to hear, then; that you’re not wholly sure, either. All one can ever truly know about Shadows is that they’re tricky.”

“They are.”

A moment of silence passed.

Barir said, “After this ‘Reset’, has been secured... Not sure I like that name, but the soldiers often call things as they see them, and those names usually stick— After the Reset, after our populace is vetted as clean of intestinal cores, and after you [Withering] them, too, which is still a few days away… We’re having a feast. You’re the guest of honor. Will you come?”

“Of course I will come.” Erick added, “I like boneless fried chicken strips and sauces, but don’t make that the main course—”

Poi gave a small cough.

“—And some sort of fish, and something spicy, and something fancy, and a lot of something meaty.”

Barir smiled a little, his mirth seeming to return, now that he knew that saying the wrong thing wouldn’t set Erick off like some sort of easily-exploding bomb. The general proclaimed, “It shall be done!”

Barir and Erick spoke for a little while longer about further actions that might need to be taken to secure the Reset, but after that, Erick and Poi returned to their room in city hall.

And then Erick switched out Poi for Teressa, and went back to the Smithy.

- - - -

Erick had a few questions piled up, and so he asked them before they started learning.

Grosgrena said, “The runic web concerns are a matter of security, so we can’t tell you those since you don’t live here and you have no vested interest in remaining here. If that changes, then we’ll open up all those secrets to you, but until then, it is how it is. What I can tell you, though, is that most spells —Including most variations of [Chaining Dispel]— are locked to their specific section of the runic web. Besides that, we can ignore many of those types of [Dispels] because it still costs the assailant X amount of mana to erase X amount of spellwork, and we have lots of spellwork in that web. The full magic saturation point for a kilogram of steel is in the millions, and we got many times that number in our web.” She added, “[Force Breaker] is specifically guarded against, though. All of those types of spells won’t get more than a few meters through the web. Now a [Chain Force Breaker] is a rare spell indeed, but we’ve got methods to deal with that, too.

“As for all the smaller concerns with foreign runes inscribed in the metal: if we’re under direct attack and we know of it, then we can separate the web to prevent your [Fireball] scenario. This also solves the [Chain Force Breaker] scenario. But no, I won’t be elaborating on that.

“As for your questions about Metal Sense, and why a normal mana sense won’t let you see the fractures that I can see, I couldn’t find any people, but I did find a book! It’s not here, though.” Grosgrena said, “It’s in my office under lock and key, so we can get it when we’re done here. I can’t let you have the book, either, but you can take it with you to your room and read it while you’re here in Enduring Forge. The book records one of Clan Adamantium’s ancestor’s experiments with Metal Sense. From what I gathered, Metal Sense is some form of [Future Sight] adapted toward metal, based on understanding the mana currents naturally present inside metal. I’m sure you’ll get more from that book than I did.” She gestured to the stone work bench beside them, saying, “And now: what we’re here for.”

The stone table was only a small part of a large private forge that was built for one purpose, and one purpose only: the imbuing of magic into metal. The tools to accomplish such a feat were different for different metals, but that difference was mostly one of size.

The main imbuing machine was black adamantium and it looked like two pillars, one on top of the other. A large wheel and mechanism with a counterweight attached to the top pillar, so when the wheel rotated, the top pillar would systematically raise and lower against the bottom pillar. In the space between, the bottom pillar had a divot, while the top pillar had a bulge, but there was enough space in that pounding point for a normal-sized ingot of metal to not spill out of the crush zone, when the machine eventually got to crushing.

“Watch, and learn,” said the Old Smith.

Grosgrena picked up an ingot of silver that looked much too heavy for the old, shrunken woman. She walked over to the crusher, and with a touch of her other hand against the adamantium machine, the pillar lifted up like it was being polite. The Old Smith placed the ingot in the cradle, and then she cast a spell across the space, filling the crushing zone with sparkling black magic that quickly faded away to a small density of the air.

“This is so complicated that it’s almost a school of magic on its own, but the basic idea is the same across all metal imbuing processes.” Grosgrena returned to Erick, saying, “Making magical metal requires a spell that enforces Rest, like what I hear your [Prismatic Ward] can do. Your own [Prismatic Ward] won’t be good for this, though; you need direction in your Rest, not a blanket Rest. Or try out your own [Prismatic Ward] and see what happens; I’m not your mother. It’ll make some sort of magical metal, for sure. Probably have to use platinum as your base, though. Anyway. This particular Restful spell is a simple [Absorption Ward] for 500 points. This is the best way to create Deep Sky Silver out of normal Silver.”

She lifted her arm, casting a small spell at the crusher.

And then the crusher began doing what it was meant to do.

The pillars came together and crushed the cold silver between two inexorable adamantium forces, filling the air with a loud screech as they deformed the ingot. Grosgrena smiled as a second screech filled the air, but a third screech didn’t come; the silver had deformed as much as the setup had allowed. It was now a partially crushed ingot filling up the bottom of the adamantium crucible. And it had gotten hot. The machine continued to crush, but it would not crush what had already been crushed beyond its reach.

Grosgrena said, “Now, every year, some fool kid loses an arm or gets a bent piece of metal lodged in their stomach, or something equally bad. I don’t think that’ll happen with you, but be aware of the danger of extreme pressures flicking metal across the forge like a particularly nasty [Rock Bolt]. Always be sure you have control over the metal in the pounder. Never operate a pounder when you’re not sure about its use.

“And all the other shitty disclaimers. Yada yada.

“This is how you stick magic into a metal and make it a magical metal. Broadly. Every metal has its own nuances, but Deep Sky Silver is the easiest to make, and the easiest to use to explain the process, for like most magical metals, Deep Sky Silver has degrees of power. And also like most metals, you can tell a lot about what you have created from the color of the metal during the forging process.

“This stuff right now is still silver. But with a few telekinetic turns, like this—”

With expert control and in the split second while the pounder was fully open, Grosgrena grabbed the silver in a telekinetic grip and flipped it over, turning the concave ‘ingot’ into a convex hump. The adamantium pillar crushed that hump back down, sending a loud screech through the room. Three more screeches followed that, but soon, though, the noise stopped. The pounder had crushed all it could crush.

And then Grosgrena flipped the silver over again, allowing the machine to do its work.

She spoke over the noise as she continued to flip the silver, saying, “Soon, the [Absorption Ward] will break. Maybe two more passes— There it goes!” She recast the Restful spell. “The magic will break four more times before we see the first shift in the silver, so we’ll go a lot faster now that you’ve seen the process a few times.”

The machine sped up.

Thun-screeech! Thun -screeech! Thun-screeech! Thun-screeech!

Grosgrena flipped the convex half-moon of metal over and over, and soon it got hot enough where Grosgrena was able to bend the metal under her own [Telekinesis]. She did that a few times, before she stuck the metal back into position, ensuring that the silver got crushed in a whole new, more violent way. She flipped and flopped and bent and flipped, working the silver and renewing the spellwork as needed.

After the [Ward] broke for the fourth time, Grosgrena pulled the well-folded silver out of the machine. It was hot, but clearly not hot enough to ruin the magic inside, like Erick had when he used [Incandescent Aura] to melt the previous bar of the good stuff. This stuff didn’t look too blue, though, but it was clearly not simple silver anymore.

“See here?” Grosgrena said, “It’s blueish. This is weak Deep Sky Silver.

“The original silver costs 50 gold, or 500 silver, and the original five kilos of normal silver were enough to make around 1000 silver coins, max, for most coins are made of trash metal that only has a bit of silver in them.

“Right now, this weak Deep Sky Silver is worth about 500 gold. Usable for shit enchanting work and assorted jewelry. If we were to continue this pounding process for about 32 hours straight, never stopping, and casting about 4 million mana worth of [Absorption Ward] into the process, then we’d get wrought-quality Deep Sky Silver. Now that stuff you can use to make some really nice shit, for such items are easily rechargeable via grand cores, or they’ll have extra charges, or whatever else general-purpose good thing you’re going for. Not my field of caring. But what I do care about is being able to tell the quality, and good, easily enchantable Deep Sky Silver will be as blue as a morning sky, but with a sheen of silver light to it.

“That good kind of Deep Sky Silver, in this quantity, is worth 5000 gold; 50,000 silver.

“Most people don’t go for the 32 hour creation of good Deep Sky Silver, though. It’s a lot easier to go slower, with an [Absorption Ward] cast by a Scion of Focus that will regenerate as fast as the pounder can utilize that regeneration. Faster regeneration of the spellwork is more important than size of the [Absorption Ward], because, for the most part, metal can only absorb so much magic so fast. A 500 point, million Regen [Ward] is more impressive than a million point, 500 Regen [Ward]; the first can get you where you need to go in four hours with one cast, but the second will need to be cast four times.

“There’s a bunch of math involved in crushing metals and how much magic they can absorb in one crush, but a good rule of thumb is absorbing 25-100 mana per crush. More, if the metal is cold; less, if the metal is hot. Usually, the metal is hot from crushing.

“Down at the crushing rooms, we’ll usually set up so there’s a crush every 30 seconds, with an apprentice turning the metal as needed, with the caster of the [Ward] only coming in once a day to recast the spell when needed. Takes about a week to turn out a single 5 kilo block of Deep Sky Silver, and almost all of it is sold off to contracted parties for 5k a pop.” Grosgrena turned off the machine and set the block of crushed Deep Sky Silver to the side, asking, “Any questions?”

Erick had listened well, but he was unsure on one aspect of Grosgrena’s lesson. “Are all magical metals made magical in this way? What about froststeel? Adamantium?”

Grosgrena smirked. “Different and specific [Restful Ward]s are used to create specific magical metals out of specific starting metals. Mostly, the [Ward] is an elemental ward of some kind, and the metal is platinum. That’s a good 75% of all magical metals out there. Froststeel requires a lot of cold, so that’s hard to do, but we can get it done.” Grosgrena said, “A few notable exceptions are adamantium, as you say, and holyite. But the first is a secret and the second is something you’ll have to ask the gods about. It’s usually a Quest from a god to a follower to find holyite and craft it into an item, so I tend to stay out of that shit.”

“Okay. Fair enough.” Erick said, “I want to try platinum and [Prismatic Ward].”

Grosgrena smirked. “I thought you might.” She tapped a brilliantly white bar of metal sitting on the stone table. “That’s platinum. Let’s get to crushing!”

Erick smiled. He had an Ophiel expend himself as a [Prismatic Ward] across the crusher while he stuck the bar of platinum in the machine. Grosgrena turned it on, and it started crushing. With lightform precision and Domain power, Erick turned and held the platinum inside the cavity. Platinum screeched particularly loud as it deform—

Grosgrena cast a silencing spell, cutting off the screeches, as she said, “I used to love that sound when I was younger, but it grates sometimes when the [Ward] is strong enough. It appears your [Ward] qualifies.”

Erick smiled.

Grosgrena said, “We should have a tentative result soon, maybe four more minutes at this rate of crushing.”

Erick nodded, saying, “I heard you used [Metalshape] to do this process. I didn’t think it was actual physical crushing.”

“Hmm. Now that’s a topic.” Grosgrena said, “[Metalshape] will achieve weak versions of various magical metals, but only actual crushing and folding will achieve the strong stuff. If you’ve ever bought weak Deep Sky Silver, you probably got it from a source that used [Metalshape] to do their imbuing. We don’t sell that shi— Oh!” Grosgrena eyed the crusher the whole time, and now her eyes focused. “Looks a bit iridescent.”

Erick narrowed his eyes. “It’s not… Celesteel?”

“Close guess, but no. It has red notes. Celesteel has no red. I bet money that it’s prismsteel. Good for all elemental applications.”

“Oh. Well. Yeah. That would make sense, wouldn’t it.”

Grosgrena smirked. “Now, I’ve never used [Prismatic Ward] myself, but I reckon that if we added some titanium dust to the mix, then you’d get celesteel, for sure. Copper dust would get you hellite. That’s mostly just theory that I’ve read in some of the older books, though; no one around here has had [Prismatic Ward] in a long time. Now, neither of those outcomes would be well-made under your [Prismatic Ward], and you’d have to pound the platinum for ten times as long, but eventually, you’d get there. Pretty sure, anyway.” She said, “A much more efficient thing to do if you want celesteel is to make an [Exalted Restful Ward], then you could put plain platinum in the pounder and you’d end up with celesteel afterward.”

Erick’s thoughts caught on a snag. Something didn’t sit right with Grosgrena’s words. Erick asked, “If you used a proper [Exalted Restful Ward] then you would not have to add titanium dust to get celesteel?”

“Nope.” Grosgrena smiled, for she recognized why Erick was having trouble understanding what was happening here. She solved the puzzle for him, saying, “When you took apart those metals for us you solved the question of ‘how does this shit turn magical’, and in an unexpected way. Apparently, through this pounding process, and through the correct [Ward]s, parts of the platinum actually turns into titanium when you do this.”

“Uh.” Erick said, “So platinum actually…”

Changes atomic number? From 78 to 22? When under the effect of magic?

Okay.

Erick didn’t want to voice that theory, though, since it sounded crazy. Such an atomic action would release an absolutely vast amount of energy. Too much! It was difficult for Erick to actually wrap his head around exactly how much energy should be released in such an action.

Erick stared at the pounding pillars in front of him, his eyes going a bit wide.

Grosgrena wasn’t lying to him, either.

So.

Huh.

Well. There was a simple explanation. Magic existed. (Duh)

And apparently alchemy was real on Veird (also duh). And with those truths self-evident, there was probably a way to turn plain stone into gold.

Who the fuck needed [Duplicate], when Particle Magic was right there— Oh.

Oh.

This was a problem.

Like, sure. [Cleanse] turned matter into mana, and this was fine and understandable, so Erick had no problems with the E = MC^2 stuff and platinum becoming titanium after taking a moment to think about it.

But the creation of gold out of nothing but the sand in one’s backyard, or out of thick air, was a much larger problem.

But maybe this was fine? Actually? Platinum was rather damned high on the periodic table, but gold was even higher. Going lower in atomic number was obviously possible, but going upward on the p-table? No evidence that was possible, yet.

And if it was possible, then such a spell would have been censured already? Right?

There were only 7 particles that were higher on the p-table than gold, and also stable. And most people never got near that end of the Condense line of spellwork, anyway.

And [Condense Gold] was Particle Mage Only… So.

Erick relaxed. No one was making gold out of nothing. The economy was fine. Erick hadn’t fucked over the entire world in the exact same way that the Headmaster had specifically warned him against, back when he learned [Duplicate] from the Old Dragon.

And so, Erick finished his thought, saying, “Platinum can turn into other metals? Neat.”

Grosgrena said, “We haven’t had any luck going up the particle mountain, but going down is easy enough.”

Erick smiled at that, all the while using his lightform to turn the platinum as needed, to allow the pounder to crush it down, letting the [Prismatic Ward] soak into the shiny silver metal. All the while, the platinum was becoming more and more rainbow-y.

Erick and Grosgrena spoke of magic and metals, and of all the most useful types of [Restful Ward]s.

Eventually, the conversation moved on to how spellwork flowed through a runic formation. His conversation with Darabella about all of that had given Erick a good starting point, but it had been a short conversation; not nearly long enough. Apparently, ‘how runes chained’ was a pretty simple answer that Erick would have found out if he actually tried making a formation himself. The magic went into the network, and was spread between every single valid rune, affecting stuff around those runes based on the spells imbued into the runes.

And that was all there was to that.

At the end of the metallurgy lesson, Erick left with a newfound appreciation for metals, a book to read, and some runic experiments to undertake. It had been a fantastic day.

The evening was great, too, with another nice dinner with everyone at Hothalls, and with Jane trying the 13-star meal and vanquishing it like the conqueror she was. Few others had ever accomplished such a feat, and Erick was proud of his daughter. For such an accomplishment, the owner even came out of hiding. The recluse was supposedly devoted to creating ever stronger and stranger spice concoctions which were able to burn and entice only the most foolish or brave sorts of people. He congratulated Jane on her accomplishment, then vanished, back into hiding, but not before handing Jane a few bottles of his own special 12-star blends. Those bottles held the same spice/beauty product that would turn her hair red. Jane was thrilled.

And also barely keeping it together.

Back at their rooms, Jane kept saying she was ‘perfectly fine!’ and ‘stop worrying about me!’ and ‘It’s only some blood coming out of my ears, I’m still at 50% Health!’, but eventually, Erick convinced her to accept a [Cleanse]. Instant relief! Both for her, from the pain, and for Erick, for having to watch Jane hurt herself like that.

- - - -

Erick woke up.

Today, he’d go see Darabella about more rune carving. He’d learn more about joining runes and flowing power between them.

Tomorrow, he’d do more metal work. Maybe make a shield for himself that could hold [Animadversion]. Maybe he could even combine runes and multiple small shields so that he could control many at a time, expanding the thorny shield’s most protective and reflective parts out into a net that could cover half of his body, if needed.

The day after, would be the [Withering] of the town.

And the day after that would be a banquet in his honor, held up at the noble district.

And sprinkled throughout all of that, Erick would help secure the Reset of the lands Down Below.

And then…

Something would happen.

When was the shit going to hit the fan? It had to be coming, soon, right? This was too comfortable, so something had to happen to upset the whole apple cart. Though… sure, these people were scared of him and that might make something bad happen, but probably not. People mostly didn’t mess with others higher on the power scale than them. They just ran away; screaming optional and not recommended.

But something was going to happen before all that.

And when it did…

Well.

If Erick was being honest with himself there were two outcomes to his stay in Enduring Forge. Both were… ‘bad’, in a sense.

Either the shit would hit the fan, which was option one. Or there was option two: which was a different sort of call to end his Worldly Path. Erick could easily see himself staying here, in Enduring Forge, long term. And plus! Linxel wasn’t too far away.

Enduring Forge and its people were wonderful.