“So, when do I begin?” I asked, a little of my curiosity returning after finishing the meal.
I remembered practically pleading with her to take me to her workshop and teach me the runes so that I could help her. That was when Father was still not here with us, and I had no grasp over my own essence to be of any help. Perhaps, that was going to change now.
More than getting my primer in forging, I was excited to experience Mum’s workshop for what it was. She had built the workshop underground when she single-handedly constructed our house. While she had taken me in before, I never got the whole tour of the place, and how she did the work.
“In a couple of hours,” she said. “After you’ve had some rest.”
“Or you could cast the rejuvenation spell on me,” I suggested with a grin, "and we can begin now."
Mum shook her head. “I would have, but your essence is growing swiftly. It’s best if we let your body adapt to your essence recovering your stamina passively.”
I considered her words and sighed. Mum’s spell was already becoming less effective, but the relieving sensation would still have been welcome.
“It’ll be hard at first,” Mum said, her voice tinged with worry. “But I promise you’ll feel a lot better within a couple of weeks.”
“Your endurance will grow. Your stamina,” Father added, “and your recovery speed as well.”
“Unless, of course, you find swordsmanship isn’t for you,” Mum said. “It’s not really a requirement for Shapers. Take Aunt Emi. She was terrible at it, but that didn’t stop her from reaching Prestige class.”
“But I might not be terrible at it,” I said. While Shapers’ power manifested directly through manipulating the essence of nature, many still found it essential to train in swordsmanship or another weapon—mostly the combat-class Shapers. Aunt Emi was more of a scholar.
On that note, perhaps I was delving into too many paths, but that was merely because I found them all interesting. Perhaps there was a trouble of spreading yourself too thin, but I felt none in the elementary grades. I had enough time to train them all. Maybe that would change once my essence seed ignites.
“I’m going to read until I’m ready,” I said, shaking my head.
“What am I going to do about him?” I heard Mum say from the kitchen, as I crept to the study.
The entrance to the basement forge was locked with an essence seal that only Mum could open. She placed her palm against the thick door, and light shimmered into existence, swirling in a perfect circle. The glow dimmed with Mum’s essence unsealing the lock. A soft click echoed, and with a creak, the door unlatched.
Inside, it was much colder than I had imagined a forge to be. Fluorescent light constructs flared to life, illuminating the hidden room before us. A small staircase led down, bridging the gap.
The basement was vast—almost half the size of our home—and entirely dedicated to her workshop. It was divided into two sections. On one side were all the instruments: hammers, anvils, a large set of tweezers, and a table stacked with ingots and bricks of various metals. More of the materials were neatly arranged beneath the staircase. Rare metals, alloys, crystallised essence, and leather lined the space.
A moderately sized hearth was installed against the far wall, while the side wall was decorated with swords, axes, hammers, arrows, and bows.
On the other section stood another table, cluttered with a microscopic device, a forging pen, large stacks of parchment, and other instruments I didn’t recognise. A single chair accompanied the workstation.
The forge itself was neither finely furnished nor ornately decorated, but it was marvellously clean and well-lit.
“Disappointed?” Mum asked. “I guess it’s all archaic compared to what you probably imagined. The old hearth can do everything a plasma smelter can, with some hard effort. We do lack a good refiner or a spectral analyser, but I can do what those cutting-edge mechanisms do.”
“Wow,” I muttered. “I don’t understand half of what you just said, but it sounded wondrous.”
“That only means you have a lot to learn,” she said, her lips curving upwards. “Do you know how we make fabricators?”
“Fabricators?” I repeated, furrowing my brows.
“Artifacts, apparatus, relics, magical devices,” Mum said with some distaste. “These are the more common terms for it.”
“I don’t think ‘apparatus’ is common, Mum.” At least, I had never heard of it.
“Nor are artifacts or relics,” Mum snorted, “but people see a crudely built sword that can cut wood better than an axe and call it an artifact. In truth, it is merely a sword with a script formation which can fabricate the effect of the [Empower] weave."
"So a fabricator is anything that can fabricate weaves?" My brows knitted together.
"The process is different, but more or less." Mum was delighted that at least I caught the right term. "Whereas a high-functioning fabricator needs to meet a certain process of production and threshold for it to be called an artifact, and that said artifact, once antiquated, and embodies certain characteristics will become a relic.”
“That explains why Relics are so rare.” I nodded in understanding. “What about an apparatus?”
“An apparatus isn’t a single tool but a system of tools designed for a specific task. A refiner, for example, extracts the purest forms of ore and metal.”
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Wow, I love it when Mum gives straight answers.
“Now, before I begin my lesson,” she crossed her arms, “tell me what you know about the process of forging.”
I paused, trying to give a more concise answer. “You smelt the metal here first,” I said, pointing towards the cold hearth. “Then beat it into shape with a hammer… or use essence to shape it?”
“And then?”
“You engrave all the runes and weaves,” I guessed.
“You’re mostly right, though we engrave the magic while the metal is still hot,” she corrected. “And a hammer isn’t as useful as you think, at least not in the hands of a novice. Most artisans work alongside blacksmiths, but those more proficient in their craft use essence to forge directly.”
Needless to say, she fell into the latter category.
“Can you show me?” I asked eagerly. “You making something?”
Mum looked at my beaming face and smiled. “Sure. What do you want me to make?”
I froze, swallowing the first answer that came to mind. While a sword might be something stunning, there were already several swords hanging on the walls, along with other weapons and tools.
“Choose something smaller,” she suggested. “A proper piece takes time.”
“Mhm,” I thought hard, finally settling on a very lame answer. “A pen?”
“An engraving pen?” Her gaze flickered to the four different metal pens on the table. “Those are some of the most complex articles to create, despite their size.”
Well, I was thinking of a normal pen, one that wouldn’t need to be refilled with ink. I told her as much, and her eyes gleamed.
“That’s an interesting idea,” she murmured. “I wonder why that never crossed my mind.”
“Maybe because ink is easy to refill?” I said
Mum hummed, though she didn’t seem to hear me, still lost in thought.
“I have a brilliant idea,” she said suddenly, coming out of her reverie. “Well, maybe not brilliant, but certainly interesting.” She stroked my head. “I definitely know what to get you for your next birthday.”
A pen with never-ending ink?
“But for now, how about an engraver for you to practise rune engraving?”
I was okay with anything. “But why not the pen of never-ending ink?”
“Because that idea needs to be revised, drawn into a design, and tested a few times,” she said. “First rule of an artisan: you do not begin forging on whims. A good idea deserves good time in the mind and some more on paper before coming to fruition.”
I nodded along, finding it reasonable.
“Whereas I have made dozens of engraving pens and do not require an essence design or schema to get myself working.”
Still, for my benefit, she swiftly drew one and handed it to me. One page held the outward design with the rune patterns, another held the essence weave—the machinery that would let me use it without utilising my own essence—and finally, a schema with a plan for the entire construction.
Mum said it was a hybrid model that could work with the artisan’s essence or the essence core built within. But, like a normal fountain pen, the essence within was not infinite.
“Mum, how much do these things cost?” I asked.
She had already lit a small fire in the hearth, with an ingot of metal placed into it. “The cost of production is not high,” she said, “but since anything involving essence is practically a luxury product, it’s quite expensive. A rune engraver of novice rank can cost up to a hundred silver leafs or two.”
I sucked in a deep breath. That tiny thing cost so much? It was more than what I needed to fill a large empty shelf with books.
“Why do you ask, sweetheart?”
“I was thinking about what it would cost to buy something good for Rose and Aunt Emi.”
And for you too.
“Hmm,” she hummed, turning the heat up, the small metal ingot already smouldering red. “You don’t want me to buy it for them?”
“I would, but that would make it your gift,” I said seriously, “not mine.”
Mum chuckled. “You are not wrong, though I suppose your aunts will appreciate your thinking.”
“No, I want to gift them something on my own.”
“Then you should learn quickly and forge them something they will like,” she said fondly. “Now, watch.”
Threads of yellow light flew from her palm, swirling around the smouldering bronze ingot. Slowly, it floated out of the hearth and hovered in suspension. Under her control, the ingot began to flatten, unfolding into a metal plate as thin as a couple of sheets of paper.
I watched with unwavering fascination. Mum shot her palm towards me, and a thread of essence shot towards the table, connecting with the engraving pen there. The thread made contact with the pen, and it flew to her palm.
That’s telekinesis, right?
I thought but didn’t ask, fearing it might break her concentration.
She didn’t use the pen at first. More threads of essence sprung up, forming a tapestry of weaves, glowing in smouldering yellow light. It took several minutes, but my eyes remained glued to the whole process.
Mum drew the essence weave into the plate—not atop it, no, inside the thin metal plate. The process was even slower. I didn’t know if she was slowing it down for my benefit or if the process simply required it.
Once that was done, she finally played her hand with the engraving pen. She infused her essence into it as a smouldering nib elongated from the pen. It was almost like an essence thread, but far more physical. Using it, she began drawing the geometric pattern first before engraving the small runes within them.
“Many artisans, usually novices, use stencil paper to draw the runes and then transfer them onto the fabricator,” she said. “The chance of error is low, though it takes a little more time.”
“Then why are you not using one?”
“Because I’m proficient enough,” she said, golden eyes glued to her work. “And the transferring may leave the synapses between the runes and the essence veins weak.”
The runes needed essence to work, and the essence veins were the path through which essence travelled inside the metal. If the connection was weak, the output would be less than satisfactory—maybe even malfunction after some use.
Mum finished the rest of the process in about a quarter of an hour, though the end product was far from done.
“You can sit down,” she chuckled. “The remaining processes are as interesting as swinging a sword.”
Over the next half hour, she rolled the metal plate into a cylinder in the shape of a pen, connected a small essence core—an amber gem, smaller than a peanut—into the network, and then forged the nib.
“There are classifications in essence cores. Usually, amber, yellow, or golden ones are best for engraving pens or any other enchanting-related fabricators.”
Finally finished with the product, she handed it to me. “It needs some polishing, but you can inspect it.”
I could not draw essence out of my body, so the only inspection I could do was turning it on by the little trigger she had put at the end of the pen and trying to draw runes. I already knew them through the puzzles in the cube.
Mum handed me a couple of sheets of stencil paper to try.
“I knew you were a natural,” Mum said, looking over my shoulder at the simple formation of runes I drew. A fire script. Investing any essence into it would cause a flame to manifest.
“I studied them on the cube for close to a year to call myself a natural,” I snorted.
Mum grinned, pulling me into a hug. “Do you feel I cheated you into learning artificing?”
A little,
I thought, but then the spell’s voice echoed in my mind.
[A new way is accessible: Rune Engraving I (1/10)]
“Not at all,” I said, as though convincing myself.
“Does the symmetrical form symbolise any practical function?” I asked, eerily aware that all the patterns I saw were enclosed in symmetrical geometric forms. Even spell weaves utilised symmetric forms, though not always in geometric shapes.
“There is,” she said thoughtfully.
I waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t. “And that is?”
“What’s the fun in telling you that? It’s better if you figure it out on your own. Hmm, consider it your first assignment under my tutelage.”