“Enter,” a voice called from within.
Wren didn’t hesitate before pushing the door open.
The workshop looked the same as it always did — shards and samples scattered across the worktables, the same faint iron-and-rust smell hanging in the air — except for the corner near the back, where Corren sat hunched over his own desk, an identification circle glowing faintly around a sample of his own.
Wren stood by the door and waited, unwilling to interrupt whatever slow, exacting work Corren was in the middle of.
The wait stretched longer than he expected.
Eventually the circle guttered out, and Corren straightened, rolling one shoulder like he’d been sitting still for hours.
“Do you need something, Apprentice Wren?” he asked, in the same flat, uninterested tone he seemed to use for everything.
“Yes, sir.
I’d like to discuss the ore fragment you assigned me — and the identification spell itself.”
Corren’s eyes flicked toward him properly for the first time.
“And what were your questions?” He didn’t sound especially curious, but he didn’t sound bothered either — just a man mildly interrupted from more important work, willing to spend a few minutes finding out if this was worth his time.
Wren took a breath and reached into his pocket for the fragment.
He set it down on the table between them, along with his notes — the identification results, the strange third structure buried at its core, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the truth about exactly how long he’d kept the spell running to get that far.
Corren didn’t say anything while he read.
He picked up the fragment first, turning it once between his fingers, then set it back down and worked through the notes with the same unhurried precision he seemed to bring to everything, occasionally flipping back a page to check something against what came after it.
“You held this active for two hours,” he said finally.
Not a question.
“Yes, sir.”
“Unsupported.
No crystal.”
“Yes, sir.”
Corren set the notes down and looked at Wren properly — really looked, in a way he hadn’t bothered to during the affinity test, during any of the workshop sessions since.
Something in his face had shifted, subtle but unmistakable, the flat disinterest cracking just slightly at the edges.
“The third material’s a known impurity,” he said, tapping the fragment once.
“I’ve documented it before, in samples pulled from the same region.
It’s small — small enough that a basic identification circle usually can’t resolve it cleanly at all, let alone in a single session.
Most apprentices never see it.
Most trained mages need several passes, spread across days, before they get a clean read.” He looked back down at Wren’s notes, at the rough sketch of the shape still half-formed on the page. This story is hosted at novelping(.)com.
“You got this far in one evening.
On your first attempt at the spell.”
“It wasn’t a clean read,” Wren said.
“I never actually identified what it was.
The pain broke the circle before I finished.”
“That’s beside the point.” Corren’s tone hadn’t warmed exactly, but something in it had sharpened into genuine attention — the particular focus of a man who’d just found a far more interesting problem than the one he’d expected to be dealing with that afternoon.
“I have to say, Apprentice Wren.
I assumed you were an anomaly in willpower.
Nothing more.
Half the tower’s still talking about that test.” He set the fragment down.
“I didn’t expect an anomaly in research and casting as well.
That’s considerably rarer, and considerably more useful to me.”
Wren wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said nothing.
“I’d like you working directly with me,” Corren went on.
“Not the standard apprentice curriculum.
My actual research.”
“Sir?”
“You’ll still attend your lectures.
But your workshop hours will be spent here, with me, rather than copying diagrams alongside apprentices who need three weeks to manage what you did in one evening.” He picked the fragment back up, studying it with a fraction more interest than he had a minute ago.
“Consider it a promotion, if you’d like to think of it that way.
I’d rather think of it as not wasting either of our time.”
Wren looked down at the fragment sitting between them and felt something complicated settle in his chest that wasn’t entirely about the ache still living there.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“I’d like that.”
“Good.
Then let’s get you situated on what I’m actually working on,” Corren said, not skipping a beat.
“What they’ll tell you I’m researching is related to metallic subtypes.
That’s not untrue, exactly.” He continued, “The bare bones of it comes down to special types of metals.” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Special types?
What do you mean by that?”
“I mean certain metals have properties that make them useful in different circumstances.
Steel is hard, strong — perfect for weapons and armor.
Orichalcum, on the other hand, is only used for armor, since its malleability makes it unsuitable as a weapon.”
“Steel and Orichalcum are common knowledge, though.
Basic categories every apprentice memorizes before they’ve cast a single spell.” Corren picked up a third fragment from a case at his elbow — darker than the others, with a faint, oily sheen under the workshop lantern.
“This is Meteoric Iron.
Fallen from the sky rather than pulled from the ground, which matters more than it sounds like it should.
Holds a Lightning caster’s rune better than it has any business doing, for iron.
Nobody’s fully explained why yet.”
Wren stared at the fragment like it might answer the question itself, if he looked hard enough.
“Cold Iron, Bloodstone, Tarnsilver, half a dozen others most apprentices never bother learning past their name.” Corren set the meteoric sample down.
“Cold Iron’s the interesting one, if you want somewhere to start.
Doesn’t hold a rune at all.
Doesn’t absorb mana.
Completely inert to spellwork, which is exactly why it’s valuable — restraints, containment, anywhere you actually need magic to stop rather than continue.” He glanced at Wren.
“Half of what makes a metal worth studying isn’t what it does.
It’s what it refuses to do.”
“That’s actually kind of fascinating,” Wren said, before he could stop himself.
“It’s tedious to most people.
Cataloguing failure states doesn’t sound impressive at dinner parties.” Something almost like approval crossed Corren’s face, brief and clinical.
“You, apparently, don’t find it tedious.”
“No, sir.
I don’t.”
Corren studied him a moment longer than the comment probably warranted, then set the Cold Iron sample down beside the rest, lining the fragments up in a neat, deliberate row.
“Good,” he said.
“Then we’ll get along fine.”